Sunday, March 25, 2007

First thing, let's kill all the law students.


Is it just me, or are law students from across the entire political spectrum total cementheads? How else to explain this puerile screed from Blogging Tory Aaron Lee Wudrick:

The National Post tells Stephane Dion quit being a crybaby over Harper's QP Taliban/troops comeback:

Since last fall, the Liberals have labelled Mr. Harper a Neanderthal over his government's cuts to the Status of Women Canada budget; implied he is racist for axing the $5-billion Kelowna agreement on native funding; claimed he is anti-democratic for "stacking" the committees that advise on judicial nominees; accused him of "undermining our Canadian values system" by eliminating funding to the left-leaning Court Challenges Program; and suggested he was homophobic for reviving the debate on same-sex marriage. They have called him a "control freak," "Bush-lite," "deceitful" and a practitioner of "Republican voodoo economics."
...
Act like a leader, or at least a grownup politician. Accept that in the cut-and-thrust of political jousting your opponents are going to make allegations against you and your party every bit as outsized as the ones you make against them.

Quite right. Stuff a sock in it, Grits. As the ones who dragged it down to the level in the first place, don't blame the Prime Minister for learning from the originators.

Let's take this one claim at a time, shall we?

...the Liberals have labelled Mr. Harper a Neanderthal over his government's cuts to the Status of Women Canada budget ...

To be fair, I'm not sure I would have used the word "Neanderthal." "Misogynistic," perhaps. In any event, if Mr. Harper -- who, I should point out, ran on a platform of being, you know, pro-family and pro-children -- deliberately chooses to gut funding to Canada's needy women and their kids, it doesn't seem entirely out of place to call him on it. You may not like the phraseology, Aaron, but underneath it all, that insult is at least based on objective reality; that is, based on something Stephen Harper actually did. See how that works?

... implied he is racist for axing the $5-billion Kelowna agreement on native funding ...

See above.

... claimed he is anti-democratic for "stacking" the committees that advise on judicial nominees ...

Ditto.

... accused him of "undermining our Canadian values system" by eliminating funding to the left-leaning Court Challenges Program ...

Etc, etc.

... suggested he was homophobic for reviving the debate on same-sex marriage ...

If the shoe fits, Aaron ... I'm sure you know how the rest of that goes, right? Which brings us to Aaron's bizarre attempt at an analogy:

The National Post tells Stephane Dion quit being a crybaby over Harper's QP Taliban/troops comeback ... Quite right. Stuff a sock in it, Grits. As the ones who dragged it down to the level in the first place, don't blame the Prime Minister for learning from the originators.

Which is where Aaron's feeble attempt at equating the two situations suggests he's not quite ready for that devastating summation before the jury just yet. See, a) demanding that "war-time" prisoners not be abused and b) supporting the troops have nothing to do with one another. Nothing. Zip. Squat. They are entirely unrelated.

One can fully support Canada's military while still adamantly insisting that they adhere to the Geneva Conventions, which I should point out is as much for our troops' protections as it is for everyone else's. Sadly, though, logic from folks like Wudrick seems to consist mainly of non sequiturs like:

You: Even in the middle of military conflict, we have an obligation to follow the Geneva Conventions.
Aaron: You hate our troops and love the enemy!!
You: What the f...?

You know, Aaron, there's a reason people still get a kick out of jokes like:

What's the definition of the term "flagrant waste"?
A busload of lawyers going off the edge of a cliff with a vacant seat.

And, trust me, Aaron, you're not helping.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You forgot to crack him over the head for suggesting that it is okay to be slimy and corrupt if your predecessors were (or you allege they were). What kind of stupid argument is that?

Anonymous said...

1, I'm sure I would have used the word "Neanderthal" if I had thought of it.

2. I thought we had agreed that "supporting the troops" isn't about supporting the guys in uniform, it's about supporthing the Neanderthal.

3. Most of the criticism I've seen has been in the nature of Canadian troops contracting-out the torture to the Afgans; it's not like the Canadian troops were doing it themselves. Which is why the BT's call the Neanderthal "Bush-lite."

Wear red!

Anonymous said...

"deliberately chooses to gut funding to Canada's needy women and their kids",

How in the world does cutting funding to an organization that promotes feminism and women in the workforce in any way help needy women and their kids.

In my mind - giving those women actual dollars in their pocket is going to help them alot more than giving the dollars to help keep offices open.

I await your response.

Miss Cellania said...

Wow, thanks to the Tories for listing all this in one place, so a Yank like me can learn what I need to know about Harper.

Mark Graham said...

For an excellent historical account of the liberal slanders and accusations thrown at Harper and the conservative party,

go to: http://www.coldhardwonk.com

The liberal party of Canada has very little credibility when it comes to decrying political slanders.....

M@ said...

How in the world does cutting funding to an organization that promotes feminism and women in the workforce in any way help needy women and their kids.

Maybe the reference is in fact to Harper's completely botched day care "plan"? You know, the one that failed to create a single new space in the private sector?

Oh, but families got a big (taxable) bunch o' money for day care. Which, even before tax, covers about a tenth of the annual cost of daycare. Right. Much better.