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.

 

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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.

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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.

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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.

 

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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)

As we peer across the Atlantic — shaking our heads in wonder at the implosion of the European Union (EU) — give thanks, Canadians.

In comparative terms, we’re in pretty good shape. In fact, we’re in really good shape.

The European “leadership,” meanwhile, is busily at work on blowing itself to bits. The EU has become “ungovernable,” billionaire George Siros said this week, adding that “a dynamic of disintegration” is tearing through Europe.

Early on Thursday, European leaders hammered together a deal, of sorts, to save the Union from ruin. But the 11th-hour deal addresses the symptoms of the crisis, not the root causes. Greece still has a debt level that is an extraordinary 150% of its gross domestic product (GDP).

Italy, with a far larger and far more significant economy, still has a debt-to-GDP level of nearly 120%. Places like Ireland are deeply in recession already — and there, as in Belgium and supposed super-powers like Britain and Germany, the debt-to-GDP ratio hovers at or above 80%. The exit of one or more countries from the EU now seems inevitable.

The damage done to European economies has been mainly self-inflicted. In some Euro-zone nations, their approach to pensions, retirement, taxation and public spending is the stuff of science fiction. The Union did little or nothing to address the economic cancer that has now spread throughout Europe.

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Wow.

Rob Ford helped to elect progressives in every Ontario municipality on October 6.

Now he’s going to help elect progressives worldwide!

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Regulars will recall my suggestion that, if Stephen Harper’s Reformatories achieved a majority, you wouldn’t recognize Canada by the time he was done with it.

That process, I think, is well underway. The thing that has assisted the Reformatories, more than anything else, is declining participation in democracy. The Con voter base is smaller, but more motivated; if you can suppress the progressive vote – and/or keep it divided – you’ll keep winning.

The Occupy movement, in a very real sense, is the embodiment of Harper’s dream: one, they’re a group of mainly-young people who have given up on democracy. Two, they’re a group of mainly-progressive young people who lack leadership, and are divided on what should be their strategy and tactics.

Thus, we’re Harperized. It’ll be thus for years to come, if the progressive side of the spectrum doesn’t get its proverbial head out of its proverbial ass.

(And people wonder why guys like me chose provincial politics over federal. Wonder no more.)

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Now that he has become national news – and now that he has the entire country wondering how such a knuckle-dragging, mouth breathing hick could become mayor of Canada’s largest city – I figured I would go back in the archives and see if Rob Ford has always been this way.  My motivation was to understand him better. I mean, perhaps Rob Ford was smarter, way back when, and he hit is head on something, and it’s not really his fault.  That sort of thing.

He was elected to Toronto council in 2000.  A few months after his arrival, and after not much media attention, he was profiled – in the conservative National Post, of all places.  What they published about him (a) must be read and (b) makes clear that he has always been an idiot with anger management issues.  He will never change – notwithstanding the “secret” meeting he had with certain, um, well-known Conservatives who told him to get his act together, or else.

(Oh, and again: $300, minimum, for that tape, no questions asked.  I will then broadcast it on Sun News and here, in the hope that it will ensure Rob Ford’s defeat at the time of the next municipal election.)

The profile:

The odd rantings of young Rob Ford

(National Post, March 10, 2001.  By Don Wanagas, City Hall Columnist.)

What are the four words that people attending city council meetings most fear to hear these days?

The answer: “Councillor Ford to speak.”

That’s Councillor Ford as in Rob Ford. Young Mr. Ford (Ward 2 — Etobicoke North) has only been hanging out at Toronto City Hall for a few months now, but he has already made quite a name for himself. Not for anything he has actually done, mind you. Ford’s claim to fame are the outrageously incoherent speeches he likes to make expounding the supposed virtues of neo-Conservatism.

Alas, it is very doubtful he’s winning many converts to his cause. To help explain why, we return you now to the Thursday morning session of this week’s council meeting where Melville’s political braintrust has been busy debating the pros and cons of concepts like privatization and contracting out public services.

It has been a spirited but generally good-natured discussion thus far. Then, the meeting’s chairman, Deputy Mayor Case Ootes, utters the four dreaded words.

“Councillor Ford to speak.”

This is an unedited account of what Ford said.

“I have to give my head a shake because some of the rhetoric that comes out of the mouths of some of these councillors boggles my mind, I swear.

“This $200 that the province gave? How many of you guys gave it back to the province? How many gave it back to a special interest group? Did you? Fantastic. I think that’s great.

“Hey, Councillor [Raymond] Cho. You always keep complaining about $200. Did you give it back to the province? Did you give it back to the province?”

At this point, Ford is almost screaming.

“Walkerton. In Walkerton, I think people have been living under a rock. This was not Mike Harris’s fault. Walkerton. It was strictly the public sector that screwed it up; people drinking on the job and weren’t even competent at what they were doing. I think people haven’t been reading the papers.

“Competition is the best thing for the economy. Competition in public sector or private sector makes the mare gallop. It only makes a better person, makes a more efficient company when you have competition. I hope and I really hope the province makes this council 22 seats and we’ll see how really, really competitive you are. And then we’ll be efficient like our MPs and our MPPs having one per federal provincial riding.

“Another thing. Why does everyone blame the province? Everybody starts moaning and moaning about the province. Well, the province ruled this great province for 40 years, from ’40 to ’85, and things were going great until the Peterson government came and destroyed it. And then the Rae government came in and buried it. It was the Harris government that came in and did something positive.”

By now, the council chamber is in pandemonium. Ford is red with rage and screeching at the top of his lungs. Other councillors are screaming back. Ootes tries to regain control but can’t, and Ford carries on at increasingly higher volume.

“Get the government out of our backyards. It’s ridiculous. Government red tape here. Bureaucratic here. It’s nonsense having all this government. And it’s nonsense. It’s so ridiculous. If you don’t like what the province is doing, there’s going to be an election in June of ’03 — before our election, by the way.

“Go run as a Liberal or NDP. Go put your money where your mouth is and run as a Liberal or an NDP and see if you can knock out your Conservative member of Provincial Parliament. Thank you.”

Clearly bowled over by Ford’s performance, Councillor Anne Johnston jumps to her feet.

“I think he should receive the neo-con award of the day,” she suggests with a chuckle.

“I think that probably perked up the folks at home,” adds the Deputy Mayor.

“Prozac, get some prozac,” shouts Councillor Joe Pantalone, obviously concerned his overwrought colleague from Etobicoke had failed to refill his prescription.

I don’t know about Prozac. But he sure as heck needs something.

This is, after all, the same Rob Ford who a day earlier had advised his colleagues that money to be spent erecting a suicide prevention barrier on the Bloor St. Viaduct would be better used to round up child molesters who, he claimed, are the main cause of people jumping off bridges.

Take a pill, big fella.

 

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