So I've been thinking about Phoenix and what a nightmare it has been and continues to be for thousands of public servants, not to mention how costly it has been and will continue to be for the rest of us.
Kudos to public servants who haven't lost their minds. I would have lost mine.
Anyway, it occurred to me today that Phoenix may be the result of kompromat on the governing politicians responsible for buying it, just like Donald Trump may be the result of kompromat on the governing politicians responsible for buying him.
Maybe not Russian kompromat, per se, but Russian-inspired kompromat. Unless, of course, Phoenix is just a(nother) deliberate wrench thrown in the works of our government operations to benefit the sorts of people who benefit from chaos - while the governing politician responsible for throwing it resigns in disgrace thereafter or is - miracle of miracles - defeated in an election in spite of a well-documented effort to cheat-to-win. Again.
Stephen Harper did say once upon a time that we wouldn't recognize Canada when he was done with it, which hardly seems like the sort of rallying cry to voters that it apparently was, but, of course, Conrad Black's purchase of 99% of our print media some time before he became Prime Minister certainly amplified the opinion that Canada was actually Sodom and Gomorrah, didn't it, and made it seem legitimate, even if it wasn't, when an Alberta separatist party (essentially) became the Harper Government of Canada.
Ugh. I just threw up a bit in my mouth typing that last bit.
Motherfuckers.
Cripes, reading the Ottawa Citizen in the morning back in the day and continuing on to now was and is, for a liberal feminist like me, like starting the day with a punch in the face. I actually wrote columns for it so I know what of I speak. In order to see publication they had to, in some way, be anti-Liberal Feminist. Although I suppose I should admit, it's surprisingly easy to do, even for liberal feminist me, to be anti-Liberal Feminist. I think it's the capitalization.
Of course, I was desperate to be published, too, because I thought it would turn into a career of being a full-time anti-Liberal Feminist opinion writer, as opposed to a once-a-month (on average over two years) freelance contributor of anti-Liberal Feminist columns. Eventually, I couldn't be anti-Liberal Feminist enough, though. Also, the sweet gig I'd scored at the National Post ended with the firing of all their freelancers, if such a thing is even possible. I didn't really care, although I missed the $300/week, but they'd taken to changing punchlines to make them anti-Liberal Feminist when they just weren't, thereby rendering whatever the intended joke was nonsensical.
I was finally embarrassed to see my name in print, if you can believe it. Me. Embarrassed.
Indeed, no sooner did Conrad Black own our print media when suddenly everyone seemed to be saying the same thing, whether we wanted to or not, that the only real threat to our collective health and well-being as Canadians was that being posed to the white male Conservative Christian and his way of life by Liberal Feminists.
"Won't somebody think of the white male Conservative Christian children?!" was the headline every opinion piece screamed.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, we still didn't and don't know who funded Stephen Harper's leadership campaign, you know, the one that ultimately led to him forming his own political party. But we do know that its #1 priority was to kill the gun registry. We also know that the much complained about price tag of that gun registry, complaining that came mostly from Canadian gun rights advocates, was the result of aggressive sabotage by - wait for it - Canadian guns rights advocates.
Apparently, they were acting on instructions by the NRA, too, currently in Robert Mueller's sights for laundering Russian mob money into the Republican Party. Maria Butina, Russian kompromat honey pot, is even rumoured to have been intimate with Dana Loesch, such is the small world of guns rights advocates these days.
Of course, the white male Conservative Christian nationalism in common makes it even smaller, doesn't it, such that American guns rights advocates are positively gaga for Vladimir Putin, the Murdering Thief in Chief of Russia who wouldn't in a million years want Russians to have the gun ownership rights that Americans have, but whatever.
There's a reason why Paul Ryan et al are resigning in the prime of their political lives, as opposed to running again in 2020, and it's not because they want to spend more time with their Conservative Christian families.
But to loop back a bit, as soon as Stephen Harper had his majority government, which we know involved a level of cheating Elections Canada had a hard time quantifying, so skilled had today's Conservatives become at it thanks to lessons learned at The Manning Institute in Oilberta, he killed the gun registry. His government even had a party on the Hill to celebrate. Indeed, they let it be known far and wide that they were having a party, too. Discretion? Not for those motherfuckers. It was no doubt just the bother of travel (remember how globe-trotting Stephen Harper's p.r. impressed upon us how he hated travel?) that stopped them from having the party on the graves of the young Liberal Feminist murder victims who inspired it, the gun registry, I mean. Instead they went after the Quebec government - very aggressively - for trying to protect its data from destruction, lest there be any mistake what their #1 priority still was.
Anyway, we heard a lot, over and over and over, whenever there was a lull in the Liberal Feminist bashing, from whoever Stephen Harper's spokesliar was that day, about how Stephen Harper had talked super macho man tough to Vladimir Putin at a summit. But we never actually witnessed it, did we. All we know for sure is that he didn't sanction a couple of Russians very close to Vladimir Putin that even Obama did, and Obama was no tough guy on Russia, himself, in spite of Vladimir Putin being a white male Conservative Christian nationalist.
Did Donald Trump think up that whole Kenyan Muslim thing himself, do you think? I don't. He's a racist but he's not a Conservative Christian nationalist. He wouldn't think of the Kenyan Muslim thing. Black would be enough for Donald Trump.
But back to Phoenix. Jim Flaherty, John Baird, and Tony Clement were all Mike Harris's boys from back in the day when Mike Harris criminalized poverty and legalized door-to-door energy company fraud, such that many of us had/have no idea who our gas "company" was/is and how they got hold of our accounts and why we owed/owe them money and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc. And then they went on to be Stephen Harper's boys, in charge of the Canada Revenue Agency, Foreign Affairs, Treasury.
Well Jim Flaherty is dead, John Baird bid a sudden and hasty retreat from politics - without getting so much as a hug goodbye from Stephen Harper - and now Tony Clement - same except minus a hug from Andrew Scheer, who was himself the "Surprise!" winner of a close call leadership campaign that was repeated by Doug Ford right here in Bill Davis's Ontari-ari-ari-o not too long after.
"Surprise! It's Doug Ford by a nose hair!"
It may not be the hat-trick Stephen Harper vowed would happen at the Ford family barbeque he showed up at in Etobicoke a few summers back now (where he grew up, coincidentally) but yikes.
Anyway, we're told, we've always been told, that it's ALL about oil, that oil is the why of everything to do with guns and politics and the men who own our countries and our politicians and us, so I thought I'd link to this (from 2017) that I came across today.
Because yikes - I don't like being down this rabbit hole alone.
Black Gold, Arctic Tea
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