You can be forgiven for thinking that Dean del Mastro is a scumbag. God would.

He doesn’t decide who is a “good Catholic” and who isn’t. God does.

If I were Justin, I’d handle this like we used to at Loyola or Bishop Carroll or Our Lady of Lourdes – behind the church, face to face.

Justin is a way nicer guy than me, so he won’t. But I have no doubt he’d knock del Mastro’s porcine form into next week. You could sell tickets to that one. Hell, you could retire the national debt.

Anyway, this one has gotten me so pissed off, I think we Grits should make Dean del Mastro the next Benedict Baldy. Let’s get together and kick the crap out of him the next time he runs.

Who’s in?

UPDATE: And another thing: does he really want to have the personal lifestyles of some of his fellow Conservatives – including the one he names – scrutinized to see how rigorously they observe what conservatives consider to be “traditional” Christianity? He won’t like the result.

FURTHER UPDATE: Hey, look who voted against a well-known and well-established Catholic principle: Dean del Scumbag!  Del Scumbag voted against reaffirming Canada’s rejection of capital punishment, both here and abroad. Dean del Mastro favours capital punishment – and that’s contrary to the long-standing position of the Vatican and the Catholic church.  So I encourage everyone to contact The Most Reverend Nicola De Angelis, c.f.i.c., D.D., the Bishop of Peterborough, and other Catholic clergy, and demand del Mastro’s excommunication. You can contact every Roman Catholic priest in Peterborough right here. What’s good for the Liberal goose is good for the Conservative gander, isn’t it?

Comments (43)

One, here’s Testy Tom speaking candidly to Barbara Yaffe – who, BTW Tom, works for a newspaper and will quote you and all that: “There’s nothing I find more galling than to have the fact of being from Quebec used as a wedge issue, saying: The guy is from Quebec, he cannot lead a national party,” he said. “We’ve come full circle from the time it was seen as an advantage to the time it’s used as a slur against you.”

Two, here’s what the black-hearted CRG elf lords will turn that beaut into, in just a few months from now: “NDP LEADER [OR DEPUTY LEADER] SAYS HIS OWN PARTY IS AGAINST QUEBEC.”

And, three, here’s my suggested slogan about this guy, gratis: “Thomas Mulcair – once an idiot, still an idiot.”

Comments (6)

Get a load of this:

“Several ministers and influential Liberals pleaded with the Liberal war room to insert some humble pie in the Premier’s message, to no avail.“

Like, as if the author would have access to the intimate thoughts of “several ministers and influential Liberals.”  Let alone “the Liberal war room,” which I sort of know something about. Uh-huh.  Riiiight.

So what is this about, you ask?

Oh, golly, I don’t know.

 

Comments (1)

BCL strikes again. Check it out:

“Mr. Lemire” is Marc Lemire, a former leader of the violent neo-Nazi group, the Heritage Front. “Mr. Chisu” is a Conservative MP. He’s new.

I will be charitable, therefore, and assume for a moment that Mr. Chisu and the young Mr. van Vorstenbos didn’t know Marc Lemire has been a central figure in the most powerful anti-Semitic, white supremacist group to emerge in Canada since the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the Eighties.  I will, however, say that they are supposed to check these things out in advance, and not be total idiots.  Which, in this case, they are.

If, on the other hand, Messrs. Chisu and van Vorstenbos knew who Mr. Lemire was, and sent their pithy letter anyway, I will only say this:

Thornhill, York Centre, Eglinton-Lawrence, Don Valley West, North York, et al., welcome home.  We missed you.

UPDATE: Greg Elmer, who I like, suggested the headline was off, and I think he’s right.  Thus the tweak, above. Grammar is everything!

Comments (23)

At the moment, I am about 100 friends short of having 5,000 friends on my Facebook page. According to Facebook’s rules – which make sense to me, for what it’s worth – I will no longer be able to accept new friends after the 5,000 number is hit.  Given the rate at which I get friend requests, I expect that to happen sometime next week.

So, for the folks who get stuff from me on my Facebook page – posts from here, and also stuff I don’t post here – things are going to be different.  After 5,000 is hit, I am going to be posting to my newly-constituted “fan” page, found here. I may not be posting to the old Facebook page anymore – it depends on what the Facebook elf lords let me do.  If I can do both pages, somehow, I will.

In the meantime, c’mon over to the fan page, if you like, and join the fun.

And, yes, to answer the question you may now be pondering.  I really do know all 5,000 of my friends.

We are very close.

 

Comments (14)

It’s the Steyr-Mannlicher HS.50.

Like the Ruger Mini 14 – the type of weapon used in the Montreal massacre, when 14 young women were murdered at École Polytechnique – the Steyr-Mannlicher will now be easier to acquire. And, according to the Toronto Star, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives plan to make both exempt from their new gun law.

Some days, it’s hard to come up with the words to describe this government. Other than this:

They make me want to puke.

UPDATE: This sentence in the Star story – “…in information sent to the Star, its researchers point out that under the Conservative bill the Ruger Mini-14, the .50-calibre sniper rifle known as the Steyr-Mannlicher HS .50…” – I read conjunctively, not disjunctively.  They’re two different weapons, so I have amended the posting above, and offer apologies for those who were confused by the Star story, as I was.

But the criticism remains: a government that thinks it should make it easier to get the Ruger Mini 14 or the Steyr-Mannlicher is a government that has lost its mind.

UPDATER: I’ve spammed dozens of comments that were racist, disgusting, libellous or off-topic.  As of this point, any more crap and we will post your identifying info and make it way easier for you (and your guns) to be found.

Comments (287)

With the exception of some of the loons who regularly haunt the comments section below this space, you are a sane person.

And, being sane, you haven’t paid any attention to the federal NDP’s leadership contest.

Who can blame you? The New Democrats seemingly have more leadership candidates than they do caucus members. The race is boring. Most of the contestants are nobodies, and that’s putting it nicely. And all of them, to a one, lack Jack Layton’s charisma. So why bother to pay attention?

Well, if you don’t, rest assured: The Conservative Research Group (CRG) will happily do it for you.

The CRG is the innocuous-sounding appellation for the dozens of neatly barbered young Conservatives who toil in a government office building on Queen Street in downtown Ottawa. They’ve been around since 2006, when Conservative Leader Stephen Harper set up the office under the tutelage of his capable communications director-to-be, Sandra Buckler.

From the start, CRG apparatchiks have done a good job. They are swift, they are deadly, and they are relentless. Most notably, they made miserable the lives of successive Liberal leaders — Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff in particular.

And, now, the CRG are getting to work on the many folks vying for the NDP leadership.

Comments (10)

Destroying government records, as the Reformatories propose to do with the gun registry data, is against the law.

The Library and Archives of Canada Act demands that the disposal of records managed by government institutions “must occur under processes and procedures which permit the identification and preservation of archival and historical records.”

To be specific, per section 12. 1 of the Act, “no government or ministerial record, whether or not it is surplus property of a government institution, shall be disposed of, including by being destroyed, without the written consent of the Librarian and Archivist or of a person to whom the Librarian and Archivist has, in writing, delegated the power to give such consents.”

So, unless the top Librarian and Archivist has given the okay in advance, which I rather doubt, the Cons have announced that they plan to break their own law.

Ipso facto, call these guys.

You’re welcome.

Comments (46)

From today’s HT, a regular exchange between me and my pals Tim Powers, Karl Belanger:

What I find interesting about Tim’s broadside against the NDP isn’t so much what he said—after all, declaring “I’ll tax you more” isn’t much of a get-elected strategy. He’s right about that. But what I find interesting is that the Harper Death Kill Machine (HDKM for short) has now targeted Karl’s Dippers.

Welcome to the big leagues, Karl! You haven’t made it, politically, until the boys and girls (but mainly boys) in the CRG start spending untold thousands to smear you!

It follows a tried-and-true methodology, too. The CRG will throw punches at the various contenders for the NDP leadership, but nothing lethal. Mostly, they’ll just clip and catalogue every word you utter (and quite a few you don’t) between now and March.

And then, once the leader is picked—most likely my pal Brian Topp—they’ll swing down on you like a pack of ravenous jackals, which they closely resemble.

Offshore web sites. Libelous SO 31s in the privileged forum of the Commons. Nasty brown envelope stuff about the candidate as well as his/her family. Tax records. Unsourced videos. And, natch, wildly-out-of-context quotes (or made-up quotes) for radio and TV ads. Internet, too.

That’s their M.O. They’re not subtle, they’re not original, but they are convinced it’ll work. Because it worked against Iggy and Dion.

But here’s why it worked: IGGY AND DION DIDN’T RESPOND. Or, if they did, they responded too late.

It’s not in this Grit’s partisan interest to give you this free advice, Karl, but I like a lot of you guys. So here it is, in point form:

1. Rip their faces off, first.

2. Leave no charge unanswered.

3. Rip their faces off, again. Make them cry like babies.

That’s it. That’s the politics we’ve got, now, thanks to Mr. Harper et al.

It’s sink or swim, Karl. Welcome to the bigs.

 

Comments (37)

Sullivan is white supremacist who, typically, lies online about where she works.

She maintains a Twitter feed as “Right Girl” – where she smears blacks, Muslims, gays and others, and regularly suggests that minorities deserve to be “executed” – but she has recently tried to wipe all traces of her blog off the Internet.

We’re trying to serve her, but she’s elusive.  Anyone with information in that regard, we’d be grateful to hear from you.  Thanks.

Comments (32)