The Wall Of Separation

I'm not Catholic, but I have observed that the Catholic Church comprises a pretty powerful group of people. Usually, governments take them on at their peril. Not Dalton McGuinty's government, though.

The chief problem here, as it is for any opponent of Dalton McGuinty, is that the Catholic Church is not the government of Ontario. Like most Ontarians, I do not like the idea of a church being the government. I am unlike most Ontarians, however, in that I also do not like it when the government is the church.

Look at what's going on in Quebec right now. The people of Quebec had a Quiet Revolution, and now they're having a very loud revolution. In Quebec, the government is definitely not the church. In Quebec, they have come to the understanding that there are some things the government can't get away with without a real fight. It is also that way in many other regions of the country. It is also that way in many other countries around the world. But, not in Ontario.

It is an entirely rational and correct response for Ontario Liberals to be worried about a global explosion of unrest. Global explosions of unrest, when they happen, tend to shake things up enough so that just doing the socially acceptable thing won't work. And when the socially acceptable thing doesn't work anymore, you might as well be taking a Liberal's oxygen away.

But I draw your attention back to the idea that the Ontario government is at loggerheads with the freaking Catholic Church and Dalton doesn't seem too worried. Not about the Church itself, or about people who send their kids to Ontario's Catholic schools and don't seem to care for mandatory GSA's, or anybody who has an opinion that differs from the government.

Why, there's even talk of defunding the Catholic school system. But that's silly. No way Dalton would ever get away with that. Right? I mean, obviously Ontario's Catholics would hit the streets in protest, not unlike the red squares in Quebec, if that ever happened. Right? Ummmmm......well, I don't know. Like I said, I'm not a Catholic.

You know what? Maybe I've got this whole thing backwards. Maybe Quebec is catching up to us. Back when Mike Harris was Premier, there was a lot of social unrest here, too. Mike Harris tried to put forward some ideas that could be credibly called "conservative" ideas, and the experience was so traumatic for Ontarians that we decided that no matter what the government does, we'll never have social unrest again.

A Communist Walks Into The Ontario Young Liberal AGM....

Yeah, that sounds like every Conservative joke about Liberals ever, but it actually happened.

Here's my favourite part:

As one of the only people I talked to who knew a decent amount about the student movement in Quebec, our conversation was a refreshing one. In fact, I found myself agreeing with him on quite a few things. That is, until the liberal hammer came down. He told me that he too was a Marxist, but a pragmatic one. I asked him what this meant, and he told me that he saw joining the Liberal party as the most realistic way to act upon Marx’s critique of capitalism.

Interesting. How many more members of Dalton's Youth League agree with the red square-sporting Montreal Marxists?

Another Very Special Announcement: Mississauga Erindale Fundraiser!

Want your local PCPO riding association and/or semi-affiliated event advertised on one of the most up and coming PC Party blogs out there?? Advertising with The Clown At Midnight is fun, makes a definitive statement, and most importantly, is cheap as free!

This Wednesday, May 30th, join the Mississauga Erindale riding association at Woodbine Racetrack for Night at the Races! Special guests include MPP's Vic Fedeli of Nippissing and Norm Miller of Parry Sound-Muskoka! Tickets are $160 each, and tables of 10 are $1,600, which makes sense because 160 x 10 = 1,600! Visit www.mississaugapc.com to reserve your tickets!

If you're tired of Dalton McGuinty gambling with the future of our province, or if you want to support the beleaguered horse racing industry here in Ontario, or if you fall into both of those categories, then this event is definitely for you!

What Is This, A Sideshow?

Remember when the NDP was getting all sorts of kudos for averting an election? Remember when everyone was saying the PC's should have negotiated with McGuinty instead of saying "To hell with this"?

I'm still trying to figure out how the Liberals can blame the opposition for wanting an election when the Liberals are the ones who have caused an election- the upcoming one in Kitchener Waterloo, to be exact.

Apologies for the lack of decent posting- should be over when there's something decent to post about!! Jeez.

Something Doesn't Add Up

"Growing number of Ontario college students need help in grade school math"?

But....but....I thought we had the best schools in the universe here in Ontario?

There Are Days, And Then There Are Days

Ontario's top doctors, who have just had their salaries slashed, and a bunch of associated Liberal hangers-on are coming together to help Dalton McGuinty reduce childhood obesity by 20% over the next five years. I don't know if this means that obese kids will be 20% less obese in five years, or if all kids will be 20% less obese in five years, and I don't think I'm supposed to know. I don't think the panelists themselves know! All they know is that Dalton's local food policy is awesome, and that Tim Hudak's on the wrong side of history again for pointing out that the policy is causing school cafeterias to lose tons of money.


Meanwhile, the Ontario Liberals made it so that municipalities like Toronto didn't have to go to the trouble of having to hold referenda on building casinos. Maybe we should also have a referendum on whether Toronto should have subways or LRT's? Nope, no need for that. Council decided already!

Oh, and student government apparatchiks in Ontario say they are so "inspired" by the riots in Quebec that they have drafted a strongly worded petition in support of the red squares. The petition reads, "Quebec has shown, again and again, that the only way to force concession from governments is to mobilize on a mass basis through a strike campaign and confront the government, not with postcards, but with action!" That's how you know this campaign is serious; forget postcards, these people have got petitions, and a petition has more words on it than a postcard!

I couldn't help but notice how the petition doesn't say anything about targetting Dalton or Queen's Park- just a bunch of faceless "pro-business politicians." I guess even when you're a hard-bitten student radical, you recognize that some people are just off limits, you know?

Dwight Can Haz Cheezburger?

Dwight Duncan decided to, er, weigh in on the issue of whether school cafeterias should allow kids to purchase food that is not necessarily healthy. He made a few jokes about cheeseburgers, and called the PC stance on this issue "Pathways To Obesity."

Let's take another look at Mr. Duncan.

Yeah. Now there's someone who should be making fat jokes.

I can't wait for this guy to succeed Dalton.

Great Expectations

So, how many people out there were bothered by the Quebec student riots today? How many people think masked goons harassing students who were just minding their own business is crossing a line?

I bet lots of people thought so. Lots of Liberal voters here in Ontario picked up their Toronto Star like they do every single day, read the editorial page, and sniffed, "Quite so, quite so! Thank Dalton we don't encounter this sort of nonsense in prim and proper Ontairy-airy-airy-o!"

Except; screw you, you have no right to be bothered. None.

The Quebec student riots are the direct consequence of what happens when you condition people to expect the government to take care of them. This wasn't some weird one off. This is what happens.

Every time.

You don't avoid it just because you speak a different mother tongue than Quebeckers. Or Greeks, or Italians, or the French, etc.

If we do not have people rioting to protect their entitlements, it is because those people don't feel entitled enough to riot. Yet.

So yeah. Dalton is marginally less statist than Jean Charest. He only does stuff like cut university tuition by 30% after it rose for a few years. He doesn't have a full on "Ontario model", though you can be damn sure he would like to have one.

Remember how a few months ago everyone was quietly cheering on the Occupy Movement? Remember how they were so cool and how they meant so well? How this was the beginning of a new awakening for the left that lazy journalists could cover on Twitter from the safety of their newsrooms? Bet they never saw this coming!

Now, if we were all Conservatives like me instead of socially acceptable Liberals, we would look at this debacle and the people that were harmed by it and conclude that no, no matter how all-powerful and all-legislating the government is, it can't really protect people!!!

And we would stop expecting it to protect people. But that's the problem here, isn't it? Expectations have been created. And now they must be met. And when they aren't met, the highly educated youth of Quebec lose their collective minds. Pun intended.

Is there a Liberal out there with enough courage in his or her convictions to say that they support these rioters? While that would be horrifyingly dumb, it would convey an understanding- of which most Liberals are bereft- that you can't have it both ways. Either you accept that government should control everything and that people should expect as much and react as much, or you don't.

Oh wait. No. That's too black and white. It's not that simple. It's really about what causes less harm. Right guys? Sure these riots are bad, but it's not as bad as how it would be under an activist right wing government that dispensed with the notion of government services altogether. Except the only reason why people look at things that way is because they've been conditioned to expect goverment services for "free" in the first place!!!

Oh yeah. When riots like this become commonplace, it's not going to be because of us. Far from it. Trying to impose fiscal discipline is tough, but it's only tough because people have been promised a world free of want by people like Dalton.

I can only hope that people will one day realize that what they should be bothered by is the fact that by swallowing Dalton's bait, they are making things worse, not better.

Again. If you don't like the way these Liberal governments are going, you only have one choice. And that choice is the PC Party of Ontario.

Dalton in Danger?

I've said it before and I'll say it again: If all of us, including the fancy pants journalists and the Principled Conservatives out there, try really really hard to get over themselves and focus on the important thing, which is exposing the enormous fraud that characterizes the government of Dalton McGuinty, we can make some actual progress.

Here is Tim Hudak proposing ideas to fix the energy sector and getting a pretty good response. The fact that Ontario Power Generation appears to be dropping the ball in a big way out in Pickering makes this particularly well timed.

Here is Tim Hudak calling Dalton out on his attempt to sneakily reintroduce the gun registry.

Here is a revelation that those kids out in Brampton a few days ago were right, and that Dalton's healthy menus is very unhealthy for school cafeterias' bottom line.

Here's another solar plant out in Windsor closing, further underscoring the illusory nature of Dalton's "green jobs."

Here's Dalton being forced to choose between bigtime donor Gerry Schwartz, who wants a casino, and Toronto NIMBYists, who don't.

Here's more warnings of economic trouble ahead, which means danger for Dalton and Liberals cross-country.

Can we keep this momentum going? I hope so.

Non-Contradiction

You +1'd this publicly. Undo

It occurs to me that I've been at this blogging gig for a couple of years now, and one thing I've gotten very good at is pointing out how Liberal behaviour is contradictory and false, and that it is deliberately so.

But when I point out how somebody dying this week because ORNGE couldn't get their act together kind of blows a hole in the smug Liberal attitude of "Conservative ideology kills people, therefore what is needed is Liberal oversight and regulation", a weird thing happens. I get lots of views (close to 400 on that one two-line post), and I know some of those views must come from Liberals who read this blog, but very few of them ever comment or tweet at me. There's the odd anonymous person who seems to disagree, but it's never clear what their affiliation is.

I know Liberals read my stuff because a week or so ago one of them took a whack at me when I made a mistake. I was later proven right, but when I pointed this out to him, he suddenly had nothing to say. Hmmmmm.

The prevailing explanation I have for this regularly observed behaviour is that Liberals operate within bubbles of social acceptability. And if there is a bubble, it stands to reason that there is stuff outside that bubble. Dangerous stuff. And that's where we conservatives come in.

Liberals get a real kick out of making us conservatives look silly. Doing so reinforces the bubbles in which they operate. If they are engaged in fighting us and running down the stuff we believe in, they are less likely to acknowledge that what they believe in doesn't work a whole hell of a lot better.

So they need us. But they don't want us to effectively expose their own contradictions. If we do that, they focus on errors we make or possibly offensive things we say so they can win the argument. But if we say stuff that really doesn't have a lot of errors or possibly offensive things (like what I put on my blog, for example), they just don't engage. If they engaged with a conservative who says stuff that makes sense, they might start agreeing with that stuff and their bubbles would pop.  

Here are just three examples of how Liberals will just flat out ignore stuff that threatens their worldview that they can't argue with:

1) No Liberal would be caught dead voicing support for Harper's agenda, but if Dalton copies it, by, say, hiding environmental policy changes in an omnibus bill, Liberal criticism is nowhere to be found. And this contradiction won't be reported anywhere outside the Post, that's for sure.
2) It is possible for Liberal MPP's to be personally in favour of, oh, let's say, subways, while voting against them. As per Martin Regg Cohn. But you can't be a PC MPP and be personally for gay straight alliances, but then vote againt them. As per Martin Regg Cohn.

3) Yesterday I noticed that Adam Radwanski had committed an error of sorts. He wrote, "Ontario Liberals, who came to office shortly after the fatal police shooting of unarmed native protester Dudley George during the Ipperwash land dispute, have tried hard to avoid confrontation with first nations." Except....the shooting of Dudley George happened in 1995, while McGuinty came to power eight years later, not "shortly" after.

In this case, instead of just poking Radwanski on my blog like I usually do, I actually tweeted at him and pointed that out. No response. Not a whisper. Keep in mind this is a journalist who gets paid for reporting facts.

By the way, you may be surprised to learn that I actually tried contacting the War Room Boss through the proper channels, all friendly-like, through a mutual acquaintance who told me he was open to a meeting and connected me to his people over email.

A few weeks went by, in which I sent a follow up email, and I got nothing.

Why do you suppose that happened?

Help Me Out Here, Liberals.....

I've been trying to figure out at what point this becomes as bad as Walkerton. Got any suggestions?

You are the people who told us that more government oversight would prevent stuff like this from happening, aren't you?

What's Up, Docs?

I really feel for Ontario's doctors. I do. They're getting the equivalent of a surprise colonoscopy while Dalton's union pals got a pay raise which nobody but me even remembers.

But in truth, the docs should have observed the province's symptoms a bit more carefully and opted for early surgery to prevent these complications.

The posts that your intrepid correspondent wrote on the subject should have been enough for them to get the hint, but in case they didn't read those, they could have learned from the last time a Liberal government in Ontario tried this.

Instead of preparing for Deb Matthews' gut check a few days ago, the docs were content to think to themselves, "We provide an important service to Ontarians and really, we could be making a lot of money elsewhere, but we choose to stay here. We deserve to be rewarded for what we do. Surely the government understands this."

Well, as they found out, it doesn't quite work that way. As people with a conservative outlook understand very well, you are either on this Liberal government's team or you're not. They're not on your team. They never were.

Oh sure, the government knew taking on doctors would be risky, but because the media has been studiously ignoring anything that would make Dalton look bad during the past few days, it's as good of a time as any to divide and conquer.

Any good physician knows how to notice warning signs. In this case, the diagnosis they should have made was that if the government can waste money on some health-related thingy that nobody understands, they will waste away, but if they can cut doctors' salaries, they will be lauded by the populace for fighting the 1%.

Did the doctors say, "Hey, those LHIN's are a huge waste of money"?

No.

Did the doctors say, "eHealth is a big problem and proves we shouldn't throw good money after bad so far as the health care system is concerned"?

No.

Did the doctors say, "Wow, that Drummond Report is pretty well thought out and we should look at his recommendations for health care and start implementing them"?

No.

They ignored the evidence and made up excuses because they knew (though they preferred not to acknowledge) that opposing the government is for cranks with blogs like me, not for respectable physicians. It just wouldn't do to have medical professionals acting like a bunch of Tea Partiers and spouting anti-government rhetoric. We are Canadians and we don't do that.

What is more important? Who should be compensated more? The people who save Ontarians' lives, or the people who make sure that those with socially unacceptable views are kept out of the public view?

Don't these doctors know that the living would envy the dead here in Ontario if we didn't have a Liberal government to keep us from going backward to the Harris days? What would be the point of having doctors in such a situation?

So griping in the comments sections of Toronto Star articles about how Deb Matthews is a big meany-pants for saying doctors are greedy will do no good, because Debbie Doubletalk has had a lot of practice doing just that.

Not only that, but chances are that most patients agree with her. Don't we live in Canada (so goes the thinking) where we've got free health care? So why are these doctors being paid so much? When did we become the 51st state?

Not only that, but we all know what's going to happen before the next election, don't we? Dalton will dangle some sort of goodie for doctors that won't make up for this slap in the face at all, but all the doctors will still say, "Oh jeez, we'd better all vote Liberal or else we won't get anything!"

Is Tim Hudak going to announce that doctors will be raking in big bucks under a PC government? Not if it means he has to take more flak from Principled Conservatives about how he's not cutting enough money from health care!

So I return to my basic theme of how, until we as a province, say "No More" to the government stringing us along in this way, one-sided wars over money like the one with the doctors will be the norm.

Not because the Liberals want to fix the deficit, mind you, but because they want to prove that they rule everything.

The Young Shall Lead Us

Here's a group of students who could teach us all a thing or two about how to effectively oppose Dalton McGuinty's oppressive regime.

This ain't no Occupy Movement and it ain't no Quebec student protest. These guys point out, clearly and simply, that not only is Dalton's policy heavy-handed, it's also bad for schools' bottom lines. Of course, this is a government that has hit the bottom line a long time ago and kept on digging, as they decreed a few days ago that no school shall fundraise outside the limits set by them, no matter how cash-strapped that school already is.

Tim Hudak, for his part, has made it clear that he supports this effort, which means that it won't be long before the Liberals reply (likely by setting up a war room and compiling lists of things these kids may have said that might be offensive). In the spirit of their own anti-bullying bill, I'd advise them to be a bit more discreet than that.

In The Land Of The One-Seat Minority, The Floor Crosser Is King

Liberals courting Tory and NDP MPPs to resign to force more by-elections.

Didn't these chuckleheads say last month that they didn't want an election, and it'd be Hudak's fault if we had one?

Where did they get the idea that people actually wanted a bunch of little elections?

Look, we all despise Dalton and his cronies, but after a certain point you can't blame them for doing this stuff if they know the public will let them get away with it.

And people wonder why I have no patience for bottom-up politics!

Film At Eleven?

When 5 of Dalton's own MPP's broke ranks today and supported a PC private member's bill, assorted newspapers did NOT describe it as:

-"A political bombshell at Queen’s Park that has moved Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals farther away from a majority government"

-"Doing a huge disservice to their fellow Liberal MPPs, who are in it for the long haul, and sticking a knife in Liberal Party Leader Dalton McGuinty for reasons known only to themselves"

-"Raising new questions about Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty's’s decision to effectively make a huge joke of the recent budget negotiations by pretending they weren't going to coalition up with the NDP until the very last moment"

as they had done for the Witmer resignation.

If the media were not so dead set on ramming their collective noses up Dalton's tailpipe, we could have had a story about this in a major daily already. Instead, they would rather circle the wagons around the guy who was caught traipsing around Rob Ford's property.


UPDATE: Went to bed, woke up, still can't find anything about this other than PC-affiliated people tweeting about it. I found lots of stories about how the Ontario and PEI Liberals are getting married though! Isn't that special.

Open Secret

I almost missed this little gem in one of Radwanski's recent pieces:

"It’s well known around government that there are senior Liberals who trade on their influence with the government while passing themselves off as consultants or legal counsel, avoiding the scrutiny that comes with registering to lobby."

Oh! Well! That's interesting. Pray tell us, O Mr. Enlightened All-Knowing Fancy Pants Journalist.....just who are these "senior Liberals" who engage in such behaviour?

And how come the names of these people aren't "well known" amongst the voters? PC Party of Ontario, I'm looking in your direction......?

Stuff The Ontario Liberals Would Have You Believe

Dalton wants a majority.

Dalton doesn't want a majority.

Politics played no role in the Witmer appointment.

Dalton doesn't want a provincial gun registry.

Dalton isn't going to cut health care spending.

Dalton's fight with the teachers will blow over.

Deb Matthews didn't know anything about what was going on at ORNGE, but a bunch of various PC's did! Or they should have!