Useless Idiot

This is too funny! I really cannot get over quite how stupid Charles McVety really is. I mean there are activists who are grandstanding, brash, in-your-face, what have you - and yes they come off as idiots, but they make their point. Every time I've seen McVety try to make a point, he usually actually undermines it. His attempt to engage Richard Dawkins is more embarrassing, but this was still pretty bad.

Beating a Dead Horse

Stephane Dion, go directly to an election, do not pass Go, do not collect $200, do not abstain from confidence motions. A mediocre budget, Cadscam, Brodiegate, what does it take? Does Stephen Harper need to defecate on the flag in the middle of the House of Commons while giving the finger to a Mountie? What? The Bloc and the NDP are ready, your own people have grown impatient. You can bring down the government, Stephane, as Rob Schneider says, you can do it! I've sort of sat on a progressive fence for a long time now, but damn it, I'm so tempted to explicitly join the NDP or the Greens in large part to register my dissatisfaction with this foot-dragging and equivocation.

Will Ezra Levant Stand Up for Young People Fucking?

Small and large "C" conservative types have been crowing about how they are the true champions of free speech because Ezra Levant was asked some questions or something. Now we find out that the Conservative government is trying to play state censor with the film tax credit. As the Globe & Mail story points it, professional embarrassment to religion, Charles McVety is taking credit for this stupid new move. Movies like Martin Gero's Young People Fucking would probably get a harder look from the new McVety censorship panel.

So where are you conservative champions of free speech? Stand up and be counted!

Our National Shame

The Toronto Star has another story about absolutely appalling conditions on a reserve, in this case a police station has to be shut down because it "lacks running water, uses 'medieval locks' and relies on a wood fire in a 170-litre drum." Elsewhere the article mentions police officers living in motel rooms due to a lack of housing.

Canada likes the label "tolerant" and frankly we're a bit smug about how we never had Jim Crow laws or apartheid - we're not conquerers with designs on an imperial system. Sometimes I'm guilty of thinking this way too. Until we decide to do something meaningful about the way we've cached too many first nations groups on economically useless land with little in the way opportunity, we really should wonder why we feel so proud about ourselves.

Stephen Harper's campaign song

I really hope that opposition decides to do the right thing and knock off this government sooner rather than later. The disturbing tales of the civil service keeping track of opposition MPs just adds another level of sinister to what Harper is doing.

This is an opaque, paranoid government run by a bunch of Harperite drones. In that light, I present to you the campaign theme song for the Conservative Party: Radiohead's Paranoid Android!

A One-Sided Game of Brinksmanship

Once again the Conservatives table some legislation that the Bloc and the NDP oppose. The Liberals oppose it too, but not enough to bring down the government over it. At this rate it appears that there is little that will push Dion into an election. Depending on who you talk to this either makes him a sage politician or a coward, but the net result is that we probably have no prospect for a federal election until the spring at the very earliest.

One wonders what Dion will finally agree is enough to bring down the government. It's not a mini-budget, it's not an extension of Afghanistan, what will it be? In the meantime the overall perception in the eyes of many voters may be that the man is too calculating.

Unleash the Weasels!

Harper (to the surprise of no one) didn't make the throne speech so blatantly intolerable that a vote against it is inevitable. Instead, this morning his opponents are stuck dealing with a number of weasel-y statements that will trouble opposition.

He wants to leave Afghanistan but he needs just two more years until democracy rainbows shoot out of Karzai's eyes bringing peace and freedom to all Afghans. Come on! Just two years!

He's giving up on Kyoto because it can't be met anyway. Harper will really, really, totally fix this "so-called" problem. Soon. For real.

In both cases Harper did not go radical on anyone (he's keeping the crazy Reformers quiet - for now), yet even these still are opposite to positions already stated by the Liberals. So no, I don't think that were any poison pills per se. But Harper has weaseled in a number of ideas that may either force the hand of the Liberals or make them look like a bunch of flip-floppers.

Incidentally, Red Tory points out that the Conservative website had a very electionesque makeover.

A Practical Problem with Sharon Smith's Appointment

Now many people have complained about how appointing mayor and amateur photography model Sharon Smith as government representative for Skeena-Bulkley Valley is terribly unconstitutional. I won't dwell on that, I have a far more practical concern. Given that Harper seems to concentrate all decision making in his office leaving his cabinet - let alone his MPs - out in the dark, one wonders how an unelected quasi-MP could possibly influence Harper.

Congratulations residents of Skeena Bulkley Valley, you now have someone to be unconstitutionally ignored from inside the government - not just a constitutionally elected member probably being ignored from the opposition benches (who will though at least have vote to bring down Harper's stalled government).

*But seriously, this shit stinks, Harper.

Spreading democracy? Psssh, that's so 2003!

Remember all that talk about remaking the Middle East as a democratic paradise? Forget that, authoritarianism is the new rage! The new hot trend spreading on the right is ignoring democracy.

Consider:

In Canada the Conservatives have appointed an unelected party hack as the extra-special government representative for a riding that already has a member from another party. They may have done this in several ridings. Why have an election when you can just appoint these sorts of people?

In the US a credibly mainstream right-wing think tank has published a piece calling on Bush to become President-for-Life. Because it worked for the Caesars in Rome. Seriously.

Cabinet Shuffle and Priority No. 5

I suppose we'll find out who is doing what this afternoon. I can't really get worked up over this sort of thing. Harper's biggest move so far was to replace Rona Ambrose (cluelessness) with John Baird (cluelessness and ANGER!) at Environment. Anyway, Harper is his own minister of everything so I doubt he's looking for anything but better spokespeople.

Supposedly, this shuffle will set up a fall session focusing on law and order as well as foreign policy. Apparently the Conservatives have been ignoring health care concerns ever since the election and correspondingly, they have simply gone away. I remember a while ago people tried to call him on this, and yet nothing else of substance seems to have been done. Either this means that the health care concerns of a couple years ago were manufactured or that Harper is simply allowing the system to deteriorate to the point where he can impose radical measures (i.e.: large-scale privatization, for-profit clinics and hospitals) on Canadians.

Another Reason to Like MMP

I was reading James Calder's post on some poll numbers and something stood out to me when I read this paragraph:

"The only thing I can figure is that Canadians feel that federal politics is some sort of zero-sum game. If you don't vote Conservative, then you must vote Liberal no matter how dishonest you believe them to be, no matter how much you'd prefer a different party in power.

It's almost a good argument itself for electoral reform. It's sad, though."

The reality is that my riding is exactly that, a zero-sum game. For whatever reasons of demography, the Liberals can win my riding and so can the Conservatives. I'm sure there are lots of other ridings that form up that way. Others might be Liberals-NDP, some might even be Conservatives-NDP or NDP-Greens or what-have-you. Empirically I have just never seen a lot of ridings that have credible three-way races. Of all the two-way combinations, I suspect that the Liberal-Conservative one is far and away the most common.

Back to my own experience: I really only have two choices if I want my vote count towards someone who is remotely electable. I suspect that there are many people in an FPTP system that feel the same way. In other words, it's not almost a good argument, it is good argument.

Christian Government? No thank you

Some folks that I read from time to time have stumbled on this site called Christian Government. Mike (among others) said some stuff about them and now the Christian Government types are warning their readers that they are being attacked secular humanists. Apparently all secular humanists are Marxists who contradict what CG calls,

"...the Christian vision for a free and democratic social order and a civil government committed to the rule of law and the principle of equality before the law. Tyranny never could survive against liberty and justice."

Oh boy, I guess the CG people don't do much consulting of their history books. Let's not forget that absolute monarchs used Christianity to justify their rule in earlier centuries. This is one simple example, there are more of them out there for you to find. Christianity and indeed every other religion and some secular ideologies (Marxism, I'm looking at you) have been used to justify every rotten, tyranical government one could imagine. It reminds me of The Merchant of Venice where Bassanio says,

"...In religion,
What damned error, but some sober brow
Will bless it and approve it with a text,
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?
There is no vice so simple but assumes
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts"

Maybe appealing to Shakespeare is to secular for the CG types, okay, here's a noted Christian thinker's opinion of theocracy. C. S. Lewis, bring it home:

"I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber barron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point may be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely more because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.

And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt. A political programme can never in reality be more than probably right. We never know all the facts about the present and we can only guess the future. To attach to a party programme -- whose highest claim is to reasonable prudence -- the sort of assent which we should reserve for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of intoxication."

You need not be an atheist to appreciate the value of secular government. I wonder what Tim Bloedow will do with that?

Very funny, now get to work

So I saw the Young Liberal Mac-parody ads. I admit they are credibly funny (certainly more watchable than what Harper has put on TV). Anyway, one ad does not a campaign make, so I hope that the Grits (and the Dippers for that matter) are busy in their mountain fortresses (or wherever strategy is done, I don't know for sure, so I'll assume fortresses it is) concocting something that topple Harper.

Bad Idea of the Week: Elected Judges

The Globe and Mail is reporting today on a poll by the Strategic Counsel suggesting that two thirds of Canadians would like to see elected judges. Who are these people? What is wrong with them. Politicizing the judiciary is problem one of the things that is fundamentally wrong with the US justice system. Let's not go there.