Tories Crack Down On Facebook Gun-Play!

Looks like I got it wrong the other day when I wrote that Chris Reid, Gerry Nichols, and other Tory rebs had successfully faced down the party's attempt to ban the representation of fire-arms from Facebook profile pics. The Jackboot came down in the form of an email to Chris:

Chris ,

I regret that it has come to this but after speaking with the other admins we have decided that you need a " cooling off period " from the conservative facebook groups . you are not being banned but removed for at least a period of 1 month . for your failure to listen to my warnings about your recent profile picture , you have to remember that you are a former candidate and somewhat of a high profile one after what happened last election. you have a duty to learn from your mistakes and to shape a positive image of the party one that was not coming together on your posts to the facebook group. you clearly have not learned from your past mistakes and continue to make the same mistakes that got you into trouble before, i as a moderator i cannot sit back and watch this happen again . over time i hope you realise that this is necessary and in the best interests of those involved .

Ryan Rantz

Meanwhile, we pathetic progressive types debate such ephemera as the B.C. Carbon Tax and the Braidwood Inquiry.

PS. Chris Reid has literally moved to Australia (not figuratively, which you might say about someone who has recently died). Yet still roils the movement.

Tories Will Let You Pack As Much Heat As You Want On Facebook

Chris Reid and Gerry Nicholls have been leading a small group of Tory dissidents in an online revolt designed to force the party functionaries to let members display guns in their profile pictures on the CPoC and PCPO FaceBook groups. As you can see, they have been arming up and daring the party to "defriend" them.

Yesterday I asked Gerry how went the rebellion. Had they been turfed from either forum?

Hi BigCity Lib: Nope so far Chris and I are still in the group.

Here's to the struggle for freedom on social networking sites.

Conservative Party Vs. Gun Nutz: Who Will Emerge Victorious?

Chris Reid, who became briefly famous during the last federal election when the CPoC forced him to step down as candidate for Toronto Center, and who made me briefly famous as well, is back and raising heck again.

Above is his profile picture on the CPoC Facebook site, and some people are not too happy with it. In fact, a party functionary has threatened to lower the boom on him:

ok chris i'm going to be as polite as possible but your profile picture has to go if you want to continue participating in the conservative facebook groups and think common sence (sic) should indicate my reasons . its simply not approiate (sic) and some users may find it threatening or offensive . i'm giving you 1 warning and 1 day to replace it with something else .

But Chris isn't backing down because, I suppose, that would be against Liberty or something. Instead he's organizing a counter-protest of sorts. According to Gary Nichols:

Anyway, Chris is asking people on Facebook who wish to protest this ban replace their profile picture for a day with a gun, and posting on the Ontario PC Party group page.

Looks like Chris has a few supporters too.

You know, suddenly I feel terribly unmanly argue about the details of the B.C. carbon tax, especially when Tory ranks are filled with hot chicks like this one.

But in any case, who will win this showdown between Party Central and the CPoC rebs? And will they be packing heat on Facebook?

Dear Chris,

You wanted some response to your views on gun control and etc. Here's a quick one. You wrote:

Gun control: It doesn't work. There is no research that proves it does. The facts are clear, it increases crime. Simon Fraser University professor Gary Mauser finds that a year after the British obediently surrendered 160,000 legal handguns, London muggings were up 53 percent, gun murders up 90 percent and robbery up more than 100 percent. By the year following, annual gun crimes overall had risen 39 percent.

I am more familiar with American studies than the material you note above. In most cases, people advocating (like yourself) for "conceal carry" legislation tend to rely on the work of John Lott and Brandon S. Centerwall. Their work has been in turn been extensively criticized by writers such as Duggan and Dan A. Black, who was kind enough to send me .pdfs of a number of his papers. I confess to be ill equipped to decide between their varying statistical arguments for and against the more "guns = more/less crime argument", although Duggan seems to have established fairly conclusively that higher rates of gun ownership and availability leads to higher suicide rates, especially among men.

But lets get serious, shall we? The Tories didn't blast your ass out the door for merely holding somewhat eccentric (in the Canadian context) views on gun control. They turfed you because you accused women and gays who do not hold the same views as your own of, essentially, getting what they deserve when hate crimes were committed against them:

If women and gays really wanted to stop being victims of hate crimes, they'd be in support of this, but judging from discussions, they'd rather be helpless and rely on government.

You also accused, basically, the whole nation of being "effeminate" for not supporting "conceal carry" laws.

Ignore for a moment the idea that a gay male should use a common anti-gay slur ("effeminate") to characterize the Canadian character--which seems pathological--but why would you want to serve such an unworthy folk in the first instance? Did you (and does the Conservative Party of Canada) intend, if elected, to give us all a good slap to get us thinking straight?

Finally, the part of your recent post that I find most interesting is this passage:

One second you're shaking hands with the Prime Minister and on the blackberries of the campaign staff, the next day you can't get called back.

I am assuming that this confirms what the Western Standard has already reported--that the Conservative party knew of your blog, ordered you to pull it down, and then dumped you when its contents were revealed. This is the same process we seem to see unfolding in the Warawa case. Since the CPoC have already screwed you over and, as you say, betrayed their Conservative principles, why not answer a couple of questions.

1) How many Tory candidates have been ordered to scrub or otherwise disappear their blogs for the course of the election?

2) Who exactly within the Tory War Room gave these orders? And who was the guy on the other end of the phone that told you your time was up?

C'mon, Mr. Reid. You still haven't given us the real story. Spill it.

Chris Reid Is Back!

...and blogging. Several challenges issued to me in his latest post, which I will not have time to respond to today. However, I will try and get back to Mr. Reid by tomorrow at the latest. Count on it, in fact.

Meanwhile, to get a taste of our ex-candidates arguements:

As for natives, it's government that created the misery that natives are in, they live under complete socialism on reserves. There is the real life example of left-wing, anti-freedom liberalism/socialism at work- government dependence and 3rd world living conditions. Luckily some native leaders are getting out of the game and embracing capitalism and it's having an amazing result.

Until tomorrow.

Update: Another Tory Candidate and his blog.

Chris Reid Coda

I won't pick on Mr. Reid anymore, other than to note that this post to the Shotgun Blog, whose Tory insider creds are impeccable, seems to confirm what was apparent in the first place:

I can say with 100% confidence that the party knew of his blog before he even started to run. They were the ones that told him to take his blog down before he became the candidate. ...

On his initial resume given to the party, it had a URL for the blog on it. How much anyone read of his blog really can't be known obviously, however, there weren't so many posts on it that 10-15 minutes wouldn't have been enough to skim all of them...

So the party told Mr. Reid "You're okay if you hide your beliefs.", then disowned him when these beliefs became public. Nice.

And So What Did We Learn?

1) For a Leader of his immense gloriousness, Stephen Harper makes some very poor hiring decisions.
2) The CTV newsroom looks like NASA's Space Center.
3) I say "uhm" too much, and either the camera adds more than ten pounds or the gals in the CTV makeup department threw in a double-chin for laughs.
4) Some of the youth of today don't know that "cash" and "cache" are different words. Otherwise they are very sweet.
5) The only thing I would pass off as (possibly) wisdom in the whole episode:

Murphy said the swift reaction has shown the power of blogs in elections, but he said it also revealed something about the vetting process for candidates.

"This guy was never gonna win," he said. "And so one of the things that I've been doing is looking at the no-hopers on the premise that they're not vetted that deeply. But if they're not vetted deeply, and something comes up, it's going to embarrass the campaign on a national level."

As such, he compared it to the controversy involving pot-smoking and the NDP. On Wednesday, NDP candidate Dana Larsen dropped out of the election after he was shown in old video lighting joints, taking LSD and driving while "flying," as he said in a video.

Now to work! There's governments to topple!

Chris Reid Steps Down?

National News Watch says:

Reports that Bob Rae's Tory opponent, Chris Reid has stepped down.

Some speculation that it has something to do with posts made on his blog, which has been taken down, however, a cached page remains available Here.

I don't suppose this counts as 100% confirmed, but...

Chris Reid Strikes Back!

Mr. Reid, Tory candidate for Toronto Centre, has responded to an earlier post of mine re his position on Canadian gun laws and other issues:

It's a shame BigCityLib, since my campaign info is easily available, you could actually contact me asking me to explain how I developed my conclusions on issues. I would have happily responded, as I love a good, civilized political conversation.I was hoping to raise the level up political discourse in this election.

Well fine, lets have a civilized conversation right here.

Chris, while many of the views expressed in your recently disappeared blog I would classify as "merely Conservative", or "wrong but not far gone", this statement I find highly problematic:

Allow law abiding citizens who are qualified and trained to carry concealed handguns for personal protection. It's the only proven way to reduce violent crime and murder. If women and gays really wanted to stop being victims of hate crimes, they'd be in support of this, but judging from discussions, they'd rather be helpless and rely on government.

You seem to conclude that gays and women 1) are and want to be victims of hate-crimes, 2) are and want to be "helpless" 3) are and want to be wards of the State ("rely on government", to use your phrase)?

More generally, you seem to be of the opinion that many of the people with whose actions you disagree (native protesters, for example) want

...to stay victims so they can tell other people to fix their problems.

Indians, gays, and women embrace victim-hood, in other words. Is that right?

Is this really your opinion, and how do you think that opinion jibes with the official position of the Conservative Party of Canada?

Also, I'm afraid I have to disagree with your statement that your "campaign info is easily available". Others have noted your campaign's lack of on-line presence, and of course you have restricted access to your blog.

Finally, in a October 2007 post on "Political Thoughts..." you note that you are "getting back into blogging". Do you mind sharing the name/url of your previous blog?

PS. If you do want to respond to any of this, you can do it in the comments and/or I will run it as a guest post with no editorializing on my part.

Cheers,

The Tories Run Gay Nutter In TO!

Chris Reid was a former candidate for Toronto City Council in 2006. He is now running for the Tories in Toronto Center. Chris runs a blog, Political Thoughts From A Gay Conservative which recently was made "members only". Fortunately, google-cache lets us in on some of Chris' earlier posts.

For example, here's Chris on that terrible prairie bus stabbing:

A man with a knife was able to go on a murderous rampage decapitating a fellow human being. The rest of the bus was unarmed and helpless. What was the generous Canadian thing to do? Help a fellow human being? No. Flee in terror. Passengers and the bus driver stood by and watched another person being butchered, and couldn't muster up any courage or self sacrifice to intervene. This is where socialism as gotten us folks, a castrated effeminate population.

This is a perfect example of why we need concealed-carry handgun legislation in this country, so we can defend one another and deter horrible events such as this. But what are our politicians talking about? More government regulation and security.

Chris wants laws that allow us to tote around concealed hand-guns.

And here's Chris considers trashing the Canadian Health Act:

I do know the one main issue that stands in the way of a consumer driven health care system is the Canada Health Act. However, courts in Quebec have concluded that people cannot be barred from purchasing their own health care. I wonder if a similar challenge in Ontario would yield a similar result?

And here's Chris on the plight of native protester Bob Lovelace:

What bothers me about these perpetually aggrieved people is their obsession with wanting to stay victims so they can tell other people to fix their problems.

Here's some of Chris' "Conservative Solutions" for a better Canada:

A flax income tax, or better yet, eliminate personal and business income taxes all together, and just have a consumption tax to promote investing which would raise people's living standards.

[...]

Ending abortion.

[...]

Allow law abiding citizens who are qualified and trained to carry concealed handguns for personal protection. It's the only proven way to reduce violent crime and murder. If women and gays really wanted to stop being victims of hate crimes, they'd be in support of this, but judging from discussions, they'd rather be helpless and rely on government.

I especially like this last bit. Women and Gays who don't support legislation that lets you pack around a .45 magnum want to stay victims. Are we apologizing yet, Chris? I sense one coming.

Chris on author Linda McQuaig:

The reality is that McQuaig wants Canada to do badly, because the worse Canada does, the more books she will sell. Despite her emotional rhetorical skills, she is getting rich by exploiting the deaths of our soldiers.

Chris on his fellow gays:

What I found them to tolerate is promoting promiscuity, drug usage, and prostitution.

Trust the Tories to find the one gay crazy in TO. No wonder he didn't want too many people reading his blog.

In Praise Of A Harper Majority

Recently, a number of stories and polls have appeared suggesting that Canada's gay community is united against Stephen Harper's Conservative Party and, furthermore, fear the outcome should it achieve majority status after the next election. Many of the Principled Conservatives at Free Dominion concur (and even throw in a little bit of "folk art" to mark their point with a flourish):

They better be scared. If they weren't scared we'd be doing something wrong.

About time reason and sanity return to our society and cultural bearings.

What's wrong with pointing out the obvious? Their lifestyle is unhealthy and unwelcome in many parts and communities of the country.

Oh my! This guy isn't going to be too happy.

RB from the comments:

It's noteworthy that no one on FD, not even their pet "moderate" Vundo Draxon, had a word to say about the violence-advocating cartoon. You'd think they could dredge up SOMEONE to at least PRETEND to be offended while, of course, fully supporting the person's "right" to freely advocate violence against gays.