Canada must lose!

As much as it pains me to say it, I believe it is imperative that the Canadian Mens' Hockey team lose in the final to the 'Great Satan' (AKA the 'USA'). Apparently, the more medals Canada wins, the greater the chance the Conservatives will finally get a majority government.

From the Canadian Press:

Almost a year ago, Conservative party strategists were already musing about the political springboard that would be offered if Prime Minister Stephen Harper could only maintain his minority government until the XXI Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

With the Games all but here, Harper has already sprung into action.

The prime minister was scheduled to be here, there and everywhere in Vancouver on Wednesday, ending the day with a flag-raising ceremony at the athletes village. On Thursday he'll jump to Victoria for the first-ever speech by a prime minister to the B.C. legislature.

And the following evening at B.C. Place Stadium, Harper will help officially open the Games at a glittering ceremony - kicking off 15 days of elite athletic competition and a two-week pas-de-deux between players and politicians of all stripes.

"Faster, Higher, Stronger" may be the Olympic watchwords for the athletes. For those who depend on the voting public for employment, it's all about what pollsters call the "euphoric bounce."

"Contentment, happiness, satisfaction is all the friend of a (political) incumbent," says Allan Gregg, chairman of polling firm Harris-Decima and a former strategist for prime minister Brian Mulroney.

"So the extent to which people believe the economy is going well, or the country is in the right direction, or that they're proud to be a Canadian - all of these ancillary, unconnected political feelings can pour over to support for the status quo."

John Baird: whatta guy

Just in! The Toronto Star details a typical example of how the Conservatives plan to win over the voters of Ontario:

In an unguarded moment, Baird told aides Toronto stood alone in not meeting the technical criteria for federal cash, yet was complaining about Ottawa dragging its feet.

"Twenty-seven hundred people got it right. They didn't. That is not a partnership and they're bitching at us," he said.

"They should fuck off."

The federal minister overseeing the infrastructure program was overheard by a Star reporter after he mistakenly walked into a media room at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities convention at this British Columbia resort.

When his words were read back to him, he acknowledged his remarks.

GABLE's cartoon from today's Globe and Mail, lampooning, once again, the Keystone Kops antics of CPC ministers. This is probably aimed principally at Maxime Bernier and his recent displays of extreme, shall we say, 'absent-mindedness'.

An apropos reminder from John Barber

Quoting from his column in last Saturday's Globe and Mail:

Torontonians wondering why the Harper government insists on treating them contemptuously should remember the wise words of John Stuart Mill: "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives."

(Yes, I am that far behind in my reading. Since there are no newspapers available except what I brought with me, I am reduced to reading every single article from the Saturday Globe, word by word.)

Negroes need not apply

An interesting graphic appeared above the fold on the front page of the print edition of the Globe and Mail today, accompanying the article "Tories target specific ethnic voters".

Since the Globe is run by a bunch of cheapskates, no online version of the graphic (a photo of a slide lifted from a Conservative party campaign document entitled Building Bridges with Ethnic Communities and New Canadians) is available. So, instead, I have used my encyclopaedic knowledge of html to reproduce the slide as best I can:

A Sample Outreach Strategy - Thornhill

• Total population - 116,640
  
• Visible minorities - 33,675 (29 %)
  
  • Chinese 12,610
    
  • South Asian 6,595
    
  • Black 2,665
    
  • Filipino 2,530
    
  • West Asian 2,355
    
  • Korean 2,660
    
  
  
• 79% of visible minorities are viewed as CPC accessible communities
  

Interesting, n'est-ce pas?

All the minorities listed in this breakdown were bolded, except the black community. They seem to be the only community that isn't viewed as 'CPC accessible communities'.

Good for them! My problem is with the other minorities. Will they understand that the CPC's grand old traditions of intolerance and xenophobia run deep, way back to their Reform roots, and that these 'accessible communities' are only being wooed on tactical grounds?

I have met John Tory, Mr. Harper, and you are no John Tory.

If the Conservative Party of Canada does achieve a majority in parliament, these accessible minorities will soon see the true colours of the flat-earthers they helped elect.

Allah help those accessible minorities then! (I see 'West Asians' are one of the targeted groups, presumably because of their reputed intolerance for homosexuals and other deviants.)

Conservative Party of Canada: intellectual property thieves?

Take a look at the logo on the bus photographed above and compare it to the logo on the NASCAR photo in my previous posting. Notice any thing peculiar? I did.

Whilst taking the air along the promenade at Queen's Quay yesterday, a couple of buses from Coach Canada whizzed by me.

At first glance, I thought that the knuckle-draggers were in town, so similar to Coach Canada's logo is the logo for the Conservative party. You be the judge. Are the Conservatives copyright infringers?

Coach Canada:


Conservative Party of Canada:


It seems to me that Coach Canada has the basis for legal action. Their logo has been around a lot longer than that of the CPC!

If I didn't know better, I would avoid Coach Canada and go elsewhere with my intra-city travel business, making the assumption that Coach Canada is some sort of 'Young Conservative' travel service.

Take a good look at that bus photo. Would *you* seriously approach it and ask the driver where he is headed, knowing the Conservative attitude to public transport? No.

I did chat with the driver of the photographed bus. He was very genial but stated that no one at work and the like, AFAHK, had noticed the similarities between the two logos.

The result of this shameless theft of intellectual property? Lost revenue. I am thinking of alerting their management to this threat to stockholder value, and I encourage others to do so as well.

The Conservatives burnish their Global Warming credentials

I am sure everyone remembers how, after the Liberals selected Dion as their leader, the Conservatives were all aflutter, claiming that 'green' issues have always been top priority for them.

How have they decided to keep this claim of green-friendliness fresh for the public? Sponsor a NASCAR team, of course.

From the Edmonton Journal:

First, they took aim at Canadians who can't live without their Tim Hortons "double-doubles."

Now the federal Conservatives are going after the segment of the population that loves the smell of burning rubber.

The Conservative party has shifted its advertising strategy into a new gear and slapped the party logo on a NASCAR stock-racing car.


The big blue Conservative "C" made its debut Sunday on the hood and front side panels of car 29 of the Canadian Tire NASCAR series, the Canadian offshoot of the popular U.S. stock-racing circuit.

"This is just part of the ongoing process of reaching out to potential Conservative voters," said a senior party official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Ah yes, that elusive "moron" demographic. But I thought that the Conservatives had the moron vote already. Isn't it kind of like preaching to the choir?

From GABLE at the Globe and Mail: "The Changing of the Story"

Hah! Good one. I can't recall a greater example of federal shilly-shallying (but then again I have short-term memory 'issues'). Could the Conservatives (I refuse to refer to them as 'Tories') be handling this issue any more incompetently? It is hard to imagine how they could.

One thing, though, at least they are not stone-walling. They are doing the opposite: making up whatever pops into their silly heads at any given moment.

This is just the sort of entertaining keystone-kops style incompetence that I was anticipating when The Conservatives first formed their government.

It took a while, but now I feel I can finally just sit back and enjoy it.

This break will give Dion some time to work on his english elocution, and J-Lay some more time to hang around Toronto, glad-handing hapless passers-by.

WTF is up with the NDP?

After lunch, on the way back to my cubicle I was informed by my main news provider, the Elevator News Network (ENN), that the Conservatives had defeated a Liberal motion that Canada withdraw from Afghanistan by 2009.

They accomplished this through the support of the NDP. What is that all about?

If the NDP is up to their old trick (infuriatingly obvious during the Harris years, here in Ontario) of supporting the Tories for short-term political advantage, I am going to have some sharp words to share with 'J-Lay' the next time I happen upon him relentlessly glad-handing hapless passers-by.

If the bill had gone through, it would quite possibly have made our part in the occupation of Afghanistan the big issue in the next election.

And what sort of "progressive" entity wouldn't want that? The mind boggles...

The NDP, apparently.

"Canada's New Government"

I recently read an article in Harper's Magazine, titled Our Home and Native Brand. It makes public

... a September email exchange between representatives of Natural Resources Canada and Andrew Okulitch, a scientist working at the Geological Survey of Canada in an emeritus capacity. Irwin Itzkovitch is an assistant deputy minister under Minister of Natural Resources Gary Lunn. Vanessa Nelson is an executive adviser. Okulitch was fired but reappointed two weeks later.

It was very interesting, in that I hadn't realized that Canada had been rebranded.

The jist of it: apparently, early last fall the Harper government mandated that in all government press releases, etc. the term "Canada's New Government" would be used instead of "the Government of Canada".

Of course, the top hit for "Canada's New Government" in google is Steven Harper's homepage (mercifully it wasn't a 'sponsored' link), the Government of Canada. The banner graphic proclaims "Canada's New Government", with a subtitle of (in caps, I am not making this up "GETTING THINGS DONE--FOR ALL OF US")

Currently,the homepage shows a beer-bellied Harper pretending to pay attention as some hired stooge points to a tree or something. Perhaps the next place for some timber extraction?

The message is supposed to be that "Spock" cares about the environment, just like the rest of us.

At least until he wins a majority.

Then, I suspect, we will all be well and truly in trouble.