My stars, however did that get in there?

Big Daddy’s accountabiliciousness knows no limits, boys and girls.

The Harper government's new lobbying law contains a truck-sized loophole that allows a registered lobbyist to arrange a meeting between a corporate client and a cabinet minister that might never have to be disclosed publicly.

Ooopsie. You know what’s even more unfortunate? Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition was asleep at the switch. Again.

Opposition MPs who vetted the new rules as the government's flagship accountability act passed through Parliament in 2006 failed to notice the provision in committee hearings or House debate.

Now guess who figured it out. No, really — guess.

The loophole was drawn to the attention of lobbyists themselves during a workshop on the law presented by Michael Nelson, the former registrar of lobbyists, as he outlined scenarios for new monthly reporting requirements under the act.

Other aspects of the reporting rules have already been criticized for excluding too much information, but the loophole in a clause involving the reporting of arranged meetings took even lobbyists by surprise.

Hilarious, wouldn't you agree? If, you know, by hilarious I mean colour me so not shocked at the flaming hypocrisy that infests every part of Big Daddy's government.

Wassup Doc?

Celine Dion has been awarded an honourary doctorate from Universite Laval. Considering that this honourary degree is from a reputable institution of higher learning, perhaps we can supplant Charlie McVety's endless screeching with Ms Dion's.

Is that really the comparison you want to make?

Blogging Tory Michael takes a leap of faith and states that the only way Big Daddy can win a majority is by emulating ... wait for it ... Nixon’s 1972 re-election strategy.

A few weeks back there was an excellent article in Maclean's magazine by Paul Wells. In it he wrote that Stephen Harper's election strategy is remarkably similar to that of Richard Nixon. In 1972, Nixon was reelected with a landslide majority -he carried all but one state - by appealing to the 'silent majority'. He realized that the majority of Americans were not racists, civil rights crusaders, or hippies, they were conservatives. This is documented in a book I recently purchased entitled Nixonland, by Rick Perlstein.

Well. There’s no way I can fault that kind of reasoning. After all, Nixon was re-elected in a landslide, receiving over 60% of the popular vote and carrying 49 of 50 states. And he managed to govern for almost two entire years before becoming the only President to resign from office on August 9, 1974. To avoid the shame of impeachment. And almost certain criminal conviction for his part in Watergate.

Michael, I think you’re on to something here. No, really.

Heh.

Indeed.

Fuck this.

This is infuriating. I am so buying more bricks.

P.S. Yes, James Rajotte, Con MP for Edmonton Southwest and propaganda-spewing buttwipe, this means you. Again.

LET THE INDICTMENTS COMMENCE. As Garth describes it (emphasis tail-waggingly added):

But [Canada Post's] M. Campeau also made it known that because of the barrage of mailings by out-of-town MPs, the agency’s workload has increased, “by 500%.” He also let it slip he’d been pressured by CRG (the Conservative Research Group – the marketing arm of the Harper caucus) to give it preferential treatment.

And as Impolitical points out:

49. Every person commits an offence who unlawfully and knowingly abandons, misdirects, obstructs, delays or detains the progress of any mail or mail conveyance.

1980-81-82-83, c. 54, s. 43.

Arrest. Them. All.

McVety Off Gases Again

You knew it was going to happen, it really was inevitable. As soon as the CRTC announced the licencing of an adult entertainment channel, the execrable Charlie McVety began to build up a head of methane and now he is running his yawping gas vent. The puffy mugged charlatan bunched up his facial sphincter and declared...

"It is to the public detriment to fuel an industry where women are degraded and treated as sex objects," he said.

Charlie McVety, diploma miller and spurious doctorate, has declared an end to advertising as we know it. Also, kiss beach volleyball good bye.

McVety says by setting such a high Canadian content requirement, the CRTC is effectively stimulating the growth of the domestic porn industry. "If private companies want to engage in such activity, it's not criminal in this nation, and they're free to do so. But for the government to use to public resource to promote such degradation shows how detached the bureaucracy is from the Canadian people."

Earlier today, I waded through some of the degrading filth and ignorance that passes for religious thought in the Canadian christosphere. These prigs, prudes and poseurs want to grind history into reverse and return women to domestic servitude. They abhor any sexuality that isn't in the service of generating more anthropomorphic junior robot parishioners. Yet they have made extensive use of internet based networking and marketing to get their product/message into peoples faces. If they were honest with themselves, they would recognize that the porn industry has driven online technology and spurred development of online communications and media delivery. In point of fact, porn has given these tools the tools they so desperately desire to monetize their perpetual whining and lies. After all, porn is bigger than Jesus and so were the Beatles.

So what does the bloated baby want now? Another round of censorship for the nannychrists.

He also says both CRTC and the cable companies give preferential treatment to lucrative porn broadcasters but short shrift religious programming. He is concerned that the CRTC will allow cable companies to offer the station on a free trial for a number of months.

Hey Charlie, put down the Vachon brand snack cakes and turn on the television, you have a whole fucking network to yourselves. You are using my airwaves to spread your gospel of greasy leisure suited greed. It ain't like 100 Huntley Street hasn't been on the air since a little Stockwell tugged it to his first visions of a Jesusaurus and cowboys with big guns. But hey, we understand that bit about the CRTC letting them offer the station for a trial basis since all you Conservative types hate the free market. There's no place in the marketplace of ideas, imagery and iconography for things that you don't approve of and lacking your special brand of approval must mean something's teh evil. Well from where I sit, censors are evil. Charlie McVety is nothing more than a censor and not a particularly clever one.

Tip O' Teh Hat to Impolitical

Nicely played, Mr. Dion.

And it’s about fucking time, too.

Stephane Dion has challenged the prime minister to clarify his view on abortion, threatening to reignite the debate as Canada careens towards an election. The Liberal leader threw down the gauntlet while answering a question at a town-hall meeting on Wednesday night in Oakville, Ont.

The event was billed as a discussion of the Liberals' carbon tax plan, but a member of the audience instead asked Dion's views on the Unborn Victims of Crime Act. The private member's bill would make it a criminal offence to harm an unborn child during an attack on its mother.

Dion said he opposed the proposed legislation because it might infringe on women's access to abortion. "We need to protect everyone against crime but, at the same time, it happens that I believe in the rights of women to choose and I have a lot of respect for the people who have a different view," he told the crowd.

Dion then called upon Stephen Harper to state his own position on abortion. "I think all Canadians have the right to know what the party leader thinks," he said. "I gave my opinion. I want to hear the opinion of Stephen Harper."

Your move, Big Daddy.

Liars For Jeeziz

Ahem 613-695-3186 you say? Seems to be a hodge podge of christers and whackaloos. Including but not limited to Siege Canada. A group of retrograde authoritarian cranks desperate to turn the clock back to some imagined better day.

If you are like us, you don't have time for another conference just for the sake of a conference. We want to be in the middle of what God is doing and where He is - nothing less . We are running hard after HIM. This is why we are gathering in Saint John NB for our next national thrust: the REVERSE THE CURSE - SIEGE NATIONAL CONFERENCE. THE REASON: 40 yrs ago, in 1967, a generation ushered in movements. These movements included the sexual revolution, new age movement, women's (choice) movement and a movement of rebellion to authority. Proclaiming to be enlightened, a generation 'Divorced God' and married secular humanism. 40 yrs later we see the devastating results of these movements which were supposed to bring peace, joy and love. Instead they brought death, divorce, sexual disease, drug addiction, perversion and confusion.

But better still, 4mycanada is also the Republican Party of Ontario. I shit you not. They are virulent anti-choice, anti-women, anti-sex zealots and nutbags. They are still beating the boards and lying through their little teeth about Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin.

In response, on Saturday McLachlin spoke out publicly denying all involvement in the process, claiming she has only voted once for a nomination to the Order of Canada (to break a tie) and that she only chairs the Committee because she is required by law to do so.
The fact that McLachlin made a statement over two months after Morgentaler recieved the Order of Canada is encouraging proof that this issue is very much alive and Operation MOCO and other efforts are effective. While McLachlin is trying to distance herself from the controversy, even if she did not vote for or against Morgentaler, it is still her job to maintain that the Constitution of the Order of Canada is followed, and she failed to do so.

Of course rather than substantively addressing McLachlin's comments they crow that their operation MOCO (Maximum Ovarian Control Organization) is succeeding. But then these people are fucking addled. Although in their efforts to spam and lie they are pretty open. So here's them exposing their ignorance, makes mopping up that much easier.

Action Points:
1. Write a letter to the editor or article in response to McLachlin's statements and submit it to your local and national newspapers
2. The Governor General has an online blog and forum! So far less than a hundred people have discussed Morgentaler's Order of Canada. Back in May when Premier McGuinty wanted to get rid of the Lord's prayer in the Ontario Legislator, so many Canadians logged onto his website that they crashed his server! This sent a huge statement both to him and the media. Let's hit this from every angle - post your opinion on Morgentaler's Order of Canada here.
3. Continue to participate in Operation Moco by using our online form here and by sending in postcards (download them here).
4. Continue to pray.

They are encouraging their lurid trolls to deluge the Governor General with their insipid whining. If you have a spare moment, you might want to drop the GG a line in support of her splendid efforts representing our nation here and abroad. Just saying.

These characters may or may not amount to much of an organization on their own but they are certainly tied in to the larger fundie networks, jesuscanada.com, mychurch.org and injesus.com. So they probably do qualify as some sort of "group", a stunted, dim, mouth breathing group, but a group just the same. Sorry to disappoint.

Graphic by way of Stage Left

Arse Kickery

Since those frisky cats over at A Creative Revolution were kind enough to name me among their picks of Kick Ass Bloggers, I shall say thanks and name my five...

• Choose 5 bloggers that you feel are "Kick Ass Bloggers"
• Let 'em know in your post or via email, twitter or blog comments that they've received an award
• Share the love and link back to both the person who awarded you and back to www.mammadawg.com
• Hop on back to the Kick Ass Blogger Club HQ to sign Mr. Linky then pass it on!

In no particular order:

Chester Scoville at The Vanity Press

Dastardly Dana from En Tequila es Verdad (which means, if I isn't mistookened, Tequila made me... oops, I'm all... who took my pants?)

Generalisimo Thursday who keeps Polite Company

Kady Youknowwho from Inside the Queensway. Anyone who can maintain a sense of humour after hours covering a parliamentary committee that allows Gary Goodyear to blimp off is one kick ass blogger.

The evil munchkins over at Stage Left who tell a hell of a tail of the frozen part of this nation. With would include that iced cinder that Stockie calls a noggin.

Bill C-537: You can run ...

... but you can't hide.

24, and counting ...

While Buckets and others have been doing stellar work feeding "Dr." Chuckles McVety and his vaunted 42 anti-Morgentaler "organizations" through a woodchipper by revealing the incestuous relationships therein, I believe we can whack at least one more off the list for quite another reason. Consider, if you will, a member of that list: "4 My Canada." And who precisely is "4 My Canada," you ask? I'm so glad you asked.

Let us first do the obligatory "whois", to reveal, uh, not a whole lot:

$ whois 4mycanada.ca
[Querying whois.cira.ca]
[whois.cira.ca]
Domain name:           4mycanada.ca
Domain status:         EXIST
Approval date:         2005/09/14
Renewal date:          2008/09/14

Registrar:
    Name:              SIBERNAME INTERNET AND SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGIES INC.
    Number:            108

Name servers last changed: 2007/09/12
Name servers:
    dns1.midphase.com
    dns2.midphase.com

% WHOIS look-up made at 2008-08-21 21:16:56 (GMT)
%
% Use of CIRA's WHOIS service is governed by the Terms of Use in its Legal
% Notice, available at http://www.cira.ca/en/legal_notice.html 
%
% (c) 2007 Canadian Internet Registration Authority, (http://www.cira.ca/) 
$

That doesn't really tell you a lot, does it? No administrative contact, no technical contact. Not much of anything. OK, so let's pop over to the web page to find ... again, not much in the way of organizational structure. There is a contact page:


but that gives us nothing more than a e-mail address, a phone number and a post office box. So where's all the rest of the organization info? You know -- the president, the executive, the administrative staff? Anyone? Who are these people? Who's running the show? Or, put another way, where is the accountability in having an actual person standing behind that site?

Missing. All missing.

Which allows us to conclude ... what, exactly? In a nutshell, nothing. Which is exactly why we can write off this "organization" as having no value whatsoever. You don't get any public relations value out of having an address, a phone number and an anonymous web page. Sorry, kids, but that just doesn't cut it. And unless we have some reason to think there's an actual group of people backing up that site, we are perfectly within our rights to assume that that group numbers exactly zero. Because we have no reason to believe differently.

Now, if I was feeling frisky, I might just do a Google search on that phone number and see what comes up. But, frankly, I'm feeling lazy. So have at it. Let me know what you find.

Lalalalalalalalala … I can’t hear yoooouuuuuu.

Dear Ken Epp:

May I call you Ken? Thanks ever so. It has come to this girl’s attention that you have a nifty little pdf file on your web site addressing the "Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada’s false claims about Bill C-484" to use your exact wording. So I thought I'd give it all the attention it required. No, no ... don't thank me, it was truly my pleasure.

With all due respect, after carefully going through your 32 endless, oh-so-official-looking pages of textbook weasel-wording (the footnotes are an exceptionally nice touch), I really must call bullshit.

You can commission and release all the official documentation in the world, Ken, but it will never change the fact that C-484 is a back door attempt to recriminalize abortion in Canada. I'd have considerably more respect for you if you just admitted it. So, while you can fool all of the fetus-fetishists all of the time, you can’t fool me. Nice try, though.

Yours in official fact-checkiness,
LuLu

It's because they lie. All the time.

There's LifeShit. And there's reality. Any questions?

You cannot make this up.

Over at Harper propagandist Sandy Crux's "Crux of the Matter" blog, we have (and I swear I am not making this up) the following down the lefthand side of the main page:



So Sandy's idea of Canadian "heroes" includes shrieking racist and neo-Nazi sympathizer Kate McMillan, the NAMBLA-powered, child rape-obsessed Richard Evans, the depressingly senile Papa Junker, and ... and ... herself.

That's right. Under intense pressure from her fans, no doubt, Sandy openly admits that she idolizes herself as a true Canadian hero.

Is it too early to start drinking heavily? Or shooting smack?

Nobody tells me what to do.

Big Daddy gets his acountabilicious man-panties in a bunch over Chretien’s widely reported criticism and takes a bold stand (emphasis gleefully added).

While some international leaders like British Prime Minister Gordon Brown did not attend the opening ceremonies, more than 80 heads of state did, including French President Nicholas Sarkozy and U.S. President George W. Bush.

"I don't always do what Mr. Bush does," he said. "I haven't attended Olympics in the past. I indicated a long time ago I had no intention of attending this one, I have work to do in the country."

Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson represented Canada at the ceremonies.

Big Daddy then went on to say "But I totally call him before super important functions to make sure that we’re not wearing the same thing 'cause, ZOMG, like that would be the worst. Thing. EVAH!!!1!111!!1!"

And that whole medicine thing could be tightened up a bit, too.

Responsible fiscal stewardship, that's what Kory's all about:

"When we find examples of programs that are clearly not meeting their objectives, without apologies we will cancel them. That is the entire purpose of Strategic Review. We owe that to taxpayers," Mr. Teneycke added, calling PromArt "a boondoggle."

Apparently, that whole "meat inspection" thing wasn't working out, either:

Planned cuts to food scrutiny questioned

Ottawa's proposal to give industry greater responsibility for meat inspection will make future recalls more likely, professor says

On the other hand, I have a bridge for sale ...

AFTERSNARK: One wonders what Stephen Harper propagandist and personal fellatrix Sandy Crux thinks of this fascinating approach regarding fiscal efficiency and budget cuts. After all, it's Sandy who is constantly whinging on about Dalton McGuinty's lack of funding related to autistic children.

Well, life's tough, Sandy, but apparently that whole autism funding thing just wasn't working out. Lack of efficiency, I'm sure you understand.

I'll bet she doesn't understand.

Because responsible jernalism iz hard werk.

Lifesite News: News for retards. Right, SUZANNE?

I can haz catrophenia?

Cat 2.0 -- now with improved quadrophonic reception to pick up dumbass wankitude at greater distances.

Speaking of vacations …

Mine’s almost over, boys and girls. There are some pretty big changes taking place for this girl — I start a new job on Monday, my baby boy is off to college the week after and this just kind of fits my mood right now.

It's not that she doesn't like darkies ...

... it's just that ... oh, fuck it, she just doesn't like darkies. Why sugar coat it?

Canada's Blogging Tories: Because even white supremacists need a social circle.