Cadman scandal: it's got legs

"Big, muscular, hairy legs" was what they said on Don Newman's Politics braaaahhhdcast today.

Naahhh... it'll go away...yeah, right! Talking Points Memo picks up the story!!

Big, muscular, hairy, marathon-running legs... and it's just in the first 5k!

(h/t Mattt @ bastard.logic)

No reportage on Smith appointment - Why?

Last night when I should have been chilling and swilling, I was googling and oogling, trying to find a story anywhere in the MSM (other than the little Terrace Daily Online) about the Conservatives' appointment of Sharon Smith as "Go To Person" for all things governmental in the Skeena-Bulkley Valley electoral district. Such an unusual and clearly undemocratic appointment should be worth at least a few lines and a few questions... or more appropriately, a screaming 72pt headline.

Other than a few very tenacious bloggers, and the local Terrace news, I came up empty-handed. The Terrace and Houston news ran a press release issued by MP Dick Harris (Conservative, Cariboo-Prince George), but other than that I couldn't find a single word written about what amounts to a Conservative Party scandal. Vancouver Sun - zip. Victoria Times-Colonist - nada. National Post - zilch. Globe & Mail - dick. The Sun chain - fuck all. I found a couple of thingsabout Mayor Smith, but nothing about her appointment as the Go-To Person™, the Only One in Skeena-Bulkley Valley with The Ear of Canada's New Government™. Hmm! Was this announcement deliberately kept low-profile because it's only of local interest, or [adjusts tinfoil hat] because it was meant to fly under the radar of the larger MSM? Only Dick Harris knows for sure!

Let's see. Local news stories: a terrible house fire, a bank robbery, a kitten being rescued from a tree by awesomely hunky firefighters, subverting democracy... Okay kids, which one of those isn't like the rest?

The appropriate response to Dick Harris's quiet little press release (in which he openly and happily admits that if you don't have a Conservative MP you ain't getting sweet fuck all from the government, not even its' ear) should have been a long low coast-to-coast snarl building to a sustained nationwide scream. And it probably would have been... if anyone knew about it.

The major market MSM clearly missed out on this opportunity to ask the question "If democracy is subverted in the forest and there's nobody around to see it, is it really subverting democracy?" Thanks to tip lines, honest MPs and Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, hopefully they'll get to ask it in the near future.

UPDATE: Turner joins the fray.

WTF is this bullshit?!!

Frank Frink at A Creative Revolution alerted me to this un-fucking-believable story at Blogging a Dead Horse -- the Conservative Government is getting things done, alright, to us, not for us! From BADH:

"Three days ago, Dick Harris, the Conservative MP for Cariboo-Prince George announced that the Conservatives have named their local candidate Sharon Smith the “Skeena-Bulkley Valley liason to the federal government.

That’s right, seems that after only 20 months of trying it, the Conservatives have decided that listening to MPs – particularly those from other parties – is way too onerous and distracting. The solution is obvious really: replace them with compliant and agreeable people who look like MPs, pretend to be MPs, but have absolutely no legitimacy."

It might sound like just a lot of blah-blahing by the government about another boring appointment of another boring government wonk. Unfortunately Sharon Smith is the Conservative candidate for the Skeena-Bulkley Valley electoral district, and the job they're proposing she do is normally done by the person elected by the people of the S-BV electoral district to do such work, NDP MP Nathan Cullen. Not so boring now, is it! The Harper government is basically saying that it doesn't matter what the voters want; if a riding doesn't elect a Conservative, they'll install one. Because anything else just doesn't cut it, according to Dick Harris:

"Harris concluded, “Having an MP from the fourth party in the House just doesn’t cut it when it comes to actually getting things done for the folks in Skeena-Bulkley Valley."

Blog, call MPs, call media, call anyone who can shine a light on this scurrilous situation and let the government, our employees, know that this "appointment" is unacceptable. The extent to which this subverts the democratic process cannot be over-stated.