Why does it seem like it's always the good ones that go first?


J-Lay died of cancer today at age 61. As an example of how unfair life is, consider that Stephen Harper will probably live to be 100.

Harper is at it again

A few years ago, I noted that a) Stephen Harper really likes to point at things when he knows he is being photographed, and b) the Harperites will stop at nothing in their quest for a majority government, including modifying the language in a 1984-esque fashion.

Then, it was "Canada's New Government". Now, it is "The Harper Government".

The last time I heard something this ridiculous, it was the decision to name North York's new main square "Mel Lastman Square" after none other than North York's serving mayor, Mel Lastman.

I can just imagine the conversation between Harper and his eager young lickspittles in the PMO:

Lickspittle #1: Every focus group, every survey shows it. The people love a strong leader!

Lickspittle #2: And how better to remind the little people how strong a leader they have than titling all official Canadian communications from "The Harper Government"?

Lickspittle #1: What could *possibly* go wrong? It's a slam dunk!

Harper (visibly pleased): Well, if it is what the people want...

Lickspittles #1 and #2: It is! It is!

Harper: Then who am I to deny them? I reluctantly acquiesce to this dignified piece of nation building...

And the rest is history!

Our Man at the UN




It makes one pround to be a Canadian, n'est-ce pas? (From Susan Delacourt).

Huzzah! By GABLE.

Separated at birth?

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Kurt from Glee.

I like Kurt more, all things considered.

Anxiously awaiting the arrival of my mail-order tomahawk, I note that over at macleans.ca there is some speculating going on as to who Scott Feschuk would rather hit over the head with a shovel, Michael Ignatieff or Stephen Harper:

Dear Scott:

If you had to hit either Stephen Harper or Michael Ignatieff with a shovel whom would you choose and why? – Anon Liberal

Anon Liberal –

I think I speak for most people when I say the most important part of hitting someone with a shovel is the element of surprise. That’s one of the two things that make hitting someone with a shovel so satisfying. (The other thing: the hitting-him-with-a-shovel part.)

This leads to the question: If Stephen Harper got hit with a shovel, would anybody be surprised? Maybe for a moment. For a moment, they’d be surprised. But then they’d sit around and say things like, “It was bound to happen eventually” or “You know, I was thinking just the other day that Stephen Harper hadn’t been hit with a shovel lately.” That would ruin the whole experience for me.

While I, for one, consider a tomahawk (or even an Iroquois War Club) a much more versatile tool than a shovel for this sort of task, still I am glad to see that Feschuk has brought the question of Stephen Harper being struck with a blunt instrument into the realm of public discussion.

If democracy was a popularity contest, Harper would be out and Jean would stay in

On Wednesday Aaron Wherry posted the relative popularity of Canadian public figures, according to long time Conservative pollsters Angus Reid. The results?

Danny Williams 80%
Michäelle Jean 57%
Brad Wall 56%
Jack Layton 32%
Stephen Harper 29%
Greg Selinger 26%
Darrell Dexter 23%
Gordon Campbell 23%
Jean Charest 22%
Dalton McGuinty 21%
Michael Ignatieff 16%
Ed Stelmach 16%
Shawn Graham 15%

How's that hockey book coming along, Stephen?

Via Ian Wherry:

NBC reported today that the Prime Minister is working on a book about hockey. This June, coincidentally, will mark the fifth anniversary of Stephen Harper’s book about hockey. For the record, here’s how the Globe reported the tome into existence on the morning of June 18, 2005.

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper is known for his intellect and policy-wonk ways. However, he is also an armchair sports fan (the Toronto Maple Leafs come to mind) and is planning to publish a book that has nothing to do with politics or policy. Rather, Mr. Harper is penning a tome on the history of professional hockey in Alberta. Harper insiders say that he began researching and writing the book as a hobby but it has become a more serious venture as he acquired more and more information. He is researching it from primary sources, and firsthand accounts dating back to the turn of the last century, says a friend, who is familiar with the progress of the book.

This reminds me of a quote from the Family Guy (alluded to in the title of this posting) where Stewie is taking the piss with Brian about the book he has been supposedly writing for the last few years (stolen from Ink on Paper):

"How you uh, how you comin' on that novel you're working on? Huh? Gotta a big, uh, big stack of papers there? Gotta, gotta nice little story you're working on there? Your big novel you've been working on for 3 years? Huh? Gotta, gotta compelling protagonist? Yeah? Gotta obstacle for him to overcome? Huh? Gotta story brewing there? Working on, working on that for quite some time? Huh? Yea, talking about that 3 years ago. Been working on that the whole time? Nice little narrative? Beginning, middle, and end? Some friends become enemies, some enemies become friends? At the end your main character is richer from the experience? Yeah? Yeah? No, no, you deserve some time off."

Stephen Harper mails a letter

In an effort to make myself post more oftener (sp?), I have decided to rename Fridays as "Foto Fridays". Every "Foto Friday", I plan to post an irritating photo of Stephen Harper.

The photo above, liberated from Rick Mercer is a prime example of a photo so galling it might permanently damage my gall bladder.

One possible explanation for this photo is that a sneaky member of the Papparazzi ambushed Mr. Harper as he innocently attempted to mail a letter. Ever gracious, even when having his privacy invaded, Stephen managed a forced grin for the camera.

The other possibility, which I believe to be the more likely of the two, is that this is yet another in a long, long line of staged photo ops with the PM engaged in everyday, all-Canadian activities such as pointing vaguely across a lake, pretending to listen as a guy points at some trees, or subjecting Nicholas Sarkozy to his corpse-like handshake.

I have built up quite the collection of ridiculous photos of Mr. Harper, and "Foto Friday" will give me the excuse to share them with you, my adoring public.

Room Service

By GABLE.

Stolen from the Globe and Mail.

Leadership skills counselling
from GABLE.

Rick Mercer- calling them the way he sees them

From last Friday's Globe and Mail:

Here we are faced with a global economic crisis. Nations all over the world are struggling to figure out how to protect their citizens — who are terrified. We've seen unheard of cooperation between political rivals all over the industrialized world.

But not in Canada. Not with Stephen Harper. Not on his watch. No my friends, he has one goal and one goal only and it has nothing to do with governing: how can he use this crisis to destroy the opposition?

And wouldn't you know, he almost did it.

Stephen Harper decided Canada doesn't need a stimulus package; all we needed to do was cancel the subsidy that political parties get.

Which would have saved the government about $26-million. That's about the same amount Harper spends on bodyguards every year when he visits danger zones like Thunder Bay or Nunavut.

But the real upside for Harper, of course, is that the entire opposition would have been crippled or destroyed. It gives me great faith to know that as our economy crumbles Harper is on the case trying to come up with new an innovative ways to cutback the Green Party's office budget and bankrupt the Liberals. And then the world will be a better place.

Maybe he has a point. Maybe that's why Canada keeps refusing to give the man a majority. It's not because he's a mean little man obsessed with revenge, but because we just have too many choices. We go to the voting booth and get confused. Like that first trip to Baskin Robbins.

Maybe we'd all just be better off if Conservative was the only flavour on the menu.

The Conservatives baked their bread now they can eat it

Snap! For aeons, the Liberals and the NDP have been in an adversarial relationship, fighting for the support of left-leaning voters (who are, in fact, the majority of Canadian voters). Because of this split, the (relatively) newly formed Conservative Party has been able to form 2 consecutive minority governments.

It was a miserable set up, and I had despaired that the Liberals and the NDP would ever be provoked enough to patch up their differences enough that they could form a coalition government. It would take some serious asshole manouvers on the part of the Conservatives for this to happen.

Luckily for us, Stephen Harper is just such an asshole. For the past few weeks, the talk has been all about Harper's new-found maturity and consensus-seeking in the face of Canada's bleak financial prospects.

Hah!

As Jeffery Simpson wrote in Saturday's Globe and Mail:

The miscalculations have been stunning. Mr. Harper's strategy has accomplished already the near-impossible: to bring the Liberals and NDP together.

He had so many other, less partisan options at a time of economic crisis and grave national concern. That he acted in this fashion, at this time, was enormously revealing. And very sad.

Choice Harper Quotes

Mason and Nicholas over at Life Without borders have brought to my attention a list (originally compiled by In Their Own Words) of choice Harper quotes from over the years.

The establishment came down with a constitutional package which they put to a national referendum. The package included distinct society status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution, and feminist rights, and a whole bunch of other things.

- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.

For taxpayers, however, it’s a rip-off. And it has nothing to do with gender. Both men and women taxpayers will pay additional money to both men and women in the civil service. That’s why the federal government should scrap its ridiculous pay equity law.

- Stephen Harper on pay equity, NCC Overview, Fall 1998.

Then there is the Progressive Conservative party, the PC party, which won only 20 seats. Now, the term Progressive Conservative will immediately raise suspicions in all of your minds. It should... They were in favour of gay rights officially, officially for abortion on demand. Officially -- what else can I say about them? Officially for the entrenchment of our universal, collectivized, health-care system and multicultural policies in the constitution of the country

.

- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.

Withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan... Collect our own revenue from personal income tax... Resume provincial responsibility for health-care policy. If Ottawa objects to provincial policy, fight in the courts... [E]ach province should raise its own revenue for health... It is imperative to take the initiative, to build firewalls around Alberta...

- Stephen Harper in an "Open letter to Ralph Klein," January 24th 2001.

The NDP could be described as basically a party of liberal Democrats, but it's actually worse than that, I have to say. And forgive me jesting again, but the NDP is kind of proof that the Devil lives and interferes in the affairs of men.

- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.

It was probably not an appropriate term, but we support the war effort and believe we should be supporting our troops and our allies and be there with them doing everything necessary to win.

- Stephen Harper supporting the US-lead war on Iraq, Montreal Gazette, April 2nd 2003. Harper also called then-Defence Minister John McCallum an "idiot."

If you've read any of the official propagandas, you've come over the border and entered a bilingual country. In this particular city, Montreal, you may well get that impression. But this city is extremely atypical of this country... So it's basically an English-speaking country, just as English-speaking as, I would guess, the northern part of the United States.

- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.

It will come as no surprise to anybody to know that I support the traditional definition of marriage as a union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others, as expressed in our traditional common law.

- Stephen Harper, Hansard, Address in the House of Commons on Bill C-38, February 16, 2005.

In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance.

- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.

A culture of defeat...

- Stephen Harper, describing the Atlantic provinces, May 2001.

[Y]our country [the USA], and particularly your conservative movement, is a light and an inspiration to people in this country and across the world.

- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.

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'.

Needed: a Stephen Harper archive?

The number of malevolent, stupid, ignorant and/or outright lying statements made by the Prime Minister (or his puppets) has reached the point that I find it hard to keep track them down when I need to refer to a particular instance.

Maybe it is time for a Harper Archive!

Since I seem to have time on my hands, I thought I might create one (a popular UI time waster).

But first, I did a search to see if anything similar exists, in the style of stopiggy.com (now defunct, and that is stop iggy.com, not sto piggy.com, which also makes a kind of sense as long as 'sto' means something derogatory in a slavic language.)


I found one! The Harper Index. Now I don't have to splash the cash for a domain name, hosting, and the like.

While the Harper Index doesn't seem to include a library of unfortunate Harper photo opportunities (which I would have made a centrepiece) it still saves time by providing a plethora of links to what the Evil Spock really thinks.

The Harper Index is far from perfect, but I hope that it will expand its raison d'etre in the months ahead.

Perhaps a blog? A forum? Web 2.0 is like a weakened and desperate immigrant, eager to be exploited.

Happy New Year

Another entertaining cartoon from GABLE.

Stephen Harper, pussy lover?

That is apparently what the smart-alecks that run the Prime Minister's homepage would have us believe.

Scroll down the page, and there is a graphic in the left column entitled "Foster Pet Programs". This is it in the context of the page:



Fair enough, one might think. Good cause and all that.

But take a closer look at the photo:

Here, one kitty is sound asleep nestled atop the comforting expanse of the PM's gut, while the PM pauses from reading a book (to it?).

Another very similar looking kitty appears uninterested in the story and is gazing fixedly into the middle distance (a popular motif in Prime Ministerial photos, it seems).

Now that I have stared at this (a photoshop creation, surely!) for a while, I have decided that the graphic designer is having a bit of fun.

You know, like having a politician famous for his lack of basic human qualities depicted reading a storybook to some little kitties.

Those kitties urgently needed some lovin', and the PM stepped up to the plate, be damned the consequences!

Cat hair all over his suit or an interruption to his busy schedule is unimportant when rogue, unadopted kitties might run wild.

Priceless. Enjoy it now, because I suspect it won't be around for long.

Targetting the fatso demographic?

First it was the Tim Horton's demographic, then the NASCAR demographic. Now this?

The last time I 'liberated' an outdoorsy photo off the PM's official website, it showed Stephen Harper standing in a bush somewhere while a skinny local guy pointed out a good location for some clear-cutting.

This time around, Harper's image people have placed him between 2 other fatsoes, perhaps in the hope that he will look less awkward and rotund in comparison.

Besides that, it is basically the same shot. This time, however, it is Harper who is pointing into the middle distance in an unconvincing manner.

While John Baird (to starboard) is at least pretending to peer in the direction indicated by Spock's corpse-like sausage finger, the third (unidentified) member of this teletubby troika appears, shall we say, less enthusiastic about the whole thing.

Maybe he is afraid the dock is going to collapse, especially if John Baird decides to start jumping up and down?

Harper of Afghanistan

By MacKAY, lampooning Lawrence of Arabia, perhaps the best movie of all time. Liberated from the website of this is just to say.

Note how MacKAY has caught Harper's undead-like complexion. It is almost waxy in its iridescence.