The plight of the Conservative campaign volunteer
September 7, 2015
At the beginning of the campaign the big problem in Eastern Ontario was the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations. It was common knowledge that milk quota would be on the block if Canada were to make any headway. Everyone wanted to wait until after the election, but Obama threw his weight around and here we were, no longer trusted by our staunchest and wealthiest supporters, the dairy farmers. Fortunately the deal fell apart over auto parts, or we would have been in big trouble.
And then the trial started. I mean, what’s a guy to do? Knock on a door two weeks ago and all I’d hear was Duffy this and Duffy that. Then this week that poor little Syrian kid’s picture hit the front pages and nobody could think about anything else.
To make matters worse, CBC’s Rosie Barton bit a huge chunk out of Immigration Minister Chris Alexander when he tried to fudge his way through a panel discussion on refugees. Who would have thought that a harmless looking lady who can’t keep order in a panel discussion would have such sharp teeth and a killer instinct? Harper and Alexander both went into hiding for a bit after that one.
It didn’t help when a newsreel showed a protest sign claiming that Syrian dictator Assad had killed 220,000 Syrians and ISS had only killed 200. It looked as though Harper’s been bombing the wrong side.
And now Justin Trudeau’s calling for an all party, non-political meeting to plan a coordinated strategy on the Syrian refugee crisis. Yeah, right. So he can look like the statesman. Fat chance that meeting will happen.
Even worse, word’s out that our Conservative candidates aren’t giving interviews. Michelle Rempel seems to have the TV screens to herself these days.
Gord Brown managed to get his picture taken with Mr. Harper in a Tim Horton’s in Gananoque, but all that made the news was Harper’s gaffe: “Don’t let me near the cash.” Not a lot of help there.
At least Gord’s newsletters aren’t getting him into trouble the way Lanark MP Scott Reid’s are, thankfully. Back in 2012 Scott sent out an anti-refugee questionnaire on a ten per-center, and in the context of the pro-refugee sentiment after the toddler’s picture on the beach, it looks pretty racist.
Reid’s newsletter concluded with a survey, as usual.
Should refugees get gold-plated dental, vision, and drug benefits?
__ No! It isn’t fair to give better benefits to refugees than Canadians.
__ Yes! Give refugees better government benefits than Canadian citizens.
It was dumb, but apparently the PMO believes that this sort of thing plays well to their base.
But then the survey made it into a news article by Ryan Maloney in Huffington Post Canada on September 4th. Maloney had also found a 2012 newsletter from Saskatchewan MP and Parliamentary Secretary Kelly Block which went even further:
The end of unfair benefits for refugee claimants.
Working hard for you. Kelly Block, M.P. Ending unfair benefits for refugee claimants.
New arrivals to Canada have received dental and vision care paid by your tax dollars. They’ve had free prescriptions. Not anymore.
What do you think?
__ I agree with Kelly Block! Newcomers don’t deserve more benefits than Canadians.
__ I disagree! Refugee claimants should get dental, vision and pharmacare even if I don’t.
And then this spring that idiot Paul Calandra from Markham weighed in again, making all refugees out to be liars:
Personal Survey
What level of health care benefits do you believe the government should provide to failed and fraudulent refugee claimants?
__ The same coverage as average Canadians receive through provincial health insurance.
__ Extended coverage such as dental, eye care, and prescription medication that many Canadians do not have access to.
__ FAILED refugee claimants should receive no publicly-funded health care benefits.
Then someone at CBC found Maloney’s article and ran it unsigned on 6 September as their own work. Talk about bottom-feeders.
But that wasn’t a patch on the bomb they let off on The National Sunday night.
One war room or the other found an old CBC Marketplace surveillance film about an appliance repairman urinating into a coffee mug in a client’s kitchen, then rinsing it out and putting it back on the rack. Turns out the guy, Jerry Bance, had run for the Tories in two elections, and was a candidate in this one until the film came out at 9:00. He was off the slate at 9:05, I’ll tell you.
What I wonder is how long those guys have been sitting on that film, and why they brought it out right now? Yeah, our team wheeled out those tweets that young Liberal candidate in Calgary wrote when she was in her teens. She apologized and resigned, and that was it. But she was a teenaged girl at the time. Jerry Bance is a three times-nominated Conservative federal candidate. And he’s taken down in a crooked-appliance-repair sting. That’s just dirty. How am I supposed to talk that away at the door?
Maybe all we can do is keep quiet and put in more road signs. We’re getting really good at mounting the larger ones now, with an extra-long picket way down in the ditch and the other one up on the shoulder of the road.
Later.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/04/refugee-mailouts-tories-syria_n_8090126.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservatives-flyers-survey-refugees-1.3217603
Harper and Mulcair as partners: someone else has the same idea
September 3, 2015
I can’t vouch for the accuracy of everything in the article linked below, but I believe it is definitely worth a look.
http://pushedleft.blogspot.ca/2015/08/thomas-mulcair-and-stephen-harper-dance.html
How hard can it be to install a dryer vent in a brick Victorian?
September 2, 2015
I knew there was only one layer of bricks, so how hard could it be?
Four layers of crossed 1″ boards provided some resistance to the 4″ masonry core bit, as it doesn’t cut wood. It quickly became clear that the part I hadn’t anticipated, the cutting of wood within the wall, would be the real task here.
A 5″ el Cheapo hole cutter made it through the first two layers of wood, a 7/8 chestnut baseboard and an inch of hemlock, with only a few trips to the shop for blacksmith work. My $25. Princess Auto 1/2″ drill worked reasonably well for the wood butchering. But then came a cavity and the hole cutter couldn’t reach the boards on the other side, so I resorted to a brand new foot-long 7/16″ auger bit mounted in the drill. It cut through the hemlock with alacrity, and Bet had handed me a penlite flash so I could see.
I peppered the boards with holes, hoping something would give before the rented drill bit was due back in the morning. A brand new 5/8″ chisel even took a lick at the stubborn wood, driven by a claw-hammer, no less. Such was my desperation.
I should specify that conditions were very cramped in the corner of the laundry room behind the washer and dryer. Things improved considerably when Bet brought a fan to cool things off.
Eventually the wood turned to splinters which I picked out with my fingers. The rented 4″ core cutter on a 12″ extension, coupled with my friend’s heavy duty hammer drill, went to work on the brick. I kept checking for a light at the end of the tunnel, and eventually a tiny one appeared in the centre of the hole, so I hauled the massive drill/bit/extension combination out onto the roof and plugged into the fancy 110 outlet currently in service up there in case I need to plug in any Christmas lights or de-icing equipment.
I was quietly pleased to note that the hole was in the correct place, so I completed the cut from outside and did not fall off the roof, then slid the assembled dryer vent back in from the outside. Four small screws, a couple of cans of foam (wide gap filler) and the new dryer vent should be in operation.
Harperman, the protest song
August 28, 2015
It’s a clever and catchy protest song and it cost an Ottawa scientist his job. Expect to hear it a lot over the next two months.
Dealing with the circumstances leading up to a hydraulic lock on my Bolens tractor engine
August 27, 2015
Instead of my usual couple of hours of indolent reading this morning I resolved to collect a trailer-load of scaffold to erect for a job at the rear of the stone house.
After carefully wiping the dew and dust off my beloved 17 hp Bolens G174, I fired it up and hurried around to the front of the house through a narrow gate on a steep side-hill. Somehow it slipped my mind for the moment that the attached trailer was eight feet wide and weighed about as much as the little tractor. It reminded me of these principles of physics and geometry when one corner of the trailer discovered a forgotten elm stump. Contact with this sturdy object immediately stopped the right side of the trailer’s forward progress. Whatever remained of the trailer’s momentum was then imparted to its tongue, which veered sharply to the right. Of course the tongue was attached by a 2″ ball to the tall, narrow little tractor on a side hill, so it obligingly flipped over, sending its operator on an exhilarating nose-first slide down a well-kept, but steep lawn. In the same motion the Bolens wiggled its hitch ball out of the trailer’s coupler and came to rest upside down, purring contentedly. Your narrator scrambled back up the hill and shut the engine off.
I was unhurt, and the Bolens didn’t seem to have bent anything I couldn’t readily straighten. It remained, however, upside down at a 3/4 cant on a fairly steep slope.
After some reflection I drafted the Kubota B7510, a 4WD, 21 hp compact tractor, to aid its fallen comrade. I parked it nose-down toward the Bolens, then attached a logging chain to its front hitch and the other end around the near axle of the accident victim. My wife eased the Kubota back up the slope in 4WD and the Bolens flipped over onto its wheels as willingly as it had left them.
We coasted down to a low spot and I assessed the damage. One sheet metal brace for hydraulic controls bent back into shape. That was it. The loose hood had survived the fall amazingly well, and the engine didn’t leak oil, coolant, or fuel. It wouldn’t turn over on the starter, though.
I had anticipated hydraulic lock, a diesel phenomenon whereby a cylinder fills with fluid and can’t release the fluid to turn over because it’s on the compression stroke. When the engine was upside-down, crankcase oil had nothing to keep it from flowing down through any open valve into the cylinders.
The Kubota and my wife towed us up the hill to the garage, but not inside, fortunately.
A quick Internet search suggested removing the glow plugs to let the oil out of the affected cylinder, so I dutifully found a 12mm socket with extension, removed the little plugs (only one wet with engine oil), and prepared to clear the cylinders. I carefully placed a rag over the twin openings in the top of the engine to keep things tidy, but at the first touch of the starter a narrow gush of black oil shot the rag high above the tractor before turning its propellant into a comic deluge of large, black dollops of oil.
This provided a great way to break in a too-new Tilley, but the clean-up of the equipment and wardrobe afterward quickly became a chore.
The 1980 Bolens soon was back in service, down a bit of oil and very dirty, but still willing to do a day’s work.
Scout’s Honour or Sons of Anarchy?
August 24, 2015
So far in the Duffy Trial and the federal election campaign we have learned that there are lots of principled people in the inner circle of the Conservative Party, but theirs is a private code of ethics which bears little resemblance to that of the rest of us, so last week when Stephen Harper tried to borrow a bit of scout’s honour for a photo-op, Scouts Canada protested loudly at the intrusion.
For me the narrative which best makes sense of the Conservatives this year is the final season of Sons of Anarchy, the unexpectedly brilliant TV show about a California motorcycle gang which ran for seven years on US cable.
Its protagonist is an intelligent man on an oblique, personal task, required by circumstance to navigate an ethical maze while torn between a desire to free his family from this violent, fetid world, and the irresistible appeal of extreme conflict.
Seen in the context of this tragic drama there was much to admire in Nigel Wright’s testimony this week during the Duffy trial, as was there in Donald Bayne’s defence of the accused Duffy. We watched as Bernard Perrin’s testimony worked its way to the forefront of our consciousness and we realized that the hand of fate now rests upon the shoulder of trusted Harper aide Ray Novak.
Who will be next? We wait for the action to move to the next scene which must deal with the cornered Harper, confronted by the evidence of his monomania, forced to realize his wrong and to bow before our judgement, frightful in his suffering.
That’s the tragic view.
But Shakespeare liked to throw in a steady diet of comedy to keep us on our toes. Who better to play the Chorus than the increasingly put-out National Post correspondent Christie Blatchford, who in daily standups from a hotel lobby heaps ridicule upon the whole charade because she is bored?
And then last Tuesday Earl Cowan strode upon the stage. Shakespeare’s grave-digger had nothing on this guy for comedic chops. Of course the grave-digger’s faulty logic and very limited understanding caused Hamlet and the audience to laugh. Well, Earl played the Angry Conservative to perfection when he told off reporters Hannah Thibedeau and Laurie Graham for asking the wrong questions of Stephen Harper. According to Earl, Duffy had fudged his tax returns a little bit, but no less than the reporters. “Harper doesn’t read tax forms, you idiot! It’s done by people in the tax department. You cheat more on your taxes than Duffy ever did. You’re a lying piece of shit!”
But from this low comedy we quickly moved to a higher concept with the regal Margaret Atwood penning a few reflections on Hair for the National Post, only to react in pique when someone censored her lines. Years ago Brian Mulroney learned his lesson when Atwood famously addressed the Free Trade Debate (back in the pre-Harper era when there was public discourse on such things). She explained to her audience that the official Canadian animal is the beaver. Then she read from a medieval bestiary that the beaver is a rodent which, when threatened, bites off its own testes and presents them as a gift to prevent further harm. She likened this to Canada’s position in the free trade talks.
Anyway, it seems that the Conservative directors of the National Post got wind of the Hair column and ordered it taken down from their website. Atwood tweeted, “I think the National Post has censored me.” Perturbation on Twitter. The Google version of the column quickly went viral. National Post put up a revised version which removed Atwood’s allegations about two million dollars of undisclosed funding in Harper’s leadership campaign. This spawned a series of articles explaining what happened to cause a puff piece about Trudeau and Harper’s hairdos to turn into a frontal attack on the credibility of the National Post.
The four lessons of the week from this ongoing drama? You can’t borrow Scout’s honour for a photo op, the first lesson of crisis management is that you never lie, don’t let Canadians put a face to the Conservative Base, and under no circumstances do you mess with Margaret Atwood.
Angry Conservative Earl Cowan’s Facebook postings (link)
August 20, 2015
In the last week Etobicoke farmer Earl Cowan has emerged as this election’s “Joe-the-Plumber.” I thought you might enjoy these pearls of wisdom collected by fellow blogger Dennis Earl:
Ala Buzreba and the Art of the Insult
August 19, 2015
Years ago a very bright Asian physician joined our social group and seemed to fit in well, except for occasional looks of horror at our frequent use of obscenity in humour. On the other hand his casual racist comments discomfited us until we finally accepted his adage that “Brown people are the most racist.”
An European colleague at the same time shocked us with his cheerful blasts of profanity. He claimed to be a good Catholic, but verbal attacks upon the symbols of the faith were a big part of the way he put his thoughts together.
After several summers of work on construction crews and driving trucks, I had adopted a pattern of speech hinging on my outbursts while trying to shift a 20-speed White Mustang’s transmission. The truck boasted two gear shift levers which had to be operated simultaneously while double-clutching. I could hit four of the gears, total, in downtown Ottawa traffic.
As I entered the teaching profession I discovered that my creative use of the lunchbox vernacular was exceeded only by the verbal swagger of the administators who hired me.
Conversations in the staff room of a school in the ‘70’s took on a very salty tone, though I have been led to believe that they were no match for those of a women’s locker room when alcohol was involved.
One morning in my grade nine class I spotted a series of notes passed back and forth between a girl and a boy at one side of the room. I moved down and intercepted the note, to the extreme embarrassment of the kids. I could see why: these polite, diligent fourteen-year-old students interacted on paper with insults which left me gaping in awe. This sweet little girl’s comment to the guy behind her suggested that she had on good authority that he frequently joined his uncle in intercourse with a dead camel, warming in the sun. I still won’t repeat his comment to her.
When after class I confronted the kids with this exchange, they were at pains to make clear that extreme insults like this were part of the way they joked with each other. They didn’t mean anything by them, they were sorry, and they wouldn’t do it again when I was around.
Still, I was struck by the vivid imagery and ingenuity of their insults. Clearly this style of derision was as much of an art form to them as the casual obscenity which in larger Western society still passes for wit.
All of this brings me to the case of Ala Buzreba and the series of tweets from her teenage years whose publication caused her to resign as a Liberal candidate in Calgary. If examined from the perspective of my former students, Ala Buzreba’s Twitter invective showed a little imagination but no great creativity. Her comments should have ended up in a wastebasket where they belonged, but instead they remain archived on Twitter to be found by those of mischievous intent.
The lesson here is obvious: mainstream readers take offence to styles of humour or insult to which they are not accustomed, anything posted on the Internet is forever, and opponents will use any weapon they can find in a tight political race.
Would Canadians support an NDP-Conservative coalition?
August 14, 2015
Almost all polls indicate the likelihood of a narrow margin separating the three contending parties in the upcoming election. Most writers speculate that the two progressive parties, the NDP and the Liberals, would be under pressure from their members to form a coalition to prevent another Harper Conservative government. But what if we take Justin Trudeau at his word when he refuses to work with the NDP because of the Sherbrooke Declaration which supports the premise that a 50% vote plus one would be enough to begin the breakup of Canada?
Has anyone given any thought to Stephen Harper as a coalition partner for Thomas Mulcair after the vote on October 19th? After all, in 2005 Harper signed a coalition letter to the Governor General with then-NDP leader Jack Layton and Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe in an attempt to overturn Paul Martin’s Liberal government. While Harper condemned his opponents as “traitors” when they tried the same thing on December 1st, 2008, and prorogued the House of Commons to prevent defeat, no doubt he mentally justified the flip-flop with his catch phrase, “Canadians don’t care about that kind of thing.”
Stephen Harper has already demonstrated his willingness to compromise Conservative principles to maintain a grip on power.
About a year later the Conservatives brought out three attack ads against Stephane Dion in the campaign. Then came the famous attack ad against Michael Ignatieff. Apparently any Liberal leader is a common enemy of the NDP and the Conservatives, or maybe Layton and later Mulcair were just happy to go along if the Conservatives paid.
The ad campaign of the last two years against Justin Trudeau has also seemed designed to benefit the Conservatives and the NDP alike by reducing Trudeau’s standing in the minds of Canadians.
Harper and Mulcair alike have made some questionable moves to woo the separatist vote in Quebec, with Harper declaring “The Quebec Nation within Canada” in a motion in the House of Commons on November 22, 2006, and Mulcair reaffirming his support for the Sherbrooke Declaration on June 23, 2015.
If it came to a hung Parliament, I would suggest that Thomas Mulcair would find more in common with Stephen Harper than either would find with Justin Trudeau. Trudeau seems unwilling to compromise his Federalist, pro-constitution, pro-charter of rights position. This may leave him in a strong position as leader of the opposition against the strange bedfellows across the aisle in the next parliament.
But would 63% of Canadians still support a coalition if it involved Stephen Harper’s Conservatives?
Perhaps more to the point at this juncture of the campaign: will Mulcair’s cooperation in Harper’s boycott of the national debates cause him trouble with his supporters?
According to the August 14th Ekos poll, 81% of NDP supporters stand firmly in favour of more large-scale debates, televised nationally with all four national leaders in attendance.
Thomas Mulcair may have to decide whether it’s better to forsake Stephen Harper and face Liz May, Justin Trudeau, and an empty chair in debate rather than to risk the loss of the university graduates, that critical 14% of his support which this spring parachuted in from the Trudeau camp during the height of the attack ad campaign. If he slips up, these activist voters can just as easily return to the Red Tent and carry election victory with them.
the Walnut Diary 