Canadian Cynic

Once upon a fantasy ...

2009-11-22T14:20:00.005-05:00

Oh, look:

Identifying the unintentional hilarity is left as an exercise for the reader.

Dear Iceman: Any chance of an apology sometime soon?

2009-11-22T13:23:00.003-05:00

Here's Blogging Tory "Iceman," making an ass of himself in public:

Did Richard Colvin commit a war crime?

... Therefore my question is, if this guy knew that innocent people were being tortured and he did not tell a single superior visiting the theatre of war, is Richard Colvin personally liable for the alleged violation of the Geneva Conventions?

And then there's reality:

Many NATO officials in Kabul were also aware how seriously Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin was following the issue, he said.

"Richard Colvin behaved as a straight-up-and-down person, completely honest and doing his job to the best of his abilities," the former official said.

"He had to be terribly careful. He couldn't speak to us about this. But it was clear that the tone at the Canadian Embassy had changed. It became far more politicized – and it was clear that Richard Colvin was struggling enormously to do his work on the question of detainees."

There's a reason I refer collectively to Canada's Blogging Tories as horrifically stupid buttfuck retards. I'm sure you can tease out why.

Because this is different, that's why.

2009-11-22T13:07:00.002-05:00

Shorter Canadian wanknuts: "As people who were appalled at the cruel, savage attacks on Sarah Palin and the horrific, ideological assault on her that was nothing less than the mean-spirited politics of personal destruction, we hope you understand that Richard Colvin must be destroyed."

Shriek, shriek, shrieeeeeeeeeeekkk!!!!! Oh ...

2009-11-22T12:28:00.004-05:00

Shorter crazed, howling, hysterical, bloodlust-soaked Blogging Tories: "Cenotaph! Vandalism! Bastards! Screeeeeeeee!!!!!"

Shorter reality:

Cenotaph damage might not be vandalism: police

Damage at the provincial cenotaph in Fredericton might not have been the work of vandals as initially thought, police say.

It's possible the three-metre granite cross atop the monument fell over on its own because of structural flaws, said Const. Ralph Currie.

"As in all investigations, they look for physical evidence that may have been left at the scene, whether that be foot impressions, tire impressions or whatever. And it's my understanding that none of that has been found," Currie said.

There weren't any obvious tool marks or evidence that the cross was pulled over by a vehicle, either.

Explanation, please? Oh:

Concern was raised a couple of years ago that the cross was moving, Currie said. A steel post was put through the stem of the cross, but it's possible it might have come loose.

As for the second monument, witnesses have suggested it was bumped by a lawnmower earlier this summer, said Currie. Police aren't ruling anything out.

"It's not for police to believe one or the other," Currie said.

Man, but that's timely.

(Wag of the tail to Robert McClelland.)

P.S. Feel free to leave links to any of Canada's other dingbat wankers who went batshit crazy over this and who would now be feeling at least a little sheepish if they had any sense of shame whatsoever.

Let me make a prediction.

2009-11-22T11:17:00.002-05:00

From a CanWest article today (emphasis added):

Some prisoners were tortured: Afghan warden

Prisoners were tortured, but perhaps just a dozen, Afghan warden says

KANDAHAR CITY, Afghanistan — Prisoners were tortured at Sarpoza Prison in Afghanistan, but not in nearly the numbers alleged this past week by a Canadian diplomat, the prison’s chief warden has told Canwest News Service.

“Yes, there was torture and people were certainly beaten,” chief warden Col. Abdullah Bawar said Saturday during an interview conducted inside the prison’s heavily guarded walls.

“Hands and legs would be tied and they would be beaten with cables. I even remember one man who broke his leg from a beating.

Every Blogging Tory piece you're going to read based on that article: "See? I told you that Colvin guy was exaggerating. You can't believe a word that liar says."

I'll put money on that. Anyone want a piece of that action?

Hypocrisy ...

2009-11-22T09:51:00.002-05:00

... thy name is Stephen Harper.

Harper lauds press freedom in speech, doesn't take questions from reporters

Prime Minister Stephen Harper urged journalists to “shine light into dark corners” of government affairs during a speech late Saturday, but wouldn't take questions from reporters covering the event.

Big Daddy's not even trying to hide his complete and utter contempt for the peons any longer. I wonder if his disappearing act had anything to do with this?

Oopsie.

Canada's idiot wankers: 0 for infinity.

2009-11-22T08:35:00.006-05:00

It occurs to me that, for the entertainment value, we here in Not-Batshit-Crazyville should put together a list of the ways in which Canada's drooling wingnuts have been wrong about, well, everything. And a delightful list it would be, quite a bit gleaned from the archives here at CC HQ.

So ... what have the residents of Retard-o-ville managed to be completely, totally and utterly wrong about over the last little while? Oh, my, where can we start?

Jews and Iran and badges

police provocateurs at Montebello

no Conservative deficit

no climate change

no evidence for Afghani torture of detainees handed over by the Canadian military

Sarah Palin being a dangerously shrewd and articulate politician

that Robert Dziekanski guy had it coming

Really, I'm not even fully awake and I could rattle those off the top of my head. Should we continue? Seriously, feel free to drop a note in the comments section as to what should be added to the list. I'm thinking it could be our version of Sandy Crux's "Harper Government Accomplishments," except we could call it "Canada's Wankers' Totally Embarrassing Cockups and Clusterfucks Because They're Idiots." And, unlike the Sandy Crux Chronicles, it wouldn't be utter shash.

The comments section is now open. Go wild.

But I could have sworn ...

2009-11-22T08:24:00.003-05:00

Nov 22, 2009:

A day after a former diplomat made explosive allegations that Ottawa was aware of routine torture practices in Afghanistan, the Conservatives attacked his credibility, saying there was "no evidence" to support the claims.

Feb 29, 2008:

The [Canadian] military had stopped handing over prisoners to Afghan officials on Nov. 6 [2007], one day after Canada received what it called ``credible evidence" that a prisoner was abused at the hands of his Afghan captors after being handed over by Canadians.

Reconciling those two conflicting accounts is left as an exercise for the reader. Or, more precisely, for the ignorant, useless hacks at the Blogging Tories. I'm sure they're all hanging out by their fax machines, waiting for the next set of retarded talking points as I type.

BONUS TRACK: Oh, dear.

The attack of the Dilbert people.

2009-11-22T02:11:00.003-05:00

One of the most mockable Dilbert characters is someone creator Scott Adams refers to as "Bizarre Absolute Guy," who insists on restating whatever you say in terms of "bizarre absolutes" simply for the sake of being able to refute a nonsensical and irrelevant position that you never took:

Dilbert: We should add this feature to our product to make it more useful.

"Bizarre Absolute" Guy: "Are you telling me that not one person on earth will use our product without that feature?!!"

Dilbert: "You just changed what I said into a bizarre absolute."

"BA" Guy: "Oh, I change everything you say?!"

Behold, the bizarre absoluteness:

WindAtMyBack said...

harebell, I certainly do doubt the content of Colvin's statements, if he is saying for a certainty that ALL detainees were tortured. How would he know?

It's the linguistic equivalent of listening to someone, then replying with, "So what you're saying is ...," followed by a complete and total mischaracterization of what was actually said.

I call it the "Twatsification" of modern discourse. Regular readers will understand why.

To all the male whingers I've mocked before.

2009-11-22T00:45:00.004-05:00

Dear useless male wanks:

Let me give you some free advice. It does not matter how often or how sincerely you write fawning articles gushing over Sarah Palin. She is not going to fuck you. It ain't gonna happen.

I'm glad we had this little chat.

The thigh-sucking gullibility of Kate McMillan.

2009-11-22T00:10:00.005-05:00

Unsurprisingly, Canada's answer to Ann Coulter (only with less money and class but more empty cans of paint thinner) Kate McMillan is all over the latest climate change uproar like Patrick Ross on a bad haircut:

The Sound Of All Hell About To Break Loose, Con't

At Planet Gore, more exerpts from the Hadley CRU files; ...

Nestled deep in the comments we have this nugget from relentless crank Louise:

Just out of curiosity I just finished a little tour of the lunatic fringe side of the blogosphere to see what the reaction is there to this news.

Big City Lib has two entries both in full on denial that this means anything. There were, at the time that I visited, a grand total of 17 comments, mostly from folks telling him he was out to lunch and his pathetic attempt at rebuttal.

Everybody else was completely silent, although several did have posts up with today's date. These include Dr. Dawg, Saskboy, Stoogeleft (although he did have an entry a few days ago criticizing the lack of enthusiasm from the worlds political leaders, including Obama, about the upcoming Copenhagen conference), Canadian Cynic, Bow, James Bow, My Blahg, Unrepentant Old Hippie and Daily Kos.

Red Tory has a blog entry about the general global warming issue, but of course it was just more of the same old same old, with no hint of any acknowledgment that this story had broken.

Bunch of losers.

Well, Louise, it's like this. Given that Kate has a talent for being perpetually suckered by dumbass idiocy, it seemed only wise for me to spend yesterday geeking out, drinking wine and writing on other topics, waiting for the other shoe to drop, as it so always does shortly after you and your screeching flying monkey colleagues stroke yourselves into a frenzy only to be intellectually humiliated yet again. I could go on but, mercifully, Dr. Dawg does the heavy lifting, for which I am eternally grateful.

So there you are, Louise. My silence on the subject was due to nothing more than a lack of desire to make a gibbering, public imbecile of myself on the Intertoobz. I see neither you nor Kate suffer from any such caution.

As God is my witness …

2009-11-21T15:18:00.004-05:00

I have not a hot clue what Bible Spice is trying to say.

O'Reilly: Let me be bold and fresh again. Do you believe you are smart enough, and incisive enough, intellectual enough, to handle the most powerful job in the world?

Palin: I believe that I am because I have common sense, and I have, I believe, the values that are reflective of so many American values. And I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the, um, the, ah -- kind of spineless -- a spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with elite Ivy League education and -- fact resume that's based on anything but hard work and private-sector, free-enterprise principles. Americans could be seeking something like that in positive change in their leadership. I'm not saying that that has to be me.

No, really.

CC EDITORIAL: "Let me be bold and fresh again."

Falafel!

Holy. Fucking. God.

2009-11-21T14:03:00.004-05:00

Read the rest if you can stomach it.

Ah, the Jon Stewartness of it all.

2009-11-21T12:01:00.004-05:00

The fun starts at about 3:45. Luckily, we of the Great White North can rest easy that we don't have that kind of pants-pissing, batshit crazy dumbassitude up here and ... and ... oh, crap.

Stephen Taylor's Blogging Tories: Because, with encouragement, even the intellectually crippled might one day become useful members of society. Or not.

Rule of thumb.

2009-11-21T11:35:00.005-05:00

Shorter Mary Matalin, Official Darth Cheney Fluffer: If that stupid bitch had done her job properly in the first place, she wouldn’t have required such manly correction.

Money quote (emphasis gleefully added):

Time is the most valuable commodity on a campaign and you just can't waste it thinking about how to choose your words carefully or get your job done more diplomatically. If someone isn't in tears every day, that day wasn't all it could be advancing the campaign. I once witnessed an experienced (big) man slap a professional female colleague across the face over an ad buy... and no one thought anything of it, starting with the woman. In fact, she would have been insulted if anyone told her she should have been insulted.

And furthermore ... Yes, I grossed myself out by using the words "Cheney" and "Fluffer" in the same sentence. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

And further furthermore ... I can honestly say that my first reaction upon being smacked in the face by an "experienced (big) man" would not be one of insult -- it would be one of revenge.

Of course, I'm not a conservative/republican ~~drone~~ woman. And I know how to kill with my thumb.

Sure, let's talk about civility.

2009-11-21T11:15:00.006-05:00

Over at Kate McMillan's Eliminationist Roadhouse and Biker Bar, "Mr. g" holds forth in the comments section:

Yeah, that inability to cavalierly murder others really mucks with one's time management, doesn't it?

Stephen Taylor must be so proud.

Hi, guys.

2009-11-21T09:41:00.001-05:00

How's it goin', eh?

Yeah, just like that.

2009-11-21T09:38:00.002-05:00

DISCLAIMER: The above is not my work. I stole it from here.

Time for another swift boot to the nads, I think.

2009-11-21T09:29:00.002-05:00

There's the news of the day:

Weak growth delays Flaherty attack on deficit

As Canada's economy struggles to gain momentum, Jim Flaherty faces a delicate balancing act.

On one side, he says the economy is stable enough that no new stimulus measures are required. On the other, it's not strong enough to allow the government to tackle its massive deficits.

And there's the mullet that walks like a man:

... as it stands now, there is no deficit, and there won't be ...

That one's just never getting old, is it?

The intellectual powerhouse that is "Hunter."

2009-11-21T06:57:00.005-05:00

Yes, it's cruel but, seriously, you need to see this:

This amazing math quiz can likely predict which of 18 films you would enjoy the most. Don't ask me how.

Pick a number from 1-9.
Multiply by 3.
Add 3.
Multiply by 3 again.

Now add the two digits together to find your predicted favorite movie in the list of 18 movies below.

Mine was "Jurassic Park" - exactly right! So be honest, and do it before you scroll down to see the list below. It's easy and it works.

I remember being bored by stuff like that when I was 5.

Yeah, THAT will give the civil service the warm fuzzies.

2009-11-21T05:03:00.002-05:00

Someone might want to start looking for a different line of work:

Question: Why was this man [Richard Colvin] promoted to an important job in Washington and charged with intelligence if he has no credibility?

Hon. Peter MacKay: Look, I can’t answer that question and I suspect that promotion took place or it did take place long before he gave his evidence yesterday.

Shorter Peter MacKay: "Nice job you have there. Be a shame to fuck it up by standing on principle, know what I mean?"

I'm guessing Peter MacKay's title of "Honourable" isn't meant to be hilariously ironic, it's just working out that way.

Quitbull!

2009-11-21T03:04:00.007-05:00

Heh. Indeed.

P.S. Remember how you always wished that "Ignorance should be painful?" It's not always, but at least it's occasionally uncomfortable and leaves you to stand outside for several hours, freezing in the cold for nothing. So there's that.

AH, THE UNINTENTIONAL HILARITY: Who else but Blogging Tory Maria "Stupid, Ignorant Leftards" Nunes would conveniently post this pic on her latest sopping panties paean to the Quitbull from Wasilla?

I really don't need to work on collecting the humour anymore. It just shows up at my doorstep on a regular basis.

AH, THE DELIGHTFUL CREDULITY: It's amusing to watch how poor MariaS, as smitten as she is with Caribou Barbie, is incapable of describing parts of Palin's life accurately. Here's Maria, going all gushy for Sarah:

There is a story that was published some months ago about how Palin used to keep a jar of names with telephone numbers of Alaska citizens on slips of paper, on her desk. Once a week she would let her hand drop into the jar and randomly pull out some of the slips and call up those numbers and ask simple questions: "How are we doing? Are we doing a good job? What improvements would you like to see in Alaska?"

Gosh, that's adorable. And, sadly, inaccurate:

During her first year in office [as mayor of the town of Wasilla], Palin kept a jar with the names of Wasilla residents on her desk. Once a week, she pulled a name from it and picked up the phone; she would ask: "How's the city doing?"

So the story doesn't reflect Palin's self-aborted stint as governor of Alaska, it refers to her tenure as mayor of Wasilla. Sure, it's pedantic, but it's also depressing to realize that Maria -- who so obsessively worships Palin to the point where Palin probably has extra security to check the bushes for footprints every night -- is incapable of accuracy in a story even that simple. But this is MariaS we're talking about here. Don't be expecting accuracy any time soon.

Ah, the entertaining Cruxitude.

2009-11-21T02:53:00.004-05:00

So that would be a "no."

Canada's whingers: Because objective reality is hard werk.

2009-11-21T01:22:00.006-05:00

Over at Spanky's Sandbox and Pillow Fort, The Politic's Charles Anthony postulates about a public torture inquiry rather puzzlingly:

That attitude is unsatisfactory. An inquiry is only as good as it satisfies the level of scrutiny of all the left-wing and right-wing wack-jobs involved.

In other words, you will spend more of my taxes to subsidize professional arguers on both sides of the fences who will repeatedly discuss the merits of more hearsay evidence ad nauseum. At the end of the day, if you do not like what the inquiry discloses (or fails to disclose) you can stiill cry foul.

Huh. How ... interesting. What Charles seems to be suggesting is that a public inquiry -- no matter how competently run, no matter how unimpeachable its conclusions -- will simply produce a bunch of bickering ideologues in the end, some of them agreeing with the results, some disagreeing so, like, what's the point?

What a fascinating conjecture.

Because if I read Charles correctly (and I'm pretty sure I do), what he's suggesting is that he simply doesn't accept the concept of an objective reality -- a reality which, regardless of your political bent, must be accepted based on the overwhelming supporting evidence.

You see, one would have thought that a properly run public inquiry would not simply consist of people yelling at each other across the House of Commons. No, one would have thought that a properly run public inquiry would involve interviewing the players, collecting the relevant official correspondence, teasing out the incriminating e-mails, checking phone logs and perhaps even wrenching free from the pathologically corrupt and secretive Stephen Harper Party of Canada (probably via official Freedom of Information requests) the sorts of things they really, really, really don't want you to know. You know -- things that prove beyond any doubt what sort of hiedously dishonest scumbags and weasels they are.

Yes, one would think that a competently run public inquiry would, first and foremost, concentrate on establishing objectively what happened, and when it happened, and who it happened to, that sort of thing, all based on solid evidence, much of it from the public record that can't just be contemptuously dismissed so that, in the end, there is no logical way to reject the carefully-crafted conclusions. You'd think that, anyway.

But that would not be part of the world that Charles lives in. Apparently, Charles' world is inhabited by people whose rationale for rejecting massively substantiated claims is simply that ... they don't like them. In Charles' world, ideological bluster and spittle is all-important; proof and evidence and facts, eh, not so much.

It's depressing but totally unsurprising. After all, these are the people whose accusations of horrible, anti-Conservative media bias are defined as "whatever we disagree with." Whether or not bias actually exists is quite irrelevant. What's relevant is that they take exception with the content. And whether the content is grounded in reality is, for Charles and his drinking buds, not really part of the conversation.

In a sense, then, Charles is entirely correct. A public inquiry probably would be a waste of time. After all, if it was based on rigourous and methodical investigation, it would be accepted by sane people regardless of where it led, while the opinion of Canada's whingnuts would take into account nothing more than whether or not they agreed with the findings.

For Charles and his right-wing whackjob colleagues, ideology is everything. Reality is simply convenient, but only occasionally.

Talking to conservatives -- the next episode.

2009-11-20T23:28:00.002-05:00

Try to watch that and not think of Blogging Tory "Neo Conservative." No, really.