thetorontobulletin.com Blog

NeoCons flop at the paddle

The NeoCons and the their competitors decided to engage in a boat race. Both teams practiced hard and long to reach their peak performance.

On the big day they felt ready. But their competitors won by a mile.

Afterward, the NeoCon team was discouraged by the loss.

Morale sagged. Corporate management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found, so a consulting firm was hired to investigate the problem and recommend corrective action.

The consultant’s finding: their competitors team had eight people rowing and one person steering; the NeoCon team had one person rowing and eight people steering.

After a year of study and millions spent analyzing the problem, the consultants concluded that too many people were steering and not enough were rowing on the NeoCon team. So as race day neared again the following year, the NeoCon team’s management structure was completely reorganized.

The new structure: four steering managers, three area steering managers, and a new performance review system for the person rowing the boat to provide work incentive.

The next year, their competitors won by two miles. Humiliated, the NeoCon honchos laid off the rower for poor performance.

And they gave the managers a bonus for discovering the problem.

Frank Touby

Will Canada croak on the ‘Frog Factor’?

Weep for the country. We have the unhappy choice between a French doofus and a yahoo-ized control freak who sides with George Bush to lead us.

The frog factor notwithstanding, Stéphane Dion attempts to tantalize voters with, wait for it, a brand new tax. Does it get any better than that, folks? If you’re a Tory or other fan of rule by big, unaccountable corporations, you’ve gotta be dancing right now.

The only thing between your hopes of wrecking Canada and gathering up the pieces for yourself and your pals is a guy who’s often shown with his arms askew in an “I don’t know” gesture which makes sense if you understand French culture but otherwise looks downright weird and incompetent.

Dion is likely as much a control freak as Harper. Otherwise his handlers would never let him get away with his weird vote-squelching plans, attitudes and gestures. He’s taking his own addled counsel and the only thing that might save the country is if Harper manages merely another minority and the Liberals can put Bob Rae in that spot Dion occupies so ineptly.

Frank Touby

King makes first-ever Toronto visit

Oboy! Oboy! Oboy! The King is coming to Toronto for the first time! Isn’t that absolutely fabulous!

I just learned this from Laura Creedon of a flacking outfit called Pilot PMR, which boasts, “…we generate results that stir people into action.”

See if this doesn’t stir you: The King is going to make his first Toronto appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival, accompanied by two pretty women.

And after that, The King will toss out the first pitch at a Blue Jays game.
How can you miss this?

The King, by the way, is someone with skinny white-stockinged legs wearing a porcelain head and royal robes with a Burger King medallion hanging from a gold chain around his/her neck.

Come one, come all. Who can miss this staggeringly innovative public relations ploy? Whoopie! The King is coming! The King is coming!
Frank Touby

Right-wingers recruit bozos

The Idiot Factor seems to be a hallmark of right-wing political strategists. They put a dimwit in a high office many storeys above his (mainly his) level of competence and let him twist in the wind while refuting commentators stating the obvious. But the dimmer the wit, the less pain that individual actually seems to feel.

Take Dan Quayle, for example. No doubt the Indiana blueblood reminded the senior George Bush of his own spastic, intellectually challenged youngest son when he picked the obviously mentally challenged Danny boy as vice president.

Among Quayle’s many, many howlers is: “…what a waste it is to lose one’s mind or not to have a mind is being very wasteful.” Or, “It’s time for the human race to enter the solar system.”

This from an American aristocrat who managed to land a law degree in the same manner, perhaps, as George W. Bush was graduated from Yale. One can only gawk in awe if either of these lowball characters could actually earn university degrees on their own unaided efforts.

In Canada we have the Tories’ dumb bunny in the form of Tony Clement, minister of health. Since they’re congenitally in favour of wrecking the public health system in order to parcel it off to corporations, he’s a perfect fit. While his country’s food supply was compromised by a deadly food-carried infection, Clement was glad-handing in Denver amongst the politicians and oilmen at the Democratic convention.

And of course we can’t forget the epitome of dopes the reactionaries like to place in high places: Mike Harris, ex-premier of Ontario. That buffoon came into power on the statement that he and his crew of villains “aren’t the government.” Just repairmen to “fix” the government.

He held on for 9 years until finally skipping off and leaving the mess to his deputy premier when it became too obvious that Ontario was a disaster thanks to Conservative Party neocon meddling.

Why are dumbos so handy for the right wing? Because they break things. Because they wreck things. Because they make government unworkable. Because they make it seem as if only the corporations can save us.

Frank Touby