Republicans For Iggy = Tory War-Room

At the risk of giving (a weee bit more) publicity where it isn't deserved, in the last couple of days the entire Ottawa press gallery has received "a brown envelope", stuffed with

...a colour reproduction of a critical, four-year-old Ignatieff profile in the British publication New Humanist – complete with particularly damning paragraphs highlighted in yellow...

...and sent from a U.K. address. The article castigates Iggy for his “[his shared] vision of the US government’s vision of the violent and compulsory promotion of democracy."

And people are wondering who is responsible. The inestimable Kadey O'Malley reasons as follows:

As for who might behind it, although she maintains that Republicans for Ignatieff is almost certainly the product of one of Ignatieff’s leftwardly-leaning critics, this seems far more likely to be a bit of mischief making from the other side of the political spectrum

[...]

What can she say — it just feels like a Tory trick to her, whereas R4I has a different style.

Well, I think its a pretty that if this is a Tory trick, so is R4I. For example, here's a screen shot of the google cache of Reps for Iggy, showing the stunt its creators were on about last week:

Note the reference to U.K publications, and note the similar "promotion of democracy" theme. Since this particular attempt got zero in the way of media attention, I would suggest we are seeing an attempt at a "do over" by The Würstlin Group, who the Tories have hired to do their on-line campaign.

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.

In Case You Missed It

Amidst the large scale meltdowns in the Tory campaign yesterday came a few smaller ones. For example, after some good investigative reporting on the part of Kady O'Malley, it was discovered that footage on the notaleader website did not appear with permission of the rights holders. From TVO's The Agenda blog

Some of the clips might look familiar. They have been taken from an Agenda interview with Stephane Dion, snapped off the context and put them to work. And that is where an ad like this can cause trouble. Now the Conservatives are going to have to deal with the embarrassment of being told to take the clips down (sort of like when Heart told Sarah Palin to stop playing Barracuda at her rallies).

Meanwhile, there are rumours that NotaLeader might be disappearing soon (see video through link). Thus far its still there, although some of the functionality of the site has been disabled. If the "excuse generator" goes down for good, I am claiming credit.

(PS. someone tells me my post on gaming the excuse generator was mentioned on CBC last night. Does anyone else remember that, and can they point me towards an online recording of the show?)

Among The Boyz In The Bunker

Yesterday, defending himself against accusations by Stephen Harper that the Green Shift would imperil national unity, Stephane Dion got off one of the best lines to date in the campaign:

While [Stephen Harper] was busy talking about building firewalls in the West, I was fighting to keep my country together.... I do not need any lessons from Stephen Harper on fighting for the national unity of my country.

And, just coincidentally, yesterday details came to light re some of the staff operating the Tory war room:

...former lobbyist Yaroslav Baran, former Western Report publisher Ezra Levant, PMO polling wizard Patrick Muttart, MP Jason Kenney and campaign manager Doug Finley, who needs no introduction.

So the rumours are true: Ezra Levant is officially on staff at Tory HQ. As Kinsella pointed out yesterday, the idea that Harper should be accusing others of being a threat to the unity of the nation while hauling around a guy that's against bilingualism and pro-Quebec separatism is especially rich. But lets examine a few more of Ezra's eccentric views.

1) He's anti-Charter of Rights.

It was Ezra who made the “It’s the stupid Charter” buttons that were distributed at the last Conservative Convention. Harper’s people were apoplectic when they started showing up on the floor. At first they thought it was a dirty Liberal trick designed to embarrass them until they saw the “Western Standard” logo at the bottom.

2) He's anti-human rights legislation. This has most recently been manifested in his jihad against section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, wherein he has relied on Canadian and American Neo-Nazi Sources to support many of his allegations. For example, the "hacked wifi conspiracy theory", which Ezra embraced with a vengeance, and which has now been thoroughly discredited, depends in some of the details of its elaboration on information supplied by Don Black, who runs the White Supremacist website Stormfront, and who learned his computer skills in U.S. federal prison while serving time for his attempt, with a number of Toronto-based Neo-Nazis, at overthrowing the government of Dominica.

But there's more! Ezra hasn't stopped with section 13. From the foamy outrage expressed on his website, you can't help but conclude that he just doesn't like Human Rights Legislation, period. For example, in this post he ridicules a blind man's attempt, through the BCHRT, to keep his guide dog.

So, someone should ask Mr. Harper: which of the Ezra's views do you concur with? And if the answer is "none", what are you doing employing this blast from the Reform Party past in your campaign?

Can We Call The Tory Web Strategy A Total Disaster Now?

After putting up profiles mocking well known Canadian journalists, the Tories have now PULLED THEM DOWN from the DIONBOOk portion of their site.

Luckily, you can still use the site to send dirty emails on behalf of Stephen Harper.

Fun With The CPoC Website

At the Tory's NotALeader site, there's this thing called the Stephane Dion excuse generator, which you may use to send emails to people giving explanations of why you didn't do this or that little thing. The point being, of course, to mock the Liberal party abstentions from last Spring and Summer.

However, instead of using your own name you can use any name, like "Stephen Harper", and instead of your own email you can just make one up, like Sharper@hotmail.com. And, as to the message you send, well there's quite a bit of leeway as to what goes into it. For example:

And then, when you click on the button to get your excuse, a little customization gives you:

I've sent off a good two dozen of these things to my favorite and not so favorite journalists and other notable folk. Tonight when I get back from work, another set of messages from "Stephen Harper" go out, a little bit filthier than the first, and so on and so forth until the Tory War Room either shuts that section of the site down or sends the police after me.

Dumbest...War Room...Ever.

Tory War Room Tanks

Later yesterday, the Conservatives announced they are pulling back from the strategy of news conferences at dawn. They said they would move today's announcement to 8 a.m. and will likely have evening announcements.

Just as I predicted. Because I know reporters. Just try to get them out of bed before 6:00 AM.