The Left might actually be right

A British conservative sees the Light.

It has taken me more than 30 years as a journalist to ask myself this question, but this week I find that I must: is the Left right after all? You see, one of the great arguments of the Left is that what the Right calls “the free market” is actually a set-up.

Hallelujah, pick up thy bed and walk.

He does end the piece with a bit of conservative nonsense though:

"The Left’s blind faith in the state makes its remedies worse than useless."

That is foolishly simplistic, but he had to slip up somewhere....

Read more here.

Non entity runs for president..oh wait..no...umm maybe yes?

Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty told CNN that he is running for President.

Pawlenty made the straight-forward proclamation during an appearance on CNN's 'Piers Morgan Tonight' set to air Tuesday. Morgan asked Pawlenty if he would ever consider being Donald Trump's running-mate on a hypothetical ticket. The former governor responded, "I'm running for president." He then continued, "I'm not putting my hat in the ring rhetorically or ultimately for vice president. So I'm focused on running for president."

The statement follows Pawlenty's March announcement in which he formed a presidential exploratory committee.

UPDATE (8:40 p.m. ET) -- CNN reports on comments from a Pawlenty spokesman:

"As the governor has said many times, he is not running to be anybody's vice president," Pawlenty spokesman Alex Conant told CNN. "He will have a formal announcement about running for president later this spring."

Read more here.

Ugly Conservatives: Maine's Gov.elect Paul LePage

Twenty-eight representatives of these groups sat at a table with LePage on Tuesday and listed an assortment of regulations they described as well-intended but burdensome — regulations related to the environment, civil rights, public health, child labor laws and tax policy.

The entire article is stunning in its callousness. The comments, more so.

These people pine for the 19th century so bad it hurts.

Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

Read more here.

Harper's conservatives compensate for tiny dicks with $9B in new fighter jets

Gotta love those bed wetting conservatives and their fetish for all things military.

The Canadian government said Friday it plans to spend $9 billion to purchase a new generation of fighter jets, the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay told a news conference in Ottawa that the jets would be purchased from Lockheed Martin, with the first one expected for delivery by 2016

The contract, one of the biggest military equipment purchases in Canadian history, is worth $9 billion, but the full cost could rise to as much $18 billion once the government signs a maintenance contract.

Best bit:

...the purchase is also important for Canada to meet obligations to its international allies.

"Everybody else is updating their fighter jets"

Wahhhh, Johnny got a new fighter jet, I want one too, I want it, I want it!!

Read more here.

Pierre Karl Peladeau: Helping Canada get that much dumber

Yup, just what we need, a right wing television network in Canada. Now we can see the shallowness of the conservative mind 24/7.

Pierre Karl Peladeau is expected to announce today that he is launching a right-wing Canadian TV network.

The Quebecor Inc. president and chief executive has scheduled a news conference in Toronto, where details of the network -which is reportedly modelled after the controversial Fox News network in the U.S. -are expected to be disclosed...

...Great mix of hard news and straight talk

And the usual parade of right wing cunts with no more heart than a pebble.

Read more here.

Eddie Izzard - Brilliant Britain

Anything that keeps conservatives away from power, I'm all for it.

Senator Nancy Ruth: Idiot of the Day

Hateful bullying from our awful conservative government.

Aid experts alarmed by Canada’s new anti-abortion stand in foreign policy have been advised to “shut the f--- up” or risk Prime Minister Stephen Harper taking even more harsh measures – abroad, or maybe even at home if abortion becomes an election issue.

“We’ve got five weeks or whatever left until G-8 starts. Shut the f--- up on this issue,” Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth told a group of international-development advocates who gathered on Parliament Hill on Monday to sound the alarm about Canada’s hard-right stand against abortion in foreign aid.

“If you push it, there will be more backlash,” Ruth said. “This is now a political football. This is not about women’s health in this country.”

Read more here.

To Sarah Palin: Keep your F*cking nose out of Canadian health care

“Canada needs to dismantle its public health-care system and allow private enterprise to get involved and turn a profit.”

Ms. Palin is a menace to all thinking people everywhere, making her chances of election all the greater. Our home grown conservatives are dim witted enough without giving them ideas.

Whiny Conservatives: The National Post

Our beloved newspaper The Toronto National Post is upset that other media outlets covered their possible closing due to bankruptcy.

Whether it is because they dislike our founder or our owners, or because of our longstanding editorial support for Israel or our small-c conservative voice, or our irreverence, a lot of people -- particularly in the media--appear to relish the thought of the Post's voice being silenced. Fortunately, many people disagree, including our many print and Web readers, our advertisers and employees, and those who simply understand the importance of diversity of opinion across the media landscape and in the national conversation.

The possibility they may just be a crappy newspaper never enters their heads.

Read more here.

Et U2 Bono? Idiot of the Day

More than 30 years a rock star, Nobel peace prize nominee and honorary knight – but what does Bono have to do to become a Twitter trending topic?

The band's frontman became a villain on the web today moments after he turned up as a support act at the Tory conference. While the Tories hoped Bono's surprise address – via a giant videoscreen – would provide a shot of welcome celebrity pizzazz, the singer could hardly have imagined his appearance would have such a swift impact on his profile.

Many of the responses on Twitter were hostile as the tag #BonoToryScum quickly spread over the social networking site. "Look for U2's new song called Where the Streets Have No Low-Income Housing," tweeted Deadeye_Dick.

Read more here.

God was a liberal pinko

There is an effort afoot to make a version of the Bible that is more acceptable to conservatives.

I am the Word, and the Word has a liberal bias...

I'd love to see what they do with the early bits. The Snake will have the face of Darwin.

Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations.

Some highlights:

Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".

Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots";[5] using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census

Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.

Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story

Jesus forgives her, and we can't have that!

Read more here.

Harper Government homophobia cont.

The Harper Goverment, with a heart so small the Grinch would be jealous, has done it again.

The fate of this year’s Divers/Cité festival in Montreal was up in the air on Wednesday after the federal government said it would not approve funding for the event.

Divers/Cité, Montreal’s gay pride arts festival, was counting on $155,000 in new funding from Ottawa.

In an email from Industry Canada, spokeswoman Christiane Fox said there are just too many worthwhile events to allow government funding for all of them.

Bullshit, the FrancoFolies just got 1.5 million.

Harper, you are a piece of work. It's times like this I miss Trudeau. The Harper Government's idea of global influence is tallied by the number of Afghanis they kill.

Read more here.

Earth Hour is a joke

Our homegrown conservative *National* (hahahahaha) newspaper takes issue with Earth Day...

We're capitalists... we prefer to put our faith in the inter-twined march of technology and the free market rather than feel-good slogans and rituals.

Part of the reason we're fucked...

Read more here.

Oh no, our Federal Science Minister is a dope Christian

Get these people out of power!

Our Conservative government continues to embarrass us on a planetary scale.

I know I shouldn't be surprised, this is a Harper appointment after all, but but, the man is clearly unqualified for the job of *Science* minister. Perhaps that is Harper's point.

"Shucks we don't understand all this new learnin', then gosh darn either will you."

It might explain why science budgets have been cut by this government. Guess the money for all those Armed Services ads on TV has to come from somewhere.

I don't mind if they want to keep themselves ignorant, but please don't put them in the Science portfolio. Minister of Voodoo, or of "Duh I dunno" perhaps?

Federal Science Minister Gary Goodyear's refusal to say whether he believes in evolution has left scientists questioning what that means for Canadian research.

Dolph Schluter, a professor at the University of British Columbia, told CBCNews.ca in an email that he was "first flabbergasted and then embarrassed" when he heard Goodyear's response to a reporter's question about whether he believed in evolution.

"I'm not going to answer that question," Goodyear, federal minister of state for science and technology, told the Globe and Mail in an article published Tuesday. "I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate."

Again, I must apologize at the daily ignorance our Conservative government displays to the world.

Read more here.

Daniel Drezner - David Frum

Interesting insight into the conservative mind. They're still hard nosed bastards, but these two state their case rationally.

Moral Clarity

That phrase "moral clarity" -- conservatives use it a lot. And it always sounds absurd to progressive ears, coming as it does from members of an administration that shredded the Constitution, deprived people of due process, committed horrific acts of torture and lied the country into the worst military debacle in its history.

It's always bewildering to listen to such people lecture the rest of us on "moral clarity." What in the hell are they talking about?

Read more here.

Canada to deport U.S. war deserter

Our government hits another new low. Disgusting.

Again, good readers around the world, Madam Justice Anne Mactavish of the Federal Court of Canada and our present government do not represent what Canada has always stood for.

They are a disgrace, lackies of the U.S.

U.S. army deserter Robin Long is slated to be deported back to his army base in Fort Knox, Ky., Tuesday, which would make him the first resister to the U.S. war effort in Iraq to be sent out of Canada.

Madam Justice Anne Mactavish of the Federal Court of Canada cleared the way for the deportation late Monday, dismissing a last-ditch attempt to delay the process while the 25-year-old pursued further appeals.

“I was just shocked at some things in [the] ruling,” Bob Ages, a spokesman for an informal group called Vancouver War Resisters Support Campaign, told reporters outside the courtroom. “It just flies in the face of everything that we and every Canadian know about the reality of what is going on.”

Read more here.

The Far Right, Idiots and Wall-E

Two denizens of National Review Greg Pollowitz and Shannen Coffin ­ think Pixar’s latest is a bit of “leftist propaganda about the evils of mankind,” as Coffin puts it.

“It was like a 90-minute lecture on the dangers of over consumption, big corporations, and the destruction of the environment,” Pollowitz writes at Planet Gore, National Review’s global-warming blog.

Read more here.

Aussies: Kyoto should have been ratified

Conservatives get their ass kicked at the polls, and so *now* they regret not having ratified Kyoto.

Idiots. You listening Harper?

Read more here.