Where have I heard that song before?
Harper's poll numbers are rebounding and so, in the full tradition of the Great Layton, Mulcair is focusing the NDP's efforts on attacking Trudeau.
How I cast my vote on October 19th is irrelevant, utterly inconsequential, especially in contrast to what Mulcair is doing to aid and abet Stephen Harper's bid to cling to power. It's what the NDP did to Martin. It's what they did to Ignatieff. And now it's Mulcair's turn to do the same goddamned thing to the Trudeau Liberals.
Might as well enjoy it. I'm sorry and I hate to point this out but, if this music doesn't embed itself in you at some quasi-primal lebel, you got to ask yourself just what that tells you.
26 comments:
AKA Dipper "Tory" Same Old Story.
Very true that whatever ranting and raving armchair pundits involve themselves in, and whatever degree of demagoguery they indulge in (the Angry Mound being an extreme example,) none of it will have any effect on how Canadians vote on Oct 19.
Of course it's hilarious to watch Liberal partisans fool themselves into believing they are above attacking the NDP while attacking the NDP: "Dipper Tory Same old story"
Trudeau and Mulcair have been taking shots at one another throughout the entire campaign. Trudeau equates Mulcair with Harper saying he supports the Harper budget. Funny how rabid partisanship and years of cognitive dissonance completely trash a brain's capacity to see the obvious.
Well, Anonymouse, entirely predictable. You should check out the last comment on the 'strategic voting' post from another anonymous commenter who you would find to be less 'ranting and raving.' Here's the final paragraph of his remarks:
"There is a measure of revenge in Trudeau’s habit of painting the Conservatives and NDP as birds of a feather. For a decade, under Harper and Jack Layton, the two parties executed a squeeze play on the Liberals, gaining support at every election from 2004 to 2011, while the Liberals lost, in instalments, about 80 per cent of the ridings they held when Chrétien was the party’s leader."
He's completely right. Canada has endured a decade of Harper government, including all the excesses and abuses of the majority term, because of the Layton/Harper - now Mulcair/Harper - tag team. Layton helped bring Harper to power and he helped Harper to his majority. Now Mulcair is following suit.
Your personal attacks on me don't change that one bit.
I remember the Liberals propping up Harper time and time again... Iggy even crossed to floor to shake Harper's hand...
But at this time, both Liberals and NDP are going after each other hoping for a handful of votes blissfully unaware that this helps Harpercons.
I agree that the NDP for all their bluster were quite ineffective recently.
I really hop the NDP is reduced to third party status or perhaps even lose their status altogether.
The assholes in charge and the idiot supporters need to get it in their goddamn bones that abandoning 60 years of principle comes with a cost.
And to that Anon whoever he/she/or it may be...go fuck your goat.;
@ Anon7:33, I have your point. Iggie should have never backed Harper's "pinata" budget. That said it's when the writ is dropped that every party's true colours emerge. And that is when the NDP have consistently pursued self interest no matter how much that empowered Harper.
For those of us who dare imagine that Harper's rule is catastrophic for our nation and our people, the NDP can't help but appear perfidious. It's the path they've chosen and quite deliberately. They would sooner screw the Libs to safeguard second place than defeat Harper. Anyone who disputes that is just a liar.
Hey Mound have you forgotten just how many times the libs, and JT have voted with harpo?
Of course you have but fail to mention it, perhaps because of your bias away from the NDP as shown in your many posts.
You should be concentrating your fire on those bastard apparatchiks, in both parties who have conspired not to cooperate and therefore allow harpo to win again.
Trudeau is attacking Harper. Mulcair is attacking Trudeau. One of these men is helping Harper. Sorry, Ben, but Trudeau's vote on C-51 doesn't bear on campaign tactics, especially not with Harper's fortunes rebounding. There's not one piece of legislation that Trudeau was instrumental in passing given Harper's majority.
If we hadn't seen this very sort of thing from the NDP in every election since Martin was ousted I might see this differently but probably not. However that's not what has happened and Stephen Harper has been the ultimate beneficiary first springboarding off Layton to come to power and then to majority.
One of the key differences though in the way each attacks the other is that for the most part the Libs are going after NDP ideas and policies while the NDP are going after Trudeau personally, in the same way, and in more than a few cases the same language as the Harper CPC. If you cannot understand why that is an important distinction and shows which side is clearly aiding Harper more than attacking him you are not worth talking to anymore. The NDP and CPC have been at the minimum showing convergence of interests and I believe, as many do, active collusion with each other to remove the party they both appear to despise more than the other, the Liberals, because the Liberals represent the greatest electoral threat to each other. This is not news, it is not rocket science, and the way the NDP have campaigned this election continues to show the same pattern.
Dipper partisans are propping up Harper because for them it matters less to defeat Harper than it does to stay ahead of the Liberals, and for all their bleating about the good of the country, about being a party of values and principles first, this reveals that the NDP is a party that places expediency above EVERYTHING else, something it denounces in the Libs and claims to be better than. So much for NDP honesty and the moral high ground, and that stench of sanctimonious hypocrisy is strong with NDP.
THAT is what makes the NDP Harper's willing collaborator, and it is based on mutual interests, which is what makes it both plausible and explicable despite their being so different in core ideology. When Dippers pretend this is not the case they show either their ignorance or their deceit, and in the latter the only question left is whether they are lying to themselves as well as to us, but either way they are supporting a lie. THIS is why Mound of Sound is correct on this you anonymous Dipper partisans, Trudeau clashes with the NDP on issues, you all clash on Trudeau's name/hair/looks/youth. THAT is a core difference and reveals the truth for all to see.
Ignatieff screwed himself! He could have been Prime Minister but the same wankers that are running Mini Me's campaign got greedy and decided to screw over the others in the coalition and back stab them...a Liberal tradition. Iggy got exactly what he deserved, a royal shit kicking.
Cons, Lieberals, no difference. 148 years of lies, treachery, theft and broken promises.
There is no excuse for the past and the future will be worse if any of these sleaze balls form government.
Time for a sharp left turn.
CGHZD
@ CGHZD - and you think today's Blairified, free market fundamentalist, Likudnik is a "sharp turn left"? Really? Seriously? Ooookay.
"There's not one piece of legislation that Trudeau was instrumental in passing given Harper's majority."
And that's the bloody problem Mound. He may not have affected the outcome of the vote - seventy odd times, but voting and supporting the motions is very telling - What is the difference, and he is selling himself as the agent of change!!
In 2006 both The Kelowna Accord and the National Early Childhood Education Program had been successfully negotiated and were being finalized.
At that time the NDP had a choice. They could have supported both of these worthy endeavours, which were long held and articulated NDP priorities, and assisted the Martin minority government in bringing them to fruition.
Or they could have supported the Harper Conservatives who they knew full well were deeply opposed to both and would immediately destroy both programs should they gain the opportunity.
The NDP chose to align themselves with the party they knew would destroy the programs.
That was unforgivable then and it remains so now.
And it's become worse since. The NDP now supports arms sales to repressive regimes, for just one example.
I used to be the pre-rally protest and labour song guy on the stage at the old Trianon Ballroom in Regina back in the day. I've been a party supporter since my teens and I'm 67 now.
I'll have nothing to do with them anymore.
@ Ben - I adopt the remarks of my friend, Dana. The Layton/Mulcair NDP has mastered the art of connivance in pursuit of opportunism. The "balanced budget" platform was Mulcair's atonement for the sins of the "old" NDP, referencing the days when it wasn't ashamed of principles. Then there's the Israel/Palestine business - hardcore electoral groveling. Harper pipelines bad, Mulcair pipelines will be good. Really, are you kidding? Free market fundamentalism - from CETA to TPP are to be embraced. You find that defensible. Utterly astonishing.
Mulcair = sharp left turn.....
BWAHAHAHAHAHAH!
*wipes tears from eyes*
This laugh is laughing AT you, not with you.
Seriously, the idea that Mulcair and the modern NDP are a sharp left turn in today's politics truly is that laughable, sadly. I always valued the old NDP, even voted for them some of the time and worked for them some of the time. They brought an important voice and perspective to our political dynamic and we were a better nation for them. Layton sold that legacy out in an ends justifies the means gambit (believing that the evils of a Harper government were worth the destruction of the Libs as a viable national party and replacing them as the only viable governing alternative which in turn would enable Layton to bring in real NDP policies and values to fix the Harper damage, and in Layton's case I believe he would have done so, as I have stated before I believed him to be a true NDPer simply seduced by the lure of power into making a strategic mistake). Mulcair though, Mulcair I honestly believe is a political chameleon who has little to no true core political values that align with true NDP values off the old school.
Mulcair has shown by the way he has run his NDP internally, and the repeated purges of anyone that dares saying anything negative about the State of Israel or stand up for human rights for Palestinians that his core values are not NDP, they are his lust for power and his willingness to do whatever he sees as needed to get there regardless of what the NDP itself wanted as expressed by the policy convention, which according to the NDP Consitution is where the true values and policies the NDP represents is supposed to be based, and not simply by the leader's fiat and whatever he wants to run on in a campaign. The move to disappear the policy book early in this election cycle was an important symbolic and actual indicator of how much Mulcair truly cares about them.
I've seen Dippers argue that because their party is different they would if in power make sure through their activism make the leader follow throughout on core NDP values. Yet where are those voices and protests over the last three years on all these examples where Mulcair clearly chose differently (balanced budget in the first year was a horribly stupid move, accepting the Harper budget numbers as the basis for your costing was another idiocy from any real progressive POV) as well as the purging of those NDP candidates for daring to believe that the policy convention actually spoke for the party (former candidate for Kings-Hants being that example, and what appears to have been the motive for removing said handbook from the NDP websites so as to remove that ability to defend such statements as being in accord with NDP policies and values) when they ran for the candidacy and won locally in the riding from fellow Party members? *crickets chirping*
All this is why I laughed at the top of this comment, and there is more, far more, one can point to showing that the idea of a sharp left turn and the Mulcair NDP is pure fantasy and fiction and a bad joke.
All of the above may well be true but you guys are doing exactly the same, so how can you really criticize the party leaders for it?
How old are you?
MoS:
Apparently you and to a lesser extent I have really been upsetting thwap with this post and thread, he's written a rather poisonous post about us and our views from a few days ago about this thread in particular it seems. I used to have some respect for him, but his willingness to live in rage and bile so much with all that dare disagree with him, especially about the NDP, well it is further evidence of the similarities between some Dipper partisans and CPC/Harper ones in how they go lowest common denominator in arguments and dismiss critics in profane rage fueled ways. This is especially true when you are someone like myself who supports the Liberals and sees a major difference between them and the Harper CPC and is not afraid to make that point very clear, and I suppose worse from his perspective make arguments as to why that is true. His hate-on for the Libs at times seems to matter more than his for Harper, which is also a problem some Dipper partisans clearly have, as you also have noted, including it would seem far too many at the top of the leadership of the NDP election team these days.
One of the great debasements of our political discourse is when you stop making arguments and showing not just what you believe but why you do and on what facts you developed that reasoning from. It used to be that showing your work was considered the sign of someone making strong arguments for something, these days for some it seems to be nothing but "self-righteous bullshit" by an "idiot" "asshat". What I find truly sad though is how by doing so thwap actually creates the very portrait of what I refer to when I am talking about how some Dipper partisans act in a manner like the Harper CPC partisans do, as if they were dark reflections of each other, and is proud of it. Ah well, I knew thwap was a lost cause for reasoning with a long time ago, I just wish he would stop with the personal attacks disguised as rebuttals, well attempted rebuttals, since without any actual refuting it is hard to seriously treat them as such.
Just thought you'd like to know, since I rather doubt you spend much time reading his site given his manner of "debate". I used to find it useful, but these days I'm sorry to say I find reading rabble threads less toxic than his posts.
When are the Liberals going to stop attacking the NDP?
When are the Liberals going to stop supporting Conservative policies?
Also, when are Liberal supporters going to stop blatantly lying about the NDP?
Anon:
How about when the NDP stop blatantly lying about the Liberals? Oh wait, that assumes you trust ANY political party to tell the accurate factual truth about a rival party...while back in the real world...
*sigh*
This is part of my problem with so many Dippers, their moral high horse bullshit that they and only they are tellers of truth where politics are concerned when they are no better on this front than anyone else (save Harper, but as I've noted before I see him as a special case). I expect all political parties to spin information to their advantage and to the disadvantage of their rivals, to not do so is to be incredibly naive and clearly disconnected from the reality of the world we live in, and this is nothing new, it well predates the information age revolution as a truth/fact of life. If anything the information age makes it harder to do, not easier. I don't expect ANY political party to be fully honest about any of the others, which is why I do my own research for myself on ALL of them and come to my OWN conclusions. It is part of what is being known as an informed voter and a responsible citizen. You should try it some time.
There's no point, Scotian. These trolls are certainly almost all too young to have experienced what it was like to have a real, principled NDP. All they can do is spit and rant now. Forget about them.
Dana:
There is a point, if nothing else it enables me to continue looking myself at/in the mirror and not flinching. If for nothing else it is worth something, as frustrating as it gets. Aside from that, sadly, I find myself unable to disagree with you. These people clearly do not understand what a truly progressive/leftwing party looks and acts like. I've always been a far left person on social justice values and issues in our political spectrum, so I've always had some connection to that part of the spectrum throughout my life, and I know just how watered down I've watched it become over the past few decades, and especially since the rise of Harper and his CPC.
Layton made the wrong choice, not just for Canada but progressive values and policies. At that point, if instead of giving Harper the political cover he needed to take down Martin when he did, Harper likely was about to lose his hold on the party, and almost certainly would not have managed to beat Martin after Kelowna and national childcare got started. It might have cost the NDP a bit in the next election, but there was just no way the Libs had more than another one or two elections left, and after protecting Canada from the Harper craziness Layton and the NDP would have shown they were a party that could be trusted to place principle before power lust. Not to mention the feeding frenzy within the CPC as it tries to not just replace Harper but figure out what kind of party it truly was now that he had been discredited as leader. You know this of course, you've seen my comments in the past detailing this in very exhaustive detail.
I'll give Layton this much, his fault was that he fell into the ends justifies the means trap, and let his clear desire for power to advance his agenda to blind him to just how toxic Harper truly was. What I do not understand is how Dippers who could go along with Layton because they knew HIS political blood ran Orange can continue the blind faith and work with Mulcair, who clearly was never truly NDP in his heart, and from all I'd ever seen been a bit of a political chameleon for the most part. Yet here were are.
AS well, I know I am wasting my breath most of the time Dana, but I have to stay true to myself. This reminds me a bit of a similar comment you made to me back in our PA days vis-a-vis the GOP Trolletariat. I think I gave the same answer then too.
There are dead horses and then there are permanently dead horses.
Dana:
Yes, well...*shrug* can't really argue with you there, but I will also add it is mainly while we are in election cycle, I couldn't keep this up all the time anymore, that was why I took the break I did after the 2011 debacle for a couple of years.
I understand you feel that your LPC is somehow entitled to the right of natural ruling party, but there are so many causes of the CPC's potential win, I find it odd that you feel compelled to place all the blame on the NDP. Mulcair has stated he is willing to work with the LPC to defeat Harper in a coalition, and Trudeau is always stating he will not. Or we could look at our broken electoral system, where a handful of votes can be the decision on election day. Or the media coverage, the sensationalism of the niqab. Or how about all the xenophobic bigots (aka Canadians) who will decide their vote based on their ignorant world view? The NDP is not soley responsible for the state of the LPC, perhaps it's record, policies, and leadership has something to do with that? I want Harper defeated, and am worried he won't be, but I don't think the NDP is the sole cause.
Post a Comment