The Flop and Fail...

...teams up with Gerry Kaplan to illustrate why the left is losing so badly. "The left", of course, includes our MSM.

"But what happens when pundits can’t even pretend to have a clue about what’s going on? It’s been a hallmark of Stephen Harper’s reign that we keep meeting this kind of embarrassing problem, threatening the very existence of the commentariat as a class."

[---]

"Take another example. Stephen Harper has just declared that the greatest security threat to Canada is something he called “Islamicism.” I’ve seen no sensible dissection of this remarkable comment because no one can make sense of it. It goes without saying that vigilance against any potential terrorist attack is vital. Has some new peril now been discovered that no one else knows about? Are Canadians in imminent danger? Might we not be fretful about a nice homegrown Christian version of Norway’s notorious Anders Breivik as well as extremist Muslims? Why does our leader choose to feed into the bigotry of those who are determined to smear all Muslims as terrorists?

[---]

"As for more of the impenetrable Mr. Harper, take his bold march into Canada’s colonial past by putting the “royal” back in the name of two of our armed forces and the Queen’s picture on the walls of our embassies. Talk about an inscrutable manufactured crisis and fixing something when it ain’t broke.

Don’t tell me this was playing to the Conservative base, the handy-dandy answer when we pundits have nothing sensible to say. I gather all of 6,000 people roused themselves to sign an online petition to insert “royal” into the forces’ names; even the Blue Jays attract larger numbers. Not a single person currently serving in our forces – all of whom we praise to the skies – has ever served with “royal” in their names, which seems not to have undermined morale very much. So what brilliant strategic purpose can this conceivably be about?

As for hanging the dear old Queen’s picture in our embassies abroad – will she be astride a moose?– the best line came from NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar: “We don’t have a minister of foreign affairs, we have a minister of interior decorating.” Or, you could say, a royal pain in the butt."

Okay. Some of that is just plain funny, but there's plenty of baldfaced bigotry (against Christianity, for example. Quelle surprise!!) and a goodly share of loony-toon nutbarrism there, too.  This entire paragraph, for example:

"In terms of what really menaces Canadians, is “Islamicism” really scarier than global warming? What is it about these conservatives that make them care so little about their kids’ future? What about water scarcity, a looming crisis? Or the fragility of the global economic system? Youth unemployment? What about the bottomless need everywhere in Canada for new or repaired or upgraded infrastructure? Who’s going to protect us from exploding road rage on our gridlocked roads? What about glaring, growing inequality and our declining quality of life?"

Poor Dippers. Just when they make some substantial gains, along comes this old ideologue to throw up such a shining example of why they're still the same old, same old. About the only thing good about his rant I can say is at least he didn't take a swipe at Americans or Dubya. I suppose that's because The One is trying so hard to implement Dipper ideology south of the border so they are currently in his good books.