Shorter Harper Cons: In our language, the word for “crisis” is the same as the word for “opportunity to trash civil rights”.
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Accidental Deliberations: Dig faster!!!
Shorter Greg Rickford: It has come to my attention that after eight years of propagandizing for pipelines and demonizing anybody who points out environmental concerns, nobody considers Conservatives to be even faintly credible in protecting the public interest. But I’m sure we can win people over with my bold new
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On abuses of power
Shorter Ontario Libs: It turns out that the public sees privatizing power as only slightly more desirable than the plague. But to ensure a swift transition of profits toward the private sector, we’re fully prepared to falsely claim those are our only two options.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On consensus-breaking
Having earlier dealt with Stephen Harper’s attempt to justify war by building up hatred and hype toward ISIS, I’ll note the other main rationale on offer from the Cons – which can generally be described as government by wrong answer to a rhetorical question: If Canada wants to keep its
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On choosing sides
Shorter L. Ian MacDonald: Anybody doubting whether it’s worth going to war in Iraq based on minimal information and questionable reasoning had best take a cold, hard look at the dangers of being on the wrong side of history. But of course, anybody demanding a war in in Iraq based
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On deflection
Shorter Your Corporate Overlords: It turns out most of the information we supplied to get a free pass on importing disposable foreign workers was laughably inaccurate. And we’re outraged that anybody was foolish enough to believe us.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On practical obstacles
Shorter Andrew Scheer: A functional democratic Parliament is everybody’s responsibility. And to be more precise, my responsibility for a functional democratic Parliament is to enforce complete unaccountability – and indeed punish anybody who questions that choice – until the Conservative Party instructs me otherwise. (For further reading, Michael Den Tandt,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On paid access
Shorter Brad Wall: As far as I’m concerned, paying large sums of money to cynical political operatives for insider access to decision-makers is just how business gets done with the U.S. government. Also, please don’t draw any obvious inferences about how business gets done with my government.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On active demolition
Shorter Fraser Institute: It has come to our attention that due to the Canada Pension Plan, the rabble might actually enjoy the benefit of high-return investments normally reserved to our corporate overlords. Clearly this must end.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: History repeating
Shorter Joe Oliver: Sure, we’re getting thoroughly lousy results after years of setting our economic policy based almost exclusively on corporate interests, with special privileges for the resource sector. But I’ve got an idea: what if we instead based our economic policy even more exclusively on corporate interests, with even
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On reality barriers
Shorter Brian Crowley: It turns out that finding “facts” and “evidence” about mythical trade barriers is tougher than I’d realized. In light of this adversity, can’t we just agree to accept my unsupported assertions as fact, and impose the most extreme anti-government policy my corporate benefactors can imagine in response?
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Thomas Frank discusses the corporate takeover of U.S. politics – and how even nominally left-oriented parties are willing to go along with the corporate position even as voters regularly demand something else: One of the reasons the phrase appealed to me, 17 years
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On sucker’s deals
Shorter Brad Wall: But what you less-sophisticated, not-so-business-savvy people don’t understand is this: when you pawn the furniture, you get CASH MONEY UP FRONT. How can that be anything but a great deal?
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On skewed perspectives
Shorter anonymous Conservative MP: Of course we want nothing more than fairness out of Canada’s electoral oversight bodies. And by that, we of course mean they should stop damaging our party’s cause with this annoying habit of investigating Conservative wrongdoing.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On vested interests
Shorter Linda Frum: As one of Stephen Harper’s hand-picked counterweights to the troublesome democratic rabble, I refuse to acknowledge any difference between “encouraging voter turnout” and “abetting electoral fraud”. The less people with a voice in how this country is run, the better.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On public priorities
I’m not sure whether last week’s column played a role, but there have been an awful lot of attacks on Saskatchewan’s Crowns since then at a time when the parties don’t seem to be highlighting the issue. So let’s sum up the arguments being made to undermine the public enterprises
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On natural selection
Shorter (or paraphrased) Lisa Thompson: People mention ‘Walkerton’ as if it were a bad thing. Don’t they understand the benefits of killing off the weak?
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Pavlov’s lapdog
Shorter Barrie McKenna: We must respond to all tax policy developments anywhere in the world by slashing corporate tax rates. And I’ve just lowered the bar on what constitutes a “tax policy development” to include the idle posturing of a U.S. party which can’t pass anything.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On concern trolling
Shorter Montreal Gazette: We suggest the NDP stay away from Quebec provincial politics in order to preserve its federal success which we tried so hard to squelch.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On deflection
Shorter Preston Manning: Mike Duffy openly flouted the Parliamentary Press Gallery’s rules for years by seeking to trade his celebrity for a patronage appointment. When Stephen Harper was the only Prime Minister willing to offer that deal for political gain, Duffy proceeded to flout every new set of rules which
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