Is this what they call a cheap shot?

Four senior Conservatives charged with violating Elections Canada spending laws.

This could be where we juxtapose the news with all the soft-on-crime rhetoric.

Bracing for another flood of bullshit from the PMO and its flying monkeys

From Ottawa, we learn that the Harper government is preparing to stave off another round of criticism over the F-35 deal. A breathless release from the PMO suggests that our brave flyboys took to the skies to fend off a Russian attack, narrowly averting a heinous violation of our precious bodily fluids – er, our pristine northern sovereignty.

Must be hard standing up for what's right nowadays. Defending our northern skies from the godless commies is child's play compared to defending the Harperites decisions to scrap the gun registry, kill the long-form census, undermine harm-reduction drug strategies, and pursue untendered contracts for expensive military toys.

I've written previously about Insite and about the census, but the kerfuffle over the gun registry is particularly interesting, given that it sets the Harpokons squarely against the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. And indeed, the Attack Parrots™© at Sun Media are dutifully swinging into line, cueing up a chorus of ordinary hard-working tax-paying Real Canadians to target the CACP. Kory's certainly earning his pay.

OK then. The Harpokons' law-'n'-order agenda runs smack up against the police lobby.

Oh, so now they believe in statistics?

The guy who thinks men walked the earth with dinosaurs was at it again today.

Stockwell Day says crime is way up, so that's why the Harpokons need to drop $9-billion on new prisons - part of a policy initiative even Conrad Black has trouble with.

Well, where to begin?  How can this guy, and the government he's part of, speak with any credibility to any public-policy initiative whatsoever?  Especially given their wooden-headed insistence on scuppering the census, in the face of near-universal public condemnation and opposition from virtually every sector of society?  If the facts don't back them up, it seems, the Harpokons' first response is to neutralize the nation's most comprehensive collector and organizer of facts.

Second response, apparently, is to make up your own "facts."



A few years ago, Julian Fantino used to suggest - especially when the police budget was being discussed -  that crime was rising all over Toronto, and that we weren't safe in our homes, and that criminals were everywhere, and that the police weren't getting enough gratitude and appreciation.  This despite the fact that the crime rates were actually dropping once the data was analyzed and set out systematically.

When ideology leads you toward a punitive and vindictive view of the world, facts can become inconvenient.  When your focus groups tell you that that punitive approach plays well with your knuckle-dragging base, facts can become downright bothersome.  So when the facts get in the way of your fearmongering or race-baiting, well ... the Harper government's response  to that is now appallingly clear.