No Platform, No Problem

Apparently the Harper Conservatives are going to unveil a platform – in the final week before the election. They’re the government. They called the election, it wasn’t triggered by the opposition. And they’ve dummied up until they were safely past the debates. It’s just plain creepy.

Stephen Harper is shrewd. He’s undemocratic, authoritarian, hyper secretive, cynical, manipulative, and more than a tad creepy himself – but he’s shrewd.

Last time around Harpo fed Canadians a bagful of lies about how he’d govern on principles. Why he’d turn things around. There’d be accountability and transparency and a bunch of little trinkets like fixed election dates – and anyone who believed him must wonder what’s that taste in their mouths today. Here’s the answer – he fed you a load of shit and you swallowed it. And he’s getting fixed to feed you another load of the same this time.

The fundamentals of the economy are strong. That’s crap straight from the prime ministerial horses ass himself. Here, help yourself to a shovelful if you can get another one down.

In that grotesque parody of a newspaper we call the National Post, Don Martin writes that it makes sense for Harper not to release his platform because, after all, that would only give the other parties the opportunity to attack it. And, yeah, it also gives Harpo the chance to tweak it up (as in make it up) at the last minute. Yes, Don, and it also gives Canadians next to zero chance to evaluate it and look through it and figure out they’re being hoodwinked by the same Con artist who got’em last time.

The height of Don Martin’s cynical apologia for Harper came in this final line of his piece: “If voters really knew what a government was planning, they would never vote for them, confessed one candid politician whose identity I cannot find in Google (although I’m thinking former finance minister John Crosbie).” Right Don, thanks.

 

The Delusional Fantasies of the National Spot

Forget all those awkward admissions Rick Hillier made last week about Canadian forces being so short-handed they’ve been dodging the hotspots in Kandahar province. Hillier doesn’t know what he’s talking about, at least according to the National Spot’s Afghanistan specialist Matthew Fisher.

In today’s paper, Fisher claims: “One can only guess at the reasons that Canadians have not been told that their soldiers have the insurgents on the run in Kandahar.”

Now there you have it, Hillier is keeping this little secret to himself. He doesn’t want you to know that his soldiers “have the insurgents on the run in Kandahar.” One can only guess why, I guess, sort of.

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, the Taliban stopped running just long enough yesterday to blow up a British vehicle patrolling only a couple of kilometres west of Kandahar airfield (the Canadian base) killing two soldiers and wounding two others.

After that the Taliban ran straight over to a police station in Kandahar where they killed 11-officers as they lay sleeping. This was the second police killing in as many days in Kandahar. CNN reports the killings may have been an inside job:

“The Kandahar police official said an initial investigation revealed that an officer may have “had a hand” in the attack because the militants were able to fatally shoot the officers while they were asleep.

The attack occurred in the Arghandab district, some six miles (10 km) north of Kandahar city.
On Saturday, four officers were killed when militants attacked a police unit as they were eradicating poppy fields, officials said.

In recent months, militants have stepped up attacks against local police, coalition troops and NATO-led forces.”

Good thing for us that we’ve got the insurgents on the run in Kandahar, eh?

 

The Myth of Lorne Grunter

It’s the most read and most e-mailed story in the National Spot, Lorne Grunter’s powerful article exposing the myth of global warming. Grunter is no climatologist, he’s not much of a journalist for that matter, but someone operating at his low standards can find proof in this cold winter that global warming just isn’t happening.

It’s a fairly lengthy item but not long enough to include any mention much less an explanation of why we’re getting this cold weather. Grunter refers to conditions in the Arctic and theories about the Atlantic ocean but not one mention (naturally) of what’s going on in the central Pacific.

It’s called La Nina, the ugly step-sister of the other weather making phenomenon, El Nino. Now Grunter, from his encrusted perch high in the paper’s birdcage, could have easily found out about this La Nina. It was identified many months ago and resulted in a cold-winter forecast. That’s what happens during a La Nina. Of course Grunter could have found this out but he chose not to because that would have slowed down his greasy spin. And that, kids, is why Grunter’s paper, the National Spot, lies neatly folded to cover the bottom of his cage.

 

Will Connie the Con Continue to Pen from the Pen?

Much as I find Con-victed Felon Con-rad Black the egomaniacal equivalent of ten pounds of solid waste in a five pound, soggy paper bag, I do find his journalism at times amusing. I found myself dwelling on that as I read Lord Crossharbour’s pre-incarceration op-ed piece in the National Spot endorsing John McCain as the next president of the United States.

Having recently torn a strip off two former friends, Henry Kissinger and William F. Buckley, it appears Con Con is in the mood to lay waste to all and sundry who may have the misfortune to catch his eye.

Here are a couple of his observations from primary night in New Hampshire:

“Though quite enterprising, Wolf Blitzer, when he worked for us at the Jerusalem Post, was one of the most avaricious journalists I have known. After about 40 assertions from him in 20 minutes on New Hampshire night, that CNN has “the top news team on television,” I had either to change channels or find a sick bag. Prevention prevailed over convalescence, but the other channels weren’t much better.”

On, “… the greatest American political myth-maker of the last 35 years, Bob Woodward“:

“He it was who first gave us the story of the cloven-footed, horned, trident-tailed Richard Nixon, (undoubtedly, in fact, one of America’s 10 greatest presidents, despite his ethical and stylistic frailties). Woodward completely fabricated a visit to the hospital room of dying CIA chief William Casey, after the Iran-Contra side-show in 1987, in his supposedly non-fiction book, Veil. But Last Tuesday night, he not only admitted error, but volunteered what he had expected to say when Obama had won. He was the only honest commentator that I saw in hours of almost prayerful channel-surfing in search of one.”

On Michelle Obama:

“With trepidation, but not embarrassment, I offer the thought that Mrs. Obama, a formerly disadvantaged alumna of Princeton and Harvard, to judge from her well-strategized appearances on national television in exiguous dresses and trousers, is as callipygian as Jennifer Lopez. (That is my only concession to political correctness for 2008; you look it up if you must.) I saw her on YouTube saying that, “Reform must be from the bottom up.” In her well-favoured case, this could be a double-entendre.”

On the glory of a commander-in-chief of proven, military mettle:

“In 29 of the 43 U.S. presidential elections prior to 1960, someone best known as a senior army officer was a serious nominee for national office and winner of electoral votes; successfully in 19 of those elections. These included some of the greatest names of U.S. history: Washington, Jackson, Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Eisenhower, (successful, as a group, in 10 of 12 national elections.) Being demonstrably patriotic, brave, successfully commanding in crises and untainted by political log-rolling has never lost its appeal to Americans.

Since the Second World War, the only popular and successful war the country has had, the first Gulf War, yielded a hero who did not choose to run, General Colin Powell, (though he probably would have won if he had run). So since 1960, the parties have usually nominated men proud of their military background, but not in high command positions: Kennedy, Nixon, Johnson, Goldwater, McGovern, Ford, Carter, Bush Senior, Dole, Gore and Kerry (not to mention George Wallace’s 1968 vice-presidential running mate, Air Force General Curtis “Lob one into the men’s room in the Kremlin … and turn North Vietnam into a parking lot” Lemay).”

“McCain, an authentic hero, though irascible and burdened with a bogus campaign-finance bill and unacceptable views on immigration, is in the best of the military-political tradition of integrity. He doesn’t speak in clichés or adjust his views for the fluctuating polls, and he does have a sense of humour. If he is the presidential nominee, the genius move would be to invite Bloomberg to be his running mate. At this early point, if the office, in a phrase from Washington’s time, is seeking anyone, (i.e. being successfully sought by anyone), it is John McCain.”

It’s easy to understand Con Con’s attachment to McCain. As Conrad’s own appointment behind bars approaches, the Arizona senator’s years of captivity and torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese must be enormously inspirational. For McCain made his imprisonment an ordeal endured in great nobility. Doubtless Mr. Black aspires to nothing less for himself.

What I wonder now is whether mister/inmate/Lord Black will continue to deliver himself of his views via the National Spot whilst a guest of the US penitentiary service. He’ll undoubtedly have access to newspapers and television, even the internet perhaps. What a grand opportunity to extract revenge on those who have slighted and wronged him and to show the rest of us lesser mortals the true light of his brilliance?