Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Oh, by the way: Stephen Harper lied.


Just so you really understand what happened here, it was Stephen Harper and no one else that wiped out that appointments commission. Today's Globe headline had it exactly right: "Harper kills appointments commission." Harper. No one else. Stephen Harper.

As that article points out, the appointments commission was indeed "a key part of [Harper's] new ethics package" so, if it was really that important to him, he could have made it happen. One possibility would have been simply to nominate someone who was minimally acceptable to the opposition parties, which should not have been that hard.

But, as I mentioned earlier and as POGGE so significantly explained, that committee's vote was non-binding. If Harper really wanted an appointments commission, he could have had one, regardless of that committee's vote.

That commission was not killed by partisan wrangling or opposition obstructionism or anything even remotely similar. It was killed by Stephen Harper, who promised it as part of his campaign, and then broke his promise for cheap political gain.

Which means all you whiny little fucks can shut the hell up about this, OK?

BRAIN CELL, MEET OTHER BRAIN CELL
. Oh, this is just tail-wagging good. Commenter "Christian Conservative" tries for clever snark and fails spectacularly. Feel free to check out that original article I panned, and start reading the comments. That's it, keep reading, until you get to Christian Conservative's seventh comment, where we read:

I stand corrected, according to CTV... it wasn't the commission itself they opposed, it was just the nominee.

Very.

Very.

Long.

Pause.

Now imagine, if you can, how dense you have to be to have written that much on that particular topic, without ever realizing that the opposition committee members weren't voting against the creation of the position, they were simply voting against Harper's nominee for that position.

I may have to invent whole new adjectives just for the occasion.

14 comments:

Christian Conservative said...

No thanks, I'll just keep blathering on. :-) But thanks for the link.

MgS said...

Along with the motion on Kyoto, and the Vellacott fuck up, the message is pretty clear to the CPC government:

You are a M I N O R I T Y - quit acting like a fucking dictator with a Ralph Klein sized ego, and start working with the other parties in the house.

(Of course, I know that's like asking a leopard to change its spots)

Anonymous said...

Why do assholes like Christian Conservaturd ("Favourite Book: THE BIBLE!!") always say "THANKS FOR TEH LINK!!!!1" when someone links to them for being stupid?

Christian Conservative said...

Actually, the retraction was based only on a comment I made that wasn't totally accurate. I don't have a problem acknowledging when I'm wrong.

Yep, the Holy Bible, the written Word of God, is my favorite book. Sorry to disappoint you.

Anonymous said...

Because any PR agent will tell you that Infamy is better than nothing at all. Publicity is publicity.

As for Harper, I really wish it didn't look like he was following Luntz's advice to slag the Liberals any chance he got, even if he had to create the chance, but it is reading uncomfortably word, verse and chapter when he's demanding the NDP and the Bloc have to explain why they're lining up with such a corrupt party that won't let him get annnny reform done.

Eeeeeesh. Accusations on the cover above the fold. Retractions on page 16 beside the ad for used cabbages.

Anonymous said...

this might be a little off topic, but can we talk about Harper's nominee's defense to the charge of racism?

I am not a racist... In fact, I am even friends with some of thoooose people... You know, we go to church together... In fact, the other day, my wife and I went of for lunch with thoooose people. You know. The black ones.

Need we say more?

Anonymous said...

Yeesh people, Christian's politics and faith aside, try to show a little tolerance and respect. He's being very civil and reasonable, and some of you are acting like apes.

Last I heard, tolerance was still a progressive value, and a Canadian one.

Christian Conservative said...

You really are stupid. News for you: THERE IS NO GOD.

I'm sorry that you feel that way... but I'll put in a good word for you next time I'm talking to Him anyway.

On a more serious note, it's impossible to explain the evidence that I have seen in my life that clearly showed me that He does indeed exist. One can only say that it is "supernatural".

The Bible, I have found, is a much more accurate document on the state of the human heart than any other work in history. It tells us that we have a problem, and when we follow it closely, it contains the best solution offered to the world... freedom from sin which so easily ensnares each and every one of us.

Feel free to contact me if you want to discuss futher.

CC said...

Christian Conservative wrote:

"On a more serious note, it's impossible to explain the evidence that I have seen in my life that clearly showed me that He does indeed exist."

That's fine, as long as you understand that no one has any obligation to take your belief seriously in any way.

If you openly admit that it's impossible to provide objective evidence to others, then you have no basis for complaining when those others reject your claims. What that means is that your belief in a Christian God is no more persuasive or compelling than someone else's belief in fairies or leprechauns.

Can we agree on that?

David Webb said...

"The Bible, I have found, is a much more accurate document on the state of the human heart than any other work in history."

Can you tell me what was the lesson learned in having Lot's daughters rape him in a cave? Lot's wife was turned to salt for turning around, so there must have been a big punishment and subsequent lesson in this delightful story.

Somena Woman said...

Look, I'm all for jumping on the Fundy Right when they are engaged in hypocricy especially over the teachings of Christ, but Christian Conservative is not doing that. He is being polite, he is being friendly, he is even trying to "save" people.

In my books somebody who believes that if people are not "saved" they are doomed to eternal torment, and keeps trying to help "save people" despite being insulted and denigrated -- is not a bad egg. Notice that Christian Conservative is not engaged in the kind of whacko stuff that many of the other proclaimed Christians in blog-land are.

For example -- Just look at Steve Janke, who prides himself on being Angry. Christ admonishes people in his teachings of the perils of being angry with one's brothers/fellow human beings. It's spectacularly hypocritical for Janke to run around with all this unstoppable rage all the time, all the while claiming to be Christian, when Christ's teachings counsel something completely different.

I once asked Janke if he spent as much time praying as he did spewing his ANGRY rants on his blog. He never answered.

I am willing to be dollars to donuts, based on Christian Conservatives responses here that if I asked him/her that question the answer would be absolutley in the affirmative.

So -- save the vitriol and religion bating for those who deserve it. The hypocrits, who Dante claimed were doomed to the worst and most terrible plane of hell, in any event.

I'm sorry... Maybe Christian Conservative has behaved differently elsewhere - but I don't see him behaving in any fashion that is hypocrital to his stated beliefs and opinions here.

Save it for those who really deserve it. The ones who use their religious zealotry as a club to beat on people. Sorry... I just had to interject.

I may not agree with Christian Conservative's opinions but he is being far more polite and friendly and reasonable with his opinions than many of his fellow religious bloggers. I don't like seeing him getting slammed for the behavior of others.

CC said...

Since I started this little hoedown, I might as well weigh in and explain my reasoning, which applies only to me, which is mine. Got it?

My original annoyance with the posting in question is quite simple. It wasn't just that "ChCon" (if I may use that abbreviation) so willingly sucked up the right-wing talking point that Harper didn't just "take his ball and go home." As we have already established, that's precisely what he did, the whiny, little weasel.

Stephen Harper had no obligation to pay any attention to that committee vote, and we all know it now. So childishly taking his ball and going home is precisely what Harper did. The fact that ChCon so airily dismissed that and blew it off as "playing partisan political games" was enough to irk me. But it didn't end there.

As I posted earlier, if you read the comments section, you will find that it takes ChCon seven comments to finally clue in to the fundamental fact that that committee wasn't voting on whether the commission should exist -- it was simply expressing its opinion on whether Harper's nominee Glyn Morgan was a suitable choice to run it, and nothing more.

To have made that kind of misunderstanding is, quite simply, not easily forgivable. Given how all of Wankerville is gloating over how Stephen Harper showed those committee pissants what for, it's just unacceptable for anyone to jump in with an opinion when they're labouring under that kind of misunderstanding.

Consider what happens when someone on the "Left" makes a "mistake." Hey, let's consider the episode involving Dan Rather and the George W. Bush documents, shall we? The one in which CBS reported having documentation on Bush's military service.

The Right went into a complete frenzy when the suggestion was made that those documents were fakes. And nothing was going to assuage that rage. Apologies from CBS meant nothing -- those people wanted Dan Rather's head on a pike at the city gates, and nothing else was going to be sufficient. Even today, the "destruction" of Dan Rather is one of their finest moments. Just ask them.

So pardon me if I'm not as forgiving as I could be but when someone like ChCon goes public with a demonstrably silly and uninformed position, I have no qualms about laying a beating on him. Maybe he won't be so quick to do it the next time.

By the way, when you make a mistake of that magnitude, it's not generally enough to just say "I stand corrected" somewhere buried in the comments section. A top-post apology and retraction would be more in order, don't you think?

Somena Woman said...

Agreed, your blog, your rules.
Just saying this guy ain't the worst of 'em... and brother you know what I'm talking about. He's mistaken about many things, but there is a big difference between errors of judgement and errors of morality.

I got picky about the guy being picked on by others (not you CC) for his errors in judgement in believing 100% that the Bible is the "Word of God" -- thats a belief. He claims to have personal spiritual experience as evidence, unfortunatley that sort of thing can't be reproduced, so at best it can only be offered as an opinion.

However, one of the things I learned a long time ago, was that the only way to control large numbers of people was to first get them to doubt the effacy of their own minds. That means when somebody tells me they have had some personal experience, with their own senses which have confirmed for them their belief - that's the end of the discussion for me. I'm not going to tell them to doubt the effacy of their own mind in determining the realness of their experience.

To do so, would be like demanding like preachers do that people worship God, on faith and faith alone....

The reason I won't jump on somebody who expresses their belief and qualifies it by explaining some sort of spiritual experience, is because logic is a requirement for man to live qua man...

And logic coupled with science dictates that we pay attention to the evidence of our senses. That is the only way that human beings can function... they need to use logic to apprehend reality as it really is, not as they wish it to be.

As such, somebody whose senses have told him he has experienced some sort of supernatural entity has proof enough for himself - even if it's not good enough for others.

See what I'm getting at here?

As for the Parliamentary Aspect of the commentary, you are right, this should have been acknowledged as an error on the part of ChCon, and you rightly took him to task for that.

Christian Conservative said...

Hey CC (it's getting confusing, that's normally my nickname... ChCon will do here I suppose), don't forget, my original post was at 11:39 (lunch), and my clarification was at 4:20... about 4:30 later, but I had something called "work" jumping in every now and then and interupting me. ;-)

I try to keep my blogging within reason at work, they are paying me for my time... try to keep it to my breaks and such. I've posted on my blog before that it's gotten me into trouble once or twice, posting on something while missing a detail that comes back to haunt me later. A real Christian ought to be able to take correction... I'm workin on that. ;-)

MeaghanWW, wow, thanks for the vote of confidence... my prayer time isn't QUITE up to that level, but that's something I'm working on too. ;-) I was a little more "angry" in times past, but God revealed that to me, so I've been endeavoring to be more "Christ-like" in my posts.

In real life, I'm better at it... something just doesn't translate too well in cyber-space. ;-)