Den Tandt "praises" his long time target, Stephen Harper ...

And, as might be expected, his praise is very faint praise indeed.  Some excerpts [with Den Tandt's amplifying thoughts]:

... a good prime minister [Let's try to keep the hyperbole down, shall we?]

... a smart, basically decent, hard- working guy who, for all his flaws ... [You could say that about 70+% of Canadians, so let's concentrate on those flaws!]

... a better-than-fair steward [Right, "good", but "nothing great"]

... he is not ... the ogre he has been made out to be [by his partisan opponents, especially we in the Media Party]

... For all his failings, ran a broadly stable ship [So let me remind you, again, of all those failings.]

... nothing at all like the extremism we were led to expect [Not as extreme as his partisan opponents, especially we in the Media Party, led you to expect]

In the print version Den Tandt's column was titled: "Canada lucky to have had Harper" [Yes, after all, we could have had someone like, say, Vladimir Putin]

One supposes this is Den Tandt's idea of  a polite farewell to a favourite target.  In contrast, here are a couple of sample comments from people who begged to differ:

Best Prime Minister in 70 years, maybe more. He get's Canada. On the flip side, Zoolander says Canada has no culture or identity and is the worlds first postnational state. What an arrogant stupid insulting prick.

Harper, a pragmatic Canadian, for all Canadians. Now Zoolander is intent on picking his interest groups at the expense of the Canadian taxpayer and reversing Harper's policies for the benefit of all Canadians, even his insane left wing detractors. Irrational immigration decisions, FN secrecy, complacency regarding energy, complacency regarding prairie fires, outrageous and damaging deficits, increasing union powers at the expense of taxpayers,

 And in further contrast:

Stephen Harper's former lawyer comments on the Duffy case

OpEd by Robert Staley:

Commencing in mid-2013, I represented former prime minister Stephen Harper in connection with the RCMP’s investigation of Senator Duffy.  ... Now that Justice Vaillancourt has released his trial decision, it is possible to comment publicly on aspects of the case.

... Justice Vaillancourt ultimately concluded that the Crown had not proven its criminal case against Mr. Duffy to the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard. But that conclusion should not be read as a contest between Mr. Duffy and my client, in which Mr. Duffy prevailed. My client did not, and could not, ask that Mr. Duffy be charged criminally. Nor did my client assert that Mr. Duffy engaged in criminal wrongdoing. His assertion was, and is, that the behaviour exhibited by Mr. Duffy was unacceptable. It was and is my client’s view that public office demands a higher standard than conduct that falls short of criminality.

Lord Moncton's prediction of Harper's defeat and why Tony Abbot was dumped

Monckton's backstory about UN global governance ambitions and skullduggery is the mother of all conspiracyies theories:

The incredible rise of a lightweight

The rise of Justin Trudeau has been like the rise of a helium balloon.  A celebrity lightweight with an inflated ego and sense of entitlement - arising entirely from his accident of birth - Justin was released and wafted aloft by the LPC and a liberal dominated mainstream media that has never stopped idolizing, mythologizing and worshipping his father Pierre as their secular god.  The son of "god", Justin, born on Christmas day no less, has been afforded similar adoration - as a Liberal Party messiah.  The liberal media propaganda machine inflated Justin's image and minimized or ignored his gaffes while relentlessly and viciously demonizing the "Nixonian" enemy, Stephen Harper.   That's how a completely unqualified lightweight, the lightest in Canadian history, came to be elected Prime Minister last night.


Having the Liberals undeservedly returned to power from third place is bad enough, but having to accept the foppish boy-Justin as my Prime Minister is absolutely galling.  You can't blame Justin, it's not his fault he was born a Trudeau, but to think that someone, anyone, with a resume as thin as his could go from backbench MP to party leader to Prime Minister on his first try, is incredible.

Fighting Harper hatred

Two outstanding columns in today's FP:

Peter Foster:  Vote against hate:

If a man is defined by his enemies, Stephen Harper still has a lot going for him in the dying days of this election campaign. On balance, he has been a good Prime Minister in trying times, and yet he drives people to frenzies of hatred, which says far more about them than him. ...

Lawrence Solomon: Judging Harper:

Stephen Harper may be the worst prime minister in memory, as many claim. Or the best. You be the judge. ...

... On energy and the environment, Harper has been a tightwad. His predecessors in both Liberal and Conservative parties subsidized the development of the tar sands. Harper phased out these subsidies.  

...money in people’s hands isn’t the only measure of well being. Canada ranks among the top 10 nations of the world in having the World’s Most Open Governments, in the Social Progress Index, in the Soft Power 30 Index, and in the World Happiness ranking, and we are the absolute top in Best Country for Business in the G20, and Best GDP growth among the G7 nations. Not surprisingly, when you put all this together, Canada landed in the #1 spot as the most respected nation in the world, based on a survey of 48,000 people around the world conducted by the Reputation Institute, which ranked 55 nations for perceived trust, admiration and respect.

These columns deserve front page exposure.

Harper Derangement Syndrome on dislay at CPC rally in Surrey, BC

As the election draws closer, Harper Derangement Syndrome seems to be intensifying.  On the way into the CPC campaign rally in Surrey last night, a guy walked back and forth on the sidewalk across the street shouting vile insults at rally-goers lining up outside the venue.  It was funny, weird and at the same time disturbing because he seemed genuinely nuts.

And inside the venue, during Stephen Harper's speech, three more "protesters" managed to infiltrate the rally.  One unfurled a banner calling for "climate justice" (don't we all know Harper is a climate criminal?), another rushed towards Harper (aiming to do what wasn't clear) getting within a foot of him before being tackled by security guards, and shortly after a third started shouting at Harper from the audience before being grabbed and hustled out.

All in all, it was described by reporters as "the worst security breach of the campaign". The security people really started looking worried after the fracas (for their jobs, maybe?)

About those Syrian migrants/refugees

Germany: Migrants' Rape Epidemic  [via]

Where are the women?

... The increase in sex crimes in Germany is being fueled by the preponderance of Muslim males among the mix of refugees/migrants entering the country.

... At least 80% of the incoming refugees/migrants are Muslim ...

... The asylum seekers are also overwhelmingly male. Of the 411,567 refugees/migrants who have entered the European Union by sea so far this year, 72% have been male, 13% women and 15% children

How does this not give cause for huge security concerns?

A related side note: During the leaders' debate yesterday Stephen Harper said that Mulcair and Trudeau "would throw open our borders to hundreds of thousands of refugees ... no security checks or documents".   This got the excitable Terry Glavin excited; and when Norman Spector tried to calm him down a mini Twitter kerfuffle ensued.

Lefty-loons-a-leaping

Peter Foster: Naomi Klein’s Great Leap Backwards

The “Leap Manifesto” issued on Tuesday by an asylum full of celebrity victims of Harper Derangement Syndrome – led by Naomi Klein and David Suzuki – is certainly a thought-provoking platform. The main thoughts it provokes are: Does achieving celebrity cause a sharp drop in IQ and increase in hypocrisy, or does all-consuming artistic ego and/or power-hungry socialist inclination prevent all logical thought?...

... You’d think that somebody among the Deep Thinkers might have reflected that “leaping” doesn’t have the best of historical connotations. Specifically, it conjures up Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward, a lurch to socialized modernization that led to tens of millions of deaths.

... Klein is a great promoter of the notion that the dark forces of capitalism deliberately manufacture “crises” as an excuse for dictatorial control. She is quite impervious to any suggestion that the “climate crisis” might come into the same category.

...The manifesto’s main points were also promoted in a piece in the Globe and Mail on Tuesday by Klein, Suzuki, and three other well known policy experts, Leonard Cohen, Donald Sutherland and Ellen Page.

... The majority of the manifesto is taken up with peddling the fantasy of a total switch to alternative energy within a couple of decades, and demanding an end to fossil fuel activity. ... “We call,” note the Gang of Five, “for town hall meetings across the country where residents can gather to democratically define what a genuine leap to the next economy means in their communities.”

... The manifesto confirms that one of the things going for Stephen Harper in this election is his enemies. 

If these leaping freaks ever got their way we'd soon find ourselves in a totalitarian nightmare forced to  quote from Chairperson Naomi's Little Green Book. Their rabid nonsense also has hints of the French Revolution and its Reign of Terror.

Of migrants, climate and HDS

Lawrence Solomon: Obama's migrants

Soon after being sworn in as President of the United States in 2009, Barack Obama made the historic speech in Cairo that would launch the Arab Spring the following year. Within weeks of the start of the protests, Egyptian President Mubarak was overthrown with Obama’s encouragement, leading to the takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood ...

Obama's foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster on many fronts, the M.E. refugee situation being the biggest example of the consequences so far.  He has telegraphed nothing but weakness to the world and the world's worst actors have taken note:  Russia (the Ukraine), Iran (the Godawful nuke deal, for one), China (wait for it!), ...  Too bad (for the world) that he still has over a year left as POTUS.  But when he's gone, any of the 17 Republican candidates will be a vast improvement.

Peter Foster: Climate policy refugees

 The rocky road to the federal election is running parallel to the even rockier road to the (latest) “last chance to save the world” UN climate conference in Paris. In fact, their paths are not so much running parallel as frequently colliding. Both are littered with refugees, in one case real, in the other phantasmagorical.

Profound Climate Concern – which tends to overlap with Harper Derangement Syndrome — has become a key factor in Canadian politics. It lies at the bottom of rabid opposition to further development of the oil sands and pipelines, the proliferation of subsidies for unreliable wind and solar energy, and a hotchpotch of plans to curb emissions via regulation, taxes or trading systems. All mean lost jobs and reduced GDP. Only Stephen Harper has dared to point this out, and has been roundly abused for doing so. ...

Dealing with Harper Derangement Syndrome

Harper hysteria a sign of closed liberal minds: 

... Just what it is about the Conservative Leader that sends reasonable people into such fits of hysteria is best examined by historians, or better yet, psychiatrists. But it surely can’t be evidence, for Mr. Harper’s political style is not particularly novel ...

For starters, that they're "reasonable people" may be a bad assumption.

Joanne at Blue Like You wonders how best to deal with HDS.

Stephen Harper's speech in Surrey and the media Q&A

Further to my previous post here are the videos:

The speech
 

The QandA
 

Latest CTV poll:

Syria/Iraq refugee crisis vaulted to the top as an election issue

I just returned from a Conservative campaign event held Surrey, BC early this morning.  The event was cut short with PM Harper addressing only one issue which had been forced to the fore by breaking news of the drowning of a Kurdish refugee family (mother and two young boys) attempting to get out of Turkey.  It was big, big news because the family was attempting to get to Canada.

The PM's speech covered the situation and laid out the government's three pronged approach: help refugees over there, bring refugees here and military action to stop those responsible for forcing people from their home, mainly ISIS. 

The Media Party was there of course and the PM took questions from 4 or 5 reporters.  Every single one, starting with Paul Wells, asked the same sanctimonious, one-note, bleeding heart question: Why isn't Canada accepting more refugees, faster, ... ?  The PM gave them all the same answer which was a repeat of his speech.

They all sounded like they were carrying water for Mulcair or Trudeau.  Not one original question came up,  like, for example: "Why isn't Canada stepping up military action to stop ISIS and stem the refugee crisis?"

Two articles by Terry Glavin on this:

Canada is watching Syria die

Alan Kurdi drowned off the shores of Turkey. His family was trying to reach Canada

Update - CTV News poll backfires. [via the comments and sda] 

Final results: 

An open letter to Robert Fife and all the other media jackals at the "Duffy" trial

John Pepall: Mike Duffy's trial by media:

Sub judice. It’s the idea that when a matter is before the courts we should follow the allegations, the evidence and the arguments but leave the courts to decide what to make of it all.

... sub judice is not just some quaint leftover from the days when lawyers were supposed to know some Latin. It has a point: that matters that are to be decided by the courts should be left to them to decide; that they should not be subject to popular pressure telling them what to do.

... The media, when it is not just partisan, which much of it is, is flopping between unctuousness and the cultivation of populist [resentment] against anyone comfortable on the taxpayer’s dime.

...  It’s juicy gossip. And like all gossip, it is fuelled by malice and ignorance. ...

 And while the column is about Duffy's trial, the most recent phase has really been the trial-by-media of Stephen Harper.  Pepall's column would make a good open letter directed to the likes of Robert Fife (CTV) and Andrew Coyne (Post Media) [explicitly excluding Christy Blatchford]. 

Andrew Coyne - a nasty, partisan Media Party naif

Coyne's most recent contribution to Media Party yellow journalism opens with:

I am beginning to think we have done Stephen Harper a disservice. No, I’m sure we have. In fact, I think we — and by we I mean the media, me included — have been grossly unfair to him, and never more so than in the matter of Mike Duffy’s expenses. 

You will be familiar with the picture we have created of him: suspicious, paranoid, controlling, a leader who trusts no one, leaves nothing to others, insists on taking a hand in even the smallest matter. Well, you’d be suspicious, paranoid and controlling, too, if everyone around you was lying to you all the time.

And that's just for openers!  What follows is quite, let's say, uncharitable.

Coyne's opening sarcasm is actually a fairly accurate statement of the Media Party's characterization of Stephen Harper throughout his entire time in office.

Of course, he is suggesting, sarcastically, that the media (him included) have not created such a picture - that those who think so are just being "paranoid".  But that "picture" is a meme the media started and has continuously reinforced from square one.  And it is one that Harper's other opponents have adopted as routine talking points.

Coyne's entire column is just one more reinforcement of that smear.  "Harper, the paranoid micromanager not only knew every detail of his chief of staff's  handling of the Duffy affair but was directing the whole thing."  That's what beggars belief!

The simplest and most believable scenario is that Stephen Harper the CEO of the Government of Canada, like any other successful CEO of a large enterprise, would have entrusted a relatively minor internal problem, like the handling of the Duffy affair, to his chief of staff - just like he said he did.  Furthermore, any other CEO, not being subject to a partisan, hostile media would not have fired his COS but instead given him a raise along with a commendation.

Coyne needs to stop being so naively, blindly and nastily partisan and start paying attention to Christie Blatchford.  Better yet, the Post should give him back to the CBC, full time.

Mulcair's debate "zinger" a calculated lie

William Watson: Oops Mr. Mulcair, you just flunked your recession history

Instant reports on last week’s leaders’ debate suggested one of the most telling lines was Thomas Mulcair’s “Stephen Harper is the only prime minister in Canadian history who, when asked about the recession during his mandate, gets to say, ‘Which one?’”

 That’s too bad. The line wasn’t especially well delivered ... and it was obviously canned. 

... Two more serious problems with Mulcair’s zinger are that it’s almost certainly not true and, beyond that, it’s just not very relevant. But apart from being wrong and immaterial, it was a great line.

Watson provides the record: MacDonald was PM for 6 recessions, Laurier - 4 recessions, Borden - 4,  King - 5, St. Laurent - 3, Diefenbaker - 2, Trudeau - 3 and Harper - 2. 

How much more wrong could Mulcair be!  However, given that it was scripted implies that his "zinger" was a calculated lie, a cheap shot lie for scoring debating points. 

Mulcair could have truthfully claimed that there have been no recessions during any NDP administration, but that wouldn't have scored him any points, except maybe for laughter.

Kathleen Wynne's bizarre assault on Stephen Harper

Kathleen Wynne has been feuding with Stephen Harper, in part because he refuses to have the feds  collect the mandatory deductions for her new Ontario pension plan.  And why would he?  He is against expanding CPP mandatory deductions, favoring instead voluntary contributions, the  approach preferred by, for example, the employers of 2/3 of the private sector workforce.

Kelly McParland on Wynne's latest bizarro outburst:

Wynne’s latest effort is the suggestion that, had Harper been prime minister instead of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s national railway would never have been built.

... This is an odd statement, considering the considerable efforts Ottawa has put into convincing Ontario to get behind Energy East, the transcontinental pipeline that would move crude from Alberta and Saskatchewan to Saint John. It’s a truly national project, it would work to the benefit of the country as a whole, would create jobs and expand domestic refining activity ...

... Wynne and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard have issued a list of conditions they want met before they will deign to support the project.

... If Sir John A. had faced similar efforts to derail the railway over patently partisan provincial antics, the great project might indeed never have been completed. But it wouldn’t have been Ottawa’s fault, it would have been that of petty, narrow-minded premiers protecting their flanks at the expense of the country as a whole.

This an example of how the "loony left" earns its name.

Election 2015 is on!

The Prime Minister, as expected, dropped the writ today, with the Media Party absurdly whining about Conservatives' taking "unfair advantage".  Good grief!  Brian Lilley reacts:



Terry Milewski can be an idiot sometimes.  It's part of the job description for Media Party "reporters".

Canada declared "most reputable country in 2015"

Canada regains title as most reputable nation in the world despite Harper derangement frenzy

Canada under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has just regained its title as the most reputable nation in the world.  

According to the Reputation Institute’s annual report, Canada remains at the top of a 55-nation list for perceived trust, admiration and respect, based on a survey of 48,000 people around the world.

... few media picked it up. Instead, the Canadian media complex is in the grip of Harper Derangement Frenzy (HDF), which is an upgrade to hurricane status from Harper Derangement Syndrome ...

... [Canada's] international standing has never been stronger. Even the government’s global carbon strategy, portrayed by many as a national embarrassment, looks good to many other nations. As the table below suggests, Canada remains at the top of the world.

Good show Canada! (Well, at least progressives will think so.)

See also, Forbes.

Note: In 2014 Canada ranked second after Switzerland, and first for three years running in 2013,  2012 and 2011.

How "Dominion Day" was dumped by the Liberals ... and a salute to the Conservatives

From a previous post:
Some history on how "Dominion Day" was dumped in favour of the meaningless "Canada Day":

... In hindsight, it was a case of identity theft, an act of historical vandalism. A quarter-century ago, 13 members of Parliament hastily -- some say indecently -- renamed the country's national birthday in a swift bit of legislative sleight-of-hand.

At 4 o'clock on Friday, July 9, 1982, the House of Commons was almost empty. The 13 parliamentarians taking up space in the 282-seat chamber ... The whole process took five minutes. ... a private member's bill from Hal Herbert, the Liberal MP from Vaudreuil ...

And here are Mark Steyn's 2015 reflections on the subject:

... let me salute Canada's Conservative government for taking a tonally mature and historically honest approach to this country's nationhood. 

... the usual [Liberal] guff about "what a young nation we are".  We're not. We're one of the oldest continuous constitutional orders on earth, and there was always something queasily totalitarian about Liberal propagandists' insistence that Canada didn't exist until M Trudeau moved into Sussex Drive.

... Mr Harper does not share that view. ... Canada's citizenship ministry even hands out copies of Magna Carta to new arrivals - which in this 800th anniversary year is even more heartening. So I'm glad we're reconnecting with the half-a-millennium of history the Trudeaupians tried to bury.

... I shall always be grateful to Mr Harper's ministry for giving us a decade-long respite from all that Trudeaupian eternal-youth gibberish.

A realistic assessment of Omar Khadr and his lawyer

Christie Blatchford is one of the few mainstream media commenters who doesn't think of Omar Khadr as some kind of benign victim, if not hero:

... what Edney is doing is unorthodox and arguably even a risky mixing of the professional with the personal. While your lawyer is your best friend and sometimes your only one when you’re in trouble, he doesn’t usually move you into his house.

... I wonder if any lawyer who has so devoted himself to a client, can see him or her clearly.

... Edney also [accused the prime minister of being a mean, anti-Muslim bigot].  This was one of those examples of a defence lawyer imagining he has the exclusive patent on principled conduct, which is ridiculous. ... it’s loathsome to ascribe the worst of motives – racism – to the prime minister.

Omar Khadr has spent his entire adult life immersed in radical Islam and jihad.  It stretches credulity to the extreme to believe that he has all of a sudden transformed his thinking and his allegiances.  No doubt al-Qaeda and Khadr view Dennis Edney and Khadr's media cheerleaders as some of their most useful idiots.