Saturday, September 29, 2012

The Ground Continues to Shrink Under the "Robocon"-mongers

This is a news story that has seemingly escaped the notice of many of those obsessed with the so-called "Robocon" robo-call scandal. And considering that it pertains directly to something routinely treated as a smoking gun strongly supporting the notion that someone in the Conservative Party organized a campaign of misleading robo-calls with the party's knowledge.

That would-be "smoking gun" was a claim, in an Elections Canada affidavit, that Michael Sona had talked about organizing misleading robo-calls. It turns out this isn't true.

Elections Canada investigator Al Matthews submitted an affidavit in March 2012 that made this precise claim. But Matthews has since backed away from that allegation, insisting that it was a mistake.

“In an earlier [sworn affidavit] I wrote that Sona called [Matthew] McBain ‘about a campaign of disinformation such as making a misleading poll-moving call,’” Matthews wrote in a subsequent affidavit later in May 2012. “On checking I realize that in both interviews Mr. McBain … did not recall Sona as relating the call to ‘disinformation’ or about a ‘misleading poll moving call,’ only that he wanted to set up an autodial call that would not track back to the Burke campaign.”

It seems worth noting that such an autodial call would be illegal according to CRTC regulations -- something that Sona may not have known at the time, but very likely knows now.

This allegation against Sona has been seized on by "Robocon"-mongers time and time again as a smoking gun suggesting decision-makers in the party knew about it and condoned it. Sona was the communications director for the Marty Burke campaign, so had the allegations against Sona been true it might not have been that unreasonable.

Unfortunately for them, it apparently isn't true.

It's enough to make you wonder just how much more of the allegations aren't true.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Quebec Women's Groups Call For Rona Ambrose to Resign... For Acting Responsibly

Minister for Status of Women acts more responsibly than any previous Minister ever

In voting in support of Stephen Woodoworth's motion to establish a Parliamentary committee to discuss abortion, Rona Ambrose has acted more responsibly than any previous Minister responsible for the Status of Women. Ever. Bar none.

A number of women's groups in Quebec -- where nearly one in three women will have an abortion during their lifetime -- couldn't have that. They're demanding that Ambrose resign as Minister for the Status of Women.

Of course she should do no such thing. And hopefully she won't.

"The role of the office of the Minister for the Status of Women is to look after the interests of women," declared Quebec Federation of Women President Alexa Conradi. "By voting for this committee, which has no other goal but to reopen the debate on abortion, she is shirking her responsibility."

Quite the contrary. It isn't Ambrose's responsibility as the Minister  for the Status of Women to slap down discussion of abortion, nor is that even in the best interests of women. In fact, it's distinctly in the best interests of women -- in fact, in the best interests of all Canadians -- that abortion be discussed openly and frequently.

Simply put, whether people like Conradi care to admit it or not, abortion deals with the termination of human life. For any country to have no law governing it -- and to refuse to even discuss it -- is the very definition of madness. But that's only the first reason abortion should be discussed by Parliamentarians.

Perhaps the best reason to establish this committee is for the simple fact that Canadians are woefully under-informed of what the facts regarding abortion in Canada are. Conversely, the best reason for groups like QFW to oppose that debate is because if Canadians did know the facts regarding abortion in Canada were, there is no way the status quo would be allowed to stand.


To start with, Canadians do prefer that abortion remain legal. So that portion of the status quo would remain unchanged. However, 60% of Canadians were found to support some restrictions on when a woman can receive an abortion (57% of men supported this, and 60% of women did as well.)

That's a very severe blow to two common arguments used by the pro-abortion movement. The first, their argument that the current abortion-related status quo is in the best interests of women -- clearly a sizable majority of women do not agree. Secondly that only women have the right to an opinion on abortion -- clearly discounting men does them no good, as even more women than men believe that the law should restrict abortion in some way.

Even though some previous polls have suggested that Canadians are comfortable with Canada's abortion status quo, those polls also found that the majority of Canadians didn't know what that status quo was! Canadians tended to believe that Canada has abortion limits similar to those in the United States.

The pro-abortion lobby, unfortunately, is perfectly comfortable with Canadians not really knowing just what the status quo related to abortion in Canada is. No sooner was Woodworth talking about this abortion than the pro-abortion lobby hit their panic button, fear-mongering as fiercely as they possibly could.

Because they, of all people, know the facts. They know that they cannot afford for Canadians to become aware of the facts. Because if Canadians did, there would be big changes related to abortion -- changes that the pro-abortion zealots won't like.

Friday, September 14, 2012

So, This Happened...

Today, the Conservative government, under fire from lefties for something these same people never criticized when the Liberals were in power, did something the Liberals would never do.

Yet somehow they will continue to find a way to demonize Stephen Harper. It's just what they do.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Going Rogue... Badly

I have no idea what "Deep Rogue Dam" is and probably you don't either. Apparently it has something to do with Kai Nagata and The Tyee. So you can safely presume that the epic fail is absolutely imminent.

Just how imminent? This imminent:




At times like this, it seems in order to just let Batman take it from here: