Blue Scare Alert: Harper Not"Reviving Nazi Fascism" but Maoist Fascist Says He Is

It's ON

CAW President sounding the alarm of a blue scare

There's a provincial election, and it's getting serious.

How do you know an election is getting serious in Canada? When union leaders start sounding the alarm and calling for strategic voting. There's a blue scare afoot, and Canadian Auto Workers President Ken Lewenza intends to make it as scary as he possibly can.

"We're asking our members to get politically involved," Lewenza announced. "Look at the campaign and ask yourself... who represents your community and your household the best. I think (people will see) the alternatives are clear. We can't waste our vote on a third party candidate that could split the vote and allow a Tory to win."

Like Buzz Hargrove before him -- Hargrove was kicked out of the NDP for encouraging strategic voting during the 2005-06 federal election -- Lewenza has chosen to back away from being an NDP stalwart, and instead encourage members of his unions to blindly vote againt Tim Hudak and the Conservative Party.

"We marched the New Democrat line," he continued. "We thought, ‘this is our party,' but today we have to be more proactive. You have to think strategically to avoid a disaster... If I had it my way, I would try and convince the New Democrats and Liberals to form an electoral coalition so they're not knocking each other off."

Apparently, the prospect of a Conservative government in Ontario is so scary that Lewenza would, if he could, beat his head against the wall trying to convince the Liberals and NDP to work together to defeat them. He chooses to ignore the correlation between banging your head against the wall and headaches by blaming his headache on the Conservatives.

The Conservatives, it seems, aren't prepared to blindly commit themselves to further economic stimulus, even in the wake of a slowly-recovering Ontario economy. Lewenza would really like it if someone would.

"Even though some would suggest Ontario has recovered on a per capita basis... the fact of the matter is that most jobs being created are part-time and precarious in nature," he declared. "Government intervention in jobs is important."

The detail that the billions of dollars already doled out by the federal and Ontario governments has led to jobs that Lewenza considers "precarious" seems to have little impact on his assessment of it. He somehow thinks more of the same would somehow turn out differently.

Perhaps there's even more to it than that. Lewenza would clearly prefer a government that would bow to the demands of unions over the demands of the rest of Ontarians.

"Even though [labour unions] represent 30 per cent of the Ontario population, we influence 100 per cent of some of the public policy issues on things like minimum wage, pensions and health care," Lewenza added. "People are going to have to be reminded that if there's an aggressive challenge against the labour movement, it normally results in more lost time off work."

Hudak, it seems, is not that leader. He's willing to consider the views of people other than labour union leaders.

"We know the history of Mr Hudak in cabinet with [former Premier Mike] Harris," Lewenza recalled. "I remember it like it was yesterday. The first act Mike Harris introduced in the legislature was to dismantle legislation to allow workers to join a union harassment-free. They disbanded the wage protection program for workers."

In fact, Hudak voted with Harris for legislation that required secret ballot votes before a workplace could unionize, stripping unions of the ability to harass and intimidate workers who voted against unionization. It's no surprise that union leadership opposed such legislation.

The election in Ontario is getting serious. For Ken Lewenza, it's as serious as a heart attack. The prospects of a Progressive Conservative government threaten to undermine the disproportionate political influence of labour unions.

It's something that Ontarians should actually welcome. But Lewenza is too busy trying to make them afraid.

Dobbin, Mallick & Theilheimer: a Fear Mongering Trifecta

With the far-left decrying Prime Minister Stephen Harper's alleged fear mongering over the prospect of a coalition of losers, they have also taken this as an opportunity to... fear monger.

It's no great surprise. They've been doing it non-stop for nearly 20 years.

Some of the far-left's premier fear mongerers have dusted off their most dystopic nightmare to send one overhwelming message to Canadians: give Harper a majority, and Canada is over. Done for. History.

Everyone -- especially the authors of these diatribes -- know it isn't true. But these people being who they are, they're saying it anyway. Here's a brief round up.

First up, at Straight Goods Ish Theilheimer declares that, if given a majority, the first thing Harper would do is destroy public health care.

"Politicians and activists need to remind Canadians of how drastic the threat is. The record clearly shows that Stephen Harper loathes medicare," Theilheimer declares.

"Harper deserted Preston Manning and left politics in 1997 to work for the National Citizens Coalition, which was formed expressly to fight medicare, as chronicled by Murray Dobbin. In 1997, as NCC Vice-President, Harper said that Canada should scrap the Canada Health Act."

"Until 2005 Harper publicly professed to believe in two-tier care," Theilheimer continues. "When asked by the CBC about a parallel health care system, he said: 'Well I think it would be a good idea. We're alone among OECD countries in deciding that we'll have a two-tier system but our second tier will be outside the country where only the very rich and powerful can access it and [it] will be of absolutely no benefit to the Canadian health care system.'"

"In October 2002, Dobbin reminds us, Harper said, 'We also support the exploration of alternative ways to deliver health care. Moving toward alternatives, including those provided by the private sector, is a natural development of our health care system.'"

Of course to people like Theilheimer, who denounce "US-style health care" to anyone who will listen, the idea of parallel health care systems seems like a scary idea... until you consider that the best health care systems in the world feature mixtures of public and private health care delivery.

Meanwhile, Canada's health care system -- operating within the framework defined in the Canada Health Act -- continues to perform dismally compared to other health care systems. Perhaps Harper was right in 1997; perhaps Canada needs a new health care framework in order to correct the ever-growing list of flaws in the current system.

Speaking of Murray Dobbin, he too took the interwebs for some good-old fashioned Dobbin-flavoured fear mongering:

"It's been a long five years for Stephen Harper, his gaggle of ex-Reformers and the gang of three from Harris-era Ontario -- Jim Flaherty, John Baird and Tony Clement. Long and infuriating, I am sure, because for all that time they had to pretend that they were a government. They had to masquerade as people who believed that government could be a force for good. They even "stimulated" the economy. They were a minority government and the big ticket items they really wanted to get their teeth into were out of reach.

They couldn't slash Medicare or gut the Canada Health Act. They couldn't cut transfers to the provinces, or further weaken EI. They left the public services unions with their rights intact. They had to leave education alone (more or less). And they didn't risk slashing the civil service they hate so much. Even the CBC has been spared (though they raised millions from their loyalists attacking it in fundraising letters).

The frustration level, especially for Harper, must have been almost unbearable. Remember, this is a man who got so frustrated being in Opposition as right-hand man to Preston Manning that he bolted from politics altogether. The place he chose to cleanse himself after all those years having to play the democrat was the National Citizens Coalition, by a big margin the most right-wing organization on the national scene. He said he was glad to be out of politics so he could say what he really thought.

Harper was hoping for revenge in the last election and blew it by attacking culture. He's eager for another try, making Jack Layton an offer he had to refuse. And if you want to see what real revenge looks like, give this crowd a majority and they will unleash the most destructive, nation-changing blitzkrieg in living memory. I can still remember the night that Brian Mulroney won the historic free trade election 1988. It was devastating. But Mulroney was a kindergarten teacher compared to Stephen Harper. Free trade started us down the road to Americanization. Harper will take us to the end of that road and beyond."

There's very little of substance in Dobbin's tirade. The sole issue of great concern Dobbin raises is the "committee handbook" the Conservatives were caught passing about earlier in their tenure. As disappointing as that affair was, it's but a mere patrol boat in Harper's political game of Battleship.

Dobbin spends the rest of his column chasing conspiratorial phantoms in the dark. Apparently, Dobbin believes in ghosts.

The rank anti-Americanism of Dobbin's column sets the table splendidly for Heather Mallick's contribution to the politics of fear, who is so brazen about her empty anti-Americanism that it's heralded in the title of her piece.

"We’re being conquered. If Stephen Harper wins a majority, the United States of Canada is what we’ll be. Maybe you’re fine with that. I am not," Mallick writes. "The Harperites’ attitude is Republican with a layer of Tea Party, a 'current of bitterness, an anger born of a sense of exclusion,' as Lawrence Martin wrote in his fine book Harperland, Conservatives 'viscerally hating their political opposition' in a way that was new and startling in Canada but old poisoned hat for the Americans. We will become more American in word and deed, in thought and feeling."

The only anti-American bogeymen Mallick seems to have missed are the Koch brothers and Sarah Palin (Mallick's self-humiliating vicious attack on Sarah Palin in 2008 managed to earn her a permanent place at the journalistic kids' table). Speaking of visceral hatred of political opposition, it was Mallick herself who openly admitted to experiencing a blubbering episode during the 2010 Olympics when Harper was simply shown on TV.

"The Harper Government does indeed love 'jets and jails,' as Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has been saying on the campaign trail," Mallick fumes. "Its plan for more jailing and less parole is at the core of the disastrous US prison explosion that even the Americans are horrified of by now (plus they can’t afford it)."

The Harper government may indeed love jets -- they are rather awesome -- but the salient fact is that no one loves jails. The difference between Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff is that Harper knows that Canada needs both.

Speaking of Ignatieff, he did once declare that the United States was his country, yet Mallick has nothing at all to say about that. Anti-Americanism, it seems, applies only to Conservatives.

Mallick even blames Harper for what she considers to be increasing public acceptance of racism. Comically, she refers to the "too Asian?" issue of Macleans magazine, but leaves out a central fact: that the issue was widely denounced by critics.

Facts like that clearly didn't matter to Mallick. They've been sacrificed at the altar of fear, Mallick's last resort to try to prevent a Stephen Harper majority government.

Fear served the Canadian far-left well for 13 years. Yet Heather Mallick Murray Dobbin and Ish Theilheimer have yet to realize that Canadians woke up from that coma in 2006 when they elected enough Conservative MPs to make Harper Prime Minister.

The bid to resurrect that fear in the minds of Canadians is sad and pathetic. Thankfully, it won't get them anywhere.

Al Gore and the Climate of Extremes

Featured on YouTube via TED Talks, former US Vice President Al Gore speaks about some alarming new signs of global warming.

In the video Gore talks about the alleged spread of oxygen-depleted "dead zones" in the oceans, and about methane emissions from lakes, including a video where some scientists set these methane emissions on fire. He then finishes up by debuting some campaign ads directed against clean coal technology.

Yet as it turns out, Al Gore is not at all a reliable source of information about global warming -- or as alarmists re-term it when challenged about the lack of a demonstrable warming trend, climate change.

Speaking via ForaTV, UN Inter-government Panel on Climate Change member Patrick Michaels demonstrates how quickly Gore's sensationalist rhetoric can be exposed for what it truly is.

It quickly undermines any faith in nearly anything that comes out of the former Vice President's mouth, and reminds viewers that while individuals like Gore want to insist climate change will be the end of the world, and that we should all be extremely terrified of it, there's more afoot than these alarmists would have us realize.

It's difficult to overlook the extent to which climate change alarmism is being treated as a pretext for various political programs.

In Canada, Liberal MP Ken Boschoff let a wealth-transferring agenda slip when talking about Stephane Dion (and Michael Ignatieff's) carbon tax.

George Monbiot has been amongst the most extreme of the alarmists, writing a book that insists that climate change will reach a "point of no return" if not stopped as immediately as possible. Monbiot, who is not a climatologist, had also previously spoken on CBC's Ideas radio program about the need for a global Parliament -- something that legally-binding climate treaties like the Kyoto protocol could arguably (but not necessarily) lead to.

On the other side of the coin there are those who deny climate change outright. As Gore rightly notes, many of them profit from oil and coal -- just as those who profit from oil and coal will rightly note that Gore has a political agenda that is served by climate change alarmism.

It would be foolish to deny that climate change is a problem. At the very least, it would be foolish to deny that there aren't countless other good reasons to reduce carbon emissions and other industrial emissions -- air quality being paramount among them.

But to allow Al Gore and his extremist cohorts to terrify people ignores both the tendency of these people to promote alarmism at the expense of scientific fact, and the political agendas they seek to promote.

Patrick Michaels is absolutely right. People need to stop feeding the climate of extremes.

Poliitcs of Fear Continue to Predominate

Some "progressive" bloggers want you to be afraid -- very afraid

Ever since the 2004 US presidential election, the politics of fear has been a hot topic in North American politics.

Progressives from both sides of the 49th parallel decried the blatant fear mongering of the Bush reelection campaign. At one point it was even suggested that terrorists had pledged themselves to attack any US state that voted for Kerry.

Meanwhile, that same year, a similar fear campaign was being waged north of the 49th parallel, as the Liberal party, beset by scandle, scrambled to make Canadians afraid of the Conservative party.

The campaign culminated with this infamous ad:



It all more or less revolves around the rhetorical bomb that was the hidden agenda -- the idea that, while putting on a benign face for the purpose of courting voters, the Conservative party actually carried a much more malignant plan which was essentially to dismantle Canada "as we know it".

Despite this so-called hidden agenda remaining nowhere to be seen during the past two years of Conservative party government, politically-motivated faux-Progressives are getting ready to launch another fear-based assault on Canadian democracy.

This time the attack revolves around Lloydminster-Battleford MP and Minister of Agriculture Gerry Ritz, whose frustration in trying to implement the government's democratically-approved agenda for the Canadian Wheat Board has apparently begun to bubble over.

This past week, the CWB continued to rebuff the democratically-expressed will of prairie grain producers when they terminated talks with the federal government regarding the ending of the board's monopoly on Barley.

"To say that I'm extremely disappointed to hear that the Canadian Wheat Board is unwilling to discuss change for western Canadian producers would be an understatement," Ritz announced.

The government will be introducing legislation into the House of Commons -- expected to be opposed by the Liberals and NDP -- to end the single-desk marketing system for Barley and move to an open market. This, in one way or another, is favoured by 62.2% of prairie grain farmers.

But the Wheat Board isn't playing ball with the farmers whose interests they're supposed to represent -- or with the government whose wheat board agenda certainly was a factor in helping them sweep Canada's prairie breadbasket during the most recent federal election.

"The board has sufficiently stalled things long enough that they'll survive until after the election," he added. "When we come back with a majority, then all bets are off."

Various faux-progressives have essentially been jumping for joy since Ritz went so far as to suggest that, if (or, in his view, when) the Conservative party is reelected with a majority that they might... you know, implement their agenda. You know... the not-so-hidden one.

One can almost sense the glee in the faux-progressive corner of the blogosphere as they anticipate maybe... just maybe... being able to peddle fear to the Canadian electorate again.

Of course, that is what makes them faux-progressives as opposed to legitimate progressives. Legitimate progressives recognize that fear-mongering is inherently regressive, no matter what kind of left-wing agenda it's used to implement. Fear undermines the crucial bonds of trust that make democracy truly work, and lead to a more cynical, less democratic, society.

Of course, to Lindsay Stewart and her ilk, this isn't an issue about "progress" or "democracy". It's simply an issue about getting their way, on every issue, regardless of whether or not they have a stake in a particular issue (it's intriguing to see how many Ontario farmers -- who voted to abolish their Wheat Board long ago -- seem to be opposed to the same thing happening on the prairies).

Legitimate progressives, meanwhile, swore off fear mongering long, long ago. They did this in the name of fostering healthy democracies, not unhealthy demagogracies.

That's what makes them progressives. Now, if only demagogues like Lindsay Stewart knew the difference.