What the Fuck?

April's Morons of the Month

With the election dominating Canadian news this past month, I'm going to just get this out of the way...

Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party, for (among other things) their repeated attacks on Canadian voters. This is not merely rhetoric -- for those who don't know, the ReformaTories have taken to spying on people who are pre-registered for his campaign stops, and having the RCMP (illegally) eject them for anything in their Facebook histories that doesn't totally fit the Conservative line. The offending criteria include having casually posed for pictures with Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff (and presumably other opposition leaders/candidates), having attended other parties' rallies in the last few years, and even having been in environmental groups.

In addition to this, their candidate in Guelph (Marty Burke) apparently had his communications director (and University of Guelph majordomo) Michael Sona disrupt a legitimate advance poll and allegedly try to STEAL A BALLOT BOX, all because they discovered that someone at Elections Canada had jumped the gun and held the poll without getting full authorization first. (see story) To date, no charges have been laid in the incident -- and no evidence has surfaced to support Conservative claims of partisan materials being circulated at the poll. Of course, Guelph Campus Conservatives initially boasted about this incident, until Elections Canada ruled that the poll was operated properly and thus the votes all counted. At that point -- particularly after Harper claimed to support EC's ruling -- any and all comments GCC's members made on Facebook against the poll, disappeared.

None of this, by the way, touches on the many cases of vandalism against Liberal and NDP supporters... or how the Conservatives very rarely attend all-candidates events (like electoral debates)... or how Stephen Harper has the nerve to continue claiming that Canadians don't care about this election, or the record-making contempt ruling, even after Canadians tuned in to the leaders' debates and attended advance polls IN RECORD NUMBERS.

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Still on the subject of the election, Sun News (aka "Fox News North"), for proving less than 12 hours into its broadcasting career that it is a Harper propaganda station that doesn't give a damn about really reporting news. For example, on the first day of its rather pathetic programming, pundit Charles Adler claimed repeatedly on his show that the Harper government was overthrown over its budget... Even though the budget never made it to a vote, and everyone paying any attention to the election at all knows that Harper was overthrown over contempt.

Then there was their overtly ripe smear attack on rising-star Jack Layton of the NDP. Two days ago, Sun Media exclusively "broke" a story from an anonymous ex-cop claiming that Jack Layton was found naked in a Toronto massage parlour, in the late 1990s. Since nothing in this story suggest that Layton was arrested -- or even did anything illegal -- the cop in question sat on this "story" for the eight years that Layton was leader of the NDP, and only decided to come out with it on an extremely biased tabloid channel in the final days of an election that Layton could very well win... well, even Conservative supporters agree that this smells fishy (Harper's cult, on the other hand, just takes this as gospel).

Incidentally, since this information was leaked without the permission of the Toronto Police, they are having the OPP investigate it -- and Layton has implied that he may take legal action of his own, once the election is over.

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Donald Trump -- trying to be the Republican candidate for President, next year -- for reviving the Birther nonsense over Barack Obama's birth certificate. Keep in mind, that even GLENN BECK thinks that this is a stupid obsession. Anyway, when Obama's long-form birth record was released -- which would be totally unnecessary for any other president -- adding to the long list of documents explicitly proving that he was born in Hawaii, Trump took credit for its release... and then went after Obama's schooling, for some reason.

Rumours that Trump then demanded proof that Hawaii is a state, cannot be confirmed -- which I hope is a good sign -- but for looking like a complete racist idiot, he's been attacked by both sides of the political spectrum. When even staunch Republicans are embarrassed by this guy, I hope it's safe to say that his presidential aspirations are dead.

Worthless Passports

Bored on the Corner vs. Perez Hilton

As my regular viewers know, I'm very much in favour of same-sex marriage, for a variety of reasons. However, that doesn't mean that I like some of the more crass tactics of the left wing, any more than I do the right wing. Case in point, the Miss USA pageant was held a week or so ago, and one of the judges was notorious tabloid blogger Perez Hilton (don't ask me why, let's just play along). During the Q&A portion, he asked Miss California -- Carrie Prejean -- what she thought of same-sex marriage. Her answer was simply that while she personally isn't fond of it, she does like that others can choose it if they wish. Maybe not the most enlightened point of view, but a reasonable one all the same. Mr. Hilton, on the other hand, not only eliminated Prejean from the competition over it, but he wasted no time in calling her a "dumb bitch" pretty much everywhere he could.

Not surprisingly, this attracted a lot of attention and criticism, and not just from predictable sources like conservative pundits. Even people who are moderate or liberal have condemned Hilton's antics, because he basically went out of his way to humiliate Prejean over an opinion that Hilton himself asked to hear. Then again, this is typical of Hilton's history, so I won't beat the dead horse of just how appalling and despicable a so-called human being, he is.

I was talking about this with my friend the other night, and while we were discussing much of the same points I just presented here, it suddenly dawned on me: who the hell cares about Miss California's politics? It's a BEAUTY PAGENT, for fuck's sake, and one that most people don't even notice! I can't remember at all, the last time I even heard of Miss America creating a law, or holding a real office, can you? If Carrie Prejean ever runs for Governor, then we can talk, but until then I can think of about sixty-eight other things I'd rather worry about.

What more can I say? All that Perez Hilton did, was make himself look like an obnoxious and classless asshole, which to him is a full-time job anyway, not to mention do a lot of damage to those of us who really are interested in tolerance and equality. Sometimes I wonder if sooner or later, the real Paris Hilton will wake up to this jerk and say "I've REALLY got to get my name back from this idiot". That's it for me.