My brain hurts...

and it's getting worse.

even by Canadian Conservative standards,
it's been an unusually toxic
couple of  weeks.




first, there was the Minister of Human
Resources trashing working parents
and day-care workers:

granted, this should not surprise.

This is the minister who opposed raising employment insurance
payments for unemployed workers,
or making it easier to qualify because:


"We do not want to make it lucrative
for them to stay home and get paid for it"

She's also the Minister responsible for Human
Resources and Skills Development
who has an inaccessible constituency office.

...but still.

Then of course, we have the Conservative member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke.

Until this week, she was best-known for her homophobia, her suggestions that Christians are being persecuted within the Liberal Party and her comparison of the beheading of a prisoner to abortion.

Now, she's the one who's told off-shore workers and their families in Newfoundland and elsewhere that they should quit expecting the Coast Guard to always "be there" for them.

It seems Ms. Gallant feels that the men and women working off-shore out east just aren't plucky enough... and they should take inspiration from the cottagers and canoeists up her way and just git'er done, without looking to the le grand sein on the Rideau to come between them and hypothermia.


Even little Stevie said he thought her remarks were
“completely unacceptable and quite frankly incomprehensible.”.

***

and then of course there's Bev...

Ms. Oda is the Member of Parliament for Durham and Conservative Minister of International Cooperation. She's had her moments in the past, but nothing compares 2 where she undt der Partei find themselves now. Alas.

Ms. Oda has had the great misfortune to be caught lying to a Parliamentary committee, quite obviously and quite publicly. Twice. 

Now the Speaker of the House is involved...and as it happens, Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken is a man of impeccable political credentials. As (Steve's) luck would have it, Mr. Milliken is that rarest of fauna up Ottawa way - an honorable man, and regarded thusly across the political spectrum.

Peter Milliken is the anti-Duffy, and the last thing the Conservatives want or need at this point is an honorable, retiring man on the loose with a warrant.



But what makes this one super-tasty is this:
As (Bev's) luck would have it, her sleazy little lie maybe might link back toperson or persons unknown in the PMO- the prime Minister''s Office (see also Apparatchiks).

 
Ms. Oda is in a hard place. Our wanna-be President-for-Life Mr. Harper is, i hope, in an even harder one.


Speaking of the PMO, no one's been asleep at the switch (sic) on this one, or any of the others.

There has been all kinds of defending and clarifying and apologizing and re-iterating going on...

and whenever a camera's been a-rolling, there's been John Baird, dripping streamers of saliva, screaming out the Party line.


The Conservative member for Ottawa-West Nepean is the PM's personal pit-bull, and these days he's going off like an ever-ready bunny
with rabies. 

Baird is single-handedly turning our country's highest forum of discussion into most debased, disgusting reality show on the planet... and our media personalities and news departments seem content to let him.




John Baird makes Snooki and the Jersey Shore crew look like Reach for the Top with host Alex Trebek...

Alex Trebek, see here with Zsa-Zsa Gabor

John Baird is kind of a Cost-Co Cheney... a less intellectual Spiro Agnew for Canada's 'say it loud, i'm stupid and proud' constituency.

He's Brain Mulroney without the integrity. He's Stephen Harper without the j'en sais quoi.

Baird's the kid that the other kids never really trusted. He's a tool for cynics, the kind of a hammer you can count on to just follow orders.


He's reducing the discussion of how might we live together to the braying of a school-yard bully, washing down dad's Oxycontins with a six pack of Benylinin a parking lot somewhere.
... and our media personalities and news departments seem content to let him.




la-de-da-dy-dee,


la-de-da-dy-daaaaa.

- 30 -

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