Wherein Rudy Giuliani is massively hosed for not taking the law seriously.

Oh, myyyyyyyy.

Yeah, that's gonna leave a mark.

Dear JCCF: Read the freaking room.

In the middle of a weirdly classless and tone-deaf August 30 news release celebrating some legal victories related to pandemic lockdowns, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms writes:

First, it's not clear why Carpay included the late Sheila Annette Lewis in that list since her notoriety had to do with getting a double lung transplant and not with lockdowns, but by praising Lewis for allegedly exercising her Charter freedoms, Carpay really stupidly gives away the game.

At no time was anyone trying to strip Lewis of her precious Charter freedoms; no one was demanding that Lewis get a COVID-19 vaccination against her will, ever. It was entirely her choice to refuse to be vaccinated, and no one was suggesting otherwise, so it's not clear what any of this has to do with alleged Charter violations.

What was happening was that Lewis was told very clearly that, without that vaccination, she was not eligible to be put on the transplant wait list; this was a perfectly legal and reasonable position by Alberta Health Services, whose job it is to allocate scarce organs and to maximize the chance of transplant success. Lewis was told this, and she chose to not be eligible.

No one forced anyone to get vaccinated and no one's Charter rights were violated. Carpay is entirely correct that Lewis exercised her Charter freedoms, as she had every right to do. She made her choice, and it killed her. She exercised her Charter freedoms, and now she's dead. That was always her call to make, and she made it.

Even the Court of Appeal of Alberta made it clear that Lewis always had the right to refuse vaccination, but she did not have the right to be free of the consequences:

"In the circumstances of this appeal, while Ms Lewis has the right to refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19, the Charter cannot remediate the consequences of her choice."

It's just so strange for the JCCF to be bragging about Lewis' courage when, in the end, it killed her. I'm not sure that's something I would be boasting about.

BONUS TRACK: Unsurprisingly, Rebel News continues to grift off of this issue, and writes of "Joanie," who has also been dropped from a lung transplant wait list for (you guessed it) refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19:

But here's the weirdness. This issue is settled. Lewis' case in Alberta made it absolutely clear that the AHS had the authority to set its own transplant protocol, and the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear an appeal, quite correctly finding that there was no error in law in those judgments. That means there is no further argument -- it's settled that provinces have the right to set their transplant selection criteria, which makes one wonder:

What the hell is Joanie waiting for?

The above makes it clear that she will die without a transplant, and it's also highly unlikely that the rules are going to change, so ... well, she's going to die. Yes, time is going to run out. And if it does, once again, it will have been Joanie's choice, freely made. So what's the logic behind continuing to refuse the jab? At this point, what possible sense does that make? And who is encouraging her to keep fighting?

AND THAT'S UNFORTUNATE: This is from an August 12 post at Rebel News:

File under "Blog posts that did not age well at all."

Suitcase kat.

 

Rudy Giuliani might be the second-dumbest defamation defendant in history.

Oh, dear.

Apparently, my little corner of the bloggysphere is doing all right.

Blog stats:

I could be doing worse.

The joy of adjectives from the Right.

A recent comment prompted me to write a post I've been putting off, so here it is -- has anyone else noticed the torrent of ridiculous adjectives from the right wing being applied to anyone who is even minimally left of centre? It's never "the left" or even the inappropriately capitalized "the Left" ... no, it's invariably the "radical Left", the "militant Left", the "extreme Left" and so on. You know what I'm talking about.

Canada's own Rebel News is particularly loathsome when it comes to shit like this. One does not read about, say, progressive or left-wing protesters; no, it's always "violent Antifa thugs", "thugs" being one of Der Rebel's favourite descriptors. One need only search to see what I mean:

The most recent (and hilarious) example comes courtesy of some right-wing grifter named Nick Sortor who, when confronted by a native Hawaiian about why he was monetizing the recent wildfire tragedy and sucking up valuable resources, well, you can see where I'm going with this:

I guess we should be grateful Sortor didn't use the word "thug."

IRONICALLY, no one at Rebel News has ever described this guy as a "crazed, right-wing thug":

I'm sure it's just an oversight.

JUXTAPOSE!

Man currently mocking the idea of "dogwhistle":

same guy who once complained about someone targeting him with dogwhistles:

JUXTAPOSE!

Man who gleefully celebrated blockades and occupation of downtown Ottawa by violent, right-wing "Freedom Convoy" is suddenly outraged over (*checks notes*) blockades and occupation.

Still funny.

 

The JCCF and Annette Lewis: Down the memory hole.

Despite Canada's Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) having milked the gullibility of the late Annette Lewis for months worth of self-promotion, you will not find a single news release at that site related to Lewis' recent passing on August 24:

I'm sure they're heartbroken.

The pathetic dishonesty of Paul Mitchell.

I actually have no idea who Paul Mitchell is, but I included this screenshot in a recent post:

and it's worth pointing out how Mitchell is rancidly disingenuous in his first point alone, where he insists that the NDP:

'believes Covid "vaccination" should be mandatory for Canadians to receive proper healthcare'

It's hard to believe that Mitchell tells at least three whopping fibs in the space of a single sentence but, somehow, he pulls it off.

First, Mitchell refers to the generic concept of Canadian "healthcare." But this issue is not (and never was) about generic healthcare -- the Annette Lewis case was specifically about organ transplants and nothing more, so for Mitchell to generalize wildly and suggest it covers all of Canadian healthcare is despicably dishonest. But Mitchell is just getting started.

Not only is Lewis' case about organ transplants, it is specifically about lung transplants. This is a critical distinction as the transplant protocol that required Lewis to get vaccinated was focused on lung transplants, as lungs are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, which is why that transplant protocol existed. For Mitchell to not point this out is his second massive misrepresentation.

Finally, Mitchell suggests this is a national issue, clutching his pearls over the danger of Canadians not receiving adequate health care, when this was in fact a requirement of Alberta Health Services, and therefore subject to provincial regulations.

In short, while shrieking hysterically about the danger to Canadian healthcare across the board, Mitchell misrepresents that the Annette Lewis case was specifically an Albertan issue, and involved someone who specifically needed a lung transplant, a situation that AHS decided required COVID-19 vaccination to ensure the greatest chance of success.

In short, Paul Mitchell is absolutely full of crap.

Thanks for stopping by.

Chronicles of Twatrick: Back in Grande Prairie?

My moderately reliable network of spies tells me that Lloydminster's village bankrupt Lord Baron Twatrick von Loadenhosen has been spotted in the environs of Grande Prairie yet again, making one wonder if he's back there for employment, or just searching for the perfect $21 hamburger.

In any event, as of Tuesday, September 5, I will have a small collection of confidential informants back in the Lloyd who will be making regular drive-bys of Casa Ross and reporting to me what they discover, as I have also been informed that one of Patrick's siblings may have taken up residence there (suggesting that perhaps that property is not destined to go on the market after all but may stay in the family, although there is no way Patrick will be able to live there full time for free).

In any event, if you happen to run across Patrick wolfing down an 8000-calorie combo of triple cheeseburger with all the fixings and a double side of fries and onion rings, drop me a note.

Chronicles of Twatrick: Over-confident much?

It is moderately amusing to watch undischarged bankrupt and massively-in-debt-to-me Patrick Ross expound publicly on how everyone is so clearly wrong and he is so clearly right:

"Period." "Conversation over." "That's how it is, that's how it's gonna be." "Class dismissed."

I remember, once upon a time, Patrick announcing arrogantly that he could defame me publicly and there was nothing I could do about it. End of discussion. Case closed.

How did that work out?

Oh, right ...

BREAKING! Andrew Lawton gets it right!

Even a blind, mentally-crippled pig finds a truffle once in a while, and so it is with mentally-crippled pig Andrew Lawton, who astonishingly gets it right regarding Sheila Annette Lewis:

Why, that's right ... Lewis died not because of a violation of her Charter rights, or medical discrimination, or unfair and/or biased transplant protocols; rather, she died because she was stupid enough to listen to her stunningly incompetent lawyers and take seriously the utter bullshit of ignorant anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists.

Andrew is absolutely correct -- Lewis is dead because she made a personal choice not to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Even a moron like Lawton gets it right once in a while.

AFTERSNARK: I will once again point out what the Court of Appeal of Alberta quite correctly said about Lewis' case [para 75, emphasis added]:

[75] In conclusion, we are not persuaded this Court can, or ought to, interfere with generalized medical judgments or individualized clinical assessments involving Ms Lewis’ standard of care. In the circumstances of this appeal, while Ms Lewis has the right to refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19, the Charter cannot remediate the consequences of her choice."

Translation: "You have freedom of choice, you just have to live with the consequences of that choice."

Why is that so difficult to understand?

Paul Mitchell: The burning stupid ...

I believe I recently addressed the eye-rolling, asinine, batshit-stupid dumbfuckitude here:

I don't actually know who Paul Mitchell is, but it's disturbing to run across someone dumber than Lorrie Goldstein.

So depressingly predictable.

To no one's surprise, right-wing hack Lorrie Goldstein is unfamiliar with the concept of professional standards.

That explains so much.

This is what two execrable, ignorant pieces of human shit look like.

 

In case you were wondering.

P.S. Deluded narcissist Roman Baber writes, "I'll work to right this wrong until the last day of my career." So Baber's campaign promise is to raise Lewis from the dead?

Good luck with that.

WHY ROMAN BABER IS AN IGNORANT, DISINGENUOUS PIECE OF HUMAN GARBAGE:

Like many other dishonest right-wing trolls, CPC stain on society Roman Baber regurgitates the absolute rubbish that this case represents some sort of medical "discrimination"; this is bullshit, as explained absolutely clearly and unambiguously by the Court of Appeal of Alberta which addressed -- at some length -- this very claim of discrimination, and trashed it completely.

First, what the Canada Health Act might or might not say about discrimination means nothing, as that Act would be subservient to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, so resolving this issue requires seeing what the Charter says, and nothing more. This is not debatable, it's how the Charter works. So let's see what it actually says.

Reading the relevant ruling, the issue of discrimination is addressed in its own section starting on Para 62, and it takes little time for the Court to dismiss it almost immediately:

While I suggest reading the entire section on your own time, we can jump ahead to the conclusion to see that the Court clearly analyzed the claim with respect to the Charter, and rejected it entirely:

Again, read the whole section until you understand it, but the point is that this idiotic claim has been heard by the Court, and it has been rejected for perfectly logical and defensible reasons.

What this means is that when self-serving, bloviating asshats like Poilievre and Baber shriek hysterically about medical discrimination, all this means is that they were either a) too fucking lazy to read the ruling, b) too fucking stupid to understand it, or c) too fucking dishonest to admit they know what it says.

Pick one.

There is something seriously fucked up with Jordan Peterson.

 

How the fuck can you spend that many years as a professional psychologist and not recognize pathological narcissism?

How is that even possible?

Eating out is overrated.

Home-built Texas BBQ cheddar burger:

Total cost: $4.85.

CLARIFICATION: That cost was for two of them. There were two.

Um ... no.

 

No, Sheila's abject stupidity and her sleazy, opportunistic, self-promoting lawyers killed her.

I'm glad we had this little chat.

Suitcase kat.

Suitcase kat moved into suitcase over a month ago.

I guess that suitcase is never leaving that chair.

Chronicles of Annette: Let the martyrdom begin.

To no one's surprise, the pathetic opportunists at Rebel News are already monetizing the recent passing of disqualified transplant candidate Sheila Annette Lewis, and depicting her as a stalwart, courageous freedom fighter, standing up to the outrageous unfairness of medical discrimination and apartheid ...

... rather than as a gullible, addlepated victim of sleazy, ethically-challenged grifters^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H lawyers who convinced Lewis to soldier on for years, fighting a case that they absolutely knew they had no chance of winning. And now that Lewis is dead because she stupidly listened to those ghouls, it's everyone's fault but theirs, of course.

You can read that entire gorge-rising piece over at the Internet's Wayback Machine, where you don't need to give Rebel's profiteers off of misery the clicks.

Indeed.

AFTERSNARK: Related to this sleazy idiocy at that Der Rebel article:

Understand something clearly -- Lewis' diagnosis was terminal. She was told pointedly and unambiguously that, without a double lung transplant, she would die. There is no dispute about this point -- she knew it, the doctors knew it and told her, her lawyers knew it. Everyone knew that there was no possibility of remission or a miraculous recovery. They knew. And yet, all of the after-the-fact rationalization claims that Lewis was wary of the "risks" of a new vaccine.

Risks?

"Without it, you will die" would seem to trump any hypothetical risks, and yet her creepy lawyers relentlessly pushed Lewis to refuse the vaccine while losing court case after court case and knowing that outcome was not going to change, so I am going to ask a legal-type question here:

If Lewis' lawyers encouraged her to keep appealing her case while surely knowing that there was no chance of winning (which they should have after the first ruling, and certainly after the appeal), are they in any way culpable in her death?

Can any competent and responsible lawyer read those two rulings, then seriously suggest, "Yeah, we think you have a real shot at the Supreme Court?" And if not, well, I ask again about culpability.

Still funny.

 

Whoopsie.

 

You misspelled "JCCF".

You're welcome.

Brian Lilley: Liar.

 

That is not what the court said.

Pretend to be shocked.

Chronicles of Annette: It's over.

Fuck. You.

“The decision to remove Ms. Lewis from the transplant list over her COVID vaccination status may have cost Ms. Lewis her life."

No ... listening to a bunch of sleazy, grifting lawyers who convinced Lewis to drag this through the court system for months when they fucking knew they had no case cost Lewis her life.

Nice try, assholes.

PREDICTION: All the usual Canadian right-wing suspects are going to grift the fucking shit out of this tragedy.

OH, FOR FUCK'S SAKE:

She's dead because she listened to you. At least have the decency to own that. And, yes, I opined on exactly this as long ago as last year:

P.P.S. It's worth pointing out that Lewis could very well die because she believed the assurances from JCCF that this was a winnable case so she could hold off getting vaxxed because the courts would ultimately rule in her favour. What level of contempt for other peoples' lives do you need to have to put someone's life at risk just for the publicity and fundraising?

Did I call it or what?

The stupid ... it burns ...

This is the level of dumbfuck stupid we're dealing with:

It is neither the government nor the courts that have anything to do with this; it is the College of Psychologists of Ontario that have clear professional standards for its members, and Peterson is violating those standards.

The level of idiocy in the above two tweets is, frankly, gobsmacking.

The breaking news you've come to expect.

Apparently, it is only through the courageous coverage of Rebel News that you learn of stuff like this:

Rebel News: Covering the news that everyone else has already covered.

The Coutts 4, and when the Right turns on itself.

Regular CC commenter "ValJ" gifts us the following from an earlier post:

This is a good read about the squabbling supporters of the Coutts 4 charged with conspiracy to kill police officers. 

Also questions about Marco Van Huigenbos, one of the three Coutts blockade leaders who are charged with mischief over $5000.

Ezra appears at the top and especially towards the bottom of the blog post; apparently he funded Marco's legal costs until Marco asked him an inconvenient question. Ezra also allegedly promised to fund the Coutts 4 then decided not to.

They do not name the Democracy Fund but I assume that's what Ezra is using. There have been other fundraising activities raising a million $ for the legal costs of the Coutts 4 but maybe that does not include Ezra's DFund. Anyway, CRA should be watching, also CSIS and RCMP.

It's always fun and games until people allegedly want to kill cops. And, yes, why isn't Canada Revenue Agency interested in this?

BONUS TRACK: For me, the most interesting exchange in that interview can be seen about 3/4 of the way down that page, underneath the text: "Even more interesting is that Marco says that his legal fees were previously being covered by Rebel "News" until recently when he spoke out about Ezra not helping to fund the legal fees for the Coutts 4. Now he has to fund his own costs"

In that clip, Van Huigenbos is explicit that his legal fees were being paid through The Democracy Fund, a CRA-registered charity that is eligible to hand out charitable tax receipts, even though it's not at all clear why Canada Revenue Agency thinks fundraising to defend against criminal charges merits a tax deduction.

DEAR CANADA REVENUE AGENCY: From March of this year:

On what planet is it appropriate to allow someone to issue charitable tax receipts for donations to defend against criminal charges of dangerous driving and assault with a weapon?

ABOUT THAT MANDATE ... As I have posted on numerous occasions, this is the official mandate of The Democracy Fund, which it is required to honour in order to keep its CRA-provided charitable tax status.

I see nothing there that represents defending people accused of simple criminal assault. So why does the CRA tolerate this?

BREAKING!

Wagner Leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who launched an attempted coup against Russian leader Vladimir Putin in June, along with at least 10 others, have been killed in a plane crash in Russia's Tver region.

Rebel News' Ezra Levant immediately announces fundraising to send 17 Rebel journalists to Russia to uncover the real truth that the mainstream media refuses to tell you.

BREAKING!

Professional learns that his profession has professional standards.

A number one bestseller, you say?

Over a year ago, I explained how the utterly talentless hacks at Rebel News manage to churn out alleged Number One bestsellers. You'll never guess what just happened. Go on, guess. You'll never guess.

OK ...

Pretend to look shocked.

So what's happening with The Democracy Fund?

Anyone keeping tabs on Rebel News' in-house fundraising operation The Democracy Fund, whose CRA reporting is still only up to the end of 2021? Where are the numbers for 2022? And what's the deadline for submitting them? Anyone at CRA looking into this?

Help out a buddy lawyer?

$100,000 per guest:

For an extra $25,000, Rudy will fart on you.

Still funny as hell.

 

Technically, though, he's right, isn't he?

Rebel News and wildfire relief: A trip down memory lane.

Hey, kids ... how many of you remember a time when Ezra Levant and Rebel News announced they were determined to help the victims of a devastating wildfire but, instead of encouraging people to donate directly to the Red Cross, they weirdly registered their own fundraiser which not only lost a portion of each donation to a platform processing fee, but gave Ezra access to all of that valuable donor contact info?

No?

Didn't see that coming, did you?

The JCCF and Sheila Annette Lewis: Down the memory hole.

Curiously, despite having spent many months promoting the cause of disqualified lung transplant candidate Sheila Annette Lewis, and dragging her through the court system all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, and fundraised off of Lewis' misfortune, Canada's Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) -- having milked that case as much as they could -- now seems to have washed their hands of Lewis, as you will not find a mention of her on JCCF's "Active Cases" page.

Pretty sure I could have predicted that.

When even Jeremy Mackenzie is suing you for defamation ...

 

If anyone can forward a full copy of that missive, that would be delightful.

Rebel News: As monstrously fucking demented as one of my commenters predicted.

Several days ago, a particularly prescient commenter at this very blog opined about Ezra Levant's sucker-funded Hawaiian vacation:

As is always the case with these little Rebel junkets, you can write their entire coverage before they even board the plane.

• Day One: here we are in the airport, looking grimly serious and getting ready to embark on our expedition to tell you the Real Truth Behind the Scenes.
• Days Two and Three: we’re in Honolulu, where the restaurants and shopping are much better than on Maui. We’re adjusting to the time change, acclimatizing, scoping the mission, getting a real feel for the place. and pestering government officials. Curiously, they won’t talk to us. Obviously evidence of conspiracy.
• Day Four: on Maui. We found a whole bunch of anguished people who lost family, friends, or property in the fires. We shoved cameras in their faces and asked them who was to blame. Here’s a heavily edited montage of the ones who blamed Joe Biden.
• Day Five: Maui was depressing and stank of smoke, so we’re back in Honolulu. Alexa is recovering from PTSD from her time in the disaster zone, so we’re taking it pretty easy; but Ezra’s going out to the beach to tape a few hours of interview with this taxi driver he met who told him it was all a conspiracy by Obama’s relatives to clear waterfront for development.
• Day Six: we’ve completed our documentary on the disaster and will be booking a national tour of tiny church halls across Canada for screenings. Stay tuned.

And just now, another commenter proved the above perfectly correct:

Don't know if anyone's watching the Rebel nuggets being filed from Hawaii, but they may represent the very worst Rebel "mission" yet. In the very first one, a clearly disoriented Ezra wanders aimlessly around in a circle, rambling without a clear point or focus about how pretty the Hawaiian flag is, how awful the fire was, how nice the people are, and how the community didn't actually NEED the Starlink Kit the Rebel had brought them as an offering because, uh, they had several. 

I thought at first he must have been severely jet lagged, because it really didn't make much sense; but the subsequent "stories" have been every bit as pointless and unfocused. The fire looks like it was really awful, here's a guy who thinks Biden should have done more, here's a mom who doesn't think FEMA's any good - nothing for a week but vapid, knee-jerk anger extracted from a community under stress and clumsily edited, Rebel style, to try to exploit their anger and solicit your money.

Unsurprisingly, no one actual story has emerged. Nothing. Ezra says at one point that someone told him that FEMA had been asked to leave a camp. No facts, no interview, no followup. Just Ezra passing on a vague, unsubstantiated rumour of discontent.

And I can sort of understand why. I've always found the people of the islands to be very friendly to strangers, but also VERY closed. I think it's a combination of small-town culture, tourist-island friendly distrust of newcomers, plus a lot of discretion born of the island's sub-rosa marijuana industry. I really can't see them taking kindly to a bunch of weird come-from-aways with video cameras who want them to bear their soul for the record about how much they hate the government.

 

And that's why you read CC. For the awesome commenters.

Rebel News -- monetizing other peoples' misery.

It should surprise nobody that, even as the ghouls at Rebel News milk the tragedy of disqualified lung transplant candidate Sheila Annette Lewis while not actually fundraising for her, they are more than happy to run a petition of outrage in order to collect all that valuable donor contact info for subsequent solicitation:

All perfectly lawful since, as Ezra Levant once pointed out, there's nothing illegal about being a sleazy huckster making a buck off someone else's misery.

Good thing, too, amirite?

If Lauren Boebert were any dumber ...

... she'd be Sheila Gunn Reid.