JUST ANOTHER 'BUYING OPPORTUNITY'?

The whole Bruce Carson scandal says so much about Stephen Harper.
One of Harper's closest advisors -- a man who earned the nickname 'the mechanic' for being able to move into a department on Harper's sayso and 'fix' things -- had taken hold of a scheme to sell First Nations groups with serious water issues, while making his escort/fiancee a whole lot richer in the process.
Carson, who had been working for government on the environmental file not long ago, also was linked to Big Oil through an appointment to the University of Calgary's Canada School of Energy and the Environment. In northern Alberta, what is one of the biggest factors in undrinkable water? Oil.
Most importantly is the question why water is being continually treated as a saleable commodity over its use for citizens.
I hope all parties come out and make this one of their main campaign promises: Drinking water is a critical resource and will be established as an unassailable right for all Canadians.

READY, SET...

While they accuse the opposition of being too eager for an election, this arrived in my mailbox 11:12 a.m. pst...

Faux outrage is quaint. Good luck getting this candidate (or 303 other CON candidates, for that matter) to a debate or public meet and greet.

Go Read This...

... because it's a scintillating read.
Of course, in Stephen Harper's world, forged documents are not unlike faked tapes, plagarized speeches, doctored documents, non-compliant accountability and baldfaced lies.
Bloggers like Curiousity Cat, Impolitical and FarnWide continue to lead the way.

NO KIDDING, EINSTEIN...

Jim Flaherty to Peter Mansbridge after delivering his budget:
"This isn't Paul Martin."
After wiping the Canadian taxpayers for $40.5-Billion deficit in 2010, after a $55B one in 2009 (and spending the cupboard bare in 2008 BEFORE the economic downturn), Jimbo finally calls one right.
You sir are no Paul Martin.

But give the Stephen Harper CONservative government kudos on one thing -- they sure know how to create a pot of chicken soup. Too bad it isn't edible.

SCOUNDRELS AND BLACK HEARTS...

It's been obvious for a long time that the 'new' CONservative party knows no bounds when it comes to stooping.
They've changed the parameters of politics -- it's all about the win, and rules and honour are for whiners.
Their latest attack on Michael Ignatieff is again part of their modification of history, where they get to tell someone else's story. However, their latest launch is an incredibly new low -- attacking the dead relatives of the leader of the opposition.
For those who worry about the state of our country and the tenor of our nation's current leadership, every new gamesmanship strategy from Harper is a confirmation of what is wrong within our community. Non accountable, without ethics or moral compass, Stephen Harper's war machine will continue to salt the political landscape until people with backbone stand up, speak up and demand facts and reality as opposed to whispers, malicious lies and innuendo.
Do we really deserve that kind of governance?

WHERE THERE'S SMOKE...

... You don't suppose the fact that a TV station was doing an investigative piece on the scummy buddy of Stephen Harper had anything to do with said so-called leader tossing his buddy under the bus, or at least to the bushes where his other buddy, Mr. Grumpy Pants Elliott, could 'speed things up', do you?
Check into Bruce Carson's background and you'll see he didn't suddenly become an unethical sleazy bastard overnight. He was fine as a confidante/advisor until the heat and election drive got tangled up in blue.

HARPER'S NUCLEAR SECRET...

Stephen Harper's boast of Canada being the new energy superpower was just one more of those fake channel changers, ie Northern Star... or was it?
While we all watch with horror, compassion and empathy at what's happening in Japan, we should be reminded that our own so-called leader was (is?) eager to plant Canada's energy future in the nuclear camp.
He's tried to tie his faux environmental plan (a plan that must include mermaids and unicorns, because all of them have the same basis in reality) to a nuclear 'strategy'.
Impolitical has treaded this topic well, here and here.
Harper's abject interest in reducing public oversight, breaking down a publicly owned corporation and selling it piecemeal to likely Harper-friendly big business stirred up some concern. But it's been well hidden and nearly forgotten.
Let's remind ourselves that Stephen Harper's central focus is reducing public investment in areas where he deems it 'competition' to his friends, to eliminate the government's ability to provide safeguards and checks and balances, and let industry police itself.
Oh, no doubt Harper's next spiel about 'nuclear' will be in that sweater voice, expressing caution while placating his allies with deep pockets. It's like handing out 0-down, 40-year mortgages in one sentence, then bemoaning the level of debt Canadians carry.
We don't need to hear his psychic dresser tell us where that could end up, do we?

SIGN OF ROUGH SEAS AHEAD?

...as the rats start to leave?
No doubt the Stephen Harper CONs will be able to find potted plants in these ridings to run (and win), but the signal's pretty clear.
Exit while the getting's good.

One more chance to flash back to one of Day's worse performances as a lying CON...

NEW STORY, SAME OLD LINE...

Stephen Harper says that the $530,000 buyout was the quickest and most efficient way to extricate disgraced integrity commissioner Christiane Ouimet from her position.
The person the Harper regime put in place to oversee whistleblowers and watch over the ongoings of governmental departments had proven to be a colossal failure and drain on the department's resources -- unless of course you're the self-satisfied Prime Minister of a government with lots to hide.
It's bad enough when the odd leak gets out -- all governments know that -- so the occasional William Elliott situation or stompin' mad performance from the soon-to-be senator for Millhaven may create a bad impression on Stephen Harper, he of the carefully, psychic-guided image issue.
So, along with the free pile of taxpayers money is what is now guaranteed CONservative policy: a confidentiality agreement.
Nice to see Stephen Harper takes care of his own.
Could he at least do it with his own money for once?

WHO'S MINDING THE STORE...

Of course, when the higher-ups are busy forging documents, making 'financial offers' to dying MPs for their vote, and busy misleading parliament and the people of Canada, should we even ask?
From the CP:
OTTAWA — Conservative staffers with minds of their own or speed-bumps under the wheels of Tory re-election buses?

The resignation of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's director of multicultural affairs added another name to the lengthy list of Conservative aides who have quit over stumbles, blunders or scandals.

Kasra Nejatian resigned last week after his name appeared on a party fundraising letter sent on Kenney's parliamentary letterhead. Kenney said Nejatian disobeyed his explicit instructions not to do partisan work at the ministerial office.

Nejatian is not alone. Since the Tories took power in 2006, at least a half-dozen staff have taken the blame for controversial actions they say were completely their own.

Half of those resignations occurred since the Conservatives announced that ministers would be accountable for the actions of their staff.

"There is a clear case to be made that the accountability of political staff ought to be satisfied through ministers," former House Leader Jay Hill told the Commons last May.

"Ministers ran for office and accepted the role and responsibility of being a minister. Staff did not."
I guess we can just chalk it up to more unreported criminal activity in Harperland.

TAKE THAT, LESS FORTUNATE...

A House of Commons human resources committee took three years to come up with 58 recommendations that Ottawa could utilize to fight poverty in Canada.
Guess who's not interested?
Stephen Harper's CONservative government, that's who. It's because Harper and sadsack minister/future jailbird wife Diane Finley have their own plans for the less fortunate of the land.
It involves prorogued promises, mega prisons for those practitioners of unreported crimes, and something extra -- courtesy of the Canadian taxpayers -- for those who take care of themselves first.
And if it's a job the poor are looking for, there's a position open in the PMO office: Wanted, stooge able to look guilty on command and able to take the hit when the $#!% hits the fan...

Oh, and those pesky stats that help both public and private groups research and reach out to those in poverty? Well, while they may be perfectly fine for assisting CON ministers in devising ways to scam the public for funding partisan ventures and misrepresenting government business, Stephen Harper has found a way to avoid having to answer to other 'special interest groups' like the poor, underrepresented and ungrateful.
But how about that cake, eh?

GOOD FOR THE GOOSE...

Here it is in a nutshell.
While he can make the law, Stephen Harper isn't above it, despite what he wants you to think.
Unless he makes forgery and stealing legal.

RETAIL POLITICS

Naturally, Jason Kenney has a flunky to fall on his sword, just as Stephen Harper has one at the ready for any missteps.
Why wouldn't Harper try to ply his lies in other languages, too?
That Kenney's parliamentary secretary accidentally let the lid off the CONs latest swindle -- that's what you call it when the government uses public finances and machinery to lure in votes -- shouldn't surprise anyone. If anything, that has been the hallmark of Canada's New, er, the Stephen Harper Government.
Pitch, pitch pitch, and make sure the people know who's pitching. That credo has been used by previous Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments, too.
But there's a big difference in today's new world -- where programs and policy take a backseat to the partisan appeal.
It was revealed in the blatant cheque photo ops, in the corporate copying of Canada's Olympic logo, and in the minutia of every day governing. However, the budget-pinched world of the media, especially at the community level, hasn't had the power, inclination or heart to look into how their own Harper drones are milking the system.
Case in point -- Senator Yonah Martin. Here's a failed CON candidate, a political neophyte whose main task, if you can find her schedule and see her at work, is to troll for ethnic votes. Often at the lapel of Jason Kenney.
What has her contribution been to the senate, to the legislation that is supposedly getting sober second thoughts from her and her clones?
Harper is happy to keep us all in the dark -- and while the press give us Charlie Sheen schaudenfraude by the bucketload, it seems the truth will only surface when Harper's minions screw up.
Thankfully, there appears to be no shortage of Harper aides to throw under the bus.

FISH ROTS...

At the head of the CONservative party, your crimes are not their crimes.
Up is down. Right is wrong. Bad is good.
Stephen Harper made it so.
Now, the party that lied about standing for accountability and ethics has been slapped down once more for its scheme that would bilk Canadian taxpayers of over $800,000 that they eagerly wanted to stuff into their overflowing pockets.
Receipts that appear doctored.
Shock! -- Not.
Stephen Harper, he of the plagarized speech, of the entrapment 'Grewal tape', the man who OK'd an offer to a dying MP in exchange of his vote - now slyly defending his party's right to forge documents. A man of many broken promises who never saw a downed rival who he wouldn't kick.
His agents in the in-and-out falsified invoices threatened to lean heavily on their own Conservative people who stopped to question this scheme.
Yes, that guy.
Sure, there's the smoke-screen defence put up by No. 1 thug, the Rgt. Hon. Senator from Millhaven that Harper knew nothing of this scheme... Sgt. Schultz couldn't have said it better.
Liberals are right to state that the In-and-Out scandal is about character -- at the top.
Lack of it seems to be the next conclusion.