Steady on, progressive friends

That EKOS poll, thrilling as it is, may well turn out to be an anomaly. Sure, the corporate media love the momentary drama, but at the end of the day they'll do their duty and ensure that only the blue and the red –i.e., the two parties owned by Bay Street and/or the oil patch – are seen as "realistic" options. It's how they roll.

If there's truly an NDP surge, it may well turn out to be little more than today's Shiny Object.

Again, our priority has to be denying Harper his majority. That's got to be obvious by now, unless you like living in corporatist theocracies where ignorance, stupidity and belligerence are celebrated as civic virtues.

In that light, it doesn't really matter whether the Liberals or the NDP finish second; the acid test will be whether they can work with the Bloc to ensure that Harper, once held to a minority, does not secure the confidence of the House. Another Harper government is something this country may not survive.

Related posts:

• Wow. Just ... wow.
• To my dear Liberal and NDP friends ...
• When Liberals and New Democrats snipe at each other, who wins?
• Eye on the ball, comrades

Eye on the ball, comrades

To quote Fern Hill:  Stop it! All of you!

Do I have to remind you what happens when Liberals, NDPers and other opposition parties slag each other? Do we really want to be tearing each other down when the focus needs to be on getting rid of the foul Harper Regime?

Another election meme: #progressivemajority

Worthwhile suggestion on the Tweeter from @Falsum.

Really, isn't everyone thoroughly sick by now of the Harpobots' coalition fearmongering? It's time to kneecap this cynical strategy of falsehood, distortion and misdirection once and for all.

Let's not get too excited about the new anti-Harper ads

So the Liberals have released a couple of new attack ads highlighting Harper's vulnerabilities and making Iggy feel all warm and squishy.

Great. So you can sling mud and get your guy to wear fuzzy sweaters. I'm sure the Conbots are quaking in their boots.

Coalitions and reclaiming the discursive turf

This is how Steve Harpoon wants us to think about the idea of a coalition.

(All right, all right. I wanted an image for "monster under the bed," and, well ... whaddayagonnado. Cheap laugh.)

Harper's Pravda, the absent opposition, and a little late-summer serendipity

How does the bus even move, with so many people underneath?

Can't remember where I saw this gem* earlier this week.  It was a reference to a noxious habit we've been observing from the PMO: demonize, smear, fire and/or squeeze out people who go off-message. Even if they're professional public servants whose careers have been devoted to impartiality. (Perhaps not "even," but "especially.")

Writing in Thursday's Globe, Lawrence Martin suggests that the latest official in the Harper gunsights is CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein. Something to do with the CRTC not moving quickly enough to grant the kind of broadcasting licence being sought by Sun Media for its new "Fox News North" network. We all know, by now, who's behind that.

This shouldn't, of course, come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the Harper modus operandi. It's not as if he's demonstrated much tolerance for opposing viewpoints, or for people who don't jump fast enough when he snaps. But as one of Martin's sources argues, do we really want a society in which the ruling party gets to decide who gets broadcasting licences? As one observer suggested, this is Maurice Duplessis stuff.

I'd like to think that on top of the G20 clusterfuck, the self-inflicted wounds over the census, the idiocy over Homegrown, and the lies about the coalition, this might be the tipping point, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Least of all because in the current political landscape, I'm not sure what the tipping point is, or whether there even is such a thing any more. It's not as if Harper's drooling base is going to walk over any of these things.

The only thing that gives one pause about Martin's column is his observation that Harper

must have been pleasantly surprised that the developments at the Sun chain caused barely a ripple of opposition from other Canadian media.

Really, why would the rest of the corporate media say anything? So another conglomerate wants to set itself up with a broadcast operation? It's not as if we're going to start hearing new voices and new perspectives that the owners and managers don't want us to hear. The whole script about the "liberal media" ought to be evident as the transparent Rove/Ailes contrivance that it is. 

But back to the tipping point, if there is one. A few days ago Silver Donald Cameron, in a column that will no doubt be caricatured, misrepresented and misinterpreted because of its reference to the Nazis, wondered when Canadians would start to worry about the Harper government's ruthless manipulation, arbitrary proroguing of Parliament, contempt for the Supreme Court, and systematic assaults on the infrastructure of democratic institutions.   

Authoritarian, vindictive, contemptuous, ideologically driven and arbitrary. Not to mention how stupid they clearly think we are. So what can we do? 

The answer clearly isn't in Parliament. The Liberals vote with the government whenever it matters. Collectively, the opposition parties don't have the courage or the organizational wherewithal to force a non-confidence vote (Um, Iggy? You know this is a minority parliament, right?), and in the unlikely event that they actually develop spines (or discover e-mail), Harper can just prorogue again. It's painfully clear how easily he can get away with it.

Back to Mr. Cameron, who suggests, quite reasonably, that the opposition must come from outside parliament. Not sure how easy that's going to be, given that dissent seems to be bringing jackboots on the stairs in the middle of the night or riot-squad gorillas, but it's a start. And yes, he's probably right about how effective signing a petition is going to be, but perhaps he's also onto something when he wonders whether the latest series of embarrassments might nudge more Canadians out of their apathy. As he puts it, 

This is an odd point to be drawing a line in the sand, but if that’s where the push-back begins, so be it.

A critical mass? A coalescence of opposition? A collective realization, finally, of just how dangerous this gang of thugs is?

A guy can dream ...

(Update: tip of the hat to Chet for the Pravda reference, and to *Cameron for the bus analogy.)

(Update 2: reworded to more accurately reflect relationship between Quebecor and Sun Media. Hat tip to Antonia.)

Again with the coalition fearmongering?

Can we give it a rest, for Christ's sakes?

In their seemingly endless quest to generate bullshit stories and manufacture controversies (honestly, don't these people have better things to do?  Like, maybe, I don't know ... govern competently?), the Harpokons are reviving the moldy and discredited spectre of a coalition among the opposition parties.  Stand by for the usual flood of crap:  anti-democratic, coup, seizing power against the will of the people, yargle bargle bleghhh ...

It's beyond me how this nonsense continues to find any traction. As anyone versed in even the most basic civic principles knows, this is how parliamentary democracies work: you get to govern only as long as you can command the confidence of Parliament. Once you lose that, your mandate is gone.  Moreover, coalition governments function all over the world, anywhere there are parliamentary democracies. They're a fact of life. Describing the possibility of a coalition as anti-democratic isn't just disingenuous -- it's a lie. A Pants-On-Fire lie. Plain and simple. It is a deliberate and calculated attempt to mislead.

And yet, in the poisonous atmosphere of partisanship and misinformation that seems central to the Harper government's modus operandi, that simple fact has been transformed into a rhetorical cudgel used to beat the opposition and the media. Pointing out the facts about how things work, or citing parliamentary convention, isn't merely a statement of fact any more. Now it's taken as evidence of bias and partisanship.

Never mind their sustained and systematic assault on the infrastructure of democracy for the moment. Among the Harpokons' many acts of vandalism against Canadian civil society, that's got to be one of the worst. The goalposts defining civic discourse have been moved so far that the simple act of telling the truth in the face of lies and bullshit is now not merely a risky act -- it's taken as evidence of disloyalty. The farther down this road we allow them to take us, the harder it's going to be to get back.