…or else STFU, already!

There are some days when I almost feel sorry for ol’ Stephanie Dion.

Okay, you caught me; I can’t say that with a straight face. The fact of the matter is that I never feel sorry for citoyen Dion, mainly because most of the crap he finds himself in is usually of his own creation. And, as of today, it’s really official: Dion is up to his ankles in shit, but he’s in head-first…

The minority Conservative government has turned up the heat, announcing it will introduce a motion by Friday on extending the mission, with a vote on the matter in late March.

The move appears designed to ensure one of two outcomes this spring: parliamentary approval to extend the mission indefinitely, or a federal election on the issue.

But Liberal Leader Stephen Dion isn’t budging on his position that the combat component of the mission must end on schedule next February, with Canadian troops remaining in Afghanistan to help with reconstruction and training of Afghan security forces.

He emerged from a caucus meeting Wednesday saying he’s not afraid of an election and it’s up to Prime Minister Stephen Harper to compromise.

“I’m never afraid of anything,” Dion said when asked if he’s prepared to trigger an election over the issue.

Well, pardon us all to hell Steffy, if none of us are impressed. We’ve heard all this before, you see: Dion huffs and puffs and threatens to blow Steve’s house down and then, when the crunch time rolls around, the HypoGrits in the House vote with their arses. Every time.

Dion said the Liberals will offer amendments to the government motion, to bring it in line with the Grit position.

I wouldn’t bet the farm on that, Steffy. In case you hadn’t noticed, this is one government (minority or not) that takes a pretty damned dim view of having legislation watered down to uselessness, and Afghanistan is something that HMPM Harper is dead serious about. The Tory ducks are pretty much in a row over this issue. Grits have been all over the map.

But this isn’t the only kick in the nuts that Dion’s lined up for, is it? Nope, it’s not…

The Tories are stepping up their fight to pass their omnibus crime bill.

Bill C-2, the Tackling Violent Crime Act, which consists of five bills dealing with violent crimes, dangerous offenders, and the age of sexual consent, passed the House of Commons in late November, just before a Christmas break that ended in late January. Now, the Conservatives say they may make the proposed act a confidence matter if the Liberal-controlled Senate doesn’t pass the bill this month.

“When it comes to protecting children, when it comes to mandatory jail terms for people who commit crimes with firearms, when it comes to labeling people as dangerous offenders … we have legislation that will accomplish that and the Senate appears to be holding it up,” Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day told CTV Newsnet’s Mike Duffy Live.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson told the Senate committee on legal affairs that it should pass the bill in February. If that doesn’t happen, he said he would tell Prime Minister Stephen Harper that the bill is a confidence measure and let him deal with it appropriately.

“We say to Liberal senators, and we say to (Liberal Leader) Stephane Dion, tell your Liberal colleagues to push this through,” said Day.

In other words: you’re not running the government anymore! So knock off this pissant screwing around, do the right thing, and get the damned legislation passed! If you don’t, we’ll damned well ram it up your sorry collective asses… and John Q. Canuck’ll help us do it.

So go ahead and get yourself a stiffy, Steffy. Give us an election. PLEASE. Either way, your bullshit stalling is running out of wiggle room.

As you’ve likely heard, the federal Tories are once again firing one across the Grits’ bow with another series of ads designed to remind people of just who and what the Liebrals are. The latest, shown below, was originally put up at notaleader.ca, — the Tory site that gleefully sticks it to li’l ol’ Stephie Dee — but was uploaded to YouTube by Matt over at ASTTR (thanks, dude).

I don’t know about you, but I sure got a chuckle or two. So sit back, crack a cold one and enjoy the show…

Sometimes I just plain don’t get my fellow right-wing nutjobs; I really don’t. There has been a great weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth over the last 24 hours or so, ever since Jim Flaherty coughed up the federal budget on the House rug. And quite the hairball it was, too. But let me ask you, my VRWC fellow travelers: Are any of you, any at all, really surprised by any of this??

Come on, now; you didn’t just fall off the turnip truck this morning did you? I’m not in the habit of moaning and groaning about my BT fellows, but some of what I’ve read leaves me scratching my melon hard enough to leave a gouge:

Christopher Edey, Got Blog If You Want It:
“Someone should really remind Prime Minister Harper, Finance Minister Flaherty and co. that they really are in government, and don’t have to keep letting Paul Martin write the budget just because that’s what everybody has gotten used to.”

M. K. Braaten:
“This afternoon when I read about the latest federal budget I swear I thought the NDP was in power. What happened to being fiscally conservative? What happened to income tax cuts? What happened to increased spending only at the same rate of increase in GDP? What happened to fairness?”

Others, like Dark Blue Tory, Sandy at Crux of the Matter and Joanne are taking a somewhat more pragmatic approach. I tend to agree with them. No matter how you slice it, there is no getting away from the fact that this was a political budget. It’s purpose was not to chart a course to fiscal responsibility, boost the economy or anything else like that. Its purpose was to pave the way to the next election. Period.

If there’s one thing that we should have learned in the last year, it’s that nothing meaningful will get done while the Tories have only a minority government. Anything that they try to do, that will actually make any kind of a difference, will be shot down by the opposition if for no other reason than to be able to bleat to the voters that the Conservatives can’t get anything done.

We need a majority and this is one step towards getting it. It’s bitter medicine, I know, so let’s just hold our noses and get it over with.

Well, it looks like we can finally look forward to something other than a one-horse race for who is going to get the nod to run for the Tories in London North Centre whenever the writ that everybody keeps talking about gets dropped.  Good thing, too.  For a while there it was looking like “acclaim” would be the word of the day and call me odd, but I don’t think that such an outcome is ever a good idea; there should always be some alternative, even if you don’t particularly like it.

While Tom Weihmayr isn’t going to take a run at it this time (kind of a drag, that; since I was hoping he’d try again), Paul Van Meerbergen (left; who jumped into the race a while ago) is getting joined in the race for the Tory nod by Allison Graham (right).  Some of you might know Graham from her writing the Freeps’ People You Know column but she also operates a business-networking advice firm called Elevate Services and Strategic Development.  More can be found in the Freeps, right here.

Now all we need to do is decide who is best equipped to bump off Glen Pearson and represent us in Ottawa…

Well now, isn’t this interesting? Here I am, slurpin’ on my Timmy’s and munchin’ on a Boston creme with not a care in the world, ’cause it’s almost payday. Yeah, the weather’s kind of crappy, but I grew up in Huron County and I have to admit, I still like a good snowstorm. Watching snow fall and cover trees in a soft white blanket is just so… just so damned Canadian, you know? I start thinking that I just might get through the day with nothing to piss me off.
Boy, was I an idiot.

I like to bitch about media bias. Hey, I’m conservative; it’s one of the things we do. 😛 A lot of people will tell me that I’m just making it up, persecution complex, paranoia, not enough beer, whatever. 🙄 It would probably be better if that were true. But it’s kind of hard to ignore, especially when I see stuff like I saw in my Freeps this morning. It’s a story about, among other things, how the PMO has changed the formula for calculating flight costs on the CAF‘s fleet of Challenger jets:

Neither the original formula nor the reduced charges came anywhere close to what Harper himself in Opposition had called “$11,000 per hour Challenger jet flights” by the previous Liberal government.

The invoices, obtained by CP under the Access to Information Act, show three Challenger flights by Harper in 2006 for which the military billed the Prime Minister’s Office.

The first flight was Feb. 10, shortly after the minority Conservatives won power. Harper’s return trip to Halifax from Ottawa for the retirement party of Nova Scotia premier John Hamm was deemed a partisan exercise and the Conservative party paid the freight.

The invoice from National Defence, which lists Harper and six staff on board, calculated the trip cost “3.1 flying hours X $2,139.00/hour.”

It also points out an interesting difference between the current government’s attitude of accountability and the Librano$’ Culture Of Entitlement®…

“Following up on our telephone conversation, it is the wish of the Prime Minister’s Office that the Conservative Party of Canada compensates the Crown for the use of the Challenger on July 26,” wrote a PMO official on Aug. 10.

[…]

“There was no previous protocol, as the former Liberal government never reimbursed Canadian taxpayers when they used the Challenger for non-government business,” she said in an e-mail. “Aside from the first instance, Canada’s new government has been consistent in its protocol for reimbursing the cost of an economy return trip ticket.”

I know, I know. You’re sitting there saying to yourself, “Damn, Dennis; what the hell are you bellyachin’ about? That doesn’t sound bad at all. Whiner.”

I do sound kind of thin-skinned today, don’t I? Well, it’s not the story that I have a problem with. After all, it shows pretty clearly that, with the Tories in charge, the flight costs have dropped from $11,000/hr to $2,139/hr (a drop of more than 80 per cent!). Hell, it even shows that the Tories actually pay their way, whereas the Grits just latched onto the public teat and sucked for all they were worth; so it’s not exactly like they’re smearing the PM now, is it?

No, it isn’t. But what’s got a burr under my saddle isn’t the body of the story; it’s how it’s spun. You see, that’s what the MSM does. They tell the truth but always seem to slant it to make liberals look good and conservatives look bad. Take this story for example. What kind of headline would you expect for that? How about something like…

Harper Slashes PMO Jet Costs 80%

Wouldn’t sound too unreasonable, would it? Or, how about this one…

Tories Pay Own Way

That would be okay, too, wouldn’t it? Either headline would be honest, accurate, even a little eye-catching. Ah, but that wouldn’t fit in with the Lefty-loving media’s little agenda now, would it? Hell, no. So, instead of a headline that hints at how the Conservative government has a) cut flight costs and b) actually pays their own way where the Grits just mooched a ride, we get this bullshit…

Taxpayers on hook for PM jet

Yup, that’s it. No bias there, is there?

As most of you already know, the Librano$ have their collective panties in one hell of a bunch lately over the supposedly underhanded comments that the Prime Minister didn’t make in the House on Wednesday. And we’ve seen the Liberal/Left-loving media spin it every which way ever since. We’ve seen everything from “Liberals shout down PM over ‘base’ attack” to “Harper forgot the dignity of his office in quest for blood” and just about every damn thing in between.

Oddly enough, the least slanted-sounding headline that I could find, “Gloves off in terror law fight,” cropped up in the damned TO (Red) Star, of all places. No idea how the hell that happened… 😕

Everybody and their dog knows that the media spins things whatever way the staff leans (which usually means to the Left of the political spectrum) but very few publications ever actually come right out and say it. Well, the National Post did just that today. Not only that, but they also bluntly point out some of the BS we’ve been getting fed lately for what it is: a Left-loving, almost Machiavellian, MSM busting it’s ass to reinforce their beloved Grits. It skillfully paints a picture of deception, misdirection, hypocrisy and most of the other things that spring to mind when you think about the Fiberals and their lapdog media.

So, since I’m not above stealing somebody else’s stuff when they say it better than I would, here is the NP editorial in question, in full (with a little emphasis added here and there by me)…

‘Shame’? Hardly

National Post
Published: Friday, February 23, 2007

Journalists employ a special term when a politician accidentally speaks a forbidden truth out loud: They call it a “Kinsley gaffe,” after the legendary American editorialist Michael Kinsley, who pointed out in 1992 that the word “gaffe” is never really used by native writers of English except to describe such a situation.

The catcalls of “shame” that drowned out the Prime Minister in the House of Commons on Wednesday are the infallible sign of a Kinsley gaffe. Mr. Harper was about to describe an article from the Vancouver Sun pointing out that the father-in-law of an important young Liberal MP and organizer was once a spokesman for Babbar Khalsa, a group officially recognized by the Canadian government as a terrorist organization. This same individual is a potential witness in the Air India investigation, the very same inquiry that will be hobbled if Stephane Dion prevails in his new-found and oddly passionate quest to kill provisions of the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act that permit such investigations.

None of the Liberals leaping to their feet to denounce Mr. Harper have bothered to deny the facts presented in the Sun by Kim Bolan: given Ms. Bolan’s reputation as an investigator and chronicler of Sikh separatist activity, it would be foolhardy to try. It is the context in which the fact was brought up that bothers them. Or so they say.

No one–including us –is accusing the MP in question, Navdeep Bains, of any illegal behaviour. And voters are entitled to make their own individual judgments on whether the PM was engaging in dirty pool by opening the pages of the Sun in the privileged environment of the House of Commons. But they would be advised to ignore the slanted, indignant language that some other media outlets are trying to disguise as impartial reporting.

The PM is being accused of suggesting that the Liberals changed their policy on ant terror legislation to protect Mr. Bains’ father-in-law, Darshan Singh Saini, or, more generally, to cripple an Air India investigation that many in the Sikh community oppose. In fact, it is only by clairvoyance that reporters can claim to know what Mr. Harper would have said in his complete reply. He was shouted down long before he had the chance to make the “suggestion” being freely attributed to him (readers may wonder why the Liberals did not sit quietly and let him continue covering himself with “shame”).

But even if Mr. Harper intended to suggest what he is being accused of suggesting, his only “shame” lies in saying what millions of Canadians are thinking. The Sikh voting bloc that Mr. Bains drew to the Dion camp (via Gerard Kennedy) at the Liberal convention in December is a critical reason why it is Mr. Dion, as opposed to Bob Rae or Michael Ignatieff, who now sits as Leader of the Opposition. Why would it be out of bounds to suggest that Mr. Dion’s sudden and stalwart opposition to key anti-terrorism provisions — even over the objections of many influential members of his own divided caucus — might somehow be traced to those same provisions being potentially used to compel testimony from the supporters of a king making MP?

We recall that, in 2000, the Liberals used the same specious calls of “shame” to attack Reform politicians who questioned the Liberals about their party’s stance on a Tamil terrorist group. Yet it was the Liberals themselves who were disgraced when it turned out Paul Martin and Maria Minna had attended a fundraising event for a group identified by the U.S. State Department as a front for the Tamil Tigers, which — like the Babbar Khalsa outfit for which Mr. Bains’ father-in-law once acted as spokesman — is classified as a terrorist group under Canadian law (over Liberal objections, of course).

Even given the premise of Mr. Bains’ personal unimpeachability — a premise to which the Prime Minister’s press secretary was glad to assent on Wednesday — this may be a trickier question than it appears. The premise that a Member of Parliament’s family and ethno-political connections are irrelevant can easily be carried to the point of absurdity. Apparently in recognition of his delivering the votes of his fellow Sikhs at the Montreal convention, Mr. Dion appointed Mr. Bains to the party’s national election readiness committee last month. If an equally important Conservative had a father-in-law who stood to benefit from a newfound Conservative policy, are we to believe that no reporter or opposition member would dare ask uncomfortable questions? No one can show that Mr. Bains’ family connections to a possible Air India witness have played any part in the sudden Liberal rediscovery of civil liberties, but when did it become inappropriate for a politician to point out a potential conflict of interest among his opponents?

It seems to have happened right around the time the conservative parties reunited and formed a national government. We recall that some of the publications now lashing out at Mr. Harper were happy to wallow in “family legacies” when it came to Stockwell Day’s Western-separatist father or Preston Manning’s ancestral Social Credit connections. Could the apologies owed to these men have gotten misplaced in the mail?