Somebody Waterboard This Guy...

Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier continues to prove two things:

1. If it wasn't for the starch in his shirt, there would be nothing keeping him upright.

2. Integrity and intelligence are not prerequisites for employment in the Harper government. In fact, they may be exclusionary criteria.

Like the good lapdog he is, Bernier said he would remove the US and Israel from a Canadian list of countries in which prisoners risk being tortured, and that he regretted the "embarassment" (coincidentally, an apt description of his own record as Foreign Affairs Minister).

Odd, since the American director of national security has himself stated that interrogation techniques such as waterboarding would be considered torture.

Odder still, since if the conference below takes place, we will be obliged to add Canada to the list of places where torture occurs.

Conservative Conundrum

Uncle Steve won't be happy about this...

The Canadian Press Harris/Decima survey asked respondents to choose the kind of split they'd ideally like to see in a hypothetical Parliament of 100 seats. The results, on average, gave 36 seats to the Liberals, 31 to the Conservatives, 15 to the NDP, 10 to the Bloc Quebecois and eight to the Green party. Projecting those percentages to the actual House of Commons of 308 seats, the Liberals would end up with 111 seats rather than their current 96 and the Tories would have 95 instead of their present 126.

One could certainly argue that these numbers should be sobering for both the Liberals and the Conservatives. But Stephen Harper would be well advised to keep in mind that the Liberals have been largely under the Conservative boot this past year. They have had precious little in the way of positive media coverage, and have been at the mercy of a well-funded CPC attack machine. And yet Canadians still feel uncomfortable handing the reins of power to the Conservatives. Perhaps instead of perpetually casting darts at others, Harper should direct his gaze inward, and contemplate why his tactics continue to fail so miserably.

Welcome 2008!

A toast to the new year, and a thank-you to all who have taken the time to stop by this little blog.

I hope all of you had a relaxing and enjoyable holiday. Mine was certainly so. I have a busy month at work ahead, so blogging will be light. But I will get around to commenting on some of the more tumultuous events that have recently taken place around the world (many of them unspeakably sad).

For now, though, I will simply wish everyone a healthy and prosperous 2008. Cheers!

Happy Holidays

Best wishes to all!

Conservatives Still In Neutral

Ahhh, life in the slow lane.

The Canadian Press
December 19, 2007 at 11:28 AM EST
OTTAWA —
A new poll suggests Stephen Harper's Conservatives have lost their big lead over the Liberals, plunging six percentage points in popular support in just one week. The Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey puts the Tories at 30-per-cent support, in a statistical tie with the Liberals, who are up four points to 32 per cent.
Support for the Tories dropped across all regions and demographic
groups.

The Wingnutosphere will no doubt be atwitter with their requisite responses:

• Poll? What poll? We don't believe in polls.
• It's the CBC!
• It's the Red Star!
• Sound of deafening silence as BTs ignore story altogether.

Take your pick.

TOO GOOD TO PASS UP: Researchers have discovered a giant rat in Indonesia! Originally thought to have been a new species, Stephen Harper today confirmed that it is not.

Perpetual Victims Cry Foul....Again.

For all of their bigotry, ignorance and general blowhardiness, The Blogging Tories have perfected the art of playing the victim card. And you have to feel sorry for the poor little nincompoops. Forever under the boot of the immigrants, the gays, the Muslims, the environmentalists, the peaceniks, and any other group at whom they sneer, they continue to stand on guard against oppressors (real or imagined) in all their forms.
The latest threat...making a return appearance...LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS!!!

Allow me to summarize their complaints: "BOOO HOOOO HOOOO HOOOOOO HOOOOOOOO!!!!!!"

Assclowns, the lot of them.

BONUS STUPIDITY: I don't pretend to compete with Canadian Cynic when it comes to exposing BT dumbassitude, but if you want to read one of the world's dumbest attempts at fisking, check this out. I love the fact that Sandy proudly blogs under the banner "Crux of the Matter" while managing to miss the point of her own post by a country mile.

Mike McGuire: A Sadist with a Heart

"I understand that torture isn't something that's to be all that fond of."

So says Mike McGuire in one of his more feculent "dispatches" from the Socialist Gulag. Good for you Mike, good for you.

Gee, I thought all along that waterboarding doesn't work, that roughing up terrorist scum isn't the way to interogate them because it's counter-productive. Well, it appears the bleeding hearts were wrong...

Well, Mikey, I don't suppose it would do any good to point out that in fact there has never been any evidence that torture is an effective means of eliciting valid information. Or that many people more enlightened than you (and I'm guessing that's a pretty big list) have dismissed it as unreliable. Or that lack of efficacy is not the only thing that "bleeding hearts" have against the practice of physically and psychologically abusing another human being. Seems ethics, a basic sense of human decency...and...oh yeah..the law are hardly the types of things one has time to ponder when shrieking for the heads of one's enemies from the chilly depths of the socialist gulag.

In case you're wondering, Mike is referring to a recent admission that the CIA used waterboarding on an Al Qaeda prisoner, and "broke" him in 35 seconds. What the "dispatch" fails to mention is that the CIA was so proud of their accomplishments in this regard, they decided to destroy the video evidence. And as Wonkette observes:

Um, hey, buddy? If it only takes about 30 seconds of non-torture-y waterboarding to break a senior terrorist dude, then either waterboarding is way more torture-iffic than you really know, or the guy’s such a pussy you probably didn’t need to torture him in the first place to get the information out of him. I’m just sayin’.

But maybe my heart doth bleed too much. Maybe we should torture them all! And since Mike is so convinced that these kind of techniques don't cause "death or long term physical damage", maybe we could start with him! If the CIA strapped a car battery to his genitalia, he'd probably fess up to the JFK assassination. And 5 bucks says he'd do it in less than 35 seconds. Any takers?

Update: Courtesy of Canadian Cynic, turns out that Mike's shining example of waterboarding success is a little less than advertised. The CIA found Zubaydah was "certifiably insane" and knew "nothing about terrorist organizations". No soup for you, Mike!