Tories Co-Opt United Way

Rural Sandi noted this in the comments of my last post. Below is a shot from the 2009 United Way Hockey Challenge (back last January), from Dean Del Maestro's website. You can see it in a few pictures, but this one is clearest (see white arrow on guy far left): the Tories have stuck CPoC logos on the United Way team jerseys. Pretty damned brazen, and I wonder if its entirely kosher.

Rural Radicals Carry Conservative Message

According to Stephen Taylor, that's a picture of someone from the Ontario Land Owners Association with a CPoC "Tax On Everything" t-shirt". This fellow is protesting a Dion event in Ottawa.

Randy Hillier fronted these guys a couple of years ago, during which time he called for, among other things, a separate state in rural Ontario. More recently several members of their leadership were arrested several weeks ago up in Horton township for protesting the installation of a couple of septic tanks.

Nice bunch to have on your side, Stephen!

(PS. Although it also looks like the OLA will be trying to meet with CPoC next time Harper is in Ottawa. Wonder what kind of response they'll get)

Tory Attended Tamil Tiger Tête-à-Tête!

More Terrorist Trouble For Tories?

MONTREAL - Inside the school auditorium, the Tamil Tiger flag had been raised in a solemn ceremony and the audience of 600 people had heard a taped address from the terrorist group's leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. Then an undercover RCMP officer watched as 'a Caucasian male' approached the podium.

'The male praised [Foreign Affairs Minister] Maxime Bernier and spoke about the position of the government, which is to favour the nonviolence, diplomatic solutions to the conflict, etc.,' says an RCMP affidavit made public on Friday by the Federal Court.

When the speaker drove his Mercedes away from the Martyrs Day celebrations organized by Montreal's World Tamil Movement last Dec. 1, a surveillance officer noted the licence plate. It belonged to Maurice Brossard, the Conservative candidate in the riding of Brossard-La Prairie on Montreal's South Shore.

Why do they hate America Canada?

(PS. Really, just the kind of thing that sometimes happens when you reach out to certain ethnic communities. But since the Navdeep Bains smear I haven't been able to work up much pity when the CPoC gets caught up in this kind of thing.)

Still Not Dead, Still Not Funny

I don't know why, but I wandered over here, and, lo and behold, the utterly craptacular "Kyoto's Dog Blog" is still ticking along, albeit at a slower and slower pace,with the posts down to about one a week.

A quick check at Alexa gives a profile of a blog on the fade:

So lets all give the site a traffic bump, ridicule it mercilessly, and convince the CPoC to piss away more of its ill-raised millions on a hopeless cause (instead of, for example, spending the money more usefully on some exercise equipment for Prime-Minister Doughboy).

The First Step Is Acknowledging You Have A Problem

"Federal Tories losing touch", says the Calgary Sun's girl ranter Licia Corbella. And why are the Tories "plummeting in the polls". Not because of the detainee crisis in Afghanistan? Oh no, Canadians forgive them for that. Not because of their pathetic "green" plan? Nope. That too is okay rank and file Canucks. The income trust flip-flop? Shovelling Western money at Quebec in the last budget? No and no! What then?

...trying to score political points on the back of an upstanding, honourable young hockey star playing his heart out for his country on a volunteer basis in Moscow is akin to a cheap shot for many Conservatives. This will stick in their craws for a long time.

[...]

They should stand up for decency and this country. Always. Shane Doan stands for both. By voting to question his captaincy the Conservatives prove unquestioningly how offside they have skated in their blind pursuit of power.

I don't know how the filing deadline works for Sun writers, but this column seems to have been hacked out sometime after the last whiskey and before the first coffee. And if Tory partisans think their problems have nothing to do with 1) their policies alienating the majority of Canadians, and 2) their attempts to reach out to the majority of Canadians alienating their political base, then frankly they are in more trouble than I thought.

Canadian Conservatives, Pakistani Terror

Here's a picture of Stockwell Day, Canada's Minister of Public Safety Minister, meeting with members of the MQM (Muttahida Qaumi Movement), a Pakistani political party whose Canadian chapter has endorsed the CPoC in both 2004 and 2006. And here's a sample of the kind of fund-raising policies that have landed the MQM a spot on The MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base (TKB) list of international terror organizations. From Chowk, a website chronicling life in Pakistan:

"Salim_Chauhan, MQM wins at-least half it's seats through coercion, just as it carries out shutter-down strikes through coercion.
[...]

MQM is just a goonda-badmash-extortionist thugs group. They go around house to house in the North Karachi, determine each household income, and impose a monthly jagga [illegal] tax. That is what pays for the Pir Saheb's upkeep in London and all those day long telephone call speeches ... hahaha ... what a joke. "

Hopefully, Stock wasn't talking taxes with these people!

Tories Are Bringing Scary Back

Heather Stillwell is is a school trustee in Surrey, British Columbia, well known for her conservative opinions on homosexuality, abortion, and sex education. One of the founders of the Christian Heritage Party, she believes Canada should be run on Christian principles, which means no abortion, no gays, no porn, and Canadian soldiers dying in Iraq.

In an attempt to present a more moderate face to the Canadian public, the Harper Tories have been quietly smothering attempts by SoCons like Ms. Stillwell to run for Conservative Party nominations. However, in her case news got out and onto The LifeSite, and as a result of their expose, Heather is, so to speak, back on the menu:

"I just wanted to thank you for that fabulous story and I think that it moved something forward here because I've had a call and they are going to let me run," Stilwell told LifeSiteNews.com Saturday. "I've had a lot of response from people who were reading LifeSiteNews, so good on you guys."

Can't remember if the one of the Christian Heritage Party planks was a repeal of the metric system, and I don't know if Heather has personally resigned herself to measuring things in Satanic units, but I personally was just getting used to thinking of 32 degrees as being "hot", so I'd rather not throw the whole thing out the window.