Blame The People For Electing a Douchebag

Douchebag

So the Canadian federal election this past week was no real surprise for the most part.  The Conservatives held a minority government and the Liberals lost seats.  On the other hand, the NDP gained a few seats and the Greens gained a significant part of the popular vote.  In fact incumbent Rahim Jaffer actually lost his seat to an ND by a mere 400 votes or so.  But there was one thing that didn’t surprise me one bit.  And that was the election of Rob Anders, Conservative MP from the riding of Calgary West.

If you don’t know who this guy is, perhaps its better that you not know.  But for the sake of educational purposes, I’ll give you a brief synopsis of what this guy is all about. 

He is essentially a ultra right conservative MP.  His views are so right wing and in reality so messed up that even the Prime Minister himself keeps a muzzle on this guy.  And rightly so.  He embarrassed not only himself but the entire country by blocking a motion to declare Nelson Mandella a honorary Canadian Citizen, claiming that he was a terrorist and alluding in a TV interview that South Africa would have been better off under apartheid.  He is a bigot and racist.  Among other things, he believes that humanitarian work should work on changing the languages of foreigners to English and get them to change their religion to Christianity.  He also believes that the children of immigrants that are born in Canada should not automatically receive Canadian citizenship.  This is just SOME of the douchebaggery that has come out of this guy’s mouth.

So my question is this:  Given that Anders is a known bigot who needs to be reigned in by the Prime Minister himself, do the people who elect him share the same views as him?  I know that we live in a democracy and critiquing the choice of the people isn’t something that many people do.  Even Jennifer Pollack, the Liberal candidate running against Anders in the riding, said that the people voted for the party.

I whole heartedly believe the leaders and those elected under the leader are a direct reflection of general tone of the people.  Those people are the ones that reflect the greater picture to the rest of the world as far is image is concerned in the international community. 

Andres is the type of guy that has shown that he is willing to circumvent the rules of his own party, at the expense of disenfranchising those in his own riding to win a nomination.  He knows that if he doesn’t do that, he’s not going to win the nomination and therefore, not get elected. 

And yet, despite all of that, people in his riding still elect him with an overwhelming majority.  The way I look at it is, the residence in Calgary West are either so amazingly loyal to the party that they would be willing to elect an inanimate object if it ran under the banner of the Conservative Party of Canada, or they are bigoted and therefore stupid.  I choose to adhere to the ladder. 

Anders is one of the many reasons that democracy is a flawed system.  Because it allows stupid people to legitimize their stupidity under the opuses of democracy.  Stupid people, then make stupid decisions that reflect stupidly on the rest of the country.  What makes the people in Calgary West even more stupid is that despite the entire country (literally) denouncing Anders as a man of great stupidity, they still flock in numbers to elect a stupid man.

Moreover, they essentially have legitimized his stupidity and have said, through their ballot, that they essentially agree with his stupidity.  By virtue of that, the people of Calgary West are stupid.  Even those that did not vote in this election, in that particular riding are stupid.  Those that don’t agree with Anders at all but chose not to vote are also to blame for electing such a stupid man because they couldn’t get over their stupid excuse of apathy could have chosen to set aside their grievances for just five minutes, walked over to their nearest polling station and mark an X beside ANYONE’s name but Anders.  But instead they chose to sit on their sofa and watch some stupid program on tv.  After all, those that abstained from voting greatly outnumber those that actually voted.  Those that would have otherwise stayed at home on election day could have come out to vote, and combined with those that voted for candidates aside from Anders could have easily…EASILY told him that he is no longer welcome to spread his stupidity around Canada and around the world. 

So it is the people of Calgary West that really are to blame for this blunder that keeps occurring every election.  In all honesty, its not all that hard to oust someone like Anders.  He has been getting a free ride in that riding for way too long.  After all, Even Rahim Jaffer lost his seat to an NDP candidate.  So the argument that “my vote doesn’t count” is nullified.  Your vote will only count if you get up off your couch and actually caste a ballot.  Otherwise, your vote that you didn’t case that you think won’t make a difference, actually makes a difference.

So really…its the stupid people, stupid.

In Light of Bernier’s Resignation – Does Harper Love Canada?

In light of the resignation of the Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier, I can’t help but begin to question whether or not the leader of my country actually loves his country.  Given all the stuff that has happened since Harper has come into power, questions about his loyalty are hard to ignore. 

I don’t usually call into questions the loyalty and allegiance of Conservatives in Canada.  In fact I think it is totally unfair to even bring something like that up.  But the way Harper acts and the way he thinks, I can’t help but question whether this Prime Minister really has the best interests of Canada in mind or whether he wants to take Canada to a path that falls along more with the ideologies (albeit failed ideologies) of the Neo Cons to the south. 

One of the Liberal Leadership Candidates, Gerard Kennedy, came to the University last year.  There, when he was speaking to us, narrated a story about how an elderly woman called his office one day and began to speak to him.  She told Kennedy that ever since she was voting, she had been voting Conservative.  During the bi-elections last year, she told Kennedy that she had voted Liberal for the first time in her life.  Kennedy asked her why that was.  The elderly woman replied in a tone of concern that she doesn’t think that Harper loves Canada.

I’ve always kept that story in the back of my mind.  And I think slowly its starting to precipitate.  The way Harper governs, the policies, especially those in the realm of foreign affairs, and his very American-like ideology, the way he dismisses important issues with the wave of a hand, its all very hard to convince myself that Harper has the best interests of Canada at hand. 

 When it was revealed that Bernier’s girlfriend, ex-girlfriend now, had ties to the Hells Angels, Bob Ray stood in the House of Commons and asked a very simple question:  Are there any security concerns that the country should be worried about vis a vis Bernier and his relationship with Couillard?  The Conservatives then dismissed it as an absurd and inappropriate question.  Now it turns out that Bob Ray’s concerns are totally appropriate given the potential breach of national security.  Stephen Harper admitted himself just a few hours ago that this mistake and thus had no choice but to accept the resignation of Bernier. 

It is going to be interesting to see how this all plays out in the coming days and in the coming weeks.  But it will also be interesting to see if my feelings regarding the loyalty of Stephen Harder will be founded.  I truly hope I am wrong. 

In Solidarity With Dave Cournoyer

 I feel obligated to come to the defence of a fellow political science student who is being bullied by the premier of his province of Alberta.  Premier Ed Stelmach is suing a U of A poli student Dave Cournoyer because he failed to register his domain name on the Internet.  Seeing that it was available, Cournoyer decided to purchase the domain for 14 dollars.  Steady Eddie finally decided to catch up to the times and create a website dedicated to all the failures of his government and chronicle the decline of the Conservative dynasty in Alberta when, to his surprise, edstalmach was already purchased!  Now, the honourable member for Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville is suing the U of A student to try and get the domain back.

To Ed, I say pick on a guy your own age.  There are plenty of other ways to resolve conflicts with people but hurling lawyers at students is not one of them.  Plus its not very good PR.  Frankly speaking, if you waited this long to register your domain, you really don’t have a case.  I mean, you were first elected in what, 93?  Ok so the Internet wasn’t all that big back then.  But in 1997 you entered into the cabinet as Minister for Agriculture.  Alright fine, I’ll admit, even in 97 the Internet was still relatively a new phenomena and people didn’t really understand the full potential of the net; certainly not politicians.  But come on, by the year 2000, everyone knew what the Internet was and people were fully aware of the potential of it.  OK but even then, lets just say you were naive and still didn’t realize what the net could do for you.  By 2004 you had become the Minister for Intergovernmental affairs.  SURELY you would have realized what the Internet was by then.  But I guess you didn’t and now you are suing a student because you didn’t know what the hell the Internet was.  Like really, do you not feel that this is in some way your fault? Or at the very least the fault of your staff for not having the brains to take up your domain.  Nowadays people register their domain even before they think of running for nomination.  You got elected in 93, became premier in 06 and you are just now thinking of having your site up?

Before this whole fiasco came about, Cournoyer blogged on Daveberta under the auspices of the edstelmach.ca (via redirection) domain.  The blog was used as a means of legitimate political descent against the Stelmach/tory government.  There are some Canadian experts in the field of E-Commerce that argue that by virtue of Cournoyer using the domain for means of political discourse, it is rightfully his. Also, there are some that argue that Stelmach isn’t even popular enough to lay claim that his name a legitimate trademark (I’ll spare the jokes for you guys). 

Typical of the Conservative attitude in the province, there are some that claim this is the workings of the Alberta Liberal Party because Cournoyer was a paid employee for ALP.  Here’s a good example of the typical rant and cry by the right wing Alberta conservative.  Note the infuriatingly flawed logic that’s inherent in the article. 

So in Liberal logic it’s Internet open season on anyone who doesn’t own all the domain names that are slightly connected to them.

So yea, like its that black and white. Mind you, the above article is from the Sun, a newspaper that uses a grade 5 reading level, pictures of semi-nude women, advertisements for call girls, strip clubs and escort agencies to attract readers. So really, I don’t expect any type of sophisticated logic to come out of that paper. But I think you guys get my point. It seems that any type of descent that the Conservatives face is always some sort of ploy by the leftists to gain political points. I am sure that suing a 24 year old university student is perfectly honourable.

If Dave was legitimately slandering Eddie’s name then I would agree that Stelmach has a case against Cournoyer. But because his criticism is of a political nature, there it cannot be considered as being that at all. In fact, I would argue that Cournoyer is being censored by the Premier. I am sure that if Cournoyer were praising Stelmach, calling him God of all of Canada, Eddie would be tipping his cowboy hat at him, at the very least; patting him on he back. I can’t remember them off the top of my head but there were a few federal MPs that found that their domains were taken by special interest groups (I think they were pro same sex marriage when the MPs were anti same sex) and there was really nothing they could do about it. It wasn’t until after the whole same sex marriage was declared legal in Canada that they got their domains “back.”

I got the perfect solution for Stelmach. Go to Register.com and type in your domain. Near the top of the page will be a set of options for you. Choose C, make an offer. If you really care about your name, don’t tarnish it by using bullying tactics. Use the good old free market approach to settle your dispute. The good thing about this solution is that:

1. You won’t make yourself look like a crying baby
2. You’ll spare yourself the criticism of picking on students
3. If you offer enough money, you’ll help out a fellow highly indebted student who lives in the only debt free jurisdiction in the western hemisphere, just in time for the start of the winter semester
4. You’ll be helping out the Alberta economy.

Its a win-win situation.  You’ll get your domain and he’ll won’t have to pay tuition for a semester.  Or at the very least, he won’t have to reach into his own pocket for text books.  Law suits are for weaklings.  This is the real Conservative way of doing things. 

Good luck with your battle Mr. Cournoyer.  Your fellow students are with you.