Excited Delirium

I love this chart. Many thanks to Kevin at cryptogon.com for reminding me of it (I’d seen it before, but can’t recall where).

Like many people, I’m troubled by the impending possibility that Bill C-51 will become law. Our new old government certainly seems to want things that way.

What bothered me is that I couldn’t really find a clear rationale for such a draconian piece of legislation. This bill will virtually eliminate the rights of Canadian citizens if it gets passed into law. Yes, it’s under the guise of suspected possession of deadly products like Vitamin C and homeopathic prescriptions, but then, why should we trust Canadians to take care of themselves when our own health care system is basically a massive ATM for the pharma companies?

And then I realized that this is the ‘thin edge of the wedge’ in a bigger plan to privatize our health care system. The same thing is happening with our legal system and a woman’s right to choose.

The Conservatives are great planners and the rest of us simply aren’t. They know that they can’t bring in radical right-wing privatization to our health care system or a woman’s rights to abortion without creating a massive uproar and overthrow.

Instead, they are working under the premise that they are chipping away at institutions, one piece of legislation at a time.  Boring, dull legislation that most Canadians don’t care about when they don’t involve panti-less pop stars.

The Conservatives are counting on a majority in the next election and I’m afraid that we’ll hand it to them.  With that, they won’t need stealth anymore.  Their jack-booted thugs will simply toss our door down and take what’s ours.  Canada.

And if they don’t get a majority, Dion will do everything he can to support them.

the Conservatives released new television commercials portraying Harper as a strong, steady leader who has lowered taxes and shored up the military.

The election-style ads, in both English and French, feature Canadians who offer a positive assessment of Harper.

"Stephen Harper’s the kind of person who knows where he stands. He’s a straight-up guy," one man says in the advertisement.

The 30-second spots are in sharp contrast to a spate of Conservative commercials released earlier in the summer, which focused on attacking Dion and his proposal to tax carbon emissions.

LINK: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/08/29/harper-duceppe.html

An election hasn’t been called yet, but the Conservatives have probably booked their media and are already launching a slew of ‘pre-campaign’ TV ads designed to depict Harper as a ’straight up’ guy.

Are these ads even legal?  Does this mean we’re in election mode or not?  If we are, then announce a bloody election.  If we’re not, then stop running ads.

Since when does ’straight up’ mean slashing programs because they don’t suit your ideology and hand-cuffing food inspectors so that it leads to the death of a dozen unsuspecting Canadians?

The biggest question:  are Canadians going to see through the rhetoric and know full well that Harper isn’t strong, but he’s just a big bully?

This is the best.

Does this mean the whole Republican ship has hit the ‘berg and they’re about to tank?  Will they please take the Conservatives with them?

Please?

Stephen Harper and his cabinet let Ontario drown in dollar and oil-related issues while their friends in Alberta gushed with cash.

Now that an election is imminent, they are running around the Province of Ontario making last-minute, random and poorly thought-out distributions of cash to companies that are unable to manage that money.

Good idea.  That’ll win us back.

Didn’t the massive corporate tax-breaks work?  What happened to the genius of your macro-economic strategy?  Oh yeah.  The money upped and left Canada leaving us with an empty wallet.

What was really unfortunate is that the Windsor announcement made by Stephen Harper yesterday was overshadowed by the announcement of the death of a local boy as he was stationed in Afghanistan.

What to say?  Promise us jobs, but deliver us bodies.  What a shame.

Original Story Here .

Giuliano Zaccardelli says that Canada should end its controversial use stun guns.

Zaccardelli said he supported the use of stun guns, commonly known as Tasers, during his seven-year reign as commissioner because they were simply another tool for policing.

But given the recent controversy surrounding police force’s use of Tasers in Canada, the former commissioner has reconsidered his position, he said.

"And you know, after all that I’ve thought about it, I’ve come more and more to the conclusion that I’m not sure that having Tasers is worth the negative impact that it has on police forces in terms of public perception," he told the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge.

"I think we should stop using it."

We all know that this is going to be a race to dominate the air waves.

What bothers me is that these airwaves are not owned by progressive-friendly organizations.  Canwest, CTV and other smaller stations (that are owned by Canwest and CTV) regularly show a considerable level of disdain towards progressive ideals and have probably already shut out the opposition.

With that in mind, I’d be willing to wager that the Conservatives had their air-time booked months ago, leaving little but the few ads in between Quest Personals and a 30-minute sales pitch for ‘the Bullet’.

More importantly, I’d also go so far as to suggest that not only are we going to see Steve’s mug interrupting "American Gladiators" and "TMZ", we’ll also be pounded by a wave of ‘feel good’ ‘new government ads’ that are thinly veiled Conservative ads.

A personal favourite for the Conservatives will likely be Department of Defense recruitment ads.

Watch for it.  Key words that they’ll probably embed with Public Service Ads will be ‘responsibility’, ’strength’, ’security’, ‘on guard for Canada’ and a whole bunch of other framing that will mirror Stephen Harper’s press releases.  All of the color tones will be Conservative blue, especially now that they’ve vetted any show of red, green or orange (or other colour for that matter) from any Government of Canada advertisements.

As a result of this shut-out, the real opportunity will be the Internet.  Candidates that have some sense will make the best of good-old viral campaigns and competitions.  They’ll inspire Canadians like me as they launch YouTube video and Rabble podcast describing their platforms in as much detail as you want, without the media sound bites.  The smart candidates and leaders will create a new level of dialogue that will encourage Canadians to talk about what’s important to them.

And they’ll be able to save enormous gobs of money to do this because they won’t be wasting it on TV, indirectly funding those who believe ‘progressive’ is a bad word in Canada.

But they should get on it soon … the clock is definitely ticking.

An election battle is looming, and it won’t be long until we’re inundated with a barrage of ads from all parties trying to woo us to vote for them.

I don’t have TV numbers and I don’t even know if they’re available (geez … why would you ever throw away money on TV ads?), but I did a quick check with YouTube to see who’s most popular:

"Stephen Harper" generates about 1,320 results
"Stephane Dion" generates 689 results
"Jack Layton" generates 460 results

By comparison, here’s what we see in the US:

"John McCain" 75,400
"Sarah Palin" 4,680 (she’s got some catching up to do)
"Barack Obama" a whopping 184,000 videos
"Joseph Biden" 4,790

So, it looks like our Canadian counterparts are woefully lagging the folks in the US by enormous margins.

And yet, Obama seems to have taken the world by storm.

Go figure.  Could it be that he’s working with people that ‘get it’?

I think so.