I'd support it
Suddenly, Conservative
The telephone is ringing. At dinner, of course.
A telemarketer.
A very unfortunate telemarketer.
Because Rue's answering the phone, not me. But despite my expectations of bloodied eardrums on the other end of the phone, she hands the phone to me with a smile.
"Hello" I say tentatively, wondering who has gotten by the gatekeeper - she who is my wife - and what they want.
"Hello Mr. Kraut. This is Donald calling on behalf of Stephen Harper."
"Ah. OK. Put him on."
"Well, I'm actually calling on his behalf to say thank you for your recent response to our mailer."
Recent? I mailed that thing in December.
"So he's not going to talk to me?" I am soooooo loving this.
"Well, he's not actually in the office right now..."
"Is his cubicle next to yours?"
"Actually, Mr. Kraut, did you know that with an election call only days or weeks away, Mr. Harper would like to rally all Canadians who believe in accountable government to put an end to the excessive waste of 11 years of Liberal rule. Can we count on your support?"
"To do what, exactly?"
"Well, running a campaign against an organization as well-funded as the Liberal Party of Canada is an expensive proposition at best..."
"Oh, I see. The answer is no. I don't give money to political parties."
(pause) "Well, you could become a member for $10..."
"Can I yell and scream at meetings and votes?"
"Sure..."
"OK, count me in!"
"Well, now that you're a member, would you feel more comfortable contributing to the cause?"
"Sheeeesh! I told you I don't contribute to political parties. My membership's coming in the mail, right?"
"Yes sir...Have a good day."
"And you."
--click--
"Wanker." I say, putting the phone down and getting back to my now cold dinner.
And that, dear reader, was how I became a member of the Conservative Party of Canada. God knows what kind of cataclysm this will produce in the future.
A party that would have me as a member...
Joe who? Part Two
Andrew Coyne said it better:
His decision is revealing enough of the man, however. Everyone else in the two parties has had to put a large amount of water in his wine -- everyone, that is, except Mr. Clark and his followers, such as Sen. Lowell Murray, those loud exponents of compromise and tolerance who are utterly incapable of compromise and supremely intolerant of anyone's views but their own. If the party will not follow them, they will do their level best to destroy the party.
It was quite a shock to me when I started falling back into my right-wing roots and actually became interested in a leadership contest this time out. Like many voters, I feel that I will actually be able to have a clear choice this upcoming election. And it's no coincidence that this happened after Joe Clark became irrelevant to the whole process.
Messrs Clark and Murray are examples of that uniquely Canadian type, the fanatical moderate (Robert Fulford's term, I believe), for whom the answer to every question is to take the middle path, regardless of whether a) there is a middle path, b) there is anything to recommend the middle path as policy, or c) today's middle path is likely to remain in the middle for long.
The sad part is that this is creeping into everday Canadian life now. Hands up everyone who's met someone who can't make a decision (or at the least have an opinion) about something obvious without consulting every last idiot in the room? This is called "consultative leadership." I call it a bleeding waste of time.
But only the Red Tories could make lack of principle into a principle.
It's telling that Joe Clark's "big statement" is to support the best candidate in each riding. It's a remarkably easy way of not actually having to declare your beliefs.
It's hopeful that when the Conservative Party comes up with its platform that there are unique positions, rather than the "me too-ism" of the last election that made it so frightfully boring.
Joe who?
Amazingly, it's Canadian politics that's broken my dryspell...
Clark prefers 'devil we know' to Harper
It's always interesting after a political party goes through a dramatic change to see the "losers" in the process come out and slag the winners.
In an interview on CTV's Question Period, Clark said he sees no evidence that the revamped Conservative party headed by Harper can show the kind of leadership needed on issues like health care, the role of women, gay rights, the environment and foreign affairs.
Joe says this? Well that's it. The new Conservative Party should just fold its tent and shove off. Let's see: how long was Joe Clark able to hold a government together? Was it nine months before he was slapped by Trudeau in 1980's elections? If anyone knows about losing elections and watching your party be ground into the dust it's Joe Clark.
Clark, who adamantly opposed the Alliance-PC merger, quit the party caucus after it went ahead and is not seeking re-election in his Calgary riding.
I'm taking my ball and going home! Nyahhh!
"I don't think either one of these so-called national parties merits support," said Clark, who advised voters to pick the best candidate on a case-by-case basis in their local ridings.
Good Lord. That would mean I'd actually have to know who the candidate is in my local riding! Screw you Joe!
At Least He's Honest About This
Martin says Canada can't join international force to stabilize Iraq
Canada is unlikely to participate in an international force to protect United Nations employees in Iraq because military resources are tapped out, Prime Minister Paul Martin suggested Thursday.
Contrast this honest account of Canadian force-readiness with the grandstanding former Prime Minister Chretien did last year when he refused to join the coalition. It's really easy to refuse to participate and claim some kind of moral superiority when your armed forces have been bled to the bone for decades rendering them basically useless.
Much better to save face by playing the conscientious objector...
Brush with shmarminess
Rue told me a story about a certain government scumbag that tried to pick her up on a flight from Toronto to Montreal some years back.
I hope she writes about this while he's still imfamous (hint hint).
Lucky I wasn't on the flight or I'd have to punch his lights out, picking up on my wife like that...
If this guy's not a refugee...
then who is?
North Korea reminds me of Orwell's 1984:
His wife was lured home by her parents before she had a chance to make a refugee claim and in April 2002, was executed in North Korea
...lured home by her parents...who probably had a good idea what was going to happen to her.
Board member Bonnie Milliner ruled that Mr. Ri would likely be executed for treason if returned home but said he was not "deserving of Canada's protection" because he was complicit in crimes against humanity merely for being a member of Kim Jong Il's government.
She made that ruling despite written assurances from Canada's War Crimes Unit that Mr. Ri was "not a person of interest to them" and that there was no evidence he had committed crimes against humanity.
She made that ruling despite written assurances from Canada's War Crimes Unit that Mr. Ri was "not a person of interest to them" and that there was no evidence he had committed crimes against humanity.
So, with the self-importance of Pontius Pilate, she washes her hands of this and sends him back to his death.
Canada is usually seen as a haven to bogus refugee claimants; people who are undeserving. Here we have a case that seems to qualify perfectly as a genuine situation and it's being refused.
"While [Mr. Ri] may not have personally committed any atrocities, I believe that on a balance of probabilities he was aware of the North Korean government's excesses ... and waited 10 years [to leave]," she concluded in her September 2003 decision
So what's the incentive for any high level diplomat to defect if this is the response they'll get. Any high level diplomat will be "aware" of his country's excesses. What bullshit.
Mr. Ri's problem is that he obviously has nothing of value to trade to Canadian or American authorities. And for this omission he'll be returned and killed.
I prefer the Old left
Read this the other day over at Daimnation and was struck by how far the left has fallen away...
"The left doesn't see because a lot of people, in their good-hearted effort to respect cultural differences, have concluded that Arabs must for inscrutable reasons of their own like to live under grotesque dictatorships and are not really capable of anything else, or won't be ready to do so for another five hundred years, and Arab liberals should be regarded as somehow inauthentic. Which is to say, a lot of people, swept along by their own high-minded principles of cultural tolerance, have ended up clinging to attitudes that can only be regarded as racist against Arabs."
I used to argue with a lot of people who used to tell me that we had no right to dictate to lesser developed countries what kind of society they should have. They had the gall to say that our society was just as corrupt and evil as the worst of the worst dictatorships...Therefore we had no right to insist that the third world clean up its act. I asked them how many of their relatives had been taken away in the dead of night, never to be seen again because they had spoken out against the government.
"Oh, it happens here," they'd crow smugly.
"Name me ONE person," I'd counter.
Of course they couldn't because they were full of shit. But the obvious truth didn't sink in past the rhetoric.
"The old-fashioned left used to be universalist-used to think that everyone, all over the world, would some day want to live according to the same fundamental values, and ought to be helped to do so. They thought this was especially true for people in reasonably modern societies with universities, industries, and a sophisticated bureaucracy-societies like the one in Iraq. But no more! Today, people say, out of a spirit of egalitarian tolerance: Social democracy for Swedes! Tyranny for Arabs! And this is supposed to be a left-wing attitude? By the way, you don't hear much from the left about the non-Arabs in countries like Iraq, do you? The left, the real left, used to be the champion of minority populations-of people like the Kurds. No more! The left, my friend, has abandoned the values of the left-except for a few of us, of course."
But, of course the new left can't be bothered: droning anti-Bush rhetoric is a lot easier.
Too easy
Warning: more Canadian politics a-brewing...
I could start hacking away, but I'll leave it short and sweet:
Sheila's still whining.
The former heritage minister and leadership rival to Martin — who has toyed with running for the New Democrats if she can't win in Hamilton — sees this as a sign of desperation. "It tells me that they think Tony can't win," Copps said.
...or that her own party REALLY can't stand her.
Belinda
Daimnation! reports Belinda Stronach's website is up and running, but comments on how she needs to come out stronger on where she stands.
I'd like to know where she stands on the issues - and the fact that she has yet to release any policy platform isn't encouraging.
I agree.
And I also noticed that she has a link on the index to "Belinda's Blog" which is currently empty.
I hope that this will be better than our Prime Minister's lame attempt at keeping a weblog. Why even bother with this if you won't follow the forms? Blogging is a highly personal thing that can let you know the author very well. For a relative unknown in politics like Stronach, this could bridge the gap between her and her potential voters and really convey a message.
Or it could just fall flat and be totally boring.
Daimnation also echoes my other worries as well...
Eleven years ago, the PC party chose another little-known blonde as leader, and that mess is too depressing to discuss further.
UPDATE: Well that was fast.
She was asked for one single example of a "tough decision" she had made in her previous role as chief executive officer of Magna International, but she could not, or would not, provide one.
Ouch. That just reinforces the impression (unproved) that Daddy (Frank Stronach) was really running the show.
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