He's cheesy and he's greasy

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Dumb and Dumber

Who is a clumsier liar and stupider spin merchant - Dean Del Mastro or Maurice Vellacot?

 In this corner....IT WAS THE LIBERALS!

Conservative demand Liberals release phone records, but won't release their own
Dean Del Mastro, the parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, blamed the Liberals over and over again during question period Monday.
"When those records are made public the Liberal party will in fact have fingered itself for each and every one of those calls," he said.
However, when asked by reporters if the Conservatives would release their own records, Del Mastro said they didn't need to because they are not the guilty party.
"No, because obviously our party is not behind the calls. We know that. We believe the Liberal Party has in fact made these allegations and they've made these allegations knowing full well that they've paid these companies millions of dollars to makes calls to hundreds of thousands of households across the country," he said.
Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae said his party has agreed to release all phone records, including scripts, from last May's election.
"We're hoping to release stuff as soon as possible," Rae said, following question period.


And in this corner...IT WAS ELECTIONS CANADA!

Tory backbencher lays blame for robocalls with Elections Canada

OTTAWA — A Conservative backbencher is suggesting Elections Canada may be to blame for the robocalls affair.
“I suspect that at the end of the day, if Elections Canada has the resources to do a proper investigation, they’ll find they’re themselves significantly responsible,” Saskatchewan MP Maurice Vellacott said in a statement.
“That tech issues with marrying (Elections Canada) lists to available, electronic phone lists is part of the problem, and in a few instances there may have been malfeasance by one party or the other.”
Vellacott says there have been numerous address errors by Elections Canada in each of the six federal elections he has contested.

 
Ahem

From the CBC May 2, 2011 story:

Susan Friend, an Elections Canada official, said the agency never calls voters directly to warn them that polling stations have moved.

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Why Stephen Harper really wanted those pandas

I fully expect to see these hairier versions of John Baird knocking on doors for the CPC in the next election

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Running the government like a business

“I'll simply say that our campaign was run with the same standards, the same structure, the same processes that any modern progressive company would use to ensure that its employees, and its agents operate ethically and in compliance with the law,” Mr. Giorno said. 

 Any company, like say Enron or Haliburton or Bre-X.
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Harper's the One

What the hell are those things on the side of Dean Del Mastro's head? They can't be ears, because he clearly isn't listening to a word that is being said to him. Del Mastro is probably sitting down in the video linked above because he has been spinning so much lately, he is too dizzy to stand up. What a maroon.

As Stephen Lautens pointed out on Twitter the other day, the Tory have a sort of standard response anytime they get their tails caught in a crack. I've amended his list slightly:

1. It's a smear
2. It's not worthy of a reply
3. It's a rogue
4. But...But...ADSCAM!
5. Look over there! A shiny object!
6. The Liberals did it/the Liberals did it first
7. But the NDP are SOSHILUSTS! OMG!
8. Sure it happened, but REAL Canadians don't care about all this insider political stuff, just ask Don Cherry
9. Prove it, copper!
10. Everyone does it
11. Plead guilty and pay a fine

Let me be perfectly clear, and I'll use small words so people like Del Mastro can understand.   There is nothing wrong with using robocalls to ask for support for your party, whether the calls come from Canada, the United States or Timbuckfreakingtu.
The only time the point of origin becomes an issue is when the calls contain illegal content, because if the company making the calls is outside the country, it is more difficult to compel them to provide information to investigators.

Calling voters and claiming to be from Elections Canada or claiming to be calling on behalf of a party other than the one paying you, is ILLEGAL.
Lying to voters with the intention of preventing them from voting is ILLEGAL.

With the vast number of ridings now reporting illegal calls intended to suppress the vote, it is becoming clear that it this could only have been put together by someone with access to significant amounts of both money and data. It is also pretty clear that the vast majority of the illegal calls across the country were made to try to suppress the votes of identified Liberal supporters, with NDP supporters being a secondary target. The fact that a handful of identified CPC supporters now claim to have received such calls is irrelevant. Why are they only coming forward now? Why are there so few of them and so many complaints from Liberal and NDP supporters?

In investigating a crime, one looks at who had means and motive. The Conservative Party of Canada has a massive database of voter information going back several elections. Their people regularly brag about it. They have shown, at the highest levels of the party, their willingness to break election law in the past. They had the means and the motive. It is simply a matter of finding the fingerprints on the knife sticking out of the back of democracy at this point.

Do not be misled or confused by the ink the CPC is spraying like a frightened octopus. Do not let them sidetrack you with arguments about whether Elections Canada has received 31,000 complaints or 31,000 contacts or 30,999. Do not be misled or confused by the endless speculating on who 'Pierre Poutine' is or might be. He will be found eventually. There is a going to be a paper trail of some kind. The people directly involved in the illegal calls in Guelph and other Kitchener area ridings will eventually be identified.
In looking at the local players in CPC politics and the history of ratfucking among a few of these Segeretti wannabes, I have my suspicions about who might have been involved. And no, I'm not going to name any names so the aforementioned ratfuckers can stop dialling their lawyers for now.
Do not be misled when the culprits are finally identified and the Prime Minister and his inner circle of advisors and cabinet colleagues all disavow any knowledge. That is how espionage works  -- when you or members of your team are captured - the secretary will deny any knowledge etc etc. This was not done by a few rogue operatives, working on their own without supervision of any kind. There will be an apparent organizational firewall of plausible deniability. Some of the people at the sharp end of things may even be prosecuted.
But do not for one instant think that the final responsibility for this does not lie with Stephen Harper. He is the King Ratfucker.
This is his crime in the same way that Watergate was Nixon's crime.
At worst, he personally ordered it done and chose the people who executed the plan. At the very least, he fostered an attitude within the party that winning - by any means necessary - was all that mattered, chose the managers of the people who committed these crimes and completely and utterly failed to exercise any oversight, supervision or leadership.
In the end, it doesn't really matter where Harper's actions or lack of them fall on that scale. He is the leader and a leader is responsible for the actions of the people he leads.
If he had a right or honourable bone in his body, he'd admit that and resign immediately.
But what do we get?
Stephen Harper first claiming the Liberals did it and finally, if not in so many words, saying "Prove it, copper!"




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More surprising news!

 A Liberal party staffer has admitted to being behind the @Vikileaks30 campaign on Twitter. As observed at the time, apparently it is okay for Vic Toews to push a bill he hasn't read that would allow warrentless access to Canadians' internet usage and history, but repeating already published information about Vic Toews' love child, divorce and romance with his kids' babysitter or the fact that the former justice minister and current minister of public safety was convicted of breaking the campaign finance laws in 1999 is apparently worse than a thousand Hitlers squared because that is a personal attack on a politician.

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the buck stops where?

Illustration stolen from Alison at Creekside, an excellent place to start learning about Robocon or Suppressiongate or whatever we are calling the latest bit of epic malfeasance on the part of the Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada

The conduct of Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada is now being described as Nixonian in some quarters and I would find it hard to disagree. They have certainly copied from the Nixon playbook in that they like to claim to represent the 'Silent Majority' and accuse their opponents of being elitists and radicals. They are profoundly anti-intellectual, to the extent that they mistrust science. They are hawkish on foreign policy and love to tout their support for the military.

But most of all, Harper will deny, deny, deny and throw on advisor after another under the bus. Nothing will ever be his fault and he will never acknowledge any error, any awareness of wrongdoing and will never admit to anything, no matter what the evidence.

It kind of reminds me of this song from the Watergate era.




I am willing to take Stephen Harper at his word that he knew nothing about the fraudulent phone campaign that helped him win a majority. But if he didn't know about that one, what else didn't he know?

No one voted for his advisors or campaign staff. He picked them himself, or picked the people who appointed them. He chose the people who decided that it was okay to for the CPC to lie, cheat and steal their way into power and he is the one who must take responsibility.
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how do you think they got rich in the first place?

I'm shocked - shocked I tell you!- to learn that a study has confirmed what we kind of always knew in our hearts.

 Rich people less ethical, more likely to cheat and lie, study says
MONTREAL - A new study says rich people are more likely to engage in unethical behaviour than their poorer counterparts — like cutting off motorists, lying in a negotiation and cheating to win a prize.
That's the finding from researchers at the University of California and the University of Toronto, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Now, I haven't seen the methodology used and I suspect that it would be a difficult thesis to prove experimentally and the researchers are careful to say that this doesn't mean all rich people are crooks, just that there is a 'tendency' there.

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Calling you

A little required reading for your Monday and the resumption of Parliament:

• More and more reports coming out about fraudulent telephone campaigns by the Conservative Party of Canada to undermine democracy and steal the election
• This campaign voter suppression robocall kerfuffel isn't a scandal that is just popping up now, some people have been on it for quite a while 
• And it is definitely part of a pattern of underhanded sabotage and infiltration that has been going on for some time and is well documented
• When the CPC has lost Post Media, it is clear that they have stepped over a line
• And it isn't just robo calls either, it is the use of phone banks to systematically mislead voters and suppress democracy
• CPC hack Dean DelMastro does his best to keep the vital "both sides do it" narrative alive, but given this admission his complaint is a bit rich
• I understand campaign cheats do their best to provide leaders and candidates with plausible deniability, but apparently the CPC and Canada are now being led by Sgt. Shultz

As an editorial aside to my learned colleagues in the media: Can we please stop referring to these incidents as crank calls? If you pick up the phone and someone asks to speak to Amanda Hugginkiss or wants to know if your refrigerator is running or you have Prince Albert in a can, that's a crank call. If someone claims to be calling on behalf of Elections Canada or a political party and lies to you about how or where to vote, that's a crime.
And let's not just write it off as political pranksterism or dirty tricks either. Putting a bag of flaming dogshit on somebody's porch, ringing the bell and running away is a dirty trick, a whoopee cushion is a prank - an orchestrated effort to suppress the vote by lying to people about how and where to vote is a crime.




Keep that soothing music going as you read these links, you're going to need it.


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If thinking that knowing things is good makes me a snob, then fine, I'm a snob

Evan McMorris-Santoro clearly has a strong stomach and the ability to keep a straight face no matter what. Watch as he wades through the river of willful ignorance that is a Rick Santorum - Americans For Prosperity - Tea Party rally. (warning - link contains weapons-grade stupid)
Apparently knowing stuff other than how to chew tobacco, scratch and vote for Rick Santorum is snobbish elitism of the worst sort. The amazing shit-ton of wrong chronicled in this short piece is so astounding its hard to know where to begin. According to the people quoted people who do manual labour are inferior, money is the only measure of success, colleges are totalitarian liberal fascist brainwashing factories, diversity is communism, and schooling is only for job training so no one should be encouraged to learn anything that doesn't directly apply to their job.
I'm honestly shocked that none of the people quoted in the story used the phrase "fancy-pants book learnin'"

“President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college,” Santorum said. “What a snob!” Santorum started by saying some people don’t need to go to college: “Not all folks are gifted the same way. Some people have incredible gifts with their hands.” 

Yes and god forbid that someone who  has "incredible gifts with their hands" should get a chance to learn to appreciate literature, learn to think clearly and logically, find out the earth revolves around the sun, learn a language other than 'American' or gain an appreciation for anything other than beer, wrasslin' and "reality" TV (thought to be fair, I did learn a lot about beer in university). Extrapolating from what they are quoted as saying, I'm guessing most of them regret having learned to read and write, assuming they can read anything more complex than TV guide or a stop sign. These folks are not just wallowing in willful ignorance, they are insisting others be forced to as well. 

I know some of this is simply right-wing contrarianism and that the Tea Party people are against higher education simply because Obama advocates it, but still it is amazing to me that a political candidate, let alone an entire movement, would come out in favour of curtailing opportunities for people. I await the day when Obama goes on national television and tells the American people that it is a bad idea to hit themselves in the head with a ball peen hammer and that under no circumstances should any American stick their tongue in an electrical outlet. Because just know that a bunch of the same yahoos who attend CPAC and think Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are wise and wonderful are going to end up in the emergency ward.

I am not saying that higher education is necessary to be a happy and successful person, or that smart is the same as educated, but learning for its own sake is to be encouraged. It is always better to know more than to know less. For most of us, knowledge is power, but I guess for the Teabaggers, ignorance is bliss.

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If it's Friday, it must be time for Tom Waits

With a tip of the tattered fedora and a raising of the chipped juice tumbler full of cheap fortified wine to Driftglass


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Loyal retainer is loyal

So Michael Sona has done what he was hired for and fallen on his sword to deflect blame from his masters. If you honestly believe a 23-year-old communications assistant for a failed CPC candidate managed to organize, fund, co-ordinate and execute the entire "robocall" affair, please write to me. I am in contact with the widow of a former oil minister in Nigeria who needs some help getting  millions of dollars out of the country. All I will need is your bank account number and a signed power of attorney and she is willing to cut us in for millions of dollars. Just send me the information and I will take care of all the rest.
For the rest of you, shall we start a pool on how long it is before Sona is hired by the Manning Centre or the Fraser Institute or some other non-think tank -- or is he more likely to be hired as special assistant to the director of sitting around on our asses drawing paycheques to do nothing? My guess is he becomes special assistant associate director of the Blogging Tories.


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Word of the day

'Backpfeifengesicht' (Back-fie-fen-ge- zischt.)


1. German, literally "a face that cries out for a fist in it'

Example:

Of course, no mention of Tucker Carlson should be made without including this clip of the day Jon Stewart effectively ended his career as a pundit:




Update!

Required Canadian Content example:

 This is Matt Meier, president and CEO of Racknine, who has no idea how all those bogus illegal election calls got made to Liberal supporters telling them their polling stations had been changed

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If Jenny is right...

...then I must be one of these guys for real. Because I'm getting more than a little sick and tired of getting turned down for jobs I was overqualified for ten years ago and living month to month on a handshake deal to keep coming in until somebody tells me to stop. Seriously newspapers, I love you to death but what the hell have you done for me lately?



And yet...
What the hell else would I want to do?
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canadian content

More reading - this week a couple of Canuck classics

#11 Vinyl Cafe Diaries by Stuart McLean

One of the things that has surprised and delighted me in moving back to Canada is the discovery that society at large has discovered and embraced an old favourite of mine.
I can remember Stuart McLean when he was a roving reporter for CBC radio's Morningside program back in the late 80s and early 90s (it is official, I am old), and have been a fan of the Vinyl Cafe from its earliest days. When CBC started to make their programs available via the intertoobs, I was an avid listener. I was such a Peter Gzowski fan that two different people sent me tapes of the last Morningside show.
I think the Vinyl Cafe has a similar positive, upbeat outlook without being annoyingly chirpy or Pollyanna-ish, and following McLean's perambulations and the chronicles of Dave and Morley and the World's Smallest Record Store via podcast over the last several year provided a wonderful touchstone and a weekly dose of Canadiana whilst living in Tokyo. But having spent so long outside of Canada, I had no idea the show had become as popular as it has or that McLean had become such a national institution. Good for him.

This collection of stories from the radio program is pretty much what I expected and I had heard some of them when they were originally broadcast. A light, entertaining and sentimental read that will give the warm fuzzes we all need from time to time. McLean may not be big, but he is small.

#12 Three Cheers for Me, the Bandy Papers Vol. 1 by Donald Jack

While I'd often seen this series on the shelf when browsing at the library and had a sort of vague idea of the premise - the uproarious misadventures of Bartholomew Bandy, the son of an Ottawa valley clergyman who goes off to fight in World War One determined to steer clear of the temptations of liquor, women and bad language. Needless to say he fails in three of these four ambitions while giving superior officers fits and becoming a flying ace.
The first book, published in 1962, was a hit and spawned a nine-volume series, three  volumes of which won the Leacock humour prize. A wee bit dated in some ways, in the same way most things that are fifty year old might be expected to be. The first volume -I've not yet read any of the others, but I expect more of the same - reminds me very much of another favourite series of comedic historical novels - The Flashman Papers - which didn't come along for another three year. The difference being that Flashman is a rotten cad  and bully who succeeds in spite of his craven cowardice, whilst Bandy is not a coward or a cad, but simply prone to ridiculous mishaps - In his first trench raid as an infantry officer. Lt. Bandy leads his squad out into no man's land, accidentally gets drunk and then loses his bearings and stages a heroic raid on his own trenches, capturing his own regimental commander.
Like Flashman's creator George MacDonald Fraser, Jack has a very unsentimental view of the horrors of war, likely gained during his service in the RAF in the latter half of the Second World War, and doesn't dodge the realities of trench warfare or aerial combat.
In all, the first book is a good light read, well written and researched, and very very funny. I can't believe these books haven't been made into a CBC miniseries yet.

Addendum: Given the date, I would be remiss in not commenting on the anniversary of the death of one of my favourite writers and personal heroes. Thankfully RossK has done this for me already. Mahalo.


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some Valentine's Day advice

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Let me get this straight...

So, because a tiny, whiny, paranoid minority of Canadian fans of Michelle Bachman found the anonymous mandatory long-form census intrusive and coercive, the Conservatives' Industry Minister Tony "Gazebos R Us" Clement decided to scrap the whole thing against the advice of just about everyone.
And because a small, but very vocal bunch of paranoid gun nuts backed by the NRA ("keeping deadly weapons cheap and readily available for Americans for over a century") thought the long gun registry was intrusive and coercive, the Tories will scrap the whole thing and destroy the database against the wishes  of the majority of Canadians and police across the country.
But, according to Conservative Public Safety Minister Vic "Lock'em up and throw away the keys" Toews, anyone who objects to the government and police being able to access all your internet records and find out every website your computer has ever accessed, whether by annoying pop-up, virus, unauthorized third-party use or what have you, is clearly  siding with the child pornographers.

Our country is being run by a bunch of jackasses.



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the chamber of mature, sober second thought

Meet Conservative Senator Irving Gerstein:



It's speculation, but I think it is highly likely that Conservative Senator Irving Gerstein's report cards from primary school must have included the notations "Has problems sharing" and "Does not play well with others"

The so-called house of sober second thought witnessed the kind of contest normally associated with first-grade birthday parties, as a showdown erupted over seating arrangements this week.
The newly elected chair of the Senate banking committee, Conservative Irving Gerstein, didn't want the vice-chair, Liberal Celine Hervieux-Payette, sitting next to him.
When he asked her to step away from the head table, she refused.
So Gerstein, elected this week as chair, called a vote to kick Payette out of her chair.
With a Conservative majority on the committee, the motion passed Wednesday and the game of partisan musical chairs ended with Payette being forced to grab a seat farther away.

Click to read the whole thing to get a proper picture of  the kind of petty dickishness that prevails in Canada's ruling party.
Given the level of maturity demonstrated, I'm guessing Gerstein was worried he'd get Liberal/French/girl cooties if he sat next to Hervieux-Payette.
But the Conservatives have a majority, so I suppose we must respect their authority

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There is a reason Florida has its own tag on FARK

Ah Florida, land of orange blossoms, beaches, golf courses built on gator-filled swamps and the early bird buffet special. Home to Disneyland, retirement paradises and more crazy per capita than any other state in the union except maybe Utah. I'm not sure if it's too much time in the sun or all the prescription drugs all those retirees are flushing into the water table, but Florida seems to produce a lot of screwy stories.
Even given all that, it is hard to know just where to begin to describe the colossal amounts of fail, stupid, sexism and sheer wrongheadedness in this:

Sentence for domestic abuse: Jail or dinner and a date

A romantic night on the town with his wife rather than a night in jail was the sentence for a Florida man arrested after a marital fight over a birthday.
After careful questioning of Sonia Bray, Broward County bond court Judge John Hurley told the lawyer for her husband Joseph:
“He’s going to be out of jail by 3 o’clock today, he’s going to stop by somewhere and get some flowers and a card.”
By now, Joseph Bray and his counsel are grinning in a video broadcast by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper.
“He’ll pick up his wife, get dressed, take her to Red Lobster and then go bowling.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Bray.
The next day, Hurley ordered, the Brays were to sign up for marriage counselling.
The judge explained the leniency of his creative ruling after asking Sonia Bray repeatedly if she felt threatened by her husband or had been injured. Was money or alcohol the root of the problem?
“No,” the tearful woman told the court. It was just “a lack of communication between both of us.”
Hurley pried out of Sonia Bray that her husband had neglected to wish her happy birthday the day before, or even talk to her. They argued and he pushed her onto a couch, grabbed her throat and raised his fist, but never hit her, she said.
More careful questioning got her to admit she liked bowling and Red Lobster for a night out. Hurley threw in the flowers himself.
“Flowers, birthday card, Red Lobster, bowling,” Hurley ticked off for an abashed looking Joseph Bray. “You’ve got your work cut out for you.”

Needless to say, county court judges are elected in Florida, though at least they need to have a law degree and pass the Florida Bar exam. Sometimes democracy  is not the best system.
How long before this idiot is on TV as a replacement for Judge Judy? (Big surprise on the link: His favorite book is Atlas Shrugged). Whoops, he is on TV, of a sort.

My parents just got a place down there, so this is worrying.

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turning pages

#9 Why Me? by Donald E. Westlake
Is there anything as pleasurable as a midweek day off (especially a Monday?) - sleeping late, getting up to strong coffee, a toasted western, and a Dortmunder novel you haven't read yet when you have no other plans for the day? I doubt it. Read this in a single three hour sitting without so much as a restroom break. Nobody does humorous caper novels like Westlake. It is odd that none of these have seemed to translate into decent movies, though its been tried again and again. For those not in the know, John Dortmunder is a professional thief who lives and works in New York City. Aided as always by an eccentric  group of accomplices, Dortmunder is the master heist planner. He is also the unluckiest crook ever born. In this instalment, he inadvertently steals the world's largest and most famous ruby and the resultant political heat has the NYPD, FBI and CIA, a variety of terrorist groups and and foreign spooks and every crook in NYC looking for the stone and the guy who stole it. Needless to say, zany hijinks ensue.

#10 The Wild Things by Dave Eggers
There is more than than zany hijinks afoot in Dave Eggers novelization of his screenplay adapted from the classic picture book Where the Wild Things Are. As in most of Eggers work, there is raw emotion, existential angst and movement, always movement. I loved Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and the combination of sorrow, whimsy and affection he brings to most of his writing make this a very affecting novel. Few writers understand and can portray the mind of a nine-year-old boy this well.

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