Rob Ford Apologia

Tell me this isn't what immediately went through your mind when you heard the *pussy* apology and the SunNews FordNation "reality show" announcement on the same day.
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Paging Snuffleupagus to the SunNews white courtesy petition

The last time Sun News needed help with an online petition, Snuffleupagus and Homer Simpson were there to help, mysteriously adding their names  to 80,000 others on a "Stop Fox News North" Avaaz petition in 2010, along with a number of real people like Kady and Stephen Maher who didn't sign it.

Sun News mastermind, Kornkob ethanol lobbyist, and Steve's former director of communications Kory Teneycke 'discovered' the fraudulent names and wrote it up in his Sun News column on Sept 3 2010 in a bid to discredit the petition ....  only to get busted by Kady who pointed out the names on the petition were not published so how did he know about them then, huh?

Kory, who had wanted a Fox News for Canada as far back as 2003 and in March 2009 went with boss  Harper to meet with Fox News magnates Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes in New York, resigned unexpectedly from Sun News four days after his Homer/Snuffy column, but returned as Sun News VP three and a half months later.

The very same day Homer and Snuffy were helping out Sun News with their bogus petition entries, Kory went on CBC's Power and Politics :

"We are not nor have we ever asked for mandatory carriage of this station where Canadians would have to be obliged to pay. We are saying that we would like to have it offered but theoretically it could be carried by no one ... these are all private sector negotiations." 

Or, as he put it in his Homer/Snuffy column :

"Sun TV News is not, nor has it ever, asked for “mandatory carriage” by cable or satellite companies. As the critics correctly point out, this would be tantamount to a tax on everyone with cable or satellite service"

Well that was then; this is now. 
Now they are asking the CRTC for exactly that - mandatory carriage to be included in every basic cable package in Canada plus guaranteed placement on the lower end of the dial. Because it turns out the 'free market' they go on about so relentlessly turns out to be just another of the many many obstacles they have to overcome on their path to Spun News greatness, like Ezra wearing that orange wig above to mock Jack Layton's funeral.

Sun News Network is arguing its signal must be broadcast into every Canadian home if it is ever going to recover from losses that have already reached $17-million a year.

This would generate about $18-million a year for the network ...

... sparking a whole slew of "then cancel my cable" comments under the G&M article.

Sun News argues that many Canadians have expressed enthusiasm for its conservative commentary-intensive programming, and would watch the channel regularly, but they don’t know it even exists. The digital cable or satellite connections currently required to see it haven’t been adopted by enough viewers in the senior citizen demographic that Quebecor concedes it is largely appealing to.

So Sun News has put up its own petition to the CRTC, presumably appealing to the angry racist misogynist xenophobic pro-gun pro-christian anti-choice anti-environment anti-union anti-gay anti-pot anti-Quebec anti-government anti-Roma anti-FN anti-Islam anti-arts tough-on-crime "senior citizen demographic" who "don't know it even exists" to lend their support. 

Well ok then. Maybe Homer and Snuffy could help out here.

Update : Arghh. Alberta Diary : SUN NEWS PLEADS WITH ANTI-CHOICE GROUP TO BACK ITS QUEST FOR 'RIGHT TO LIFE' SUBSIDY

Brian Lilley : "Sun News is the strongest voice for the pro-life cause on television in Canada. Bar none."

Sun VP Teneycke : " we need to demonstrate a groundswell of support for Sun News, and the readers of LifeSiteNews can help."

You can submit your opinion on SunNews' application directly to the CRTC here.
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Ari, abortion, and alternate universes

Seems former White House Bush spokesy, sometime Steve fluffer, and anti-Planned Parenthood campaigner Ari Fleischer was involved in vetting job applicants for the Susan G Komen For the Cure foundation, which then dropped their funding for Planned Parenthood's breast cancer screening last week after its anti-choice leadership reverse-engineered its funding rules to align with anti-choice groups opposed to abortion, contraception, and stem cell research. 

Dr. Dawg has already done a takedown on their subsequent non-apology apology, made in the wake of considerable public backlash, and Fleischer is insisting he had nothing to with any Komen policy changes about Planned Parenthood.


This reminded me that as recently as three years ago Ari Fleischer was still plumping for an alternate universe in which Saddam Hussein was the guy behind 9/11.   15 second clip above; full Hardball show here.


Eighteen days after that March 11, 2009 TV appearance, Ari, acting in his capacity as Steve's US media fluffer, arranged the now infamous Fox News luncheon attended by Steve, Steve's director of communications Kory Teneycke, Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, and Fox News president Roger Ailes. Four months later, Teneycke left Steve's employ to pursue his dream of creating a Fox News North for Canada and voilà - the alternate universe of Sun TV where they just make shit up was born. 


The night before the Foxy lunch, Ari had also arranged for Steve to have dinner in Washington with  "Charles Krauthammer, David Frum, Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, William Kristol, and conservative syndicated talk-radio host Laura Ingraham."
Good grief but those little applets never seem to fall too far from the RepubliCon family tree, do they?

In 2004 Ron Suskind related the following conversation with a Bush aide :

"The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' 

I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'' 

Meanwhile, Con MP and Fetus Festivus alumnus Stephen Woodworth will hold a public press conference tomorrow in Ottawa to ponder the question "When is a human being a human being?"
According to Section 223 of the Criminal Code of Canada, in this universe a human being obtains upon having "completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother."
Hope this helps.

Ok, I think we're done here.

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Canadian media : It can't happen here.

We're getting a lot of stories from our media who are at pains to assure us a Canadian equivalent to the Rupert Murdoch scandal of cozy incestuous relationships with British politicians and illegal phone hacking/dirty tricks couldn't possibly happen here in Canada.

Really? No cozy incestuous relationships? No dirty tricks?

On March 30, 2009, Stephen Harper, PMO staffer Kory Teneycke, Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, and Roger Ailes, president of Fox News and former communications adviser to Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., all sat down to lunch.

We know this because it showed up in the mandatory disclosures media consultant and former White House flack Ari Fleischer made to the U.S. Justice Department. Ari, you will recall, had a personal contract with Steve to grease US media wheels for him. Teneycke had a dream of a Canadian Fox news channel.

Four months later, Teneycke had left the PMO - barely a year into his job as Harper's chief spokesman - only to pick up a contract with Quebecor to explore a project that Ottawa insiders almost immediately described as a fledgling "Fox News North."

Three more PMO staffers followed Teneyke to SunMedia : an issues management adviser, an advertising manager, and an issues management researcher, described as "a guy who could dig up any dirt on the opposition in a jiffy".

Teneycke himself had to take a brief three and half month leave from heading his new project after conflict-of-interest embarrassments ramped up following his Sun op-ed and public admission to prior knowledge of the hacking of an Avaaz petition hostile to his setting up of a Fox News North in Canada.

Teneycke was back in the Sun saddle during Steve's re-election campaign in April this year when a fifth former PMO staffer, Harper's former deputy chief of staff Patrick Muttart, sent him a photo of an Ignatieff look-alike posing in full combat gear in Kuwait in 2002.
"Ignatieff linked to Iraq war planning" ran the SunMedia headline and story, sans photo, before Teneycke apparently tumbled to the ruse.

Patrick Muttart was working for the Con election war room at the time, while simultaneously heading the "Canada/US practice" at the US PR firm Mercury Public Affairs, where he works under Terry Nelson. Nelson, former political director of the 2004 Bush Cheney campaign and McCain-Palin campaign manager, now a Senior Advisor to teabagger and 2012 presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, is famous for the race-baiting campaign ads and phonejamming dirty tricks done under his GOP watch, and for employing the media advisor on the original Swiftboat Veterans For Truth ads which used lies and doctored photos to smear John Kerry's war record during his run for US president.

Amusingly, the CTV piece, Harper immune from Murdoch-style scandal, makes extensive use of analysis from Muttart to assure us a similar scandal could not happen here. We just don't have the same "intense, quasi-incestuous" clique of political and media elites, Muttart says without irony.
Besides, another Harper former chief of staff, Ian Brodie, explains about Canadian papers: "so few people actually read most of them."

Yet somehow the rightwing National Post muddles on for 13 years losing $9-million a year, no one seems to know who owns CanWest/PostMedia now besides it being some US hedge fund and so much for the rule limiting foreign media ownership to a third, and 99% of the papers which endorsed a candidate in the last election all endorsed Steve.

We could have a Murdoch-style scandal here and it would be out of the news cycle again the same week, no damage done.

Update : More from David Climenhaga at Rabble
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Patrick Muttart trail leads back to US dirty tricksters

Sun News headline, April 20, Brian Lilley  : Ignatieff linked to Iraq war planning

"As a politician in Canada, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has said that he was on the sidelines of the Iraq war, but new information reveals he was on the front lines of pre-invasion planning when he worked in the U.S."

Well, it is Sun News, aka Fox News North, after all, wot?

But then yesterday morning Sun Media Corp President Pierre Karl Peladeau published a photo that Sun News VP and former Harper spokesy Kory Teneycke had received from Harper's former deputy chief of staff Patrick Muttart.

It was "a compelling electronic image of a man very closely resembling Michael Ignatieff in American military fatigues, brandishing a rifle in a picture purported to have been taken in Kuwait in December 2002", together with "a clip from a Pentagon press briefing in which an American colonel thanked Michael Ignatieff specifically for his work in preparation for the invasion" on the day before the invasion.

Trouble was - it wasn't Iggy in the photo, a discovery credited to Teneycke by Peladeau.

Peladeau :

"It is my belief that this planted information was intended to first and foremost seriously damage Michael Ignatieff's campaign but in the process to damage the integrity and credibility of Sun Media and, more pointedly, that of our new television operation, Sun News."

Later in the day Muttart's present employer, the US PR company Mercury Public Affairs, responded to Peladeau :

"At no point did Muttart tell Sun Media that he had positively identified Ignatieff in the photo in question."

and went on to describe Muttart's work in helping set up the branding of Sun News :

For the record, Mercury was hired by Quebecor to assist Sun News with its pre-license branding and positioning. Muttart worked with a creative agency to develop the network's original logo (a modified version is currently in use). And he was the original source for the network's "hard news" and "straight talk" framing language."

including Muttart's pro bono work for Sun News after his contract ended!

Of particular interest here is that while all this was going on, Muttart was also working for the Harper re-election campaign :

"mostly from his Chicago home base where he has worked for an American public affairs firm since 2009, returning occasionally to Ottawa as needed. ... A source close to Muttart said the photo was found online by a U.S.-based political party researcher ."

"He has no further role in our campaign," Conservative spokesman Alykhan Velshi said from the party’s Ottawa war room. Muttart recently returned to work on the Conservative campaign as a consultant “offering advice on messaging and strategy,” according to Velshi.

According to Mr. Velshi, the Tory campaign "provided Sun Media with information that had been acquired during Internet research, namely a photograph described as that of Mr. Ignatieff. The campaign made clear to Sun Media that the identity in the photograph could not be verified and that our own efforts to verify the photograph had been exhausted."

So. Patrick Muttart, former Harper staffer, helps Kory Teneycke, another former Harper staffer, set up the brand for Sun News and then sends him incriminating but fake material in what looks to be an attempt to swiftboat Michael Ignatieff - and he did this while giving "advice on messaging and strategy" to Harper's re-election war room? Unbelievable!

So who is this US company Mercury Public Affairs that Muttart now works for - presumably the source of the photo found by "a US-based political party researcher" ?

Mercury - A firm specializing in "high-value public affairs," including image management, polling, and "grassroots coalition building".
Company slogan : "We know what it takes to win in difficult situations."

May 20, 2009 :

Mercury Public Affairs named Patrick Muttart as an MD [Managing Director] and leader of the firm's new Canada/US practice, starting May 4. Muttard is the former deputy chief of staff for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and former chief marketing strategist for the Conservative Party of Canada. At Mercury Public Affairs, he will also work with the international public affairs team, which is led by partner Terry Nelson.

Muttart's new boss Terry Nelson, former political director of the 2004 Bush Cheney campaign and former McCain-Palin campaign manager, is now also a Senior Advisor to teabagger and 2012 presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, which might go some distance towards explaining why Harper's recent campaign ad bore such a strong resemblance to Pawlenty's.  [My parody of Harper's ad here.]

Here's Rachel Maddow on Terry Nelson : the race-baiting, the phonejamming dirty tricks, and, before his firm Crosslink Strategy Group became an operating unit of Mercury Public Affairs, the staffer in his employ who was previously the media advisor on the original Swiftboat Veterans For Truth ads , which used lies and doctored photos to smear John Kerry's war record.



Which pretty much brings us full circle on the apparent attempt to swiftboat Michael Ignatieff by a former Harper staffer on loan from a Republican PR company during our election.

Update : Sixth Estate has a few questions.

Thursday Upperdate : Cons : No, no, no, he wasn't in our war room while simultaneously advising Sun Media.
Muttart : Yes, I was.

PostMedia : "Contrary to what some have reported, Patrick hasn't been working in the (Conservative) war room or been in Ottawa," wrote Conservative spokesman Chisholm Pothier in an email."

CP : Tory strategist says he advised Sun Media, and worked for political war room

"Patrick Muttart, the former deputy chief of staff for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, told The Canadian Press on Thursday he gave periodic unpaid advice to Sun Media in recent weeks to help it launch its new television news channel. Until this week, he was also on the Tory payroll as a consultant to the party's election war room."

We still don't know, however, what he was doing sending false and incriminating stuff on Iggy to The Sun in the middle of an election. And did he send it from the Con war room and on whose instructions?
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US senators visit their Defense Dept jet fuel in Alberta

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach will be taking a tour of the tar sands today with three American senators, all members of the Senate Committee on Armed Services.

So while the good senators might be looking at this :

they will be seeing this :

That fuzzy bit in the red portion that takes up well over half the US Department of Defense Energy Consumption pie chart says : "Jet Fuel".

Tar Sands Watch :

The U.S. Department of Defense is the world’s leading consumer of petroleum, sucking up about 340,000 barrels of oil every day, more than the total national consumption of Sweden or Switzerland.
The Pentagon is the single largest institutional buyer of oil in the world, consuming an estimated 85 percent of the U.S. Government’s use of oil.

Canada is the largest supplier of oil and refined products to the US at over 2 million barrels a day, nearly half of which comes from the tarsands.

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Stelmach has been busy lately with his advertising campaign to persuade the world that Alberta's oilsands are clean and secure.

Here's a jingle suggestion for you, Ed : "Supplying jet fuel to the US military to bomb Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq - it's what we do best."

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Last night future Sun TV luminary Ezra Levant was on Alberta Prime Time touting his book "Ethical Oil", in which he argues that the oilsands are a superior ethical choice to using oil from human rights violating countries. The other guest was the remarkably unflappable Mike Hudema from Greenpeace who wasn't buying Ezra's bizarre moral equivalency.

It needn't be a false choice between two bad options, said Mike, at which point Ezra, who had introduced the country comparisons in the first place, accused Mike of equating Canada with Sudan.

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Apparently undeterred at the prospect of being sued for libel by George Soros for misrepresenting Soros' Holocaust childhood to score points for Sun TV/Fox News North in his Sun editorial "George Schwartz, the Jewish Nazi", here is some of Ezrant's response to Mike last night :

"Goddamn coward ... you're a liar, a disgusting man ... bullshitter ... a con man ... a crook ... you little coward ... you bastard."

You can watch it here if you must. Personally I can hardly wait for further arguments in support of the superior ethics of the tarsands from Ezra when Fox News North hits the airwaves.

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Kory, the NRA, and the long gun registry vote

Photoshop inspired by Steve Harpo : "From my clammy pudgy hands"

(h/t Antonia Z)

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Here's Steve's former communications director Kory Teneycke on CBC's Power and Politics, Sept 3, 2010 (Time mark : 6:50), comparing the Avaaz petition against a must-carry licence for Teneycke's Fox News North to a 'hypothetical' case of the NRA meddling in Canadian politics :

"We're having a debate on gun control right now in Canada on the long gun registry, a very hot debate. What if the NRA came into Canada with petitions and advertising campaigns, trying to influence Canadian policy and Canadian decisions? People would be outraged. People. would. be. outraged."

OK, Kory, let's go with that.

From the NRA website : Standing Guard by Wayne LaPierre, NRA Executive VP :

"If all goes well in the Canadian parliament, Dominion gun owners will be freed from 14 years of living under the crushing weight of a bureaucratic, scandal-ridden, wasteful, invasive, $2 billion, error-ridden and inarguably worthless long gun registry."
"The NRA of America supports and endorses the work done by the CILA [Canadian Institute for Legislative Action] and strongly encourages all Canadian firearms owners to become CILA supporting members."

Tony Bernardo, head of CILA :

"We have been working hand in hand with the NRA regarding international issues for the past three and a half years...in fact, the NRA was instrumental in the formation of CILA…the NRA provides CILA with tremendous amounts of logistic support."

Foreign Policy, July 2006 :

In December, an NRA official was scheduled to offer a "legislative training workshop" at the annual meeting of CILA's parent organization.
"How do we protect our rights?" went the promo for the event. "By being more politically active and effective at the grassroots [level]. And who better to show us how than the most powerful lobby group in the world, the National Rifle Association and their Institute for Legislative Action."

CBC, today : NRA involved in long gun registry debate

Bernardo, a frequent guest on NRA chat shows updating U.S. gun owners on the fight to kill the Canadian registry, said the NRA was instrumental in helping him set up his Canadian lobby group, CILA, the lobbying arm of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association (CSSA), and a mirror group of the Institute for Legislative Action, the NRA's lobbying arm.

The CSSA's communications director, Brant Scott, was previously an aide to Con MP Garry Breitkreuz, featured here on the NRA website.

CSSA media release, June 8, 2010:

"While Brant was working with Garry Breitkreuz, he acted as liaison with the CSSA on a variety of gun-related issues, including the long-gun registry. The CSSA worked with the MP's office on Bill C-301 and later Bill C-391," explains Bernardo."

Garry Breitkreuz is chair of Canada's parliamentary Public Safety and National Security Committee.

Back to the CBC :

Michael Bryant, formerly Ontario's attorney general, said the NRA has been agitating in Canadian political backrooms for years.
Canadians need to know the role the NRA has played in the gun registry debate, Bryant said.

"For a lot of people in Canada, if they knew that the NRA was part of the effort to get rid of the gun registry, they would think more about their views," he said.
"And they would think, 'well, wait a minute, I thought this was about, you know, wasting taxpayer dollars. The NRA's involved? Really? That makes me very uncomfortable … ' "

So. "Uncomfortable" or "outraged"? Your call, Kory.

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G&M tonight : Tories deny NRA 'conspiracy theory'

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Yep, I'll bet you're really really sorry now you reminded us of the NRA's reach into Canada, what with the Cons precious, the long gun registry vote, coming up on Sept 21st and all.

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h/t Dammit Janet

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Fox News North : Kory's cat and dog show

Here's Korncob Kory Teneycke on CBC's Power and Politics today, stating that his baby, Quebecor's Fox News North, never asked the CRTC for a must-carry licence—the kind that would require cable and satellite providers to include the channel in their basic package:

"We are not nor have we ever asked for mandatory carriage of this station where Canadians would have to be obliged to pay. We're saying that we would like to have it offered but theoretically it could be carried by no one."

Really?

G&M : CRTC refuses Sun TV’s bid for preferred status

"In a private letter sent to Quebecor on July 5, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission rejected Quebecor’s request for a rare must-carry license. It would have guaranteed distribution by all cable and satellite firms – and the subscriber fees that come along with that distribution."

After the CRTC rejected the Fox News North must-carry application that Mr. Teneycke just told us they never applied for, Mr. Teneycke responded :

“We’re not particularly fazed by that letter"

and Serge Sasseville, Quebecor's VP of corporate affairs clarified :

"We'll get exactly what we're asking for at the end of the day.
We'll ask the CRTC exactly the same conditions we've been asking with a Category 1, and we're pretty confident we'll get it. You can ask for a must-offer even for other categories. It's only labelling. You can call a cat a dog but at the end of the day it's still a cat," he said.

Care for a redo on your cat and dog show performance tonight, Mr. Teneycke?

See also Pogge, Dammit Janet, Rusty Idols, and Kady for more on hate media and the suspicious sabotage of the Avaaz petition asking the CRTC not to buckle under pressure.

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League of Extraordinary Canadians : A Few Good Men and Women

The fired, the dismissed, the muzzled, the smeared, the set up, the forced out - the ones who spoke up and lost their jobs, the ones we know about :

Cathie

900ft Jesus

Next on the chopping block, according to Lawrence Martin at the G&M today, may be CRTC Chair Konrad von Finckenstein for not rubberstamping KoryMedia Fox News North's request for a Category 1 licence last month, which would require cable companies to include Fox News North as part of a basic cable package. Finckenstein's vice-chair has already been booted.

On March 30, 2009, Stephen Harper, Kory Teneycke, Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, and Roger Ailes, president of Fox News and former communications adviser to Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., all sat down to lunch. We know this because it showed up in media consultant/former White House flack Ari Fleischer's mandatory disclosures with the U.S. Justice Department. Ari had a personal contract with Steve, you will recall, to grease US media wheels for him. Looks like Steve got his money's worth.

Useful link : Keeping an eye on Fox News North
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Fox News North - Fairly unbalanced

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Corncob Kory Teneycke, a founding member of the Reform Party, ethanol lobbyist, and Steve's former communications director, has been busy rustling up a 24-hour rightwing cable news channel for Canada modelled on Fox News. It is contingent on whether Quebecor Media are successful in nabbing that all-important "basic cable" licence vital to beaming more US celebrity mudwrestling straight into your livingroom.
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So far, the previous comedy stylings of Mr. Teneycke, the brains behind Oily the Splot! , have already won over David Akin, formerly of Canwest/CTV, to be its first TV host.

Earlier this year David Akin amused us all with his personal choice of questions for Steve at the year end interview. Proroguing Parliament? The Aghan detainee issue? Nope. Here was David Akins' final question to Steve as delivered by the National Post:

"Do (you) see yourself in a decade -- you may not be prime minister -- do you see a career for yourself after this? I don't sense you're the board of directors type but I don't know, maybe you are -- an academic? What do you want to do? Where are you in a decade?"

Practically serves as a Fox News North job interview all by itself, wot?

h/t to Ian, Waterbaby and Beaver co-blogger Bob by e.
Edited for spledding mistake.