Today’s Jeffrey Simpson article in the Globe is an intellectually insidious account of Harper’s two and half years in office, especially the part that read: “So they got their election promises done: the overwrought Accountability Act, the family allowance cheques, various tougher criminal justice measures, money for defence.”
Huh? Election promises done? Accountability Act? There’s no accountability to be found in the Accountability Act, and I am reminded of one election promise that Jeffrey Simpson has selectively glossed over, namely Harper’s widely touted 2006 election promise of:
"When Ralph Goodale tried to tax Income Trusts ... don't forget, don't forget this ...they showed us where they stood. They showed us about their attitudes towards raiding seniors hard earned assets and a Conservative government will never allow either of these parties to get away with that"
Turns out, Harper’s “never” has a short shelf life, meaning nine months
Meanwhile the press has stood by and allowed Harper to “get away with that". As such, the press is even more pathetic than Stephen Harper himself........Deceivin’ Stephen......The Lyin’ King.
“Don't forget, don't forget this.”
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Jeffrey Simpson promulgates false impressions
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13 comments:
refer to the video of Stephen Harper speaking about Income Trusts-That video
SAYS IT ALL!!!!
Mary P.
Sometime I wish I lived in Quebec so I could display one of their license plates on my vehicle. I won't forget this Harper Betrayal....Je me souviens!
Mary P
Right on the money (yours & mine).
An election campaign featuring those inauspicious words of Stephen Harper`s should be his undoing.
Lies , lies & more lies---great quality in a Prime Minister.
May his reign be short & may truth & justice prevail.
If that fails then we should throw rocks!!!!!
Dr MIke Popovich.
Mary P:
Were you thinking of this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=CjD2KZbnFfg
Brent Fullard
"Meanwhile the press has stood by and allowed Harper to “get away with that". As such, the press is even more pathetic than Stephen Harper himself........Deceivin’ Stephen......The Lyin’ King."
You know Caiti when I read you're post I laughed out loud. This is like the pot calling the kettle black.
The only ones that are pathetic here are Mr.Dion's liberals.They are the one's who have been propping-up the Conservative government not the press. If I had a dollar for everytime that Mr.Dion's liberals had the chance to bring down the government I'd be a very happy man;)
So if you think that this government is not doing a good enough job for our country that is you're opinion,and you're entitled to it,but please stop blaming the press for this it's misdirected in my opinion.
The right is where it's at said:
"You know Caiti when I read you're (sic)post I laughed out loud.
This is like the pot calling the kettle black."
Hey TRIWIA, get your pots and pans sorted out.....we're not the Liberals, nor have we even formally supported their income trust policy.
The only kettle that we're calling black is Hypocrite Harper's 18 pages of blacked out democracy (i.e. his so called "proof" of alleged tax leakage.)
While you're at it, get your English checked, as we're not your you're.
Brent Fullard
I'm surprised Steve the liar hasn't Cadmanized CAITI. Wonder why? Is it because a suit would reveal that Steve has no facts to back up his tax leakage claims and having a willing press will sanitize the lies Steve willfully makes?
There is no free press in Canuckistan.
To:Brent Fullard post 11:24 am:
I appreciate the correction. But my point is that blaming the media does nothing to advance your cause. You only have the liberals to blame for this. They are the ones who are keeping them in power not the media.
The Right is Where it's At said...
"To:Brent Fullard post 11:24 am:
I appreciate the correction. But my point is that blaming the media does nothing to advance your cause. You only have the liberals to blame for this. They are the ones who are keeping them in power not the media."
Thanks, but I don't need you to tell me how to think or where to assigne blame.
Unlike you, I prefer to assign blame to the guilty party....im thi scase Harper the fraud, after all it was he who held himself up as the virtuous one, when he sanctimoniously said:
""When Ralph Goodale tried to tax Income Trusts ... don't forget, don't forget this ...they showed us where they stood. They showed us about their attitudes towards raiding seniors hard earned assets and a Conservative government will never allow either of these parties to get away with that"
Bottom line: Harper is either grossly incompetent of wholly untrustworthy....or maybe both. Take your pick. Hint: It has nothing to do with the Liberal Party or Stephane Dion.
As for the useless media in Canada, they are only the other 80% of our problem.
Brent Fullard
Right on Brent! The general Canadian public does not understand that Harper's actions have harmed everyone in the country. They don't know because the media has failed to do their job.
Right Where.....you know, there comes a time when a political party and/or its supporters have to grow up and not blame everyone else (always the Liberals it seems) for their errors.
Harper made that speech - not the Liberals.
Harper made that promise - not the Liberals
This Johnnie hit me first mommy is tiresome and quite pathetic.
The Chronicle Herald
The Deeper Ugliness Behind The Khadr Affair
RALPH SURETTE
Sat. Jul 19 - 4:32 AM
BEYOND the emotional reactions and legal to-and-fro, what the Omar Khadr case does is bring two big, ugly things into a clearer light: the extent of the assault by President George W. Bush and company against the U.S. constitution and its principle of limited presidential power, and the vigour with which our own Stephen Harper applauds this rampant destruction of the rule of law – indeed, the extent to which he seems determined to embarrass Canada on every point of foreign affairs.
To keep a 15-year-old in custody onward for seven years without charge, apparently tormenting – if not torturing – him continuously in order to build the façade of a case before a military tribunal, is highly evocative, but just the tiniest tip of it.
People’s eyes tend to glaze over at the full litany of indictments against the Bush regime, which would fill a book, but here’s a bit of a re-cap.
There’s the lifting of habeas corpus, the justification of torture, the ripping up of the Geneva Accords governing the treatment of war prisoners, and the re-definition of "child soldier" from the international norm of 18 down to 16, not to mention starting a horrendous war without just cause.
On the home front, there’s the politicization of the justice system to reward Republicans and punish Democrats, the manipulation of regulatory bodies and scientific commissions, and the cooking of intelligence reports.
There’s also military "justice" – and even getting a phoney trial before a military tribunal only happened because the Supreme Court decreed it.
If all of that doesn’t sound too good, let us remember that the Bush administration is not alone. It has at least one fan in the international peanut gallery cheering madly – Canada’s Stephen Harper. Harper says he can’t bring Khadr back to Canada, as Britain and Australia have done with their nationals at the Guantanamo Bay prison, because there’s a judicial process underway, and he has full confidence in it.
This despite the fact that Khadr’s military lawyer, Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler, a Pentagon appointee and a born-again Christian who says he has never voted Democrat in his life, says the specially rigged Bush military commission "is designed to get convictions … without real evidence" and that military prosecutors "launder evidence" derived from interrogations.
And that’s not yet the nub of it. The expression "executive privilege" evokes boring editorials in serious newspapers. But it’s serious stuff. It means the president and other members of the executive branch arguing that they are immune from requests and subpoenas from the courts or Congress – that they are, in effect, above the law.
To some extent it exists, in the name of separation of powers. However, it can go to excess and the last time it was an issue in that regard was when Richard Nixon invoked it to refuse releasing the Watergate tapes. The Supreme Court decreed otherwise and Nixon was toast.
George W. Bush, who has arguably failed in everything else, has at least succeeded where Nixon failed – in trashing the rule of law. He and his henchmen have been claiming executive privilege to cover up every low manipulation. These have been coming up regularly for years.
The latest one involves the former Democratic governor of Alabama, Don Siegelman. He was prosecuted by the justice department for corruption and sentenced to seven years. There’s suspicion that this was a setup, to keep him from running again, worked by Bush fixer Karl Rove. The House Judiciary Committee wants Rove to explain. No go – executive privilege.
Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and the rest of the gang are would-be tyrants, despite their prattle about freedom and democracy. Only the barely intact resistance of a muddled Congress and a split Supreme Court stand between them and who knows what excesses?
And, of course, there’s the resistance of the rest of the Western world, for which the Bush name is mud – especially the resistance, with regard to Guantanamo Bay, of close allies Australia and Britain.
But not of Canada. Stephen Harper thinks all of this is as it should be. As the natural practitioner of one-man government, whose roots are in the religious fundamentalism of the far-right, who knows how far he’d go if he had a majority in Parliament?
Bush/Harper are a hazard to democracy. At least the U.S. constitution is still intact enough to get rid of Bush when his term is up next winter – although it’s deeply unfortunate, for the U.S. and the world, that he’ll make it to the end unimpeached. In Canada, lumbering behind, the least we can do is get rid of his buddy.
( rsurette@herald.ca)
Ralph Surette is a veteran freelance journalist living in Yarmouth County.
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