Steve and Sandra motivate their troops

What? You never wondered what might be playing on some of those little earpieces everyone wears in Question Period ?

Steve and Sandra - In the Year 2025

Relentlessly Progressive Economics :

"The Harper plan is for a 20% reduction by 2020, and will be 13 years late in meeting the Kyoto targets (6% below 1990 levels by 2025). The 18% number is an intensity-based reduction – that is, per unit of output – not a total decrease.

For what it is worth, the intensity of Canada’s CO2 emissions fell by 13% between 1990 and 2005, according to Environment Canada. This was a time when our actual emissions went up by 24%."

Steve and Sandra's blackouts

Link : What Ottawa doesn't want you to know

Steve and Sandra sponsor a scandal

Hands up anyone who gives a rat's ass about AdScam.
In this Allen Gregg piece we get some perspective :
"Being discussed concerned commissions paid to advertising agencies in relation to the Federal Government’s (since abandoned) sponsorship program.

The amount in question was $100 million over a four year period or approximately $25 million per year. Based on an annual operating budget of $180 billion, the amount for which “little or no value” could be found represented .015% of the tax dollar entrusted to government for that year.

Steve and Sandra - Voila notre $233 billion!

Flaherty's budget speech - Voila le trick ou treat.

Steve and Sandra's Gnu Accountability

The GnuGovs want to know if Canadians are cool with there being no accountability in their GnuGov Accountability Act. Because as we all remember from their campaign in the last election, nothing, repeat nothing, is more important to Canadians than cleaning up government by making lobbyists and their government contacts accountable.

Gnashing of teeth continues at Creekside

Steve and Sandra's State Craft

Reuters :
"Canadian police concluded a probe into a 2005 income trust scandal on Thursday without charging any Liberal politicians even though the scandal contributed to that party's electoral defeat last year.The RCMP said it is charging only one person -- a senior civil servant in the Finance Department -- as a result of its investigation.The governing Conservative Party, while in opposition, had accused the then Liberal finance minister, Ralph Goodale, and his office of directly leaking information to investors of an imminent tax policy announcement regarding income trusts, allowing the investors to make tidy profits.
"If Mr. Goodale wants an apology, he should go to the RCMP and ask them whether they're still investigating him and ask if this is a conclusion," said Finance Minister Jim Flaherty."

Good idea, Jim.
Because if, in his capacity as general director of analysis at the tax policy branch of the Department of Finance up until Wednesday, Serge Nadeau made a single illicit dime on the Cons watch in the last year, well then I guess it's only fair if we paint the entire Con party as corrupt, right?

Steve and Sandra go green!

CBC : U.S. urges "fivefold expansion" in Alberta oilsands production
CanWest : Ottawa hails nuclear energy for oilsands
Creekside : Subsequent hand-wringing by me

Steve and Sandra and the Clean Baird Act

All Baird quotes courtesy of today's CBC Almanac.
Trouble with Rona was - she didn't talk loudly and just didn't use her boots enough.

Steve and Sandra and Canada's New Accountability

Link

Steve and Sandra and MiniTrue

Globe&Mail :
"Sandra Buckler, the communications director for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has asked that staff working for Conservative cabinet ministers secretly provide her with assessments of their bosses' communications skills."

Steve and Sandra get things done

The ubiquitous slogan : "Getting things done for all of us"
Shorter : "Getting things for us" and "Things done for U.S."

Steve's communications director Sandra Buckler fired off several rounds of bucklershot yesterday not explaining why London North Centre Con candidate Dianne Haskett is not permitted to speak to the media [Ed. note - Gays! Guns! GOP! God!] as part of her campaign.

Sandra finished with a new variation on the theme :
"Vote for a candidate that will be a part of a government that gets things done for families and taxpayers."

Whoa, Sandra. Waaay too friggin long, girl.
Try these instead : "Vote for Families" and "Things for Taxpayers".

Steve and Sandra and Same Sex Religion

The always wonderful Chris Hedges : Letter From Canada

Steve and Sandra send regrets

Globe&Mail : "Stephen Harper has surprised and annoyed European Union leaders by cancelling a planned Canada-EU summit, where he was going to be criticized for abandoning this country's commitment to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming."

Steve and Sandra and Acts of Spam

Steve and Sandra and not Garth

A little recent history and a nudge from Canadian Cynic.

Steve and Sandra and the faith-based thing

Amid stories of the no longer secret Republican Party derision of the fundies down south, comes this quote from Harper in his Reform days, as reprinted in The Star:

"In the United States, this (social conservative) element of the electorate has been critical in the development of the Republican coalition. It provides workers and funds disproportionate to its size as a voting bloc."

Steve and Sandra - NAU you see it...NAU you don't

NDP Trade Critic Peter Julian has raised the question of the secret conference at the Banff Springs Hotel organized by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives. He will be making access to information requests.
Good for him, but he will be up against these guys.

Steve and Sandra and the lighter side of torture

US Congress, with the help of 12 Democrats, has suspended the right of habeas corpus. Bush is now officially in the business of disappearing people without trial, and authorizing interrogation methods the UN considers illegal. In addition, immunity from prosecution is now retroactively granted to the perpetrators of all previous abuses.

In a story in the Toronto Star regarding Canada's ongoing complicity in the Arar case, there is this tragic little sidebar, with a quote from a State Department official regarding their decision to send Arar to Syria.
It reads in part :
"there were assurances that [Arar's] treatment would meet the standards of the Geneva Conventions," he told a briefing. "We had to have a reasonable expectation that he was not going to be tortured or maltreated. We were able to assure ourselves of that."
Not any more.

Steve and Sandra play their base

Steve : Whoa! What, no cartoon this time? Where's the frames?
Sandra : We seem to be the victims of some kind of funding cut, sir.

Steve : Hey, how are our own funding cuts playing to the base?
Sandra : Excellent, sir. They clearly demonstrate we don't like research or drugs or uppity women or gays or aboriginals. But that isn't even the best part....

Sandra : No, the best part is how they're reacting to the big cheque moment. They think you invented it, sir. Many of them don't realize that the $13 billion surplus was accrued under the Libs or that it must be applied to the debt every year by law or that the Libs paid down $82 billion in the last decade alone.

Steve : Yeah, well, it's all about optics. Speaking of which...Sandra, what are you wearing?
Sandra : Why, sir....this is rather unexpected...my red power jacket. Why?

Steve : Because it's Wednesday, Sandra. Wearing red on Wednesdays is not supporting the troops.
Sandra : Sorry, sir. I was just wearing red in my spare time. Won't happen again, sir.