Monday, February 27, 2012

Let me get this straight

We are being asked to believe that the same Harper who had our public servants roaming Canada counting and then reporting to him, on a weekly basis, the number of Economic Action Plan signs that were in place in preparation for the election, did not check to see if the voter suppression tactics were in place for the targeted ridings. He might not have known exactly what time in the night, Mrs. Shirley Johnson in Mississauga was to receive the annoying call from a conservative pretending to be a Liberal supporter or the exact phony location that Liberal supporters were being sent to in Sudbury, but he sure as hell knew that both tactics would be used. Hell, when you hire the services of American voter suppression specialists, it is like ordering from a Chinese menu: 75,000 misdirection calls, 140,000 annoying late night calls, 75,000 Sabbath calls….. Oh would you like ballot box stuffing with that order?

Enabling Election Fraud

My favorite enabler is Andrew Coyne, because he gets quoted all the time by Progressive Bloggers and always gets a pass as a voice of non partisan conservatism. Re-read Mr. Coyne’s heavily linked National Post article on the conservative electoral fraud. The first paragraph lists everything “we do not know”.
We do not know whether the calls were made by members of the Conservative party. We do not know whether any Conservative authorized them, or even knew about them. We do not know whether anyone was prevented from voting, or had their vote changed, as a result, nor do we know whether the results of any riding were affected.
Or in short there’s no proof that the conservatives did anything. The middle of his piece is all about how serious this is and how Harper is changing the ethics etc. etc. etc. and then we get to the closing paragraph and the other great Harpercon spin.
The progression is sadly familiar. Having first compromised its beliefs, a party finds it is easier to compromise its principles; having compromised its principles, it learns to compromise its ethics; and compromises of ethics, as we have seen in other parties, lead sooner or later to compromises with the law.
If you think I am being too harsh on Mr. Coyne, go back and re-read his MacLeans post from a year ago about the illegal In & Out fraud.
My point is not to exonerate the Conservatives. It is rather to suggest that this is hardly the sort of cut-and-dried case of “electoral fraud” the opposition, and it seems large sections of the media, have decided it is. It is indeed, as the Conservative talking points insist, a dispute about accounting standards, and shifting standards at that: as of 2006, Elections Canada’s “Handbook for Candidates” really did seem to allow, in the judgment of the Federal Court, the very practices that are now in dispute.
Maybe if Coyne had stepped up last year over the fraud from the previous election, Harper might not have been so quick to participate in election fraud this year.
Oh sorry we haven't proven that Harper participated yet.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Not big on I told you so

But To every piece of sanctimonious, excrement that voted for a conservative candidate, in the last federal election and to all the ignorant, oozing, comedones who claimed that there was no difference between Harper and the Liberal governments of the past, I would respectfully ask that you each purchase a copy of tomorrow’s edition of the Toronto Sun and roll it into a coil. A coil so tight that when placed to your lips, and blown through, it makes a deep resonant sound. Continue to blow until the end of the coil is softened with the drippings of your bitter, alkaline spittle and then forcefully shove it up your ass, daily, until 2015.