Manitoba MP Shelly Glover: Nothing to see here kiddies, just stay to the right

[Above: MP Shelly Glover doggedly sticks to her message that: "In PM Harpo's world, staying to the right is always the right choice."]

Does the Tory branding exercise know no shame?
Judge for yourself, read this:

St. Boniface Tory MP Shelly Glover recently offered Louis Riel students free water bottles, but trustees turned Glover down when they learned that the bottles would bear the Conservatives' logo.

"The bottles were personalized and had her name and the Conservative logo," Louis Riel school board chairwoman Marilyn Seguire said Thursday. ....

Seguire said that it was not clear how many water bottles Glover was offering, or how they would promote students' interest in French immersion.

.... Glover said she offered the water bottles as a way to congratulate students doing well in French immersion and as an incentive that would be available to other students if they did better in their French immersion courses.

"I went to a French immersion program. When I was in French immersion, we had incentives to speak French in the hallways," Glover said.

But when Glover was told that the school board had turned down the water bottles because they bore the Conseravtive[sic] logo, she said, "I know where you're going with this," and said she would have to gather more information before commenting further.

Don't know about you, I can hardly wait for the rationale she's going to pull out of her arse to justify this one. However, I doubt she will admit the truth; ergo, that it is part of the wider Tory plan to "get 'em young and get 'em early"

Update: Too funny. Just checked site-meter, in the 1/2 hour since the this post went up, it appears that at least one group has noticed it! Again, too funny. What do they care what a blogger thinks?

	gc.ca	Nov 13 2009	9:38:15 am	2	0:03
	gc.ca		9:32:31 am	1	0:00
	gc.ca		9:26:45 am	2	0:00
	gc.ca		9:20:56 am	3	18:07
	gc.ca		9:17:07 am	3	22:15

News release: "The Government of Canada Supports Victims of Crime"

"The Government of Canada Supports Victims of Crime"?

Jesus! Good thing they are not supporting the other side!

Yesterday's news release hyping the Department of Justice's "new online Victim Services Directory that will connect victims of crime with services available in their local communities" was really worthy, wasn't it? Not just another empty announcement, was it? With Harpo's Minister's Whack-nut and Wing-nut both at the podium yesterday morning, the announcement must have been meaningful? No?

Could it be otherwise?

To Whack-Wing's credit, their opportunistic announcement to mark National Victims of Crime Awareness Week was not without benefits. If you have been robbed, raped or buggered in B.C., Alberta, or Ontario this announcement had real import. The new online Victims Directory site indeed has a list of agencies that can help. In B.C.'s case there are 109 support agencies listed. In Alberta and Ontario there are 63 and 93 agencies respectively. Good. Victims of crime need all the support they can get.

But if you happen to live in Manitoba, and have been robbed, raped or buggered ... well, this announcement probably won't do you any good. You see, clearly the Tory's were more interested in getting the "news" out than in ensuring that it was providing all with equal information. If a victim of crime in Manitoba needed to rely on this site today they would find their options severely limited. You see, according to the federal government, in all of Manitoba, there are only 5 (five) agencies apparently able to offer victims of crime the support they need? And if you require counselling? Well, there is only ONE, and it, apparently is only for the elderly. Wow. Is this the best they could do?

Could Harpo's minister's not have ensured their much touted site was better equipped before they made an announcement? What is the battered woman from Churchill to do with this information? What are the abused in Snow Lake, Swan Valley, or Souris to do?

Well, apparently, unless you live in either Brandon, Hamiota, or Winnipeg you are shit out of luck. Because, apparently in my province, these are the only locations that have victim services agencies. By the way, if you live in Newfoundland and Labrador, your chances of finding support via this website is also extremely limited - 3 agencies.

So what does this tell us about Harpo and his Ass-Clown government? .

It tells us they are more interested in optics than details. It tells us that their pathetic attempt to be seen to be caring about ALL victims was more concerned with politics than results.

It is not so much that Whack & Wing do not care about VICTIMS in Manitoba, or Newfoundland and Labrador (probably no one believes that?); rather, it is that, in their rush to portray their Tory government as compassionate, these two Ministers of the Crown could not even be bothered to ensure the announcement they were making was really accurate (i.e. that their vaunted "valuable tool" would actually, as far as possible, help "victims and family members to identify local services in their area.") At a bare minimum, in Manitoba's case, they should have made an effort to incorporate the information from this site to see that victims here have as many options as possible.

But, when Tory time is of the essence and PR is the name of the game: Who really cares if the rape victim in Flin Flon, Manitoba has meaningful access to victim counseling agencies courtesy of Harpo's Government of Canada!

In Harpo's World all that matters is that the announcement got made. That the minions stayed on message. Yesterday's news release proves again that we are governed by those live by the mantra: "Fuck substance"!

"The Bruinooge Report": A Hamster's Delight

Oh freaking happy day!

Here in South Winnipeg my copy of Tory MP Rod Bruinooge's "Parliamentary Report" has arrived in the mail.

Whew! And here I was worried I would have nothing to line our Tory's cage with this week.

You see, "Tory" (our pea-brained shit-eating hamster) likes having the "Bruinooge Report" placed under its shavings.

A pleasant departure from the regular facile offerings of the Winnipeg Free Press, it gives our rodent something different to dig up and read during its downtime. The fact that our beloved four legged rodent then proceeds to gleefully crap all over the content of the "Bruinooge Report" is, I am sure, merely a coincidence. But I have to say, "Tory" does seem happier when he has Bruinooge's partisan pablum to keep him company.

If nothing else, at least Rod's 17" x 11" eight paged dark blue-hued offering is good for something: it improves the quality of life of our caged animals.

Tory MP Peter Kent Needs a Haitian Vacation

[as originally posted 01/08/09 on my formerly free thinking blog http://tworippingarseholes.blogspot.com ]

Rookie Tory MP and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs - and former TV newsman - Peter Kent has questioned the annual winter getaway choice of 600,000 plus Canadians this week by scolding those who flock to Cuba to escape the ball-busting cold as being "too willing to accept a candy coated vision" of life (in "an artificial bubble") on the island. Cuba "is still a dictatorship, any way you package it," Kent informed us. Huh?

Thanks for the metaphors Peter, but we two arseholes don`t believe that most Cuban-bound Canucks care one Cuban peso for what you think. Nor, presumably, do they care that you are wasting time demonizing the aging Castro regime as you flounder about looking for a way to promote Harpo's weak Latin America policy.

Not "an expert on the region", Kent's words should be appreciated for what they are: covering fertilizer for our pathetic approach to the region. Tasked with pushing Canada's "agenda" in the region, Kent is now putting all his experience from his years as a talking-head to good use - he's talking a lot. But words are cheap. And cheap words are nothing, if not a Tory mainstay, when it comes to Latin American policy.

Kent wants us to believe that the Western Hemisphere is "a top international priority for the Conservative government" and that Harpo & co. have a plan with "two-prongs" to deal it:

There's the aggressive economic agenda to forge closer ties with stable partners such as Brazil and Chile, while pushing free trade deals with Colombia and Peru. Underneath it all is a value-based policy that pushes democracy and human rights.

Unless, of course, you are Cuba.

If you are Cuba, you will note Canada has "been noticeably silent about" about you since Harpo came to power three years ago. Of course, this was because he was trying to curry favour with the Bush mal-administration when it took a page out of the Twilight Zone era of US policy and tightened the economic blockade around Cuba. When Bush moved to limit "travel to the island by Cuban Americans" and the amount of money they could send, Harpo (like a ventriloquism doll without a hand up its ass) stayed mute. He did not call on Bush to reconsider; he did not point out the hardship the restrictive US policy was causing; he made no plea for a "humanitarian" reconsideration of the effects the measures were going to have on US-Cuban kinship relations. No, he did none of that.

He did nothing.

As a Cuban scholar said, the business opportunities for Canada on the island were, for a time, paying dividends. Our opposition to the US embargo gave us credibility as honest brokers and our business was welcomed. But when Harpo & co. began "following US guidelines much more closely" than had Paul Martin, the Canadian-Cuban relationship began to "deteriorate." Canadian investors grew wary and the result is that Cuba’s economic relationship with Venezuela "has grown steadily stronger" in the interim, much more than it might have otherwise had we acted differently.

Now that Obama is poised to re-assess American-Cuban policy, what can we expect from our intrepid PM? Apparently, the tea-leaf reading Kent believes Obama "is going to...bring striking change to Cuba and its place in the hemisphere" and that Canada has a role to play in "engaging and encouraging" Cubans who have a "hunger for democracy and democratic change."

Well, if all that's the case Mr. Kent, why bother with the ridiculous "reminder" that Cuba is still a dictatorship? Is it not time for you, Harpo & co., and the Colombian-free-trade-cult over at Foreign Affairs to stop this kind of juvenile grandstanding? Better you should be making efforts to re-engage Cuban authorities now on both the political and trade fronts before Obama lifts the embargo. Is this too much to ask? Do we want to lose out on these opportunities, or, will we soon find ourselves directed to Haiti for our winter getaway because that is a place our government "supports?"

In fact, we think Mr. Kent, while he is reminding us of how the Western Hemisphere is a top priority, should visit Haiti - where we allocate more foreign aid than anywhere else but Afghanistan. Let him have a look around at our great "successes" there: disease, dislocation, and death. THEN come tell us what we should be thinking when we choose to escape yet another frosty parliamentary session dominated by you damn Tories and your stone cold lies.