This morning’s story is served with a steaming hot cup of schadenfreude.
Word is, there may be more to fall.
31 Replies to “Cam Broten’s Party of Left Wing Extremists”
Hyperbole is a weapon that is as likely to backfire than hit its target. Bozo eruptions are not just embarrassing but derails the campaign when you’re constantly on the defensive. You have to know your constituents and vet accordingly. Those shouting about right-wing extremism should have checked themselves for left-wing extremism. Heh.
For that same reason, Wall was right to distance himself from what he (and most moderates) would see as extreme comments around here. Most people know someone who has struggled with addiction problems: family, relatives, coworkers, friends or children of friends. As such, “Let them die” comments, even as hyperbole, would not be accepted. Saskatchewan people are quite concerned with being kind to those in distress. I’m not sure Sask voters are ready for harm reduction that I support (legalizing pot, injection sites, legal brothels, unrestricted vaping). I suppose I’d be considered a libertarian extremist.
Politicians who are suckered into “distancing” themselves from the opinions of people with no connection to their party are gullible idiots. It’s a fatal failing on the political right.
The left NEVER does this. Try to get them to disavow Occupy, or the violence of Black Lives Matter, illegal blockades by FN, or the raving Castro/Chavez supporting lunatics in the NDP youth wing. Nope. And 9 times out of 10, the political right walks away without holding them to their own standards.
The NDP are infested with these hateful cockroaches, and now Broten’s clever Alinsky tactics are coming back to bite him.
What is it that Lorne Calvert used to say, ” If you are explaining in politics, then you are losing. “!!!
And 9 times out of 10, the political right walks away without holding them to their own standards.
Which accounts for Donald Trump’s popularity. When someone calls Trump a fascist or racist, Donald at least responds with something like “fat pig”.
Bang on Kate!!
Can you imagine if PM Harper had actually put the Stars and the CBCs on the spot on national TV.
Adscam is the DNA of Liberals and is forgotten.
If Conservatives actually fought back?
I fear the Liberal Girlymen are winning.
Surely Conservatives are getting tired of cowering.
the caption on the video clip has a speling mishtake.
s.b. “NDP drops TWO more . . . ”
the new loosey goosey standards for written commuuuuuunication.
There certainly is a double standard when it comes to how extreme comments are covered by the media. A conservatives is always going to be judged more harshly and his/her words will be portrayed as symbolic of everyone on the right. Given the bias in the media, conservative politicians have little choice but to play the game with the hand they’re dealt.
In this case though, I suspect that Wall was being true to his own beliefs when he criticized SDA. His brand of conservationism is more populist than social conservative. He has a positive personality and he seems to prefer humor more than negativity and attacks. There’s a reason why he’s the most popular premier in Canada. There’s many brands of conservatism and yours, Kate, and Wall’s are very different. As is mine. Ultimately though, his brand wins elections and prevents us returning to the bad old days of the NDP.
The big winner here may be the liberal party.
“harm reduction”
This bit of Orwellian double speak needs to be challenged at every opportunity.
It is nothing more than “co-dependent behaviour”, enabling addicts to stay addicted, making life easier to stay as dysfunctional as possible.
The Sask NDP leader is trying to cleanse the party of haters when the party itself is the natural repository for the politics of envy, hatred, and resentment. As Kate pointed out, not a winning strategy. In socialist Canada, the best conservative strategy (luck?) is a screwed-up or evenly divided opposition.
On the other hand, harm reduction allows them to stay alive long enough to perhaps work through whatever caused them to end up in a life of addiction or prostitution (keeping in mind that some hookers prefer that lifestyle). Making addiction and prostitution less harmful, and potentially life-saving, while offering medical/psychological help is the best and most realistic solution, in my opinion. These social problems have been around for as long as we have recorded history and there’s no evidence that prohibition works. Harm reduction isn’t a cure either but it’s more humane.
The difficult is minimizing the impact to the surrounding community. Having addicts harassing customers and businesses is infringing on their rights.
“To fix and repair humna humana humna humana…”
Oh yes LC, I have friends and family who “struggled with addiction” – people who were doing great, lovely homes and families, and DECIDED to trash it all and abandon their families after draining their finances for crack. Both have since adopted ultra-leftist worldviews and descended into what will surely prove to be lifelong suspended adolescence in their 50s.
You sound to me like someone who DOESN’T have friends or family “struggling” with the catastrophic selfishness and stupidity it requires to take that first hit.
If humanly possible, Newfs should be kept out of SK. They are often brave, and some are capable of hard work, but they are completely rotted out by liberalism, almost to a man.
You know, the more I think about it the more amazed and angry I am: this is leftist cant pure and simple. Social problem? Throw tons of other people’s money at it. If it doesn’t go away, at least you can say you tried. LC, what you fail to understand is that some social ills won’t go away because some bean counter throws money at it, and some people can’t be helped.
One of the people I’m referring to in my previous post, after one of his many failed attempts at rehab and an endless black comedy of stupid breaches of the trust others placed in him, ended up with a new girlfriend (to replace the wife he abandoned) at the far outer fringe of alcoholism. One fine evening she was putting away bottles of whiskey and finally was physically unable to continue getting up to refill her glass. She insisted he spoon-feed her the stuff or she’d throw herself out the window. Instead of being rational and compassionate and refusing (which since she couldn’t actually get out of her seat would have been perfectly safe), he did so – until she had to be ambulanced to hospital, where it was discovered she had inflicted brainstem damage on herself if you can even grasp how much alcohol that would take.
Not just can’t be helped: shouldn’t. I am sick to the teeth of this insistence that it is somehow more humane to insist taxpayers subsidize the life choices of people bent on self-destruction.
Yes, of course, your anecdotes are the one and only possible path to addiction. How could I be so daft? Here I thought people could become addicted due to other causes like: depression, abuse, divorce, work stress, mental illness, inherited predisposition to addiction, addiction stemming from prescription painkillers due to accident or injury, etc. Glad you were here to dispel all those rumours of causes other than the ones you’re aware of.
Frankly, I doubt if there’s anyone, myself included, who doesn’t know someone who is or has been an addict. I’ve know quite a few and they weren’t all like your family.
It seems odd to me that anyone calling for government support of “safe injection sites” and other such “harm reduction” strategies can claim to be an extreme libertarian. At the heart of libertarianism is an expectation that individuals are ultimately responsible for their own choices and subject to the consequences thereof. This is tempered, however, by the understanding that other individuals, singly or in association, are free to assist them in any legal way they see fit.
* “you were just too busy being fabulous… too busy to think about us…” “The government is basically saying you can be arrested and convicted for
something that will soon no longer be illegal, but don’t worry, because you’ll be granted amnesty for it later.”
government by fever dreams & magic pixie dust. groovy, man.
*
Many libertarians would agree with your pov but I think there’s a argument to be made for treating addiction as a medical issue. But, not all users are addicts and some are functional addicts. They hold down jobs and maintain relationships. Not all hookers are victims either. From college girls seeking sugar daddies to high-class escort services, there’s women who choose this career. Brothels that get at-risk women off the streets, protected and access to medical care just like any other occupation is not anti-libertarian either. It’s all about respecting individuals, their choices (even if you disagree) and realizing criminalizing drug addicts and prostitution has failed. A big misuse of resources, courts and manpower.
I’m not actually an extreme libertarian but advocating for safe injections sites, legalized pot and brothels would certainly be seen as extreme in most parts of this province.
“advocating for safe injections sites, legalized pot and brothels would certainly be seen as extreme in most parts of this province.”
Good Lord … smoking or vaping outdoors in a park in Saskatoon is considered extreme … and illegal.
The surest way to tell the difference between a progressive and a libertarian is to ask about issues like vaping, school choice or freedom of speech. Progressives commitment to choice is limited to things they approve of. Things they don’t like must be banned, fined, shamed.
LC, sounds great in theory, doesn’t it?
It doesn’t work, it just enables dysfunctional behaviour, sorry.
Its just leftist dogma to aid and abet the addict. Those actions run counter to the successful program of AA, NA and other sober programs.
A cleaner glass and a new needle doesn’t cure the addict.
Nothing but anecdotal evidence has been provided by the poverty pimp industry when it comes to addicts. Typically, these self-serving types will prop up one or two so-called success stories out of the thousands of addicts that remain addicted.
I don’t view that as a rousing success, and its very poor results for a very expensive program of many social workers, health workers, and poverty pimp types, who seem to be the only ones benefiting from this vast social experiment
As eluded by Mike Anderson (no relation), unless you have seen addiction in your own family, these new fangled theories are just massive, wasteful spending, with little results, than just keeping the addict addicted, and feeling really good about it too. Society approves of their addiction, why should they ever quit?
Would like to agree.
Would add, stop bloody apologising.
Go on, talk about it, be very, very smart, don’t apologise.
Unless you are badly wrong. That would be your own fault.
Other than that DON’T APOLOGISE.
Heed what Ms. Kate said just above your post. She knows whereof she speaks.
When Wall run for the first time, there was the proverbial video showing him to be somewhat loose with words at a party.
Your agent commented that he should stop bloody apologising and reserve the right to do stupid things in future. Maybe he read it at the time. Nonetheless he never apologised since.
End of story.
I resent that John. You are generalizing. A lot of us “Newfs” left the province for that very reason. If you are right wing, I can guarantee you that my brother and I are fifteen paces to your right, in fact in my books, you are only slightly right of PET 😉
I don’t have a problem with harm reduction programs, whether or not they are very successful as long as the state is not involved and that goes for just about everything except the police, military, and courts and I have heard good anarco-capitalist arguments to privatize those as well. Given that we enjoy an advanced welfare-nanny-state with seemingly no limits on where leviathan can slither its tentacles, harm reduction programs conducted by local or provincial governments are likely not as incrementally harmful as much of what we accept as “normal” coercive government involvement.
legalizing pot, injection sites, legal brothels, unrestricted vaping
One of these things is not like the others.
Legalized pot, brothels and vaping costs nothing to taxpayers, and removes restrictive legislation.
Safe injection sites have a cost to taxpayers. In fact, given the hard work that most people put in their jobs, they’re just about the most cynical waste of tax dollars imaginable (which is how the leftists like it). As long as drug use and possession are illegal, the justice system should not be using tax dollars to help people break the law.
PM Harper should have instantly invoked the “notwithstanding clause” when the Supreme Court handed down its atrocity re InSite in 2011, which was probably the biggest slap in the face to the rule of law this country has ever seen.
If you are explaining in politics, then you are losing.
Not explaining much over a nearly ten-year period probably cost Stephen Harper the PM job last year. That was his biggest fault.
Sugar coating the truth about addictions only serves to exacerbate the problem.
The facts are not conclusive on crime prevention and harm reduction programs have limited successes,are expensive and divert health care resources.
The growing popularity and expansion of these program only serves to prove the programs
are futile for the addict and the public.
You evil right-wing blogger, you.
…but they WERE all self-centered a$$holes I’ll bet. The reality is that there are masses of people in this country who are just plain pieces of crap, and the propensity toward addiction is just one aspect of that monumentally antisocial, self-centered, terminally stupid, death-embracing approach to life. My POV is based on actual experience – and sometimes what I read, like the article explaining that in the Netherlands, junkies avoid state-funded safe shooting houses because they lack a party atmosphere.
Or if you actually do know addicts whose addiction doesn’t stem from a lethal level of reckless suspended adolescence, and who don’t put their addiction before their own families, then bully for you. Depression, divorce? Boo hoo, there are millions of people suffering from depression, or who even suffer terrible abuse, who do not abandon life and embrace death. And if they do embrace death, as I said and you chose to ignore, throwing other people’s money at it isn’t the solution. That attitude is precisely why I loathe people like Bernie Sanders: enforced charity toward the terminally hopeless.
God, I’ll bet you’re one of those execrable hypocrites who also thinks we have a massive overpopulation problem AND is anti-death penalty. You sound noble, but it’s just a reality-avoiding stance you’ve adopted in order to improve your good opinion of yourself.
My God, this bit from you just hit me full force:
“It’s all about respecting individuals, their choices (even if you disagree).”
That has to be word for word from one of those professional-activist NGOs who go to bat in court for the right of addicts to remain addicts. Respect those individuals and their – your word – choices, and their witless enablers? NO, you leftist in conservative clothing, NEVER!
Hope that’s clear enough for you.
Hyperbole is a weapon that is as likely to backfire than hit its target. Bozo eruptions are not just embarrassing but derails the campaign when you’re constantly on the defensive. You have to know your constituents and vet accordingly. Those shouting about right-wing extremism should have checked themselves for left-wing extremism. Heh.
For that same reason, Wall was right to distance himself from what he (and most moderates) would see as extreme comments around here. Most people know someone who has struggled with addiction problems: family, relatives, coworkers, friends or children of friends. As such, “Let them die” comments, even as hyperbole, would not be accepted. Saskatchewan people are quite concerned with being kind to those in distress. I’m not sure Sask voters are ready for harm reduction that I support (legalizing pot, injection sites, legal brothels, unrestricted vaping). I suppose I’d be considered a libertarian extremist.
Politicians who are suckered into “distancing” themselves from the opinions of people with no connection to their party are gullible idiots. It’s a fatal failing on the political right.
The left NEVER does this. Try to get them to disavow Occupy, or the violence of Black Lives Matter, illegal blockades by FN, or the raving Castro/Chavez supporting lunatics in the NDP youth wing. Nope. And 9 times out of 10, the political right walks away without holding them to their own standards.
The NDP are infested with these hateful cockroaches, and now Broten’s clever Alinsky tactics are coming back to bite him.
What is it that Lorne Calvert used to say, ” If you are explaining in politics, then you are losing. “!!!
And 9 times out of 10, the political right walks away without holding them to their own standards.
Which accounts for Donald Trump’s popularity. When someone calls Trump a fascist or racist, Donald at least responds with something like “fat pig”.
Bang on Kate!!
Can you imagine if PM Harper had actually put the Stars and the CBCs on the spot on national TV.
Adscam is the DNA of Liberals and is forgotten.
If Conservatives actually fought back?
I fear the Liberal Girlymen are winning.
Surely Conservatives are getting tired of cowering.
the caption on the video clip has a speling mishtake.
s.b. “NDP drops TWO more . . . ”
the new loosey goosey standards for written commuuuuuunication.
There certainly is a double standard when it comes to how extreme comments are covered by the media. A conservatives is always going to be judged more harshly and his/her words will be portrayed as symbolic of everyone on the right. Given the bias in the media, conservative politicians have little choice but to play the game with the hand they’re dealt.
In this case though, I suspect that Wall was being true to his own beliefs when he criticized SDA. His brand of conservationism is more populist than social conservative. He has a positive personality and he seems to prefer humor more than negativity and attacks. There’s a reason why he’s the most popular premier in Canada. There’s many brands of conservatism and yours, Kate, and Wall’s are very different. As is mine. Ultimately though, his brand wins elections and prevents us returning to the bad old days of the NDP.
The big winner here may be the liberal party.
“harm reduction”
This bit of Orwellian double speak needs to be challenged at every opportunity.
It is nothing more than “co-dependent behaviour”, enabling addicts to stay addicted, making life easier to stay as dysfunctional as possible.
The Sask NDP leader is trying to cleanse the party of haters when the party itself is the natural repository for the politics of envy, hatred, and resentment. As Kate pointed out, not a winning strategy. In socialist Canada, the best conservative strategy (luck?) is a screwed-up or evenly divided opposition.
On the other hand, harm reduction allows them to stay alive long enough to perhaps work through whatever caused them to end up in a life of addiction or prostitution (keeping in mind that some hookers prefer that lifestyle). Making addiction and prostitution less harmful, and potentially life-saving, while offering medical/psychological help is the best and most realistic solution, in my opinion. These social problems have been around for as long as we have recorded history and there’s no evidence that prohibition works. Harm reduction isn’t a cure either but it’s more humane.
The difficult is minimizing the impact to the surrounding community. Having addicts harassing customers and businesses is infringing on their rights.
“To fix and repair humna humana humna humana…”
Oh yes LC, I have friends and family who “struggled with addiction” – people who were doing great, lovely homes and families, and DECIDED to trash it all and abandon their families after draining their finances for crack. Both have since adopted ultra-leftist worldviews and descended into what will surely prove to be lifelong suspended adolescence in their 50s.
You sound to me like someone who DOESN’T have friends or family “struggling” with the catastrophic selfishness and stupidity it requires to take that first hit.
If humanly possible, Newfs should be kept out of SK. They are often brave, and some are capable of hard work, but they are completely rotted out by liberalism, almost to a man.
You know, the more I think about it the more amazed and angry I am: this is leftist cant pure and simple. Social problem? Throw tons of other people’s money at it. If it doesn’t go away, at least you can say you tried. LC, what you fail to understand is that some social ills won’t go away because some bean counter throws money at it, and some people can’t be helped.
One of the people I’m referring to in my previous post, after one of his many failed attempts at rehab and an endless black comedy of stupid breaches of the trust others placed in him, ended up with a new girlfriend (to replace the wife he abandoned) at the far outer fringe of alcoholism. One fine evening she was putting away bottles of whiskey and finally was physically unable to continue getting up to refill her glass. She insisted he spoon-feed her the stuff or she’d throw herself out the window. Instead of being rational and compassionate and refusing (which since she couldn’t actually get out of her seat would have been perfectly safe), he did so – until she had to be ambulanced to hospital, where it was discovered she had inflicted brainstem damage on herself if you can even grasp how much alcohol that would take.
Not just can’t be helped: shouldn’t. I am sick to the teeth of this insistence that it is somehow more humane to insist taxpayers subsidize the life choices of people bent on self-destruction.
Yes, of course, your anecdotes are the one and only possible path to addiction. How could I be so daft? Here I thought people could become addicted due to other causes like: depression, abuse, divorce, work stress, mental illness, inherited predisposition to addiction, addiction stemming from prescription painkillers due to accident or injury, etc. Glad you were here to dispel all those rumours of causes other than the ones you’re aware of.
Frankly, I doubt if there’s anyone, myself included, who doesn’t know someone who is or has been an addict. I’ve know quite a few and they weren’t all like your family.
It seems odd to me that anyone calling for government support of “safe injection sites” and other such “harm reduction” strategies can claim to be an extreme libertarian. At the heart of libertarianism is an expectation that individuals are ultimately responsible for their own choices and subject to the consequences thereof. This is tempered, however, by the understanding that other individuals, singly or in association, are free to assist them in any legal way they see fit.
*
“you were just too busy being fabulous… too busy to think about us…”
“The government is basically saying you can be arrested and convicted for
something that will soon no longer be illegal, but don’t worry, because
you’ll be granted amnesty for it later.”
government by fever dreams & magic pixie dust. groovy, man.
*
Many libertarians would agree with your pov but I think there’s a argument to be made for treating addiction as a medical issue. But, not all users are addicts and some are functional addicts. They hold down jobs and maintain relationships. Not all hookers are victims either. From college girls seeking sugar daddies to high-class escort services, there’s women who choose this career. Brothels that get at-risk women off the streets, protected and access to medical care just like any other occupation is not anti-libertarian either. It’s all about respecting individuals, their choices (even if you disagree) and realizing criminalizing drug addicts and prostitution has failed. A big misuse of resources, courts and manpower.
I’m not actually an extreme libertarian but advocating for safe injections sites, legalized pot and brothels would certainly be seen as extreme in most parts of this province.
“advocating for safe injections sites, legalized pot and brothels would certainly be seen as extreme in most parts of this province.”
Good Lord … smoking or vaping outdoors in a park in Saskatoon is considered extreme … and illegal.
The surest way to tell the difference between a progressive and a libertarian is to ask about issues like vaping, school choice or freedom of speech. Progressives commitment to choice is limited to things they approve of. Things they don’t like must be banned, fined, shamed.
LC, sounds great in theory, doesn’t it?
It doesn’t work, it just enables dysfunctional behaviour, sorry.
Its just leftist dogma to aid and abet the addict. Those actions run counter to the successful program of AA, NA and other sober programs.
A cleaner glass and a new needle doesn’t cure the addict.
Nothing but anecdotal evidence has been provided by the poverty pimp industry when it comes to addicts. Typically, these self-serving types will prop up one or two so-called success stories out of the thousands of addicts that remain addicted.
I don’t view that as a rousing success, and its very poor results for a very expensive program of many social workers, health workers, and poverty pimp types, who seem to be the only ones benefiting from this vast social experiment
As eluded by Mike Anderson (no relation), unless you have seen addiction in your own family, these new fangled theories are just massive, wasteful spending, with little results, than just keeping the addict addicted, and feeling really good about it too. Society approves of their addiction, why should they ever quit?
Would like to agree.
Would add, stop bloody apologising.
Go on, talk about it, be very, very smart, don’t apologise.
Unless you are badly wrong. That would be your own fault.
Other than that DON’T APOLOGISE.
Heed what Ms. Kate said just above your post. She knows whereof she speaks.
When Wall run for the first time, there was the proverbial video showing him to be somewhat loose with words at a party.
Your agent commented that he should stop bloody apologising and reserve the right to do stupid things in future. Maybe he read it at the time. Nonetheless he never apologised since.
End of story.
I resent that John. You are generalizing. A lot of us “Newfs” left the province for that very reason. If you are right wing, I can guarantee you that my brother and I are fifteen paces to your right, in fact in my books, you are only slightly right of PET 😉
I don’t have a problem with harm reduction programs, whether or not they are very successful as long as the state is not involved and that goes for just about everything except the police, military, and courts and I have heard good anarco-capitalist arguments to privatize those as well. Given that we enjoy an advanced welfare-nanny-state with seemingly no limits on where leviathan can slither its tentacles, harm reduction programs conducted by local or provincial governments are likely not as incrementally harmful as much of what we accept as “normal” coercive government involvement.
legalizing pot, injection sites, legal brothels, unrestricted vaping
One of these things is not like the others.
Legalized pot, brothels and vaping costs nothing to taxpayers, and removes restrictive legislation.
Safe injection sites have a cost to taxpayers. In fact, given the hard work that most people put in their jobs, they’re just about the most cynical waste of tax dollars imaginable (which is how the leftists like it). As long as drug use and possession are illegal, the justice system should not be using tax dollars to help people break the law.
PM Harper should have instantly invoked the “notwithstanding clause” when the Supreme Court handed down its atrocity re InSite in 2011, which was probably the biggest slap in the face to the rule of law this country has ever seen.
If you are explaining in politics, then you are losing.
Not explaining much over a nearly ten-year period probably cost Stephen Harper the PM job last year. That was his biggest fault.
Sugar coating the truth about addictions only serves to exacerbate the problem.
The facts are not conclusive on crime prevention and harm reduction programs have limited successes,are expensive and divert health care resources.
The growing popularity and expansion of these program only serves to prove the programs
are futile for the addict and the public.
You evil right-wing blogger, you.
…but they WERE all self-centered a$$holes I’ll bet. The reality is that there are masses of people in this country who are just plain pieces of crap, and the propensity toward addiction is just one aspect of that monumentally antisocial, self-centered, terminally stupid, death-embracing approach to life. My POV is based on actual experience – and sometimes what I read, like the article explaining that in the Netherlands, junkies avoid state-funded safe shooting houses because they lack a party atmosphere.
Or if you actually do know addicts whose addiction doesn’t stem from a lethal level of reckless suspended adolescence, and who don’t put their addiction before their own families, then bully for you. Depression, divorce? Boo hoo, there are millions of people suffering from depression, or who even suffer terrible abuse, who do not abandon life and embrace death. And if they do embrace death, as I said and you chose to ignore, throwing other people’s money at it isn’t the solution. That attitude is precisely why I loathe people like Bernie Sanders: enforced charity toward the terminally hopeless.
God, I’ll bet you’re one of those execrable hypocrites who also thinks we have a massive overpopulation problem AND is anti-death penalty. You sound noble, but it’s just a reality-avoiding stance you’ve adopted in order to improve your good opinion of yourself.
My God, this bit from you just hit me full force:
“It’s all about respecting individuals, their choices (even if you disagree).”
That has to be word for word from one of those professional-activist NGOs who go to bat in court for the right of addicts to remain addicts. Respect those individuals and their – your word – choices, and their witless enablers? NO, you leftist in conservative clothing, NEVER!
Hope that’s clear enough for you.