FREAK OF THE WEEK: Stephen “I really love Fox News” Harper

If Sarah Palin is the Queen of Freakville, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is the King. Yes, once again the FredBlog shines its freaklight on the head honcho of the Great White North.

As you recall, Palin once made headlines for not being able to name newspapers she supposedly reads. While Harper can indeed name Canada’s news outlets, last week he publicly admitted that he doesn’t watch Canadian news. Instead, he watches American networks.

This is what the Conservative told a Toronto business audience: “I watched the last several elections in the United States very closely. I tend to watch mainly American news because I don’t like to watch Canadian news and hear what … everybody else is saying about me. So my hobby is to watch politics elsewhere.”

No surprise Harper watches the American networks. He has appeared on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, among others. And no one would fault Harper for watching networks like CNN – most Canadians do.

But shouldn’t the Prime Minister of Canada be following the news IN CANADA!?!?

Then again, this isn’t the first time Harper has leered lovingly at the United States, instead of paying attention to his own backyard. He blindly followed the policies of George W. Bush, has praised the Republican Party as something the Canadian Conservatives should emulate, and once told a U.S. think tank that Canada “is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term.”

Given his disdain for his own country, it’s no wonder he chooses Fox News over the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Jack Layton, leader of the far-left New Democratic Party, said it best when he told the Toronto Star, “Perhaps if [Harper] watched Canadian news more often, he would understand the negative impact of his policies on Canadian families. And if he actually likes Fox News better than Canadian news, then Canadians ought to be concerned.”

FREAK(S) OF THE WEEK: Joe “You Lie” Wilson, Carrie “Opposite Marriage” Prejean, and Jack “Hypocrite” Layton

After a week off to attend the annual convention of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association convention in

Montreal, the FredBlog is back with a bag full o’ freaks. So let’s get the party started as the FredBlog shines its freaklight on this week’s Freaks of the Week:

1. Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina

Joe Wilson was freaky enough for shouting out “You lie” during President Barack Obama’s address to Congress. But piling freakiness upon freakiness is this past week’s revelation that Wilson, um, LIED!

If you recall, Wilson raised the roof during Obama’s healthcare address over the issue of illegal immigration. And what makes him such as expert on the issue? Here’s how he explained it during a press conference: “I’m for immigration, legal immigration. I’m an immigration attorney.”

However, as revealed by the website TPMmuckraker, he is nothing of the sort. In fact, he is a real estate lawyer. It even says so on his own website.

TPMmuckraker interviewed a number of South Carolina attorneys as well the American Immigration Lawyers Association. No one knows Wilson as anything but a real estate attorney.

So please join the FredBlog in shouting out to Mr. Wilson, “You lie!”

2. Former Miss California USA Carrie Prejean

Carrie Prejean is full of catchphrases. First, she made headlines by giving props to “opposite marriage.” Now, it’s all about, “God chose me.”

You see, this past week Prejean spoke at the right-wing Family Research Council’s so-called Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. (Sarah Palin wasn’t available, so they went with someone who I’m guessing can’t even find Russia on a map!)

In her speech to the Value (if hate is a value) Voters, Prejean discussed her pageant moment when celebrity judge Perez Hilton asked her about same-sex marriage. She told the crowd, “As I saw my goals and aspirations flash by me, I knew God had a plan for me. … He chose me for that moment.”

Yes, Ms. Prejean, of all the people in the world, God chose a dumbass beauty queen. Donald Trump may have chosen you, but God certainly did not.

3. Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada

Jack Layton, leader of Canada’s far-left party, has made a career of bashing the center-left Liberal Party over the head for not voting down the ruling Conservative Party and its Bush-alike leader, Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

In fact, in the last election campaign, Layton puffed himself up as the only true opposition leader. And Layton’s disdain for Harper goes so deep that he didn’t even bother reading the last Conservative budget before deciding his party would vote against it.

But finally, the Liberals have had enough. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff announced this past week that his party would indeed vote to bring down the Conservatives, forcing a federal election.

Oh, but wait, the polls don’t look good for Layton and the New Democrats. So instead of siding with the Liberals, something he has been waiting for, Layton engineered a reason to prop up the Conservatives. Worse yet, Layton says he will continue to support the Conservatives on a number of upcoming confidence motions.

So on a dime, Layton has switched from damning the Liberals for propping up the Conservatives to doing it himself. Hypocrisy doesn’t begin to describe Layton’s freakiness.

FREAK(S) OF THE WEEK: Tom Ridge, Jack Layton and Kansas Rep. Lynn Jenkins

It was another week full o’ freaks on both sides of the border, with a repeat performance by Kansas Rep. Lynn Jenkins. So without further ado, the FredBlog shines its freaklight on this week’s Freaks of the Week:

1. Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge

Tom Ridge, the very first Homeland Security Secretary, makes a stunning assertion in his new book, “The Test of Our Times.” In it, Ridge says he was pressured by others in President George W. Bush’s administration to raise the national color-coded terror threat level just prior to the 2004 election in order to scare the American people into voting Bush back into office. (As we all know, sadly, the tactic worked.)

But then Ridge went on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show and not only changed his tune, but disavowed what’s in his own book.

Under Maddow’s questioning, Ridge said, in part, “Well, I think you are suggesting that it was only driven by, quite obviously the people who made the decision knew more about the threat than you and I do. And again I think it is a pretty radical conclusion to suggest that men and women entrusted with the safety of this country would predicate a decision upon any other basis other than to keep America safe.”

This is the exact opposite of what he just wrote in his own book. Did Dick Cheney get to him before Rachel Maddow did?

2. Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada

Apart from the Liberals and Conservatives (much like the Democrats and Republicans in the U.S.), Canada has four parties in the House of Commons. There’s the separatist Bloc Québécois, but there’s also the New Democratic Party (NDP), which is the far left party that sees the Liberals as too centrist (much like many progressives in the U.S. see the Democrats).

For months, the NDP and its leader – Jack Layton –said there is no way they would support the ruling Conservatives, so if there were an opportunity to dissolve the government and have a new election, the NDP would do it. In fact, Layton has pilloried the Liberals for voting with the Conservatives, allowing them to stay in power. Layton has long said that his party was the real opposition.

So finally, the Liberals and its leader – Michael Ignatieff – are talking about voting down the Conservatives. But wait? What is this? Layton says that he may finally be willing to work with the Conservatives and keep them in power.

Why the change of heart? Because Layton looked at the polls and saw that they don’t look good for his party. So now, all of a sudden, with a real threat of an election looming, Layton is willing to do what he criticized the Liberals for doing for oh-so-many months. Hypocrite!

3. Kansas Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins

Last week, the FredBlog surmised that Lynn Jenkins is either incredibly stupid, racist or both. Either way, it just gets worse.

Initially, Jenkins got in trouble for saying, “Republicans are struggling right now to find the great white hope” to go up against President Barack Obama.

When it was pointed out to her that the phrase “great white hope” is a racist term dating back to the early 20^th century, Jenkins said she had no clue about the phrase’s racist overtones. (The phrase “great white hope” came into general usage after boxer Jack Johnson, who was black, won the heavyweight title – a victory that didn’t sit well with whites. So many then worked to find a white fighter – a “great white hope” – who could snatch the title away from Johnson.)

Now it turns out that Jenkins voted for a congressional resolution back in July that posthumously pardoned Johnson of a racially motivated conviction back in 1913.

So how could Jenkins say she didn’t know what “great white hope” referred to? Her press secretary happily reports that Jenkins didn’t read the bill! That’s right – Jenkins readily admits that she votes for things she doesn’t read. Yeah, that’s a great way to make yourself look good in the eyes of voters.

Liberals find a third way on Conservative budget

Most people assumed that the Liberals had two options for the federal budget that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative presented yesterday. The Liberals could have announced their support, showing them to be as weak and capitulating as they were under former leader Stéphane Dion. Or they could have voted it down, which could have risked plunging the country into its fourth federal election in five years, something that certainly would not have been good for Canada’s economic stability.

But Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff found a better way, a third way. In his announcement earlier today, he and his Liberal caucus put the Conservatives and their budget “on probation” – neither voting it down, nor giving it whole-hearted support, either.

This is wise for a budget that no one saw as 100 percent bad nor 100 percent good. The reviews have rightly stated that the budget is a long way from the Conservatives’ poison-pill “financial update” of last fall, which is ideologically driven and lacking in any measures to help stimulate the economy.

This current budget may not go far enough – there is nothing addressing the nation’s Employment Insurance problem, for example – but there is a minimum amount of stimulus to keep the economy moving.

One of the biggest complaints from all of the opposition parties is that Stephen Harper is not to be trusted. Sure, the budget numbers are OK, they argue, but you can’t trust the Conservatives to show them the money when the time comes. Therein lies Ignatieff’s politically creative genius.

The Liberals will introduce amendments to the budget calling on the Conservatives to produce three accountability reports, detailing how the Conservatives are doing in terms of producing the economic stimulus they now promise. These reports will also be confidence motions, so if the Conservatives do not reach the economic targets they set in their own budget, they can and likely will be voted out of office.

This is the ultimate in accountability for a Conservative party that loves to talk about accountability, but rarely likes to apply such principles to itself.

All this is also better politics – and policy – than the knee-jerk reaction coming from NDP leader Jack Layton and Bloc Québécois head Gilles Duceppe. They decided before they even saw the budget that they were going to vote it down.

And I feel their pain. Like Layton and Duceppe, I would much rather see a left-wing coalition government than sit through any more time with Harper’s Conservatives in power. The government should have been voted down after the financial update was issued last fall, and Harper should never have been allowed to prorogue Parliament in order to avoid a non-confidence motion. That was a corruption of democratic principles, and both Harper and Governor General Michaelle Jean are to blame for that.

But the current budget should not be judged based upon Harper’s past behaviour, but on what the current budget offers and the ability of Harper to keep his promises. And the Conservatives are not likely to vote against the Liberal amendments for fear of being seen as anti-accountability.

Harper, whether he feels it in his heart or is just doing it to save his political skin, seemingly learned something from his near-death scare before the prorogation. Now it is up to Ignatieff and the Liberals to make sure those lessons stuck.

If they didn’t, then it will finally be time to throw the bums out.

It’s about time for Liberal/NDP coalition

While Conservatives are spinning out of control, trying to convince the public that a coalition government is undemocratic, I have just one thing to say: What took the Liberals and NDP so long?

We saw shades of such a coalition back in 2006, when Paul Martin and his Liberal minority worked with Jack Layton’s NDP to come up with the budget. The government fell – taking that ad hoc coalition with it – only after Layton decided he didn’t want to play ball anymore.

But now with the spectre of another couple of years of an emboldened Stephen Harper, Layton decided it made more sense to cooperate with – rather than bash – the Liberals.

Although some hard-core partisans are balking, the Liberals and the NDP are natural coalition partners. Frankly, except for the separatist issue, so is the Bloc Québécois.

All three are left-of-centre parties with more commonalities than differences. All three parties agree, more or less, on issues ranging from the economy and infrastructure to arts funding and gender equality. And certainly, these three parties have more in common with each other than any of them have with the Conservatives.

Even on an issue like climate change, the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc may have different ideas on how to handle the issue, but at least they all agree that it is a crisis that needs to be addressed. That’s in contrast to the Conservatives who still want to stick their heads in the ice as it melts around them.

Although the seeds of this agreement were planted some time ago, the Liberal/NDP coalition did not crystallize just because it could. It happened because Harper pushed them into it. He overplayed his political hand, expecting Stéphane Dion’s Liberals to continue to sit on their hands while Harper’s minority ruled as if it had a majority.

Right after the Oct. 14 election, Harper – who won another minority government – vowed to work with the opposition parties to make this parliament work. Well, so much for cooperation. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty issued a “Financial Update,” complete with the unfortunate if appropriate acronym “FU,” that was void of any plan to handle the current economic meltdown.

Instead, it included ideologically driven proposals – such as limiting the public sector’s right to strike and decimating the public financing system for elections – that Harper knew would not be acceptable to the opposition. Again, Harper was expecting the Liberals to just roll over and play wait-for-the-next-leader dead.

Even more disingenuous is the Conservative argument that a Liberal/NDP coalition is undemocratic and/or unconstitutional. Under the parliamentary system, what the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc have proposed is completely acceptable. The Conservatives won neither a majority of the vote (just 38 per cent in this fall’s election) nor a majority of the Commons seats (143 out of 308). So collectively, the left-of-centre parties won a majority of the vote and a majority of the seats.

Under the Constitution, if the Harper government falls because it no longer has the confidence of a majority of the House of Commons, it is Governor General Michaelle Jean’s duty to ask the opposition if they can form a government. All the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc have done is worked out that they would be able to step in and take the reins.

Harper, as usual, has been acting as if he were an American-style president, rather than a Canadian prime minister. But as Bush has been his role model, he should have been looking at Barack Obama’s transition to power, and how Obama is putting competence ahead of partisanship in picking his new cabinet. It is Obama who is working with his rivals – from both parties – to form a new government.

But instead, Harper was still reading from the Bush “you’re either with us or against us” playbook, a manual that has yellowed quickly and is fraying at the seams.

Harper and his minions are now trying scare the public out of supporting the Liberal/NDP coalition, arguing that in this fall’s election, people didn’t elect Dion.

Well, Mr. Harper, a majority of Canadians didn’t pick you, either. You had your chance to play nice, but you refused. It’s time to leave the sandbox.