— Musings —05.28.2012 11:09 AM
We get letters
We get letters. Lately, we’ve been getting letters from New Democrats – all coincidentally anonymous, all suspiciously-similar, most helpfully originating from the National Capital – who profess to be profoundly, deeply hurt/angry/disappointed that Warren has been critical of Thomas Mulcair, their latest anointed saviour.
Here’s a summary of their talking points (which all read like talking points, naturally):
- Warren, I thought you were a progressive. So sad to see you talking like a conservative. So very, very sad. Sad!
- Warren, the Liberals are never coming back. You’re lashing out because you’re desperate. Ha, ha, ha, ha.
- Warren, the NDP is leading in the polls and that’s proof your attacks aren’t working. You are a [insert epithet here].
And so on.
As you are perhaps aware, I have occasionally critiqued Conservatives over the years. I’m known for that (I even have a book coming out about that). Most of the time, most Conservatives react to my stuff with humour and a shrug. Sometimes, they even want to hear what I have to say (as Sun News Network did, and does, and they pay me well for it).
Dippers, I have found, are different. Dippers are pious, condescending, humourless windbags. They regard any criticism – even, say, about how incredibly funny it is that a self-professed environmentalist like Angry Tom would have multiple garages for multiple vehicles – as treason. They go apeshit whenever you have the temerity to poke fun at them. (They’re like Paul Wells, in effect, except there’s a whole party of them.)
I’m a bit surprised that I even have to say this, but here goes.
Here’s the deal, Dipper kiddies: I’m a Liberal. Your idiot leader turned his back, categorically, on a partnership with Liberals. He said he didn’t want peace, when a few of us were suing for it. He said no.
So, Dipper folk, we are therefore enemies. As with Conservatives, I will do my level best to step on your throat. I will hit you, over and over. I will rip your face off, if you give me half a chance.
You are the enemy, and that’s a role you chose for yourselves.
Now, quit sending your whiny letters, because they’re fucking boring, and so are you.
🙂
x 2
The violence that finds its way into your posts from time to time is a bit off putting.
I could assume it’s hyperbole but it doesn’t feel like it is.
Heheh….
very concise.
🙂
Those letters are very lame. They read like typical small town newspaper letters to the editor written by a Conservative supporter.
This comment exemplifies why the Liberal Party is positioned in many people’s minds as the party of elites — and why it is in danger of becoming irrelevant. I knocked in doors for Terry Duguid in Winnipeg South last election. He should have won. He lost — by a greater margin than our candidate lost in the previous election. People on the doorsteps had it in their minds that the Liberal Party had become the party of entitled snobs.
What does my comment have to do with Liberals? The letters are lame, they sound like children or morons wrote them. There is no wit, no insight, they are just stupid. And it has been my observation that people who write letters of similar intelligence to newspapers are generally conservative in leaning, or at least kind of dumb populist. My main point is that they are un-typical for NDP leaning letter writers. This has nothing to do with so called Liberal elitism, just basic common sense.
You know, they might be onto something. There are a lot of entitled snobs in the Liberal Party. But I would also venture to say that there always have been, and its not a Liberal-specific phenomenon either. That said, we’ve been a little self-absorbed lately and forever preoccupied by internal struggles –God help me, I’m already sick of hearing about leadership. Once we remember that the entire point of governing is to do the best by the people of Canada (not JUST beating the snot out of the opposing parties), I suspect we’ll fare better in the polls.
You are priceless. And bang-on about the Dips!
You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
Former Liberal.
Great advice for those who want flies. Who ever wants flies? Is there a problem getting flies?
You, Tim Sullivan, you … mensch. As gods are my witness, I will use that line of yours until the day I die.
Well said Mr Kinsella…….Ive yet to find a socialist that talks the talk AND walks the walk……I think that variety died out with Tommy Douglas and Stanley Knowles…..Most I find are Bollinger Bolshies…..
Warren,
Maybe now you will realize why the rest of us thought your talk of merger was so idiotic to begin with. Welcome to reality lol. 🙂
Way to call out the dippys. I find it astounding they think of themselves as progressives. Most of them are regressive ‘union legbeakers’ who are trying to turn back the clock to Jimmy Hoffa days. God help us if they ever come to power!! Canada does not need their dinosaur economics.
Oh please. You’ll drown in all that hyperbole.
so lame. shame on all of you. *Hears Harper cackling in the distance*
I fully expect you to go after NDP politicians.
What’s surprised me is that you’re burning the bridge on progressive policies. (Or maybe it’s not surprising, considering Liberal history post-PET.)
You’ve frequently said that the left can’t win unless they unite under one banner. Appreciating that there will be top-down merger… how do you expect to unify progressives under the Liberal banner if you keep shitting on them?
Against taxing the wealthy. Against regulating the oilsands. And then you start staking out right-wing ground on Omar Khadr.
People are going to start wondering if you’re an NDP mole, trying to drive any remaining progressives out of the Liberal Party and into the NDP.
(argh, that should have read “appreciating there will NOT be a top-down merger…”)
So, Dipper folk, we are therefore enemies. As with Conservatives, I will do my level best to step on your throat. I will hit you, over and over. I will rip your face off, if you give me half a chance.
Well… it’s good that you’re being honest.
If he’d been that in the attack on Muclair, he may not have received so many letters to begin with.
Well, I didn’t think he was trying to be friendly with his post in the first place with that post. 😉
>Bleep< I meant, I don't think he was trying to be friendly in the first place with that post. 😉
Dan…..I think the word “progressive” was hijacked a while back.
Nowadays, when one hears the word progressive we see images of extreme left wing fringe groups and other assorted marxists.
Progressive’s now count among their members:
-anti-semites (Israeli anti-Apartheid anyone? or Queers against Israeli?)
-marxists.
-socialists
-professional victims and whiners
-unions/thugs.
Not what the word “progressive” used to mean, I’m afraid.
Taxing the wealthy? Here’s a hint Dan….most wealthy people have actually EARNED what they have. They’re not all trust fund babies, or Wall street robber-barons. (though, too many are)
Regulating the oil sands? There’s not a thing wrong with using the resources, and the technology is making it cleaner as we speak. Would you prefer to buy your oil from dictatorships? Better yet….you should immediately stop driving/flying, or using any other means of transportation that is due to oil. By the way…that means you can only walk, as even a bicycle is built using energy…..and it is used by those evil, wealthy corporations.
Looks like you’re about to become a hunter-gatherer again eh?
Holy shit, you completely obliterated me. Harper wins!
Wah, wah, wah Libs. I thought you were “Canada’s Natural Governing Party”. Right?
Wah, wah, wah!
Get used to it. You guys are done like toast.
I just want to take a second and quickly point out how dumb the phrase “You guys are done like toast” sounds.
Let’s see, you tell a fib. You link to an article containing written and photographic evidence debunking the fib. A TWO car garage has TWO doors. “No, a proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It’s a proof. A proof is a proof, and when you have a good proof, it’s because it’s proven.
Actually, many two-car garages have a single, very wide door — one, in fact, quite similar to both of the garage doors on the front of Mulcair’s house.
I’m with Warren on this — space for four cars…
OK, I spoke too soon. Not 4 car.
I can see calling Mulcair out, if he is balling around Ottawa in a Hummer but a two car garage? Do we even know how many cars the Mulcair’s actually own? One? Two? Seventy-four? That would be a better metric of someone’s carbon footprint than the number of garage doors they happen to possess.
Attack the man’s policies or offer up new ones. All this little adventure did was make some people look pretty foolish and Thomas Mulcair wasn’t one of them.
Dippers offered Liberals the Keys to 24 Sussex in 2008, and it was the Liberals who said no, we’ll get there ourselves without you. The Liberals tore up an agreement signed by every member of their caucus. And now, four years later, Harper is still in power, and the Liberals are selling the furniture.
As a dipper myself, I’m not very impressed by these letters or the campaign itself.
I disagree with some of what you write here, but I enjoy your writing and agree with most of what you say.
As long as the NDP and Liberals are separate parties, yes, they/we are political enemies. To think otherwise is foolish and naive.
For the record, I wish Muclair was critizing the oil sands more for their environmental impact than playing the Dutch Disease card. In forty years, our children and grandchildren won’t particularly care much about regional economic disparities and the impact of temporary currency rates on the manufacturing sector; they’ll have bigger problems to worry about.
People vote based on the here and now. I don’t suppose too many people in St. Thomas Ontario believe the Bitumin industry is creating any jobs for them, right now. ANOTHER 500 jobs gone with Timken’s consolidation in the Deep South.
Dude, in 140 years Alberta will STILL be screaming “national energy program! national energy program!”
In 140 years they won’t be mining bitumen anymore. They will be a poor province again unless they invest in developing technology that will make oil irrelevant — before another jurisdiction does.
Now youve done it dips……always better to have Mr. Kinsella with ya, rather than agin ya……..it has ever been thus……
What? Sez you. Silly comment. Go outside and play now.
Ignatieff refutes you.
Yeah, and where is Iggy today? No where.
Big deal what he says. Obviously, he didn’t know what he was talking about and the Canadian people confirmed it.
Canada’s last 3 fraud elections:
Harper cheated in 2006 with in-and-out fraudulent transactions to get around spending limits.
Harper cheated in 2008 by calling an illegal election.
Harper cheated in 2011 with misleading and deceptive phone calls.
Stephen Harper is not our Prime Minister. Harper stole all 3 last elections. It’s much worse than we’ll ever know.
http://www.leadnow.ca/robocall-fraud
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Hey Lumley – shouldn’t you be off in your basement blogging smartass remarks about murder and body desecration? Or perhaps photoshopping glamour photos of yourself?
I came from a family where my father was a chief of staff to a well known NDP member and in fact he (my father) was a political science prof. I think he has voted for all three parties at times. He is pragmatic like that… This version of the NDP and the NeoCons are the same stripe of different breads. It is dangerous days, It is republicans Vs. Weird Canadian Socialism. A bit like Greece with Neonazis and Communists. With Jack it made some humanist sense, with this clown it is a complete joke. Reason over Passion. With that said, there is a red sign on my parents lawn in Etobicoke Centre.
And whom was your father. More made up Lib stuff. You guys ARE DESPERATE to paint the NDP and the Tories as the same, and that is a reach. Pathetic, Matt, Pathetic.
My dad was personal friends with Tommy Douglas, and thought the rise of the NDP was a grand thing.
You don’t speak for anyone else but yourself.
You are the same. Manipulating public opinion no matter the facts to gain some votes. Canadians are learning from the Conservatives to spot disingenous clap trap.
The NDP is so insecure with their policies and party, they feel the need to respond to every opinion that DARES challenge their twisted view of reality.
The NDP is insecure? I didn’t say I was speaking for the NDP, but if it makes you fill better “Chris”, then you keep telling yourself that.
Pathetic.
May I say that I think that it’s funny that you don’t hold the same to Matt with the “More made up Lib stuff” and “You guys” comments.
You’re not a spokesperson for the NDP, these are just your opinions, but you seem so willing to not extend the same favor to someone else, the “You don’t speak for anyone else but yourself” notwithstanding.
They kept pot-shooting Libs during their eternal 3rd party status. It’s payback time, bitches.
Their third party status wasn’t eternal, was it? Let’s fight Harper, instead.
Here’s another picture of what you describe as a “four car garage”:
http://business.financialpost.com/2012/05/28/maybe-mulcair-had-it-right/
I have donated a significant amount of money to the Greens, Liberals and NDP, in the last 15 years. I have knocked on doors for candidates from all three of those parties in federal elections. Most recently I campaigned for Terry Duguid in Winnipeg South but voted NDP in my own riding in order to block a Conservative (I watched the debate from Terry’s campaign office when Jack eviscerated Ignatieff with the line: “If you want to apply for the job you have to show up for work.”) I even attended a Green Party campaign school once and sat on the Green Party EDA after Judy W sandbagged the Liberal lead with that trumped up RCMP letter about investigations in Goodale’s office. Now I see liberals and NDP fighting again — and rhetoric that is rapidly turning me off of the Liberal Party, even if I am equally frustrated with Mulcaire’s idiotic comments. The Green Party may get my attention again — but there are still too many oddballs in the party for them to do anything but split votes. What the hell is a guy like me supposed to do in a place like this? Meanwhile poverty worsens, the rivers die faster, and Harper changes rules to allow meat processing plants to accept road kill.
Answer: Like me, you will have to leave the country. Hope you are lucky enough to have a second passport. And then agitate from outside. Our reputation abroad is still far far far too rosy! That “good boy scout” image will die far too slowly.
Is This The House Of A Prime Minister? © 1993
… and you politicos wonder why we the great unwashed masses increasingly don’t participate in your charade of democracy. “Step on your throat”. Really?
And people actually pay you to think for them? Barfight!
“Dippers are pious, condescending, humourless windbags. They regard any criticism – even, say, about how incredibly funny it is that a self-professed environmentalist like Angry Tom would have multiple garages for multiple vehicles – as treason. They go apeshit whenever you have the temerity to poke fun at them. ”
Lines like this are why I keep coming back to this site. Awesome. And completely true.
I’ve said it before, Jack Layton’s legacy is a Conservative majority government.
You said it, brother.
Funny, I’d peg that more as Paul Martin’s/Stephane Dion’s/Michael Ignatieff’s legacy.
“Dippers are pious, condescending, humourless windbags. They regard any criticism – even, say, about how incredibly funny it is that a self-professed environmentalist like Angry Tom would have multiple garages for multiple vehicles – as treason. They go apeshit whenever you have the temerity to poke fun at them. ”
LOL I thought I was the only one who exerienced that. Had to delete a whole batch of them from Facebook. Add in self-righteous hypocrites as well. The majority of the NDP puff balls I’ve met with are all puff and no um balls.
But the frightening thing, is more people are buying their complete bullshit. The Liberals have a significant opportunity here to present to Canadians a plan that is based in reality rather than the cheap rhetoric the NDP spews and the divide and conquer hate of the Conservatives.
BRAVO!!!!!
Is this post the equivalent of Queen Vic’s ‘We are not amused.’?
ND’s ‘pious’ used to work, but was ripped off by the Reform in the early 1990’s.
A two-car garage is proof of–what, exactly? I’m genuinely curious.
By the way, I have a good sense of humour. Laughed all the way through this post of yours. 🙂
Half-tons…
…With Hemis…
…In Our Four-Car Garages…
WE ARE NOT MAKING THIS UP.
© 2006
Dear NDP members… Your leader is going to lose on purpose just to show you how much he hates the Liberals. I hope you are all so excited by Harper’s second uncontested majority. But I’m sure you will all keep sending him money because at the end of the day its all about your party’s ability to make silly, meaningless pronouncements isn’t it?
Haven’t checked the polls recently have you Sean. This one is from Forum released today:
NDP 36%
Conservative 32%
Liberal 20%
Also on Approval Rating
Mulcair 41% approval; 31% disapproval: Net = +10%
Rae 31% approval; 36% disapproval Net = -5%
Harper 31% approval; 62% disapproval Net = -26%
Poll predicted that under current conditions – NDP would win minority government
Results were identical to Environics poll from earlier this month (which also had NDP at 36, Tories at 32; liberals at 19).
“So, Dipper folk, we are therefore enemies. As with Conservatives, I will do my level best to step on your throat. I will hit you, over and over. I will rip your face off, if you give me half a chance. ”
Didn’t you used to say they’re your opponents not your enemies?
No, I detest them. I detest you, too.
“So, Dipper folk, we are therefore enemies. As with Conservatives, I will do my level best to step on your throat. I will hit you, over and over. I will rip your face off, if you give me half a chance.”
Le jeu commence. Bonne chance.
In a more perfect world, ominous music would be playing in the background. Sadly, the funding for personal philharmonic orchestras will remain at the current pathetically low level of zero dollars a year until we do something about it and elect an NDP government…or somehow get it attached to a military appropriations bill in the U.S. Congress (see…nerd humour…we’re not all that bad).
Oh best post ever.
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Good ol’ village idiot Lumley loves it when people get all pissy and violent. Liberals indeed.
Tories Use Tax Payer’s Money for Online Thumb Clickers
Conservatives have been particularly scrupulous about pushing their views into the comments section of websites,
… and many of their online assaults appear orchestrated.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/steveharper/article/925731–harper-s-liberal-fixation
☻☻☻
Oh Lumley you little vixen, if only I get paid for the barbs I toss out. What party coffers are paying your salary?
A liberal campaign strategist telling the NDP they are his enemies?
How redundant! Just like the Liberal Party of Canada!
I’m a fan of yours Warren, but you do sound a little bitter about the NDP’s success.
Really, huh? That’s nice.
NDP success? just like pissing on the coals – evaporates pretty fast
Warren Kinella, whose website is decorated with praise from Stephan Harper, Sun News, and National Post, tells Dippers he is their enemy!
Right back at you slick!
So now that the Liberals have written off the 30+% who voted NDP last election…
… why can’t I point out that it’s incredibly funny to see Liberals applauding as they drive off a cliff?
One of your best posts. Ever.
Serge,
Get thee to Ottawa as quickly as possible. The Liberal brain trust D-E-S-P-E-R-A-T-E-L-Y needs many more guys like you…
Warren,
Pictures of non-four car garages notwithstanding, I guess your last couple of posts calls for a “Welcome to no-merger-with-the-NDP faction” from someone.
Sure it took you a little extra time to get here but who am I to judge? Beer’s on you or something.
I hope this doesnt extend to the green party, I think Elizabeth May should take over the lib party:)
and on the bright side, I guess it will make for interesting reading, me I like Nathan Cullen but the rest of the NDP dont do much for me.
Kids, think of the “yellow press” from the 19th century — each paper had a partisan alignment and was honest and open about it.
Doesn’t mean it isn’t worth reading, but you read it knowing which filter is on what you get.
Here, you’re going to get stuff that — although often analytically very interesting — will necessarily have a tilt towards the Liberal Party of Ontario. (Love-hate towards the Liberal Party of Canada, but that’s a fun old quarrel. :p)
Don’t get angry at that — it is what it is.
I think it’s worth reading. I assume you all do too, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.
Warren I think you’re great, and I’m not even a Liberal.
Only the NDP would assume that Official Opposition status would make you BFFs with all parties other than the one in power.
P.S. Any news from your publisher about whether/when your upcoming book can be pre-ordered in ebook format?
In both truth and fairness, I have several friends who are members of the NDP or who have consistently voted for the NDP, who do not remotely resemble this caricature (and that is precisely how Kinsella’s post should be read). They are passionate about policy and politics, but also reasonable, critical in their thinking, open to informed debate, and a helluva lot of fun to have a drink with while debating both.
That said, in my experience, Conservatives generally do tend to enjoy a vigorous, epithet-laden argument (because a Conservative wouldn’t be a Conservative without slightly paranoid denunciations of your Machiavellian plots to ruin this country – which you clearly hate, you unpatriotic bastard! – while Liberally pissing on the remaining shreds of the moral fabric of society which you have torn asunder); but they are mostly willing to get as good as they give.*
Whereas Dippers tend to be insufferably sanctimonious, self-righteously decrying your every criticism of their sacrosanct policies whose perfect justice commands – commands! – that the conscience of mankind yield to their legislative agenda (oh, and they’ll tear you a new one for offhandedly using “mankind” rather than “humankind” or “humanity”, you unreformed misogynistic bastard!). Their hearts are pure. Their intentions are without blemish. They stand for and with the people – all the people – and don’t let forty years of polling and elections tell you different … except, of course, for the people who don’t embrace their policies, because they are foes without conscience. They are the social democratic elect and in your unworthy dissent you could not possibly have anything ethically defensible or substantively enlightening to say about social justice and the equitable redistribution of health. This is why, in no small part, I would tear off my left arm and beat myself into a coma before filling out a membership card for the NDP.
And the Liberals? We’re smug, devious, and frequently ruthless motherf*ckers – and all it got the country was its own flag and national anthem, the Charter, the patriation of the constitution, the Canada Health Act, the Official Languages Act, reform of our immigration system, peacekeeping, the abolition of capital punishment, two referendum victories over the separatists, and nearly a decade of balance budgets and economic prosperity while safeguarding the banks (oh, and we saw the country through the Second World War, brought it into the UN and NATO, kept it out of Vietnam and Iraq, and helped to end ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo). So, yeah, I admit it: we’re smug motherf*ckers.
* The Harperites are, of course, a different breed. They’re the spawn of Satan that turned out bad.
Pretty reasonable post here. Goes to show you there’s reasonable people and jerks in every party.
I’m here 100% for a Liberal perspective. I expect to see pro-Liberal partisanship. Sometimes as an ally, when there’s a shared agenda. (The Charter of Rights and our federal health system were anticipated by a Premier of Saskatchewan named Tommy Douglas, and the NDP has stood consistently for peace, diversity and human rights.) Sometimes as an “operative”, when I’m trying to understand the Liberal strategy. (Although I have no high level power to act on what I know. Just grassroots influence.) So I’m not surprised when I see an insult thrown at the NDP.
Some of the insults against the NDP are even fair. For example, Dalton McGuinty outflanked Andrea Horwath on the environment. And yeah, some New Democrats are so hyperpartisan as to believe that nothing good ever came out of the other parties (although perhaps no more hyperpartisan than the Liberals or the Conservatives).
The thing I don’t get is this. I keep hearing that — mathematically speaking — only a unified opposition can beat Steven Harper. I 100% get that the merger is off the table, and I might even say that’s a good thing. So how is the Liberal party going to get back all those ex-supporters that floated to the NDP? I’m not seeing it.
In other words, some of the attacks on the NDP are strategically incoherent.
The Liberal party needs to go hunting where the ducks are. So why am I seeing Liberal strategists making a play for this mythical New Democrat who wants unrestricted development of the oilsands, wants to freeze taxes for the wealthy at historic lows, and applauds the Conservative policy on Omar Khadr? I’m not even sure those are “centrist” ideas that appeal to the remaining 20% (and falling) of the Liberal diehards. I still meet plenty of diehard Liberals who sympathize with the occupy movement, understand the dutch disease, or support human rights in spite of the “war on terror” rhetoric… or all of the above.
The last resort, of course, is that maybe the Liberal party saw the huge defection to Alison Redford, and are making a play for the center-right. But then 2015 will look a lot like the upcoming election in BC. Which leads me to believe that said Liberal strategists actually *want* to hemorrhage voters to their left and divide voters on the right, so that the NDP can win.
Warren, keep up with what you’re doing. I love your comments.
Hey Warren,
I noticed you summarized the letters that were sent.
Would be great to see the letters in there full glory.
Would you be willing to post the full unedited versions?
I said they were talking points, for the love of God. Are you deliberately obtuse, or is it an accident?
Oh, for the love of dog, Harper and the Harpercons are all laughing at these comments. Because, there’s no way the progressives are going to co-operate. Guess who wins? Dr. Stevil, of course.
Overly partisan Liberals and NDPs outta be ashamed. They are NOT putting the country ahead of their petty partisanship.
That is very sad.
The problem is not us, it’s the party leaders & their egos. We, the people, are all for it while they dream of the Sussex throne.
Best WK blog post ever!
Beware a liberal scorned!!
I always thought sanctimonious was the best adjective for the Dippers. But humourless works well too. Let’s remember that this party has core supporters that seriously believe that nationalizing the steel industry would be a good thing to do if the party ever takes power.
The NDP wants to Nationalize everything. Remember, they don’t BELIEVE in private property…they believe in Government control of the economy. They believe this would be in the best interest of Canadians because the NDP mindset is invariably one of superiority. Simply put…they think they know what is best for you. They don’t trust you to make your own decisions, because frankly, only NDP folks know what is right.
They have a totalitarian ideology. They don’t care who they hurt, because in the end they think they are the only people smart enough to tell you how to live. Rights be damned….you’ll do as your told.
Only in Canada…they couch it in feel good euphimisms.
I’m a jerk.