For a minute or two yesterday it was almost possible to believe that Political Maverick Jack Layton was going to become a prime minister. There was this sense of optimism and energy, almost limitless, that something dynamic was finally going to happen in Canadian politics. Certain senior mandarins in parliament were already crying and cracking open priceless bottles of brandy.
Desperate operators roamed the streets of Canada in a last-ditch attempt to rustle up support for Harper and Ignatieff, each of whom were in their 'situation rooms' taking shots of maple syrup and shouting into microphones phrases such as (but not limited to): "Show me the votes!", "This isn't politics; it's a slaughter!", and my favorite of all time: "There's no time for the harmonium, just get the fuck out of Bridle Path!" Who even knows who they were talking to, but my guess is Prince.
Yes it sounded like the Liberals and Conservatives, after decades of dual-monopoly stranglehold over the Canadian Voter, were finally about to get a solid drumming for their misbehavior. Jack Layton had the image, had the poll numbers, had even half an ear among Quebeckers under the age of 35, had young voters countrywide, and just one final precipice to climb: the hearts and minds of Canada's most stubborn voters: knee-jerk Conservatives and habitual Liberals.
Showing posts with label Ignatieff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ignatieff. Show all posts
4/28/11
4/12/11
The Debate is On!
Moderated by the unparalleled Steve Paikin, the Canadian debate is happening right now, and it is a little rude. I'll be quick about it so I can get back to watching: everything has been rough, nobody's been excessively rude, but there is some frank backbiting. Harper has been calm thus far, not even breaking a sweat as the other politicians condemn him soundly. Layton and Duceppe are definite secondaries as Ignatieff and Harper go at it. Let me paraphrase an injunction by Iggy: "This isn't bickering, Mr. Harper, this is debate. This is democracy."
Harper's weakness is foreign policy, the G20 is a definite black eye, but Ignatieff and Layton have a lot to prove, and Duceppe has to reach out to angophones. Where is Elizabeth May? The consortium vetoed her away. Is that fair play? I say, "No way." Shame, shame, shame.
Talks of coalitions, party brandings, closed door meetings, and all that other good stuff abound. Watch. Consider. Vote. Laugh, because some of the bickering is relatively petty.
Oh and the other big news is that humanity gained space 50 years ago, via Mr. Yuri Gagarin, cosmonaut, lately of Russia. Props to him and Russia for winning the first leg of the space race. (Lets also remember the many people who died, laboured, and sacrificed so that we could fire unreliable columns of machined steel out of Earth's atmosphere.)
Harper's weakness is foreign policy, the G20 is a definite black eye, but Ignatieff and Layton have a lot to prove, and Duceppe has to reach out to angophones. Where is Elizabeth May? The consortium vetoed her away. Is that fair play? I say, "No way." Shame, shame, shame.
Talks of coalitions, party brandings, closed door meetings, and all that other good stuff abound. Watch. Consider. Vote. Laugh, because some of the bickering is relatively petty.
Oh and the other big news is that humanity gained space 50 years ago, via Mr. Yuri Gagarin, cosmonaut, lately of Russia. Props to him and Russia for winning the first leg of the space race. (Lets also remember the many people who died, laboured, and sacrificed so that we could fire unreliable columns of machined steel out of Earth's atmosphere.)
Continuing Canadian Context
Go ahead and ask them now, some weeks later, what the political landscape of Canada is. It features nothing the Group of Seven might have done except for the map with its abstract political colours. Harper is blue, Ignatieff is red, Layton is orange and May is green. Let's ponder these colours. Green is the colour of life, Orange is the colour of Hollander royalty, red is the colour of life (but also Soviets and the dying Maple Leaf). Blue is the colour of disenchantment, also of life, and thirdly of lack of options.
Since the election has been announced there has been a deafening silence about the government deficit and the global depression (or recession if you're an optimist, or end of capitalism if you're an alarmist) and everyone opened volleys of 'family politics' and other types of sensationalism. In this country you do not play politics on weighty issues. Let me explain: families, in Canada, are doing well. Most families are in the easy-to-control low-to-mid middle class, relatively wealthy, perhaps overspending on credit, but doing well and employed, with an exception rate of less than 10%. This comes out to maybe 15,000 out-of-work families facing destitution or hard times, probably half that and maybe even less than that. There is no particular zone of concentration as in the '90s. The east coast probably can be weighted a little.
What makes this weak politics is that this group of people is easy to hoodwink. They think their fair taxes are monolithic tithes to the state. All an aspiring prime minister has to do is promise that these taxes will be reinvested into the middle class family background that pays the majority of them. It goes without saying that the poverty line does not discriminate between families and individuals, but families are more important. Help them, and help yourself to a political majority. This is all theory, but the parties have acted on it as if it were a rule.
So each of the big three politicians started election season by flogging family politics. Some friends of mine distilled it thusly: Conservatives meant a straight family with not even a gay child, while the Liberals and NDP would help any family. Never mind the family unit is the sort of ancient structure that is known to be able to survive all kinds of nonsense. Maybe in the 'post-industrial' era families are endangered or suddenly overwhelmed by the corporate world structure. Anyways, because in most countries all people come from families, they are the safest bet for politics, and that is why for weeks there were shameless attempts by each party to win this faction over.
This is how majority politics works. I have no idea how these aspiring governments are planning to fund their extravagant family subsidies, but it will probably include wasteful consulting, forms in triplicate, and a communications blackout. Nearsightedness is a curse on the populace, but a blessing to the politicians.
Since the election has been announced there has been a deafening silence about the government deficit and the global depression (or recession if you're an optimist, or end of capitalism if you're an alarmist) and everyone opened volleys of 'family politics' and other types of sensationalism. In this country you do not play politics on weighty issues. Let me explain: families, in Canada, are doing well. Most families are in the easy-to-control low-to-mid middle class, relatively wealthy, perhaps overspending on credit, but doing well and employed, with an exception rate of less than 10%. This comes out to maybe 15,000 out-of-work families facing destitution or hard times, probably half that and maybe even less than that. There is no particular zone of concentration as in the '90s. The east coast probably can be weighted a little.
What makes this weak politics is that this group of people is easy to hoodwink. They think their fair taxes are monolithic tithes to the state. All an aspiring prime minister has to do is promise that these taxes will be reinvested into the middle class family background that pays the majority of them. It goes without saying that the poverty line does not discriminate between families and individuals, but families are more important. Help them, and help yourself to a political majority. This is all theory, but the parties have acted on it as if it were a rule.
So each of the big three politicians started election season by flogging family politics. Some friends of mine distilled it thusly: Conservatives meant a straight family with not even a gay child, while the Liberals and NDP would help any family. Never mind the family unit is the sort of ancient structure that is known to be able to survive all kinds of nonsense. Maybe in the 'post-industrial' era families are endangered or suddenly overwhelmed by the corporate world structure. Anyways, because in most countries all people come from families, they are the safest bet for politics, and that is why for weeks there were shameless attempts by each party to win this faction over.
This is how majority politics works. I have no idea how these aspiring governments are planning to fund their extravagant family subsidies, but it will probably include wasteful consulting, forms in triplicate, and a communications blackout. Nearsightedness is a curse on the populace, but a blessing to the politicians.
3/27/11
The Canadian Political Situation as of March 27, 2011
There are a shit ton of things I could blog about in this apocalyptic month. Shit I could even go the frivolous route and write about something that happened to me, or what I think of a recent movie, or Charlie Sheen. I got a good Charlie Sheen joke I'm holding onto for the first anniversary of the BP Oil Spill of 2010. I think I could write three parts about snow melting. I could even do another off-colour joke about school shootings.
But I'm going to dial it back a little and give everyone some breathing space whilst I write speciously about the political situation in Ottawa, Canada. With so much trouble in the world, it's only right that I do what the US MEDIA does relentlessly and contextualize it in the candy-coloured terms of geopolitics.
The effortless government of Stephen Harper finally rolled into the rough last week; parliament was dissolved, and the thing Canadians feared most (an election) finally rose out of the slightly toxic, slightly oily, slightly radioactive water of Canadian politics. What kicked it all off was a budget bill nobody agreed with, which led to slightly bemused finance minister who took it not at all personally saying that only time would tell.
If you ask any Canadian on the street, especially if they're unmarried and under the age of 30, they'll tell you they know nothing about the situation at all. Who could blame those fools for not caring about how their country is managed? Sorry, anybody who's lived under a repressive regime: things are so good in Canada that we can afford the fatal luxury of political apathy. Under these conditions it's pretty easy to see how professional politicians could shake up an election season out of nowhere: with strife and struggle raging all over the world, they just wanted a piece of the action.
I've seen ministers out on the streets begging for lights and spare cigarettes. Tim Hortons franchises are packed with political bookies offering huge odds on Jack Layton. Oil-hungry representatives and death-lobbyists from other parts of the world are getting away with murder in the capitol while obscure backbenchers search for their parking passes. The RCMP is letting anybody into parliament who agrees to adjust their pay to 2011 levels. Michael Ignatieff looked considerably smug earlier this week, but I saw him a few minutes ago with a pained expression on his face, as if his earlier enthusiasm was but an act.
Meanwhile, Harper made the most intelligent comment of the month when he alluded to the fact that 'most Canadians do not want an election'. Sure, a small portion of politically literate Canadians balked at the idea that he had the gall to speak for them, but the rest of us are not very impressed by this year's lineup. Also he was right. We preferred complaining about the Conservatives and the fact that we were the first country on earth to have a robot as our leader.
In terms of betting it is far too early to make an half-decent wager. The smart money has not been placed yet, but by mid-April we will wish we had done this last year, and sullenly bet on Blue, again, out of sheer spite.
But I'm going to dial it back a little and give everyone some breathing space whilst I write speciously about the political situation in Ottawa, Canada. With so much trouble in the world, it's only right that I do what the US MEDIA does relentlessly and contextualize it in the candy-coloured terms of geopolitics.
The effortless government of Stephen Harper finally rolled into the rough last week; parliament was dissolved, and the thing Canadians feared most (an election) finally rose out of the slightly toxic, slightly oily, slightly radioactive water of Canadian politics. What kicked it all off was a budget bill nobody agreed with, which led to slightly bemused finance minister who took it not at all personally saying that only time would tell.
If you ask any Canadian on the street, especially if they're unmarried and under the age of 30, they'll tell you they know nothing about the situation at all. Who could blame those fools for not caring about how their country is managed? Sorry, anybody who's lived under a repressive regime: things are so good in Canada that we can afford the fatal luxury of political apathy. Under these conditions it's pretty easy to see how professional politicians could shake up an election season out of nowhere: with strife and struggle raging all over the world, they just wanted a piece of the action.
I've seen ministers out on the streets begging for lights and spare cigarettes. Tim Hortons franchises are packed with political bookies offering huge odds on Jack Layton. Oil-hungry representatives and death-lobbyists from other parts of the world are getting away with murder in the capitol while obscure backbenchers search for their parking passes. The RCMP is letting anybody into parliament who agrees to adjust their pay to 2011 levels. Michael Ignatieff looked considerably smug earlier this week, but I saw him a few minutes ago with a pained expression on his face, as if his earlier enthusiasm was but an act.
Meanwhile, Harper made the most intelligent comment of the month when he alluded to the fact that 'most Canadians do not want an election'. Sure, a small portion of politically literate Canadians balked at the idea that he had the gall to speak for them, but the rest of us are not very impressed by this year's lineup. Also he was right. We preferred complaining about the Conservatives and the fact that we were the first country on earth to have a robot as our leader.
In terms of betting it is far too early to make an half-decent wager. The smart money has not been placed yet, but by mid-April we will wish we had done this last year, and sullenly bet on Blue, again, out of sheer spite.
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