Rick Mercer Rants About Swine Flu
“Although, who am I kidding? I live in a riding represented by the NDP. I ain’t seeing no vaccine. Meanwhile, if you live in Jim Flaherty’s riding you get three vaccines and a giant novelty cheque for five grand!”
I love it!
Taliban Stanley?
General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is openly supporting reintegrating the Taliban with the rest of Afghan society. His plans apparently include giving jobs to the Taliban, since he believes that 50 to 80 percent of them would give up fighting if they were employed.
I wonder if those who labelled Jack Layton “Taliban Jack”, for his suggestions that we negotiate with these thugs, will now attack the general in the same way.
Tags: Afghanistan, Conservatives, General Stanley McChrystal, Jack Layton, jobs, NDP, Taliban Jack, war
Liberals try to duck blame for HST
I ran across this column in The Province via bcndp.ca. It seems the HST is so unpopular in B.C. that even the B.C. Liberals are distancing themselves from it.
Polls are showing massive opposition to the HST, with 85 per cent opposed, and 71 per cent strongly opposed.
Liberals try to duck blame for HST
Consumers hit by brutal attack during recessionEven a Catholic nun in full habit was leaning on her car horn as Surrey motorists expressed their disgust during Thursday’s road-rage rally against Gordon Campbell’s HST.
Yup, rosary beads will be subject to the consumer tax grab when it kicks in next year. But it seems to me Campbell is the one who should be saying his prayers: Anger over this thing is growing faster than an Okanagan wildfire.
If you want to know how freaked out the politicians are by the backlash, check out how none of them will admit to dealing this mess in the first place.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper was asked about the 12-per-cent harmonized sales tax during a swing through Victoria this week. His answer: “This is a decision of the provincial government. They are ultimately responsible for adopting that decision and explaining that decision to British Columbians.”
Which is kind of like Bart Simpson’s classic “It wasn’t me” line whenever he gets caught red-handed.
Don’t forget a key reason the Campbell government jumped on the HST was because the Harper government dangled a $1.6-billion “transition payment” in front of their noses.
Harper is right, though, that nobody forced British Columbia to pull this stunt, even with all the federal leg-humping. Despite that, some of Campbell’s MLAs want you to believe it’s all a federal plot.
“Richmond East MLA Linda Reid said it’s clear Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants the HST,” the Richmond Review newspaper reported Thursday.
“There’s no win in holding out,” the Liberal deputy speaker lamented. Ah, the devil made me do it!
Meanwhile, as the blame game rages, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Campbell government is now reduced to shooting the messenger.
That’s right, folks: It was the Liberals who insisted before the election that the HST was a bad tax and they weren’t going anywhere near it — only to break their promise once they got back into power. But it’s the media’s fault that people are so upset about it all.
“The coverage that has come out over this last week and a half has been focused purely on the negative side,” said Finance Minister Colin Hansen.
“We have to get a lot more information out to the public about how this is good for British Columbia.”
Uh-oh. You know what that means: Get set for the ad campaign.
It will be more of your money down the drain on government propaganda. But I doubt it will change many people’s minds about this brutal attack on consumers in the middle of the worst recession in a generation.
© Copyright (c) The Province
Tags: BC Liberals, BC NDP, British Columbia, Colin Hansen, Gordon Campbell, HST, Linda Reid, Stephen Harper
Top Bush aides tried to sway ’04 vote
Former U. S. homeland security chief Tom Ridge charges in a new book that top aides to then-president George W. Bush pressured him to raise the “terror alert” level to sway the Nov. 2004 U. S. election.
Is anyone surprised?
Tags: election, George W Bush, Homeland Security, terror alert, Tom Ridge, United States, voter manipulation
“Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog”
I stumbled upon this very disturbing article via another blog (sorry I can’t remember which one) and thought it was worth reposting here. I knew that George W Bush claimed to be doing god’s work but I didn’t imagine that his insanity was this bad.
A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush
JAMES A. HAUGHTIncredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.
Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.
Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”
This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”
After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn’t comply with Bush’s request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird appeal. Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters (38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah vows to smite them savagely, to “turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,” and slaughter them ruthlessly. In the New Testament, the mystical book of Revelation envisions Gog and Magog gathering nations for battle, “and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”
In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush’s strange behavior in Lausanne University’s review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: “When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass.” France’s La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline “A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog.” But other news media missed the amazing report.
Subsequently, ex-President Chirac confirmed the nutty event in a long interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who tells the tale in his new book, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny), released in March by the publisher Plon.
Oddly, mainstream media are ignoring this alarming revelation that Bush may have been half-cracked when he started his Iraq war. My own paper, The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, is the only U.S. newspaper to report it so far. Canada’s Toronto Star recounted the story, calling it a “stranger-than-fiction disclosure … which suggests that apocalyptic fervor may have held sway within the walls of the White House.” Fortunately, online commentary sites are spreading the news, filling the press void.
The French revelation jibes with other known aspects of Bush’s renowned evangelical certitude. For example, a few months after his phone call to Chirac, Bush attended a 2003 summit in Egypt. The Palestinian foreign minister later said the American president told him he was “on a mission from God” to defeat Iraq. At that time, the White House called this claim “absurd.”
Recently, GQ magazine revealed that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld attached warlike Bible verses and Iraq battle photos to war reports he hand-delivered to Bush. One declared: “Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground.”
It’s awkward to say openly, but now-departed President Bush is a religious crackpot, an ex-drunk of small intellect who “got saved.” He never should have been entrusted with the power to start wars.
For six years, Americans really haven’t known why he launched the unnecessary Iraq attack. Official pretexts turned out to be baseless. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction after all, and wasn’t in league with terrorists, as the White House alleged. Collapse of his asserted reasons led to speculation about hidden motives: Was the invasion loosed to gain control of Iraq’s oil—or to protect Israel—or to complete Bush’s father’s vendetta against the late dictator Saddam Hussein? Nobody ever found an answer.
Now, added to the other suspicions, comes the goofy possibility that abstruse, supernatural, idiotic, laughable Bible prophecies were a factor. This casts an ominous pall over the needless war that has killed more than four thousand young Americans and cost U.S. taxpayers perhaps $1 trillion.
James A. Haught is the editor of the Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) and a Free Inquiry senior editor.
Now, the first question that comes to my mind is if this story is true then why did Chirac remain silent about it for so long? I would think that France, being opposed to the invasion of Iraq, and taking much criticism from Americans for that opposition, would want to expose Bush as a religious crackpot.
Tags: France, George W Bush, Iraq, Jacques Chirac, religion, United States, war
British Columbian HST Tax Grab
I just stumbled across some disturbing news via New Democrats Online. I’m hoping public outrage will change the government’s minds, but who knows. It’s pretty clear that Gordon Campbell doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself and his buddies.
I encourage all of my readers to head over to http://nationalpolitick.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/stop-the-hst, read the post, and sign the petition. And then contact Gordon Campbell and Colin Hansen, and your own MLA about this issue.
Tags: British Columbia, Colin Hansen, Gordon Campbell, GST, HST, PST, taxes
“Facebook has ‘serious’ privacy gaps”
To follow up on my blog post from last month, Canada’s privacy comissioner has now ruled that Facebook is in violation of this country’s privacy laws. I only have two questions.
- Why can’t people take responsibility of their own privacy by not posting information they don’t want shared with the world on the internet?
- How much are Canadian taxpayers paying for this ridiculous excersise?
http://www.calgaryherald.com/technology/Facebook+serious+privacy+gaps/1797050/story.html
Tags: Facebook, privacy, privacy commissioner
Congratulations Nova Scotia
Tags: election, election results, NDP, Nova Scotia
Seal Skin at the Olympics
Parliamentarians unanimously agree on something. Too bad it was this.
OTTAWA – Canada’s Olympic athletes will be wearing seal skin on their 2010 uniforms to protest an international ban on the product – that is, if the country’s parliamentarians have their way.
The federal Parliament voted Wednesday to use the Vancouver Games to protest a European Union ban on seal products.
Parliamentarians from all parties agreed unanimously to a motion from the Bloc Quebecois that says the Games should be used to promote products from the seal hunt.
The motion suggests one possibility: that Canada’s Olympic uniform include at least one seal product, likely skin.
Fisheries Minister Gail Shea applauded the idea, while wondering whether it might be too late.
“I would imagine the Olympic clothing is all designed and probably made by now,” Shea said.
“But I think it’s a good symbolic suggestion – to add something to the outfit of our athletes. I think it would be a good statement for the Canadian sealing industry, and Canada’s support of it.”
Parliamentary motions are non-binding on either the government or the Canadian Olympic Committee, but are an expression of the will of Canada’s elected politicians.
The European Parliament voted massively in favour of a seal ban, which could have a dramatic impact on Canadian hunters and exporters.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said he does not want the ban to scuttle separate talks on Canada-EU free trade.
But Canadian lawyers are already considering a legal challenge, while the EU council of ministers considers whether to implement the ban.
Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe said the Canadian government was outmanoeuvred on the public-relations front and that it should have been more aggressive defending the seal hunt.
Duceppe singled out one country that had no business lecturing Canada on animal rights: Spain, where fights with bulls in front of cheering spectators is a national sport.
“I find it completely abnormal to see protests (against the seal hunt) in Spain – the country that holds the bullfights,” Duceppe said.
“We need a campaign. Our adversaries conducted one heck of a campaign, and Canada did not conduct a major one on the promotional level. …
“The Olympics aren’t a trivial thing. We could use this event to shed light on this, but we need to use other events, too.”
Duceppe shot back at one questioner who asked whether Olympic athletes might bristle at the idea of being forced to wear animal pelts to make a political statement.
“I don’t know what my shoes are made of – but if they’re not made out of plastic, they’re not made out of straw, they come from an animal.”
I’m glad our members of parliament want to support the seal hunt and the workers who will suffer becase of the EU ban, but I really don’t think this is appropriate. I’m not a big fan of the olympics, but I think it should be about sport and not spoiled by political protests. If members of parliament want to protest the ban they should do it in the political or legal arenas not at the Olympic games. Besides, their proposal completely ignores the opinion of the athletes. I’m sure many of them don’t support the seal hunt.
It’s too bad the government and the seal hunters hadn’t done more to promote the seal hunt or to educate the public about it before it came to this point. The tree-huggers and PETA et al are very good at getting their message across even if it’s inaccurate or incomplete. Those who rely on the seal hunt to live had better start putting out a counter message now before they lose their livelyhood forever.
Tags: Canada, European Union, Olympics, parliament, protest, seal hunt
Freedom to Create. Spirit to Deceive.
Last week news broke that one of the pictures used to promote Alberta in the province’s $25-million re-branding initiative was actually taken at a famous beach in England. Questions have also emerged about the locations in other photos used. When questioned about the picture government officials denied that it was a screwup or an attempt to mislead people into thinking the picture was one of Alberta. Olga Guthrie, manager of the brand initiative for Alberta’s public affairs bureau, when asked about the photo by a curious Albertan, said “This slide represents Albertans’ concern for the future of the world.” When questioned by the media Tom Olsen, the premier’s director of media relations, said “There’s no attempt to make people think that this is Alberta. There’s no attempt to mislead. That picture just fit the mood and tone of what we were trying to do.” Olsen went on to say that the picture was specifically chosen because of its foreign location to represent Albertans’ interest in global issues. “The children are a symbol of the future. They symbolize that Albertans are a worldly people.”
Now, I’m sure most Albertan’s aren’t buying that explaination. Most sensible people will recognise this for what it is. A government screwup. Despite that, the government is sticking to this lame excuse.
Or are they? On Monday I stumbled across another news story about the picture in question. This story gives a few more details including the fact the picture was taken about 7 years ago and the children in the picture were shocked to learn they were being used to promote a province in a country that they’ve never visited. The part of Monday’s story that was most surprising to me came at the end of the article. Apparently the provincial government appologised for the mixup on Thursday and a government spokesman was quoted as saying: “We all knew that every single image we put out to represent Alberta had to be of Alberta, or we would be roasted. Then we screwed up, we’re sorry.”
So the obvious question that comes to mind is: Why is the premiers office lying to Albertans and making up a lame story that the picture was purposely chosen to show our supposed concern for the future of the world on the same day that a Government spokesman is admitting that they screwed up?
