CAPPYYC Rally Blogger Plug

Calgary's CAPP rally is this Saturday, January 23,2010, on the parking lot directly outside Stephen Harper's Constituency Office.

The address is:

1600 - 90 th Avenue SW
(also known as Glenmore Landing, a popular shopping centre.)

We recommend you not bring your car to the event due to limited parking.  There is a lot of parking in nearby, but not in the shopping centre.  There are maps and transit info on the event page.  We also wanted to avoid causing a problem for the retail businesses around Mr. Harper's office.

If you like walking, the location is about 15-20 minutes from the Heritage CTrain Station.

The rally will start at 1pm and will go for at least an hour, and longer if the participants want.

Because of the right leaning nature of Calgary's Social media, and the completely appropriate  attention shift to the Haiti relief efforts, it has been difficult to get our rally talked about in the blogosphere or on Twitter. If you are a Calgary blogger please help us and blog about this non-partisan event.  There are tonnes of excellent opinion blog posts about the Prorogue so I won't cover that territory here.

We will be presenting a petition to Mr.Harper's constituency office and hope you will help gather signatures. The petition asks that Parliament return in January. A PDF version of the petition and signing sheets will be available sometime today.

A link an image of  one of our posters is here.

Our press release is here

Follow the organizers on Twitter.

Thanks to the Calgarians who have supported this event, and the organizers who have worked very hard.

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Calgary's Rally Until Now Noticeably Lacking

I was surprised to learn Calgary, Alberta was one of the few cities in Canada not organizing an anti-prorogue rally.  Ok, I wasn't really surprised I was just being polite.

Although I loath facebook it is somewhat useful for organizing groups and events. Please join the group I created attempting to organize a rally in Calgary. If it falls on dead ears, at least we tried.  Sorry, typo, I meant deaf ears. I was thinking of brains.

What we need now are ideas, facebook tips, admins and joiners.

If you can think of any other social media sites we could supplement this group with please let me know.

In the meantime a little Bruce Cockburn:

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Hurtful By Intent

Here is a pdf copy of Rob Anders anti-Muslim pamphlet that I received in my mail box not long ago. Free speech is free speech, but this particular free speech, borderline hate speech, is wholly funded by the Government of Canada.

The key piece that caught my eye:

It is now illegal to hold opinions that offend radical Muslim activists.

A lie, pure and simple.

That, and frequent references to liberal activists, who by the semantics of infantile McCarthyism are equally to blame for whatever ails you.

It was released on or around Ramadan, and designed to fall on the fertile ground of Calgary West, a constituency built by hand by Preston Manning and Stephen Harper.

As a political strategy keeping people dumb, full of hatred, and confused about basic facts seems to have worked quite well.

h/t to Jennifer Pollock, whom I stole the post title from.



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Why Harper’s Speech Doesn’t Matter

If you were shocked and saddened by Stephen Harper's leaked private speech delivered last night, you're probably not alone. I felt very demoralized last night and still do. However if you learned anything new about Harper from that mean spirited hate-filled speech then I would suggest you probably haven't been paying attention. That was vintage Stephen Harper, consistent with every partisan speech he's made going back to the early nineties and the birth of the Reform Party. As an Albertan this type of McCarthyist BS is nothing new.

It won't have much of an impact on people who already support Harper, in fact it will probably energize them. Those moderate conservatives, leftovers from the PC days maybe, have no influence and are tied and gagged in the basement.

I doubt very much whether the opposition parties will pick up any new energy or supporters from this speech because we've seen time and time again where these type of things don't really register with the average voter who are worried about feeding their dogs. Or kids. If we look at it honestly, voters can be irrational about a lot of things. The entire Bush era and the current American Health care debate are cases in point.

Unless polling suggests otherwise, I'm willing to bet that this speech will be quickly forgotten in a swirl of garbage noise from the CPC.

Here's Milewski's take on the speech.

Update: September 10, 2009 09:40 MST

I'm starting to believe that the leak was deliberate. At the very least I doubt that Harper would be angry at the leak since it sends all the right messages to the people they're trying to keep on board. Sad.







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Harper's Election Law was a gimmick

As we speak lawyers for Elections Canada and Democracy Watch are arguing in Federal Court whether the last election was illegal. I support Democracy watch, in general, and can't wait for Harper to be retired to a think tank somewhere. Yet, I have doubts and I think the lawsuit is misdirected effort.

Its true that Stephen Harper broke his own law, and its true that this shows his lack of character and professionalism. However the law was a gimmick. It was a brain fart from the original Reform platform. None of the Reformers had much regard for the Constitution Act of 1982 and it continues to show.

A sitting Prime Minister making a law about election dates in a minority government is bizarre beyond belief, and I doubt the Supreme Court would be able to uphold such a law if it was ever challenged. It was a gimmick and nothing more, best remedied by the voters not the courts.

Harper knew ahead of time that ignoring such a bullshit law would be perfectly legal.

Democracy watch should focus on more important issues for now, given our growing democracy deficit. And yes, for the record, I believe we should have fixed election dates as part of overall electoral reform. I can only get behind that if its based on broad consultation. Stephen Harper isn't the one to do that, he can barely collaborate within his own tribe. Also, he doesn't understand what rule of law means.

Update September 8, 2009 14:15. Fix minor typos.

Update September 8, 2009 21:00 Links to other bloggers on same topic:

Pogge.ca
Impolitical
Kirby Cairo
Impolitical (strikes again)




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