Uh-huh, he really fits in along with Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, not to mention the corrupt gang from Québec who brought us the sponsorship scandal.

And coming from me, that’s not a compliment.

For those who aren’t aware of the story, here’s why I’m saying this:

Joe Volpe, the "Honorable" MP for Eglinton-Lawrence (Toronto riding) and potential Liberal leadership contender (not anymore, HA!), has recently accepted $5,400 in political individual donations (the maximum amount allowed by law) from two 11-year-old twin daughters of an Apotex CEO or former CEO, which is a pharmaceutical company based out of Weston ON. When the affair was discovered by the media and some bloggers, in turn starting to draw a lot of political pressure on Mr. Volpe’s campaign, leading to the creation of a hilarious political satire website on the matter at http://www.youthforvolpe.ca, only then Mr. Volpe reluctantly decided it was better to refund the money. But that unfortunately didn’t stop him from defending the donations of the children, therefore sadly following the Liberal pattern of corruption and pathetic cover-ups and acting exactly like we’ve come to expect the most corrupt individuals in that party to act, unfortunately tarnishing even further the image of the already highly-frowned-upon political class in Canada.

Believe it or not, Mr. Volpe has justified these donations by saying the children in question had been moved by a speech he delivered at their school. Mistake number one. Of course, nobody bought it. (Does he think we’re all stupid?). How could children raise such an amount of money for a political candidate? This doesn’t make any sense, any way you take it.

The donations were most likely channeled through an impressive network of people related to Apotex and the Joe Volpe campaign, which is, I’m sure you’ll agree, perfectly legal but highly immoral and totally unworthy of an individual ultimately aiming to become the Prime Minister of Canada.

The scheme used is a little hard to make out, but there’s a very well-rendered schema of the network. Head here. (Hat tip to Small Dead Animals)

But wait, he’s done even worse. When it was brought to the attention of the Joe Volpe campaign managers that there was a website satirizing the whole thing, and at the same time making thousands upon thousands of Canadians aware of Volpe’s actions, they used some good-old Liberal "mafia-inspired influence" and had the website pulled off the web by the CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority) on the pretext of "defamation", notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Volpe had pretty much already "defamated" himself on his own. Mistake number two. So much for his sympathy for free speech in Canada.

So http://www.youthforvolpe.ca is no more. But fear not! As always on the Internet, various mirror websites of the now defunct website have popped up in a very small period of time. By trying to silence and hide what could have been a minor slide in his leadership bid campaign, Mr. Volpe has made things a LOT WORSE. I’ve really got to give credit to my fellow Blogging Tories for being so swift. So here’s the best mirror Youth For Volpe website I’ve found so far: http://www.youthforvolpe.net. Enjoy!

The Western Standard didn’t parody them as Librano$ for nothing. They truly deserve that reputation and namesake. See the poster here.

Now I really think Joe Volpe belongs in there. That’s totally the party for him. When I first learned about it all, I was infuriated, but really not all that surprised.

And I do believe I wasn’t the only one. Heck, probably even Liberals themselves might be infuriated about this. So I got this little idea. Given the fact that pretty much every blog at Blogging Tories (that includes myself) was buzzing with posts and comments about the Volpe-Apotex affair, I became curious to see if the Liberals were as frustrated by this as we Conservatives were. I headed over to Liblogs (http://www.liblogs.freethought.ca/) and began searching their first page for recently published comments about it all. I found ONE. It was on Jason Cherniak’s blog, at http://jasoncherniak.blogspot.com/. His post, entitled Like it or not, Volpe represents us, very reluctantly and timidly disapproves of Volpe’s actions. He also half-heartedly invites other Liberal bloggers to condemn his actions.

There’s something I’m afraid I’m not quite getting here. Pardon me, dear political adversaries, but in a situation like that, shouldn’t you be rushing to take every opportunity you get to strongly disavow, discredit and disapprove of such actions and such lowlife personalities, so you can try and restore people’s faith in your party? Shouldn’t you throw him out of your ranks? Or would you prefer not say anything and hide in the shadows to save the ass of a fellow Liberal, thus portraying the whole party as corrupt? From the way things are going, I personally think it’s going to be a VERY long time before the Liberals are put back in power, regardless of who they choose as a leader. And they’ll only have themselves to blame for it all.

As for Mr. Volpe, one can only cringe at the thought of what he would do to save his own sorry ass in an awkward situation if he’s elected PM.

I think we’ll never know, fortunately. Joe Volpe has pretty much involuntarily thrown in the towel if you ask me. And I don’t think he’ll be pursuing any kind of political career after what happened.

That’s a "shame", he was a "true Liberal".

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Sources:

"Liberal Censorship?" at Let Freedom Reign - http://www.no-libs.com/

Youth For Volpe Mirror site: http://www.youthforvolpe.net