I'm starting to feel like the country I live in is melting away...

[BolivarianHero]

A popular right-wing newspaper owned by a company connected to the PMO fires its only two columnists who don't tow the Harpocon party line.

We have a cabinet and a PMO that uses every executive privilege in the book to override the will of Parliament, the very body entrusted with representing us.

I see more and more Canadian jobs depending on the growing military-industrial and prison-industrial complexes.

I see an electoral system that rewards monolithic rightist demagogues at the same time as the people grows more progressive and more ideologically diverse.

I see a civil service and senior bureaucracy being stacked with religious fundamentalists.

[EmilyKent]

1. Choices have consequences.

And every election is a choice.

[BolivarianHero]

8. We're making better choices...

The right is weaker than it was during the Chretien years. The Harpocons are doing worse than the combined Reform-Alliance and PC vote totals. The story that most people are missing is how much ground the Liberals have lost to the left since then (the NDP was very weak do a combination of unpopular provincial governments and soft NDP voters backing Chretien to keep the Tories out and the Green Party barely had a pulse during the Chretien years) and how our broken electoral system has rewarded the far-right for this change in voting patterns.

Parties to the left of the Liberal Party, and the Liberal Party would rather exchange minorities with Tories so that they can gorge on the government trough and abuse their power than implement real political reform and keep the far-right out of power forever, are combining for a plurality of the popular vote. Remember, Liberals, if anyone in your party other than Chretien had been PM, Canadians would be dying in Iraq for the benefit of Shiite militias and Washington's military-industrial complex.

[HEyHEY]

2. I know what you mean. Don't worry, it won't last forever

Canada is just in a rut. As soon as the libs get a better leader it'll be solved. But, I too have felt less and less happy and proud of being Canadian over the last few years. I could tell you stories about the CBC that would make you cry as I worked there during its demise.

[Toilet]

3. Say what?

"A popular right-wing newspaper owned by a company connected to the PMO"

And what newspaper would that be and how is the PMO connected to it?

[Spazito]

4. The Sun media is rabid right wing....

and is populated by friends of little stevie.

"It's eyes right these days as Sun Media turns into a haven for former PMO staffers intent on morphing the chain's print and broadcast image into Fox North.

snip

"Another aspect that seems to have escaped the public is that with central layout of national pages, whoever controls the Parliamentary bureau controls the content of the national page inserted into a lot of papers," the tipster says.

"That person is now Kory Teneycke."

As you know, Teneycke is Prime Minister Stephen Harper's former director of communications."

http://torontosunfamily.blogspot.com/2010/07/margolis-out.html

[Toilet]

5. Rabid...

As in rabies? lmao.

[Spazito]

6. Yep, rabid....

very rabid, diseased and sick.

[BolivarianHero]

7. They fired George Weston and Eric Margolis in the past month or so...

Instead, we get more a lot more looney Ezra Levant columns, and these make the average Free Republic post look like cutting-edge political philosophy.

Weston and Margolis were decently columnists and frequently crucified the PMO and (in Margolis' case) the military-industrial complex.

I also notice that the Ottawa Sun's defending the Harpocons on many of the same good government and corruptions issues that they had previously been critical of them for.

[BolivarianHero]

9. Interesting that the day after I write this, the Ottawa Citizen publishes this gutsy op-ed...

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/less+proud+country/3330366/story.html

The annual gathering of the Writers' Union of Canada took place in Ottawa in June, with many former chairs on hand to offer memories of their time in office. Susan Crean remembered encountering a young, blue-eyed politico at a constitutional conference in Calgary in 1992. When the man learned that she had co-authored a certain book about American domination of Canadian and Quebec politicians, the man responded: "You should not have been allowed to write that book."

The man: Stephen Harper. Crean never forgot his words, but especially the word allowed. The room full of writers in Ottawa issued a gasp.

Crean later elaborated on the encounter. "Harper spoke to me first and asked if I had written 'that book.' I asked which one, and he mentioned Two Nations, which I wrote with Quebec activist/sociologist and well known independentiste Marcel Rioux. ... Harper was clearly still angry about having had to read it at university. In his view, I took it, the book was treasonous. I was so shaken by his words, and his open hostility, that I immediately left the dining room."

No PM should be held strictly accountable for every utterance before taking office. But this exchange suggests an instinct to control and suppress, and that is precisely -- 18 years on -- what the Harper government is being accused of.

[polly7]

10. Harper did say when he was through we wouldn't recognize

Canada. Let's hope we can punt him before he makes it happen completely ........ and find someone who will take us back. It's depressing ....... he doesn't care about us.