......And A Happy New Year, Unions

So it's come to this, has it? A proposed pay freeze for doctors. Cancelling corporate tax cuts. Warnings about belt tightening. In a word: austerity.


But if unions have been worried about the coming cash crush, I haven't heard a word from them. Oh sure, they've thrown out a few warnings through the usual channels, but if I were them, I wouldn't worry. Dalton's going to take good care of his union pals. He needs them. He doesn't need us.

It is about to become clear as crystal for all Ontarians where the power lies in this province. We're going to see union bosses strutting about, protected by the Liberal spin machine and Liberal-friendly media. And remember; these people have no love for Harper and Ford. So wouldn't it be a coincidence if Dalton, the biggest thorn in Harper's side right now, provided covering fire as they mounted their opposition to the relentless forward grind of the right in Canada.

And don't imagine that they are going to be in any way subtle about it. No. Their demands, like those they made on Bob Rae and David Miller, will get longer and louder until Dalton is mortgaged up to his eyeballs. But since Dalton is such a saint who hasn't aged a day since he got into office, he won't let the unions go hungry for too long. Doctors, corporations, even his own staffers will feel the pinch, but not Dalton's union pals.

I actually watched a documentary on Joseph Atkinson, publisher of the Star, recently. Back in the day, Atkinson took on the Toronto Tory elites and punctured their senses of invincibility as the Liberal political machine under Laurier looked on approvingly. But when I look at Toronto today, I see Atkinson's true legacy revealed; the creation of a union-backed Liberal aristocracy tossing crumbs, if they have crumbs to spare, to the people. Like all so-called reformers, all he ended up doing was transferring power from one gang to another.

Yeah, 2012 is going to be a great time for unions in Ontario. Unless we ruin their party.

Those of you out there who have recently discovered this here web space need to take a cue from, um, recent events and start putting the pieces together. These union mouthbreathers are lots of things, but political professionals they are not. Tie these people to the Liberals and expose the money flow. It exists. We know it exists.

But until we prove it, it doesn't exist.

The System Works

My post of December 23rd, ``Merry Christmas Canadian Cynic``, generated more interest than anything I had written in the past year and a half of blogging. A few things got lost in all the noise. Let's review.

One of the main reasons, if not the main reason, that the PC Party lost the election is because they did not stand up to Liberal pressure tactics. When the Liberals tried to foster dissent between groups of PCs by saying that Bill Davis was being backstabbed when he wasn't, or when the Liberals whipped up fear amongst various mayors that Hudak was going to download costs onto the municipalities, the PCs clammed up instead of fighting back.

When there is evidence that the Liberals are engaging in spin on these or other issues, the PCs do not make this evidence publicly known. This is what happened to Brian Lilley when he went up against the War Room Boss.

By systematically researching the people and issues involved and by providing evidence to substantiate claims made- whatever evidence there is, because, remember, the media must cover both sides of the story- a lot more damage can be done than trying to create anger at the Liberals where there is none. I analyzed Canadian Cynic`s blog and went to a public talk given by him to compile this evidence, as an example of how this research must be done before the fact, and before trying to drive the wedge, so it can hold up better than it would otherwise.

Because Canadian Cynic hasn`t been able to show how anything I have written is defamatory to him (so far), I have to conclude that I did a good enough job researching him and there are enough facts in ``Merry Christmas, Canadian Cynic`` for it to stay up. And that`s all he is to me- a research object. I have no interest in silencing him or his little group. Nothing I do will change their minds. But I can show them that they are not as invincible as they think they are.

If Canadian Cynic can somehow show that parts of what I have written is defamatory enough to him to actually make it all the way to a courtroom and have a judge seriously consider it, then I`ll happily delete those parts. It`s not my intention to defame the man. As it is, I wasn`t *sure* if the comments that were deleted yesterday contained false information. There were competing claims about their validity. The lawyer I spoke to told me to delete the comments because I couldn`t prove they were true or false. When I approved the comment initially, I gave the person who commented the benefit of the doubt.

I am OK with deleting part of my post, no matter how much Cynic and his pals tell themselves they`ve won by making me do that, because they will declare victory anyway. All I care about is that the portions of  ``Merry Christmas, Canadian Cynic`` that are true- which is, so far as I know, all of it- remain.

If the PC Party of Ontario identifies the Liberals` weak spots and attacks those weak spots using real and verifiable information, they will win the next election. And then everything Canadian Cynic says about the PC Party of Ontario will matter as much as everything he says about Harper and Ford. That is to say, not at all.

Now, I hope Cynic will continue to pursue this with me. I hope he will draft some BS statement of claim that won`t hold up in court. I hope he will make me one of his objects of hatred. And I hope that the Ontario Liberals do so as well.

In the meantime, I am going to keep on finding out everything I can about the Ontario Liberals, using the same procedure as I did for Cynic. And I am going to continue advocating that the PC Party of Ontario use the same procedure.

Because, as I have shown with this Canadian Cynic example, it works.   


UPDATE: Canadian Cynic has managed to figure out my real name after three days of searching (and I *only* had it in a really obvious place, so bravo on him, I suppose) and it looks like he wants to go all the way with this. He also has made no attempt to tell me what is supposedly so defamatory about my post. I can't imagine what it could be, so I'd love to see what a judge has to say about it.


FYI Cynic: You have pissed off a lot of people over the years, some of whom happen to be lawyers. And you know how we righties love to rally around one of our own who's getting law-fared. But, hey, if you WANT to make me into a right wing cause-celebre, then go right ahead.  

Merry Christmas, Canadian Cynic

Now, because I try to make a practice of not asking people to do things I wouldn't do myself, I am going to demonstrate what I believe is the correct way to smack down someone on the left following my critique of Brian Lilley yesterday. (And yes, good on Lilley for clearing up the mess, but he shouldn't have had to clear anything up in the first place, which was my point.)

Our subject today is one Robert PJ Day, aka Canadian Cynic. Some of you who've been in this game for a while remember Cynic from his now-defunct blog. More recently, he's begun tweeting at us Blogging Tories, trying valiantly but *always* failing to make a dent in our onslaught. For those who don't know Cynic's M.O., let me refer you to his most infamous post, where he told the grieving mother of a dead Canadian soldier to.....well, I'll let you read it for yourselves. At the time that he wrote that, and for a long time afterwards, Cynic blogged only under his pseudonym. So he wrote what he wrote with the full knowledge that he could do so under cover of anonymity.


I read what Cynic had written, and the other filthy things he wrote about conservatives. I began to wonder. How is it that this guy could get away with what he did? What was it that made him believe that he could go on forever without getting caught? Other than the fact that none of his targets, at that time, knew who he was? The answer, of course, is nothing. So long as he kept some of his real self out of the public eye, he could go on being as mean as he wanted.


So, I thought, why didn't conservatives try to find out who he was? Because they were too busy working themselves up into fits about what he wrote to try and figure out who was writing it. And, I reasoned, that was just the way he wanted it. So, seeing as how nobody else was doing what I wanted to do, I analyzed the Canadian Cynic blog. He had several years worth of drivel on it, and every so often he'd drop some weird hint about who he actually was. A reference to his height and weight here. A reference to Chapel Hill, North Carolina there. Boasts about his academic acheivements over here. Over there, a reveal that he was a Manitoba native. Slowly, slowly, the complete picture emerged.


I even began to notice some interesting patterns. Like how he adorned his blog with a picture of Brian Griffin from Family Guy. Brian is a white dog. And Cynic? Well, what's the Latin root of the word "dog"? Also, Brian likes to drink, and well, so does Cynic. Very very clever, sir! But, as it turned out, not clever enough to hide forever.

(No, Cynic, I wasn't the one who outed you. But me compiling your little hints sure helped narrow it down. And since you offered them willingly, you can't really blame me for being determined enough to find them, can you?)


Oh, but that's not all. Not by a long shot. For I have actually seen and met Robert PJ Day. (Not Canadian Cynic, you understand. Slight difference between the two.) He probably doesn't remember me, but I remember him.


Some time after he was outed, he advertised his presence, and I went with friends. Yes, that's right: I ponied up my own cash to sit and see who this guy really was.


And what did I find?


That "Canadian Cynic" is a persona made up by Robert PJ Day to scare us conservatives into hiding. This persona, such as it is, was created after Robert PJ Day, an ardent anti-creationist, got tired of watching scientists lose debates with creationists because the scientists were nice and conceded points, and the creationists put on a show and bent the rules. And so, when it came time for Robert PJ Day to debate a creationist by the name of Ian Taylor, then-Vice President of the Christian Scientist Association of Ontario, Robert PJ Day decided to do things a little differently. Instead of debating the merits of evolution vs. creationism, Day spent his time during the debate mocking his opponent's beliefs. And it was devastatingly effective. (Hmmm, mocking people's religious beliefs to win. Where have we seen that before?)


So, as Day explained to the audience that summer evening, it was a short leap from mocking Taylor's beliefs to mocking conservatives in general. Everything we believed was to be scrutinized for flaws and mocked, and we were supposed to flounder around hilariously trying to defend ourselves while Day/Cynic and his pals high-fived each other and laughed.


The experience was, to say the least, eye-opening. When I saw what a massive joke on us the whole thing was.....that Cynic was distracting us the way you distract a two-year old while the doctor gives them a needle.....well, the way forward became clear. If Cynic was laughing at us and trying to get a reaction, then we had to do the exact same thing. His teasing could not make us sputter or make us uncomfortable. As soon as we sputtered, we lost.


Hence, the blog you are reading right now. :)


Now, Cynic is free to challenge me on my version of events. That's just fine, because there *was* a video recording made of the proceedings that evening which could have resolved any discrepancy. I have proof that it was made. But because of a certain....how should I put this....intervention, it never saw the light of day.


Do you understand now, Cynic? Do you see what effect your intellectual masturbation is having? You're not driving us underground. You are creating more people like me. You're making the problem, such as you see it, worse. While Harper and Ford take the reins of power and Hudak breathes down McGuinty's neck, you are so obsessed with proving your superiority over us that you sit there all day long tweeting at us, trying to recapture that shining moment when you reduced Ian Taylor to a snivelling wreck.

Cynic. War Room Boss. "Nadine Lumley", whomever that really is. McGuinty. Justin Trudeau. Bob Rae. The people behind QP Comments. I look at each of these left-wing icons as puzzles to be solved. What drives them? How did they get to be the way they are? Why can't they see what we see? I do this because once they can be understood, they can be beaten. Their moves can be predicted. There will be no heroic last minute rescues like there was for McGuinty. There will just be Conservative dominance everywhere.

Harper understands this. When a weak spot opens up, he closes it immediately while always being on the lookout for his opponents' weak spots. He will wait and wait until the opportunity knocks, and then he will grab it. And his opponents, so far, are beaten every time.

And they must be beaten. For if any of them are allowed to be confident that their own weak spots will never be found and exploited, then they will keep on winning. And as long as they keep on winning, the Liberals will keep on hoping. Hoping that someday they will be able to rule this country unopposed again, accountable to no one, pushing past the objections of those who would oppose them on the grounds that their march to power is one and the same as the march of progress.


But even if there was no Harper, the outcome would be the same. Because our rise is the price that is always paid for a minority- them- forcing their agenda on the majority, us. When people get sick of being pulled forward against their will, there is a backlash.


I must confess that after all these years, I am not sure what drives Cynic/Day to be so over the top. I know he hates us conservatives. I get that. But few if any of the people who hate us will go to such lengths. I do know it has something to do with how we supposedly lie all the time. Maybe he thinks he is being truthful when he says what he says about us. Maybe other progressives wish they could be as truthful. :)

Well, Cynic and everyone else, you don't have to worry about me lying anytime soon. All my cards are on the table. They always have been. My motive is clear. It is to show you, and all your fellow travellers on the left, that your attempts to save everyone are in vain. That this is beyond you. This is a democracy, and you can't win the numbers game.


But more importantly, I'm doing this to show everyone on my side that once you and the people like you- McGuinty included- can be exposed for the tough-guy pretenders that you are and that you would have no power if not for the fear you inspire, then there is nothing stopping us from taking everything we want.


Stop being afraid, conservatives. Start making them afraid.



UPDATE: Uh oh. Canadian Cynic is maaaaaaad at me.

Don't worry, pal. I'm not going to tell people where to find you, because I don't know and I don't care. I wouldn't want to have to issue a retraction and apology like you did for getting an address wrong. Oops!

All I care about is that you and your pals don't think that you can say whatever you want without fear of an effective reprisal, as above. Once we have that understood, you can tweet till your fingers fall off.

By the way, moron, figuring out who I am is a lot easier than figuring out who you were. But hey, now *you* know what it feels like, huh?

UPDATE #2: I have deleted several comments that appeared here yesterday after consulting with a lawyer friend of mine on the grounds that they may have been defamatory.  

Silly Lilley, Tricks Are For Kids



Bra-vo, Mr. Lilley. *Very* well done. You are a credit to Principled Conservatives everywhere. You sure learned from the last time you stepped into the ring with the War Room Boss, didn't you?

Watching this, I can pinpoint the exact moment Lilley drops the ball. Lilley is asked for a quote from one of McGuinty's ministers that proves they're telling two different stories about the sex ed curriculum to different media outlets. Lilley can't provide a quote.

Let me repeat that because it bears repeating. He brought the War Room Boss into a Sun News studio, questioned him about the McGuinty government's policy, acted surprised (surprised!) when the War Room Boss provided a different version of events, and, while all of this was happening, he thought to himself, "I can say McGuinty's ministers said something different to two different media outlets. He'll never call me on it!"

You know what? Lilley's mike is the one that should have been cut. (And if you watch the video, that doesn't even happen, because War Room Boss can speak just fine a short while after Lilley issues the order.) Because Lilley threw rocks at a man with a machine gun, and he got shot down. Of course.

The quote in question is easy to find. It's right here. But I must warn you, that link will take you to Xtra, "Canada's Gay And Lesbian News". Why didn't Lilley have it? Why didn't some Sun News intern take 5 seconds, like I did, and look it up? Why didn't he have a video clip handy and 10 others like it?

Because Lilley, like every other Principled Conservative out there, is so angry-ed up about his Real Conservative Principles that he couldn't be bothered to do his homework. The War Room Boss is a lawyer. Finding the weak spot in people's arguments is what he does. I know that and I'm not even close to being a lawyer. Brian Lilley didn't know that. So he ended up cutting off his guest's mike to reassert control of the situation, and promptly got called a hypocrite on free speech. And that's what people are going to remember.

But why am I singling Lilley out? Didn't we just conclude an election campaign where the Liberals exploited every single crack in our armour until they had turned around a 20 point lead? And when they started trying to exploit those cracks, did we go after their cracks? No way. We just kept saying the same things over and over again and wondering why it wasn't working. Well friends, it wasn't working because the Liberals had popped our balloon and we didn't try to pop theirs.

We don't want to show these people up for the enormous frauds that they are. We just take for granted that our Conservative Principles will carry us through.

Why didn't Lilley say, "There's no way you people can legislate homophobia out of existence"? I wrote a whole blogpost about that! And it's a perfectly conservative and sensible thing to say, and nobody is going to call you a homophobe for saying it! Maybe call on teachers to start doing their goddamned jobs! Maybe call McGuinty out for not being tough enough when it comes to disciplining bullies and the parents of bullies! Anything but "We have a poll and the poll is right" when the guy across from you is saying it isn't!

*Was* the poll factual? Who cares?! Nobody even remembers there WAS a poll anymore! Just like nobody remembers half of what McGuinty and Hudak said during the election anymore! It's not like Lilley could tell you whether the poll was factual or not. He didn't look too hard at it before he brought it to a debate with the War Room Boss, whose *job* it is to find his opponents' mistakes.

You know what's really hilarious about this? Sun News castigated Hudak for not doing a good enough job during the election.

But based on this, do you think *they* could have done a better job???? 

Run, Rivers, Run

For those who don't know, Graham (Grahame?) Rivers is the Ontario Liberal Twitter-Police Chief. Whenever you see a bunch of Liberals mass-tweeting Dalton's latest feel-good pablum, chances are this guy is behind it.

Well, my skepticism about The McPremier's ability to navigate the treacherous economic waters ahead irked Mr. Rivers somewhat, because he took the time to tweet at me thusly:

Who exactly is this "Drummon" person, Graham(e)? 140 characters. Make them count.

In addition to proving that your humble correspondent's words are read at the highest levels within the OLP, this tweet is noteworthy because it shows the utter lack of accountability within the McGuinty government. It's not up to Dalton anymore to fix the problem. If credit agencies are unhappy with Ontario, well, we'll all just have to wait for the Drummond report so that whenever Dalton releases "this plan", whatever it may be, he can point to Drummond or someone else and say, "He made me do it!"

Hey, didn't the Liberals blab incessantly about the need to release our platform a year early last year and because we didn't, we supposedly had "no plan"? Maybe Graham knows something about that.

Anyway, as I tweeted to Graham in response, there's absolutely no reason to believe Dalton's going to accept any accountability for whatever Drummond comes back with. (The lack of Liberal ideas was confirmed today by Dalton's new press secretary, who apparently speaks for Graham as well. At least Jane Almeida had some creativity, guys!)

The recent behaviour of Dalton's ministers in this respect is instructive. Leadership hopeful Chris "Smoove B" Bentley is righteously indignated about the fact that he can't replace incandescent light bulbs with those stylish twisty bulbs as quickly as he wanted because the feds aren't acting fast enough for him, and Barney the Duncan-saur is shocked by the news that there might be less federal cash for hospitals during a really bad recession. (But when Chretien/Martin cut funding for health care during the last recession, that was OK, because of, um, of stuff!)

If these two goofballs are blaming Harper for things going wrong now, what do you think will happen when the Drummond report lands on Dalton's doorstep? Either Dalton whines that his hands are tied, or he blows Drummond off in an attempt to appear all leaderly-like. And then where will we all be?

As we draw closer and closer to the Drummond report, I get more and more sure that Dalton and his people can't run forever. :)

The Justin Trudeau Defence

It's been said that the princeling is the gift that keeps on giving to Conservatives. His intemperate outburst last week gave us something to laugh at, but the arguments used to defend him are an extra Christmas present in their own right. In short, Trudeau was right to swear at Peter Kent, because what Peter Kent was doing was bad enough to necessitate swearing, and he's Justin Trudeau, so therefore it's OK. (And look at all the Liberals who retweeted Canadian Cynic's tweet! Indicating agreement! Very amusing.)

I've also been seeing an upsurge of people referring to Harper as a fascist on my Facebook news feed. And when people are called out as going too far when they do this, what do they say? Usually some variant of "Fascism is fascism." I decide Harper is a fascist, so he is! And because I decide it, I am right! Because I'm a progressive, and progressives care about people and want to move people forward, so progressives are always right! Derp!

What is the Kyoto Protocol, and why does Harper saying he wants no part of it make the Liberals so purple with fury? The Kyoto Protocol is, and always has been, a document the Liberals signed onto with the full knowledge that it would fail, which is why Michael Ignatieff was forced to concede in a moment of uncharacteristic self-reflection that "We didn't get it done."

Which, if you recall, led to this fun moment.

So why sign the thing in the first place? Because the Liberals wanted to stop their consciences from nagging at them. Yes we're going to fail, but now we won't feel guilty about not having "tried"!

Guilt is a critical part of the Liberal mindset. Do you think, for example, as Dalton lines his pals' pockets and tries to sneakily implement his agenda over the objections of basically everybody, that he does it without any guilt whatsoever? Do you think a character like George Smitherman, or a massively arrogant human being like Trudeau Sr., or a carpetbagging snob like Bob Rae, or Chretien, or whomever tops your Most Hated Liberal list, did all the things they did without their conscience nagging at them? Absolutely not. So how can they do it? By acting as if they are God's own gifts to humanity.

Dalton is a master at this. Everything he does is spun by his War Room as the actions of a saint who cares about nothing else except helping the province along. That's what gives him his beatific calm. Look at all the great stuff he's done! He implemented full day kindergarten (and then privatized it)! Test scores are going up (marginally)! Labour unrest is down (because he paid the unions off)! And the more we point out how much things *aren't* getting better or how new problems are being created despite their best efforts, the angrier they get! Because our complaints bring them closer to the harsh reality of what Ontario has actually become under Dalton McGuinty.

I've written before about how the Liberals do this to their own supporters. Whenever Liberals are mad about how their favourite new MPP didn't make cabinet, or when they have to carry out some stupid directive from the War Room, or when they're not sure whether they'll be able to hang on to their cushy jobs after the latest revelation of misspent $$$, all Dalton has to do is remind them, "You're helping Move Ontario Forward!" And all is forgiven. Yeccch.

But luckily for us, this cuts both ways. Because if the Liberals *know* they are pissing Ontarians off, but are suppressing it, this gives us a psychological advantage IF we know how to use it. They too can be shamed. They too can be made to feel guilty. Their calm, their moral authority, can be made to disappear. And without that smugness, what do they have? Nothing.

So don't let the Liberals rain on your parade. Don't swallow their "Ontarians are mad at you for what you did! Shame on you!" nonsense. Be as mean as you want to them, and when they complain, use the Justin Trudeau defence to justify it! They'll be screaming shiddle-diddle before you know it!

We Have Met The Enemy, And He Is Us

Liberal slapfest developing in public over Zach Paikin's candidacy for Liberal Policy Chair and what it means to be a Liberal. Go, read. Hurry, before it gets yanked. If it does, I've got pictures! :)

See? Liberals like to argue about picky stuff too! They're human! Stop being afraid of them!

But, um, they seem to be getting consumed by it, and that's not cool. Let's not do that, K?