Conservative politics in North America has a clear mantra: power before people.

Matt offers some salient points about our current crop of conservatives now further entrenched in parliament, the most important being the greatest myth conservative governments of North America have sold to the people: that they’re fiscally responsible.

For all my years this has been easy to see as a false assertion. From Reagan on up in the US and Mulroney through Harper in our homeland, conservative spending has been disastrous for the United States and Canada. It’s unfortunate that a generation of behaviour can be ignored by the voting public. To be generous fair, I suppose it’s hard to shake a brand that’s been fed to you since you were born.

The definition of conservative is not tight with money, it’s fight the people. They do this with tax breaks for the rich, military spending, increased policing and incarceration, all while diminishing social support and safety nets. This inevitably leads to a paranoid and damaged society where the middle class gets poorer, the poor fight against their own interests, and the extreme minority rich own everything (see our neighbours to the south for a reference point of where we could end up).

Let’s not forget this a week from now when our frustration dies down. This conversation needs to continue over the next 4 years so everyone, country wide, can be focused on electing a candidate that actually meets their needs.

Source: blog.emenel.ca

Toronto mayoral candidates cheat sheet.

Bald?

a. Yes.
b. No.
c. Good hair cover for his age.
d. Getting there.

via picard102

Source: meganmackay

Enemies of Christ and Country: first hand observations from Tea Party central.

Such a great read from @thebombbag, I’m just going to include it all, right here:

On Saturday, I biked to Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally on the mall. I didn’t go because I believed in the politics or the people behind this ultra-right movement. I went because I thought it would be funny. Small crowd. Ridiculous posters. Angry people. I wanted to take out my camera, snap pictures, engage some of the crazier folks, and report back that this movement is a deteriorating joke, a parody of itself. Well…

Crowd size: I understand why some of the left-leaning sites like to downplay the size of the crowd but the reflecting pool was shoulder-to-shoulder, the large area to the left of the reflecting pool was lawn chair-to-lawn chair, the WWII memorial was packed, and the area leading up the Washington Monument was loosely packed with folks who didn’t want to fight the crowds. Knowing DC crowds, it would be irresponsible to say that there were much fewer than 100,000 people there.

Ridiculous posters: There weren’t any. There were some pretty ridiculous shirts and lots of ridiculous colonial hats and outfits and “Don’t Tread On Me” paraphernalia but not a lot of ridiculous posters. The reason why there weren’t a lot of ridiculous posters was because Beck asked people not to bring posters. He said he’d like the movement to remain apolitical. Anyone with the ability to look at a bigger picture knows it’s because the racist and misspelled posters of the Tea Party undermine their message and focus the people’s attention on the stupidity of its followers.

I’m capitalizing Tea Party from now on, by the way, because they’re organized and they fall in line. Beck said, “No posters,” and they left their posters home. They are a movement, not some waning fad. They should be taken seriously. They are a proper noun. A frightening, massive, proper noun.

Angry people: Well, there was a lot of crying. When I went to Obama’s inauguration there was a lot of crying, too. I cried, and I’m not much of a crier. There was a sense of hope and optimism in the air and it was overwhelming. We were ready to move on from the past and to tackle the future. The folks at this rally, however, were crying simply BECAUSE we were crying a year and a half ago. They don’t like what we did or tried to do or want to do. They think we have no soul, no patriotism. They think we forgot what made this country great and that we’ve been running it into the ground. They have no proof, they have faith. And faith, I’m finding, is a very dangerous thing to fight.

And faith is exactly what this rally was about.

It was like a Mega Church. It was like I was somewhere in Colorado Springs and not in downtown DC. Every speaker had one message: we need to bring Jesus Christ back into the fold. And every attendee agreed. This country is Jesus’s country. Not God. Not some vague higher power. Not the people’s country. It was Jesus Christ’s country. Jesus before God before family before country. It was frightening.

Several speakers made reference to the “spirit” of Dr. Martin Luther King JR, except I’m pretty sure they were calling on the spirit of Reverend Martin Luther King JR and by spirit I mean the spirit of the word “Reverend” and by reverend I mean a fire-and-brimstone Pentecostal preacher. One of the speakers actually had the audacity to say that he, too, had a dream – and that dream was that all Americans, including the “Red Man”, would come to worship Jesus Christ. Which is as far away from King’s dream as you could get.

You know, I always saw the Tea Party as racist. How could you not? And they declared over-and-over again that they weren’t racist and that we were being reverse racists for claiming that they were racists. Well…I still think they’re by-and-large racist but I don’t they they want to bring us back to 1963 or 1861 or 1776. After listening to the speeches and observing the people and seeing their tears and hearing their cheers I think what they really want, at the end of the day, is a Theocracy.

A Theocracy.

The only thing more dangerous than 100k+ racists wanting to “take the country back” is 100k+ zealots who want to establish a Theocracy. Who honestly believe that fundamental Christianity should be the foundation of every decision this country makes.

This goes beyond the idea of having an official State Religion, something that is in-and-of-itself dangerous. Having a theocracy would put us on the same list with a handful of other countries, including Iran and Afghanistan under the Taliban.

What happens to Jews and Muslims under this proposed theocracy? What happens to the non-believers? Forced conversions? Stonings? Or maybe a more “diplomatic” solution, like increased taxes or segregation or deportation.

I wrote my friend Lauren of STFU, Tea Baggers and told her that I was generally scared of what I saw. They were organized, and they’re redefining the narrative of this country. She responded with a level-headed counterpoint, that once one of “their guys” gets elected and doesn’t do anything they’ll see that all politicians are the same and quiet down a bit.

I’d like to publically respond to that opinion.

You see, they don’t have to really do anything as long as they have an enemy. No republican, hard-right or moderate, wants to end war because war creates an enemy. The Soviet Union, the War on Drugs, the Middle East – they need these wars to create enemies: Communists, drug addicts, and Muslims, respectively. No republican, hard-right or moderate, wants to make abortion illegal – they need abortion to create an enemy: women, pro-choice supporters, liberals. No republican, hard-right or moderate, wants to fix the deficit – they need the deficit to create an enemy: healthcare, welfare, and, through some twisted logic, even taxes.

The more enemies they can define, the more of a powerbase they can solidify. They don’t need to deliver right away, as long as they point to someone that’s standing in the way. And as they continue to bury us in debt and as they continue to screw over the disenfranchised and as they continue to focus their finger-pointing and say, “It’s this person’s fault,” they’ll continue to grow their base and whittle down their opposition.

And the people will continue to buy it. They’ll believe more and more that we’re enemies of Christ and Country. And, before the republicans can stop the monster they’ve created, we’ll get real fundamentals in charge. And we will become a theocracy. And America will no longer exist.

This may not be their plan, but what I saw on Saturday was a bunch of short-sighted politicians and marketers who are unable or unwilling to look twenty years into the future. Short-sightedness and greed have been the true enemies of America since Reagan, and I fully believe that when it comes time to reap the fruits of the labors of the men pulling the strings, it’ll be the end of everything we now know and care for.

Sorry, folks, but THIS is what we should be afraid of, if we’re afraid of anything.

Source: thebombbag

Haiti: Hope, history, hate.

Here’s Bill Clinton’s positive take on Haiti shrouded by John Seiler and Lew Rockwell’s sanction, invasion and the real devil, exposing Clinton as a part of the US regime having contributed to Haitian incapacitation, which is more thoughtfully expanded on by Ashley Smith, including historical detail on US involvement in Haiti and current Clinton involvement, with a digression to hate mongering from Jim Goad, balanced by Real French’s less myopic response to Mr Goad, which leads us back to how the US has unapologetically interfered with nation after nation in Latin America and the islands (see Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, etc).

In the words of Real French: ”I’m sure that Haiti being the first independent majority black republic in the world, drawing the hatred of the world’s most powerful empires, and oh by the way being invaded by the US a couple of times, has nothing to do with how fucked it is.”

What a completely demoralizing clusterfuck.