All the time time time:

Please don't touch my camera = Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help! I'm being repressed!

And stupid:

Did Obama Say We Should Kill the Old Folks to Save Money Last Night?

Actually what he said was “Old people don't need health care. They need to be isolated and studied so that it can be determined what nutrients they have that might be extracted for our personal use.”

I find it adorable that they seem to think that the government is somehow going to be more heartless than a for-profit insurance company who as a matter of policy will go to any length to avoid paying out.

The majority of Western nations have socialized medical care because it's the most efficient way to get the most coverage to the most people. Buh! Buh! SOCIALISM!! I know, I know, one day your treatment is already paid for by your taxes the next day you're lining up for toilet paper, it's how Stalin, Hitler and Satan did it.

And they are so deep, check out this pennywise:

1. The Real Lessons of Mark Sanford’s “Hike”

No one knows the future

Wow. My mind is totally blown.

It goes on and can be shortened up to "Oh yeah? Well Clinton and some other people whose politics I don't like had affairs and I like Jesus and he likes me and CLINTON!!! RARRH! He doesn't like Jesus and Jesus hates him... totally told me so.... so... so YOU JUST SHUT UP!"

Now:

I don't think that people in the entertainment industry should use their celebrity to push a political agenda.

Then:

While Michael J. Fox continues to push for embryonic stem cell research, which destroys life, we do have a couple of celebrities defending life. Martin Sheen Stars in Ad Opposing Assisted Suicide in Washington State.

Fascinating isn't it? She literally doesn't want free speech for a class of people unless it's stuff that she agrees with.

Just imagine the America her and her kind would make and what a truly miserably evil place it would be. Oh wait, we don't have to imagine, we have Iran, Saudi Arabia and other historical theocracies to use as models.

Speaking of miserable sorry about the lack of posting, some family health problems have been consuming my time and energy of late. Remember shit can change in a New York minute so appreciate the people you love while you can.

Let's say it turns into a real revolution that ends with beards hanging from lampposts / slumped against bullet scared walls paving the way to a real democracy.

How quickly do the wingnut BushZombies howl and gibber that the invasion of Iraq is thus justified and GW Bush a genius?

I'm thinking it'll start in the morning, I wonder if they'll preztle-logic out a connection or just declare it so because?

From So What if Holocaust Museum Shooter is White Christian: We Know Who Crescented, er . . . Created This Atmosphere; 9/11 Truther

• Until Muslims came along Nazis didn't dare hurt Jews

And bonus Debbie retardation, she doesn't know what plagiarism is either.

Schlussel original reporting in 2005:

Take Imad Hamad, Midwest Regional Director of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee . . . .

When Israel released hundreds of Hezbollah prisoners in early 2004, Hamad sent invitations to a celebration of the new freedom of "the Heroes."

Aaron Klein in June 2009 rip-off:

When Israel released Hezbollah prisoners in early 2004, Imad Hamad, ADC's Midwest Regional Director, openly celebrated the freedom of "the heroes

And endless fount of stupid.

So I got the footer thing working in both browsers only to find another section of the site not working in IE but because of something Java. Works perfectly in FireFox, Safari even Chrome but IE simply refused to behave.

If there is every such a thing as exploding face cancer I want the people who code and QA IE to get it.

So after seven hours of arguing I gave up and realized that if I had spent the whole day playing video game I would have gotten the same results.

So I'm spending the whole day playing "Prototype" it's the only way to balance the scales.

But before I go let's take a peek at the MegaChuch Lady and the stupid thing she's up to:

Just received the following article from Operation Rescue's Troy Newman with this note:

Dear Friends, It is a bittersweet moment. Operation Rescue was just 2 months away from getting Tiller's medical license revoked and that would have accomplished the same goal.

From KWCH this morning:

Lee Thompson and Dan Monnat, attorneys for the family of Dr. George Tiller, issued the following statement today:

"The family of Dr. George Tiller announces that effective immediately, Women's Health Care Services, Inc., will be permanently closed. Notice is being given today to all concerned that the Tiller family is ceasing operation of the clinic and any involvement by family members in any other similar clinic.

Way to go pro-lifers! Now there will never ever be anymore abortions ever! Your angry sky god will be pleased, more babies for him to kill.

Do these asshole ever think about any of this stuff? Like do they really think a woman who is like 8 months pregnant decides to have the abortion at that moment just 'cuz? Like they forgot about it? Kept on putting it off until suddenly they can't fit into any of their clothes? Oh right! Preggers, where's that clinic number?

Late term abortions are of course to save the woman's life and are probably the most emotionally wrenching things to go through. Imagine you've spent the last several months preparing to be a parent only to learn you have to kill your baby to save your life.

And now it's even harder for them.

The so-called "Pro-life" twats will howl that they have stories of mothers who chose to go through with the delivery anyway so there!

Of course the key word they're saying but not understanding is "chose" as in choice as in pro as in that's what it's all about. They don't want women to have that particular freedom, that's belongs to their god and if their god decides that the woman should die a horrible death in delivery, oh well, it's all just so strange and mysterious.

But hey, that's not MegaChurch's problem, she's working her way to Heaven and that's all that matters.

If there's any exploding face cancer left she should get a dose too.

So I spent the whole day finishing up a website, I put in this footer that was supposed to stay centered and fixed to the bottom of the browser's window using CSS. Naturally it works fine in FireFox and even worked in IE8.

But not IE7 or 6, for some reason that I would like to beat out of Bill Gates the footer would fly to the far right of the screen no matter what I would do. I had to give up and make the footer span the whole page so it looks nowhere near as sharp.

Please don't use IE, please tell your friends not to use IE for the sake of the sanity of designers everywhere.

Speaking of sanity and its fragility:

"I do believe personally that time is growing closer for Christ's return. As the time gets closer, he's going to reveal more of himself to us."

Looking at her kitchen cabinet now, she feels peaceful and protected.

"No matter what's going on in the world, God will see me through it," she said. "I feel blessed that it happened in our home."

The more who see it, the better, she believes.

"To me, it says Jesus is our hope. As bad as things get with the economy, Jesus is still our hope. It puts a smile on my face to see it."

---

Eight months after being displaced by Hurricane Ike, Tracy Ward found hope in a most peculiar place. She asks her guests to sit on the toilet facing the wall tile above the bathtub.

THE DAILY NEWS Tracy Ward believes there is a likeness of Jesus in her bathroom tile.

“Do you see him?” she asked.

“Him” means Jesus Christ. She points at spots on a centerpiece of tile.

“There, you can see his beard, and a cave behind him. If you close your eyes and reopen them, you can see people walking up behind him.”

If Christ is heralding his return via kitchen and bathroom fixtures I'll have to take a serious look at his competition who will probably buy time on MTV and set up a Facebook page.

Jesus is like the Democrats all that power and no a clue on how to make it work.

would you have to be for Rick Moran to call you out on it?

Short version: NRO idiot put out a blogger's real name because he called said NRO idiot on his bullshit.

NRO idiot refers to the blogger as "Irresponsible" & "Anonymous". What was he being irresponsible about?

Doesn't say.

Was he anonymous?

No, he was writing under a pseudonym and naturally the NRO idiot doesn't appreciate the important distinctions.

But that's how wingnuts work, they break the rules whenever it suits them, written or otherwise.

The NRO idiot wrote his emails from this address: ewhelan@eppc.org I mention that as a fact and I do not want anyone cutting and pasting that email and dropping it off on various porn and other sites of dubious moral and legal status mailing lists. And it would certainly be very wrong to put it in Craig's List under "causal encounters" tagged "m4m" saying something like "Send me pix of your cock, if it's big enough I will suck it.". It's obvious that's an important email address for Ed and he certainly doesn't need it clogged up with crazy spam and JPEGs of erect wangs.

Explained.

So I thought “Do we have a Gabby winner?¹” after reading that headline.It scores a 2.6 on the R-tard scale so there is a chance, let’s see if we can’t figure it out.

Atheism’s common form in Canada is secularism. As we have pointed out many times in the past, modern secularism is not neutral; on the contrary, it is aggressively anti-Christian.

Yes, it’s as aggressive as a wall as in wall between church and state or to put it less diplomatically secularism is society’s polite way of saying “We’re not going to let delusions run things because that always gets people killed.”

While they use the term humanism, there is nothing “humanistic” about atheism.

Um who is “they” and how can the exclusion of supernatural beings be anything but humanistic?

He never actually says, what he does instead is wingnut theist boilerplate:

Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao Zhe Dong prove that.

So they prove that when Canadian atheists use the term humanism they’re not being humanists or subscribing to the humanist ideal?

Um how?

Hitler of course wasn’t an atheist as I’ve mentioned here once or twice thousand times and Stalin and Dong (heh, you said dong) ran Communist revolutions, not atheist revolutions and furthermore communism has far more in common with religion than atheism. Atheism just says there are no such things as gods, communism and religion both tell people how they should live and threaten and inflict terrible punishment if they don’t follow the rules.

Atheism is destructive of the human person, as well as of society at large.

Yes, human persons and society is being destructed because people don't believe in mythology.

Care to show us an example of this destruction?

The root cause of this prideful arrogance goes right back to the beginning of human history. When Jesus was

Pause here.

He thinks that human history started 2,000 years ago.

How can you even begin to enter a serious debate with these people? They deny fact and reality with a casualness that is beyond ignorance. They don't want to be right they want to be "saved", thus dialogue is pointless, mockery is the only sensible response.

When Jesus was tempted in the desert by Satan immediately following his baptism, the tempter besought Jesus to declare himself independent from God. Jesus refused. (Matthew. ch. 4. See also Pope Benedict, Jesus of Nazareth, 2007, pp. 28-29.) Earlier in history, Satan had applied the same temptation successfully to Adam and Eve; if they disobeyed the commandment of God not to eat from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” they would become like God themselves: “When you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil” (Gn. 3:5).

See what I mean? It’s all but impossible to seriously debate points featuring talking snakes and magic fruit.

He then quotes some gibberish from Pope John Paul The Didn’t Notice All The Children Being Raped By His Employees that could be shortened up to:

• Anyone who says there isn’t a god is Satan’s BFF so don’t listen to them m'kay?

Of course none of it supports atheism being a threat to civilization instead we get this:

Gary Goodyear, Minister of Science
As noted in the March 2009 editorial, atheists started a poster campaign using buses in several countries, with the slogan “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

Some people take the current atheist propaganda campaign lightly. Others, wisely, do not. The Catholic Bishop of Calgary, Fred Henry, put his finger on what is wrong with this sloganeering. It is grounded, he says, in the militant atheism of Richard Dawkins,  Christopher Hitchens and others who want to slam religion and drive it from the public square. “Their goal is to divorce political questions like abortion from moral claims and religion; to control school curricula so that a secular ideology can be promoted; and to portray Christianity not only as wrong but evil.”

Yes, that bus ad sure said Christianity is Evil and that’s the name of Dawkin’s next book.

What Dawkins and others do is in fact point out an awful lot of evil has been committed not only by the god these idiots worship but by the idiots themselves.

Covering up and aiding in the mass rape of children for instance.

And “militant” to a fundy theist means “Anyone who says that my god isn’t real in any way to anyone anywhere.”

“Their strategy,” he goes on to say, “is not to argue with religious views or to prove them wrong but to treat them with scorn so that they are pushed outside the bounds of acceptable debate and to liberate oneself from moral constraint and indulge one’s appetites by portraying religion as a form of repression.” (Feb. 15, 2009).

Well here’s the rub, since atheism says “There are no such things as gods” theists say “There is such a thing as my god” and atheism says “Prove it then!” and they go “Look at Creation! You think that just happened by chance?” and then anyone with a brain goes “Yes, several branches of science, philosophy and logic have proven it beyond any reasonable doubt. Can you refute the anthropology,the archeology, the biology, the astronomy, the DNA? Can you explain the countless errors in the Bible? The illogic of a god sacrificing himself to himself by going to Heaven?"

Then religion gets all quiet and huffy and then screams “You’re SATAN!” and stomps away to kill the nearest abortion doctor.

An example of trying to deny the Christian a place in the public forum was the Globe and Mail’s recent attack on the Minister of Science, Gary Goodyear. This was joined by agnostics in the Canadian Press, the National Post and the Toronto Star.

Yes, Gary Goodyear has been banned from speaking and the Globe and Mail is of course the Canadian atheist’s shock-troopers in the front line in the war to destroy civilization.

He then rehashes the whole thing but doesn’t actually explain how Goodyear’s was denied anything. Goodyear made it pretty clear that he didn’t believe in evolution and that would be of concern to many Canadians that the Minister of Science is more minister than scientist. He was questioned on it then he was… fired? Sent to the reeducation camp? Beaten to death with Ida, The 47 Million-Year-Old missing monkey link?

No, the media got bored of the story and moved on.

Then:

Goodyear did attract some defence, however, about the harangue against him.

Now my grammar sucks but Jebus McChristnuggets "about the harangue"? That’s ridiculous.

The most effective contribution came from David Asper, executive vice-president of Can West Global Communications Corp., owner of the National Post, in a piece entitled, “The liberal war on faith.” Asper cited “sensationalized non-sequiturs” in the original Globe article, which led to a “gratuitous attack … on the basis of religious beliefs.”

Yes but not "gratuitous".

If your religion teaches you that human history started with Jesus, or that a god made us out of clay and chicks out of ribs and you actually believe it then I will mock your ignorant ass if you bring it up in public.

Twice as much if you work for the government.

It’s stupid and it’s not wrong to say so and I'm glad that society is slowly coming around to realizing that. There has always been a bizarre polite deference to religion even by atheists. Guess we're sick of pretending the emperor is sporting Armani.

Asper harkened back to the Stockwell Day episode, in which Day was vilified by the press for being an Evangelical Christian, as well as to a 2006 incident in which MP Bill Graham attacked a senior staffer in Rona Ambrose’s office because of his evangelical Christian beliefs.

That was so awesome, see Day thinks that The Flintstones should be on The History Channel and naturally he was ripped a new one, completely destroyed his chances to be PM. There were many Barney the Dinosaur jokes as well.

I love this country.

“There has been a festering undercurrent of anti-religious bigotry in the methods of attack used by left-wing critics,” Asper observed. “This stuff has to stop … What happened this week is part of a larger and more insidious political strategy designed to make voters fear Conservatives on the basis of individual religious choices” (National Post, March 19, 2009).

Oh I do hope so.

Look I have no problem with religion being in the home or whatever non-public building you like but not in government. It’s that simple, keep your superstitions off the legislation and we'll all get along fabulously.

National Post columnist Jonathan Kay chimed in, charging, “McIlroy and her editors went up and got some sexed-up reaction quotes from outraged secularists who could be depended on to slam any inkling of spirituality as a portent of theocracy … This particular Globe story is a disgrace. Indeed, there is an air of witch hunt about it … (This was) just a journal-concocted pseudo-scandal aimed at the one group in society that is fair game for abuse in the mainstream Canadian media: white, male, English, Christians.” (National Post, March 18, 2009).

The irony of using "witch-hunt" is delicious isn't it? Actual witch-hunts are one of the reasons why we don't let Bible humping idiots infect our law and order with their fear and superstitions.

Well from what I can tell this whole thing scores very high on the stupid ranking but too low on the crazy to be considered a proper Gabby but it's still a wonder.

¹ The Gabby Johnston award given to a person or collective that presents an example of authentic frontier gibberish expressing a courage that is little seen in this day and age. Back.

2,000 year old dead guy:

Better image from here

Claire Allen, 36, said she was the first to notice the image on the underside of the lid as she was putting the yeast spread on her son's toast.

snip

"When I first looked at it I wasn't sure, but when I moved it away from me it started coming out. I thought yeah, she's right - that's the image of Jesus.

snip

"People might think I'm nuts, but I like to think it's Jesus looking out for us.

"We've had a tough couple of months; my mum's been really ill and it's comforting to think that if he is there, he's watching over us."

Which begs the questions three:

1. Why doesn't Jesus end your mother's illness; isn't that one of his tricks or does he only do lepers?
   
   
2. Why does Jesus appear in such a ridiculous random fashion? Why doesn't he just appear? Doesn't it strike you as odd that he show up in such a bizarrely abstract fashion? Why isn't there anything in the Bible about anyone seeing Jesus' face pop up in an unexpected place like a water stain or a donkey fur pattern?
   
   
3. How can anyone eat marmite? I had some British buddies introduce me to the stuff and all I can remember is the taste of salt and then every bit of water in my body being sucked into my mouth then balcking out and some guy yelling "Clear!". Small surprise that it comes from a culture that thinks haute cuisine is when it's boiled in the bag fresh rather than frozen.

But wait a second, at the same time that Jesus was being all Rorschachy...

A Houston, Texas woman says she can see the image of Jesus in her mirror, and now dozens are coming to see it.

“It’s a sign right there,“ said Yolanda Gonzalez. “But I can’t get the picture yet why he’s here.“

Above a small altar with candles and a framed picture of Jesus hangs a mirror and what appears to be a cluster of smudges.

When Gonzalez gets closer, she points out the outline of a face with eyes, a nose and a beard. 

She said her stepdaughter was the first one to find it.

snip

Gonzalez said she refuses to sell the mirror even though several people have offered to buy it for as much as $3,000.

She said she has had a hard life and the image is a sign that she is not alone.

“I know what I’m going through and he knows what I’m going through,“ said Gonzalez.

But there's a lesson here; the reason why religion can have such a tight grip on some people, they need it to get through their lousy day. It's a bit like a drug and what that commie guy meant about it being an opiate.

And that's why preaching atheism is about as effective as preaching sobriety and abstinence at spring break New Orleans.

The question I can't answer but maybe you can is what do you think would serve her better in reality? The $3,000 or the Jesus stain?

and I found a pony! Check it out:

I have written recently about Benjamin Netanyahu's reasonable approach to Israel's West Bank settlements -- build no new ones, take down new "outpost" settlements built without the government's permission, but allow construction consistent with the natural growth of existing settlements.

Yes, it's a very reasonable offer Benji is making; we'll keep on doing the thing that is upsetting people who aren't us and when we do it we'll call it "natural" and you can't argue with nature! Ha! Ha!

Shit from a shit-head, digging on...

The compromise does not please President Obama, whose position apparently is, no new construction at all. It also does not please the settlers who have built the new "outposts."

No I imagine it does not please anyone because the real problem "outposts" are shanty towns slapped together by Torah humpers who think that they have some sort of deal with their real estate agent of a god. They want ALL of Israel and the people who aren't Jews are to be... well what does a stronger people do with a weaker people when they take their shit? Exile, slavery or genocide is the usual historical case.

This is to be expected. By their nature, compromises typically leave parties at both ends of the spectrum unhappy.

Wha'? Compromise? Spectrum? Ends? Um... note the shit-head is missing a stripe in his rainbow? Let's see we have Obama at the one end of the spectrum and the Settlers at the other... feels like someone is missing here... oh right the Palestinians, the people who actually y'know live and lived there before being dragged into the British Empire because Archie Duke shot an ostrich cuz he was hungry¹.

Guess Palestinians don't show up on shit-head's wavelength.

But according to the Washington Post, some settlers have responded to Netanyahu's position by retaliating against Palestinians. Specifically, the Post reports that stone-throwing settlers ambushed a mini-caravan carrying Palestinian laborers to Israel. Six of the 15 Palestinians on board were said to have been injured. Not yet satisifed, the settlers allegedly proceeded to set fire to a wooded hilltop near Nablus and set trees and agricultural land on fire near a Palestinian village.

And here's it comes, what unspeakably wingnut shit-head crap is it going to spew, the mind boggles and the stomach churns...

Assuming the truth of these reports, I am not be able to distinguish the settlers' actions from terrorism.

What a fucking ass...

...

and I'm left postless, someone at Powerline who actually understands something that they're talking about.

1 Best explanation of World War I ever

Now:

“I thought it was strong at the time and I still feel so today,” Cheney said at a National Press Club lunch in Washington. “There was a relationship between al-Qaeda and Iraq that stretched back 10 years. That’s not something I made up.” Citing 2002 Senate testimony by George Tenet, then the CIA director, he said, “We know for a fact that Saddam Hussein was a state sponsor of terrorism.”

Then:

There's overwhelming evidence there was a connection between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government. I am very confident that there was an established relationship there." - Vice President Cheney, 1/22/04

The odd thing is no one has actually ever seen this "overwhelming" and "strong" evidence that he's totally not making up.

It's good that Obama isn't interested in the truth of any of this stuff. It's like the the dead drummer from Spinal Tap; best not to investigate, just leave it be.

And hey, it's not like any harm was done! Look at how great Iraq is:

The Iraqi army and police discovered 14 decomposed bodies, handcuffed and riddled with bullets, in a mass grave on Monday, police said.

---

Police shot dead a suicide car bomber before he managed to strike a police checkpoint, but his car still detonated, killing one civilian and wounding six, in Jalawla, 115 km...northeast of Baghdad, police said. Two policemen were among the wounded.

---

Gunmen threw a hand grenade at a U.S military patrol, killing a child and wounding 15 other bystanders in a market in central Mosul, police said. The soldiers in the patrol were unharmed.

Speaking of Obama and investigating:

President Barack Obama reversed his decision to release detainee abuse photos from Iraq and Afghanistan after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki warned that Iraq would erupt into violence and Iraqis would demand that U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq a year earlier than planned, two U.S. military officers, a senior defense official and a State Department official told McClatchy.

Iraq could have been violent! Demands for US withdrawal! Phew! Dodged that hail of bullets huh?

Yes, even though the Iraqis must know about the torture they'd only get upset about if shown photos. Makes perfect sense.

I wonder how the Iraqis would react to maybe bringing the guilty parties to justice? Hmmm then you'd have American wingnuts and Fox revolting and they're revolting enough.

I guess President Hopey McChange doesn't want something things to change and hopes people won't notice.

So we all know that Bill O'Reilly had what was probably the most expensive phone-sex ever when he called up a woman who worked for him and jerked off while talking about molesting her vagina with a falafel. Now anyone with any sense... well probably would't have done it in the first place but we all have our momentary lapses of reason but anyone with any sense would on some level would shy away from tossing those particular stones at that glass house.

But we're dealing with a boss-level wingnut here so the rules of the sane do not apply, so here's Bill with yet another rant about "sexting" where we find this gem:

You don't have to support charging kids with child porn to figure this one out. "Sexting" will not do any child any good. Children should be taught that America has become the most powerful country in history by embracing a Judeo-Christian philosophy based upon good works, noble intentions and personal discipline. None of that is found in exposing yourself.

Once again, Bill called up a woman who was not interested and jerked off at her over the phone. When he shot his load he grunted goodbye, looked for a Kleenex and passed out.

The far left wants to tear down traditional tenets. What better place to start than with the kids? It never was "Bush's America." It was always our America. And if we want to keep it the way we've known it, we'd better start confronting the barbarians soon.

Yeah, Bill, why don't you start with the barbarian in the mirror?

Then again Bill is a Catholic (married too!) and as we know any sin a Catholic commits can be washed away if he tells a priest and the priest says some magic words and or gets Bill to say some magic words. So perhaps that's how Bill is able to be such a breathtaking hypocrite, as far as his religion teaches for all intense purposes he never used technology for impious sexual gratification so he can roundly condemn those who do without a second thought.

Or even a first one.

Ah how I envey the theist, again life is so simple for the simple.

Pro-life indeed.

Despite being attacked before the doctor stuck to his principles, we should all be so brave.

Now let me engage in some wild out of my ass speculation on the killer and his motive but I bet his Bible is worn from the thumping and that Jesus has already totally forgiven him. But I wonder, if that shit-eating brainless barbarian is so righteous with the baby saving why did he run away? Shouldn't he have put the gun down and pleaded necessity at trial? After all he (and many of his ilk) think they're on the right side right?

Yet away he fled.

The doctor stood up for what he believed in, his killer has no such honor, that tells you all you need to know about both men.

As a side note regular posting will resume tomorrow, I'm volunteering to work the local crisis line and the training is pretty intense and consumed most of my week. This weekend was the suicide prevention workshop and my brain is mush. It was only my out and out outrage I felt after opening up CNN to catch up on the news that spurred me to this post. After it's FTPed I'm shutting down all brain activity that doesn't involved me saving the good people of Empire City.

Really? Is this the best the Tories can do?

The Conservatives are threatening to release more potentially damaging videotapes of Michael Ignatieff in an attempt to discredit the opposition leader.

"More potentially damaging"? More as in there were others? Guess I missed those, did they show Iggy snorting a rail off the ass of a Brazilian transvestite?

Actually that would probably help.

Perhaps they're referring to the Tory YouTube thing about how Ignatieff had the gaul to see the rest of the world rather than living in a bunker in Alberta or something.

And guess what?

The ads, by the Conservative Party of Canada, show images of Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff with the tag line of "just visiting."

A new poll has suggested that these ads may actually be doing more harm than good. A Canadian Press/Harris Decima survey showed more than 50% of Canadians said the ads have a negative effect on their opinion of Prime Minister Harper and his minority Conservative government.

Just 30% said the ads have prompted them to think less of Michael Ignatieff.

Not really sure how that's damaging but when you've got nothing to work with something is better... I guess. I mean check this shit out:

His remarks followed a particularly heated session in the Commons, in which Ignatieff called on the prime minister to fire Finance Minister Jim Flaherty over the ballooning federal deficit.

Harper shot back that the issue at hand should be the "credibility of the leader of the opposition."

Yes, that's really something Canadian care about over economic policy right now; what's the guy not in charge all about?

And here's, so far, is the best they've been able to dig up:

Ignatieff is already the subject of several Tory attack ads, which focus on comments he made before entering politics, and the decades he spent outside of Canada.

One ad features an old video interview in which Ignatieff refers to America as 'his country'.

In another Ignatieff is quoted as saying the 'the only thing he missed about Canada was Algonquin Park.'

Nope, doesn't really raise the dander, wake us up when you've got something with sex and drugs. Him saying America is "his country" sounds too weird not be taken out of context and since he's living here I suspect that he may like more than just Algonquin Park*.

So this is how the Tories roll; weak blackmail. Stop saying mean things about us in the the House or we'll release the tapes. Those with political savvy take the time to add at least a veneer of decency claiming public interest as the first and foremost motivation and the political fallout a delightful bonus. Not these clowns, they probably think Machiavellian is something made by Chef Boyardee.

I think this whole thing smacks of Harper's frustration; there he is, Prime Minister, at the peak of his career and he can't do a goddamn thing because it's a minority government. He can't do anything radical or unique to put his name in the history books (yes Canadian history but still) all he can do are tiny careful baby steps.

Of course what he doesn't get is that we've got the perfect system, all our political mavens work under the Sword of Damocles and no one is going to sneeze for fear of bring it down. I think that's why Canada has had a smoother time than our Southern cousins; our government is in fear of its people.

Stephen wants an election and one he can win for reals. Sorry Harpy, it ain' t gonna happen:

The latest survey, conducted for Canwest News Service and Global National, shows the Harper Conservatives have edged up two percentage points in recent weeks, to capture a slim lead with 35 per cent support.

They're a caretaker government and will be until the Liberals come up with leadership we like then their blue asses will be tossed back into opposition until the Liberals need another wilderness timeout.

*On a camping trip there I heard wolves howling, very cool and spooky for the first hour then I was all "Shut the fuck up!" when they kept waking me up. If only I had a helicopter and Sarah Palin.