"Canada's decision will make the development of a meaningful new global warming deal even more difficult"

It's nice to see that Canada's New Government is getting some overseas press coverage. And we're being recognised as being first at doing something significant! Research? Well, no....Innovation? Human rights? Not so much - but we're still first!

The natives are restless

So the Canadian Press is quick (lead sentence, even!) to tell us in its syndicated report on the new Decima poll that "pundits and the pollster alike are telling political junkies to relax over a new survey that suggests Conservatives and Liberals are locked in a statistical dead heat."

And then give lots of column to a "long-time Tory strategist" who tell us that "Canadians like the government they have," and have "agreed to go steady with us but not much more than that at this time."

Relax? But surely someone thinks it's significant that the combined NDP/Green vote (just to recap, folks, that's the super-environauts, the granola-munchers, the people who John Baird thinks are going to lead the country to ruin) is at 30 frickin' percent? And that between 60 and 70% of the population support implementation of the Kyoto Accord? Given the actions (and inactions) of our current government, are these really numbers to get all zen about?

"If you want to use the dating analogy to the full extent, the worst thing you can do is try to go from first base to home," said the long-time Tory strategist. No kidding - but doesn't it seem to you that Canadians are already sick of being felt up by Stephen Harper?

Riddle me this, loyal readers

Which, to your mind, is the greater sin: not knowing that your ministry was occasionally doing shady things with the advertising budget, or not knowing that your ministry was concealing the fact that the country you personally represent on the world stage was in violation of the Geneva Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

Yes, it's a semi-rhetorical question. But it's also now the most generous comparison you can make between the Liberal and Conservative Parties of Canada.

It has been a bad day

...for Canadians. It has also, if there's any justice, been a bad day for Canada's New (and Getting Old, Fast) Government.

The latest environmental plan is underwhelming. The ballooning travesty surrounding torture of Afghan prisoners is reprehensible.

As notes Paul Wells: "This government [now] lies to us without compunction or apology about the most important files a government can be asked to handle."

Stephen Harper has run out of EZ-Bake options. When your long-term goals involve taking a machete to the federation and forcing Canadians do the same abroad in locsktep with American adventurism, there are only so many "progressive" moves you can make without committing yourself to...progress.

The Conservatives are going to need their war room and their spin. Because every Canadian who belives not just in progressivism, but also in honesty, ought to take aim and fire.

The National Post, more bewildering than usual...

Or maybe it's just Canadian politics that are starting to get a little goofy, as the summer silly season comes upon us.

Certainly only in a farcical, amnesiac, ahistorical era like ours would it be possible to believe, and get others to believe, that you can become a Natural Governing Party in 18 months and with 35% support.

I also thought Conservative strategists liked the fact that Stephane Dion has been getting a lot of media attention of late. Do they really believe that any publicity is good publicity? Are they worried that, sooner or later, their snowjob will cease to be effective? Are they just plain ol' spinning the Post? Who knows....Maybe the Prime Minister's wardrobe consultant/palm reader will tell us - she's probably the most put together person in the Prime Minister's Office.

Puff Piece

I'm sorry Jane Taber, but is it really big news, worthy of inclusion in Canada's National (and Newly Revamped) Newspaper, that some people who work in politics are...bossy?

Do you not feel, in fact, as though your latest piece fanning the "dump Dion" embers this morning in the G&M might be just a little bit...contrived?

I know it must be so tempting to air the dirty laundry of disaffected supporters of losing leadership bidders...but just how many MPs did you use as sources for said article? Two? One?

Go forth Herb Metcalf, and solve those personality conflicts! And disaffected Grits: it would be nice if you gave at least the impression that you cared more about the country and its downward spiral under the Conservatives than you do about your own ambitious skins. Some of us are paying attention....when we can stomach it.

Hot Air that Stinks

Is this for real?

Two paragraphs in the aforelinked article contains some of the most partisan, if subtle, editorializing I've seen yet from Canada's National Newspaper:

"Mr. Drummond's letter appears to be a political boon for the Tories, and a blow for the Liberals, as parties gird themselves for the possibility of an election campaign fought on hot-button issues such as Kyoto.

[Psychologists call this "reactance," and normal people call it reverse psychology: by stating uncertainty, you make you reader surer of the statement's truth.]

It will be difficult for the Liberals to attack Mr. Drummond, a senior Canadian economist whom political parties, including Mr. Dion's, have consulted over the years. He wasn't paid for this latest opinion, which the Tories solicited from him."

[Somehow, not paying for Drummond's very vested opinion makes it more valid?]

The Conservatives really must have no idea what they're going to do about Kyoto.

Rage and Art

The very bad (in every sense) and very telling short plays written by Cho Seung-hui in the months before his murders have been posted online - oh Lord, the wonders and terrors of the New Media - and while their appearance raises a number of questions relating to appropriate use of content (again, in every sense), those who can stomach reading them will see both why Cho's teachers were very worried indeed, and why they could do nothing concrete about their anxiety.

What is the formative relationship between rage and art? I don't think there is a direct one - or rather, I don't think one can truly create (as opposed to express) when so angry as to be uncontrolled. On top of our response to control rage, there's an element of transmutation at the moment of expression/creation that I think helps artists, those who get angry anyway, to take the animal ferocity of fury and use it to propel expression, not guide it. Thus the difference between rage expressed as art - Cho's writing - and rage expressed through art - Guernica.

More to the point, allowing people mired in their own hellish imaginings of personal and familial horror to purchase efficient killings machines easily is a stupid thing, that the Founding Fathers, sons of the Enlightenment all, could not have dreamed of. That the United States would prefer its citizens have the privilege of buying, as in Virginia, one gun a month, rather than have those same citizens - a selfless Holocaust survivor, outstanding researchers in engineering and medicine, students of all stripes - alive to the benefit of the republic, is an indication of something terrible in the American collective unconscious: a will to individual and societal death.

DFEAT?

Australia has an embassy in Phnom Pehn. Also in Riga, Sarajevo, Maputo (that's in Mozambique), Port Louis (Mauritius) and Luanda (Angola). In fact, the Australians have embassies or consulates in 90 countries around the world.

Canada? Not too far behind, with embassies or consulates in 86 states. Like in Phnom Pehn. And Riga. And Sarajevo.

Well, for the moment anyway. Because Canada's Only Slightly Used Government is closing our Latvian and Bosnian and Cambodian embassies. And smaller ones in some piddling place called, what's its name again, oh yeah, Africa.

"No one is immune from the need to stay flexible, shift resources and strengthen representation in some areas, while consolidating in others, to reduce costs wherever possible," our hopefully soon to be ex-Foreign Minister burbled in bureau-speak to the Toronto Star. "We all have to find new and innovative ways to deliver our services beyond the traditional bricks and mortar of embassies."

Maybe a kiosk in Second Life would do the trick? Or opening an Internet cafe in Luanda?

Canada, like Australia, is a large, immigrant-dependant country with strategic interests in several regions around the world. (In fact, most countries, whether they like it or not, now find themselves forced to consider their strategic interests in several regions around the world.) Stephen Harper and Co. seem to just love John Howard's jingo-spouting, immigrant-baiting, climate-denying policies. But even the Australians have a better handle on how to deal constructively, or at least semi-intelligently, with the vicissitudes of globalisation than our own fearless leaders do. Wouldn't it be a good idea to have someone on the ground in the Balkans, for instance?

Never mind - as the Prime Minister would like to be believe we're already de facto Americans, I'm sure he'll be arranging a cozy treaty ensuring any Canadian stranded in Cambodia or Angola has equal access to American overseas consulates. Right? Or maybe he should ask the Australians?

Breaking the Bank

If senior neoconservatives - who by all appearances lack empathy, compassion, foresight, wisdom, or competence in military affairs - also lack the good grace to keep their hypocrisy down to a dull roar with the rest of us, what's left of them? Note that this is not a hypothetical question.

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UPDATE: I wasn't even thinking of Gordon O'Connor when I wrote this post - but most of the descriptors listed above fit him nicely too! How fortuitous!

Jaw-dropping

"Liberals agree not to run candidate against Green leader" says the CBC.

Well...won't this be grist for a number of people's mills.

My initial, fleeting thought - "what a horrendously bad political move for Dion to make" - lasted for about fifteen minutes. But, then I pondered.

And it occured to me that the Liberals (who came in third in 2006 in Central Nova, with just 24% of the vote) weren't going to win against Peter Mackay anyway.

Whereas Elizabeth May, sucking up the support of Liberals, NDPers (the second place party in 2oo6 with 32%), old-school PC types, the 1.6 percent of people who voted Green last time, and May's high school friends, just might. Not for sure, but far more likely than if there were a Liberal candidate in the mix.

What would have been really canny (though probably impossible) would have been to convince the NDP to not run a candidate either. Can't you just see the wonderful symbolism: Canadian progressives agreeing to give the Green Party a seat in the House (and the televised leader's debates), while almost certainly ensuring the defeat of a boorish, high-profile Conservative turncoat?

Anyway, Dion's gonna get PILES of flack. Pundits (and some Liberals) will ask why he doesn't simply join the Green Party, as he's tacitly endorsing its policies and leader. In fact, May will likely join with the Liberals on almost every vote in the Commons (someone, with more time than me, I challenge you to find a spot where the two parties' platforms are substantively different), so in a parliamentary context, it's actually a remarkably astute move.

I'm just a little concerned that, PR-wise, it's going to be a disaster.
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UPDATE: Well, that wasn't so awful. Could get worse when the columnists weigh in tomorrow. One thing's for sure: Jack is seriously ticked off. Maybe he should try to do something to garner as much publicity as May just picked up - like maybe getting in on the "deal"?

But man, did Dion's English sound better at that news conference today. Much better. And Elizabeth May is delightful - her anecdote to Carol Off on CBC's As It Happens about talking to Dion on a pay phone in a Chinese restaurant was gold. Besides, how many times can Conservative MPs spew out tidbits like "this is all about Dion's lack of leadership" or some such without people becoming a little tired of the repetition? Law of diminishing returns, anyone?

Money and the Quebec vote

I'm a big fan of SES Research - they tend to be fairly on the money, and Nick Nanos is rapidly turning into the anti-Allan Greg. The latest SES poll (and it's fresh off the press) of Canadians's comfort levels with a Harper majority government is therefore worth noting.

The gist: the numbers (comfort or discomfort-wise) aren't going anywhere significant, except in Quebec, where those somewhat comfortable with a Conservative majority have increased in number more than 15% since February.

Which shows to go you that, to paraphrase Bill Clinton "it's about the money, stupid."

As an aside, it will be interesting to see how the Toronto Sun's Greg Weston - for whom, it seems, the poll was done - will interpret the findings. I think I can guess how - can you?

The obligatory Belinda Stronach post

One of my enduring memories from the media coverage of the 2006 Liberal leadership convention is of Belinda Stronach (along with John Manley) looking incredibly sour after Stephane Dion's surprise victory. Given her fairly frosty attitude at the time - not to mention the fact that being the CEO of a Big Three automaker is far more exciting than attending, for instance, the Newmarket Liberal Riding Association Golf Day and Clam-Bake - I'm not too shocked by Belinda's departure from the green chamber.

Nor am I surprised that various big-and-small "c" conservative pundits (there seem to be so many scurrying around these days) are crowing about rats and sinking ships. You have to at least admire the consistency of the conservative forces (interesting, parentheticaly, that the word "neoconservative" seems to have gone out of style in the media). One of the things that has always bedeviled progressives is a tendency to "discuss" (read: bicker) policy and position in a very earnest, honest and public way. Conservatives, from what I've seen, have no such problem.

Nor, for that matter, did some of those said-same Conservatives have any problem belittling Stronach, in ways so coarse and misogynistic that the only thing more incredible than the attacks themselves was the apparent acceptance of their appropriatness as public statements by the Canadian press and people.

But I digress. Politics is often a game of egos. Retirements aren't uncommon, and it's perfectly fair to say that some Liberal MPs who had a good run under the old regime are moving on to other things, some perhaps for reasons to do with the new leadership, most likely not. But the presence of Belinda, or Stephen Owen, or Lucienne Robillard, in the House wasn't going to sway too many people to vote Liberal one way or the other. The press's constant inflation of the story will do a much more effective job of that.

Oh, and Conservatives: wasn't the previous administration so corrupt and despicable that none of its members ought ever be trusted with high office again? Shouldn't you be pleased, in the name of a safer, stronger, better Canada, that Belinda is retiring? Or would you prefer "put down"?

Rings a Bell?

How soul-sucking is our modern age? Apparently, quite.

Let's get together/I wanna feel the same way too

Take a look at recent piece by Slate's Dahlia Lithwick, which should be required reading for the Canadian political classes, especially those in the blogosphere.

I have to admit that I've occasionally been guilty of snarky ad hominem comments against political opponents. As Lithwick points out, "taking aim and firing" sure is easy.

One thing that makes me uncomfortable actively identifying myself with a political party is that "taking aim and firing" is all the rage from politicians these days.

For instance: when pundits of all stripes debate whether or not Stephane Dion is a "good leader," they're really asking whether Dion can lead publicity "assaults" effectively in a particularly brutal news cycle, against opponents who are particularly vicious. The answer may well be no, especially against an adversary as formidable as our Prime Minister. I don't believe this makes Dion a poor leader - I think it says something much more fundamental about systemic problems in the way we as Canadians are taught about public life. And of course the trend of persuasion by abuse crosses party lines - Dion's apparent embrace of it has been one of the things that, I think, has hampered his performance, and his image with the public.

To say "that's the way things are" as justificiation just doesn't cut it. I encourage all of my arch-conservative readers (there are surely hordes of you) to suggest topics for collaborative discussion, a la Lithwick's article. I'm more than happy to talk policy seriously and intelligently with any takers! Better yet, can anyone out there think of constructive, practical ways to reorient political debate in Canada back towards civility?

Altogether vanity

"Prime Minister Stephen Harper is launching an advertising campaign of his own to counter Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams's recent attack ads.... As well, the ad contains the claim that the province has "been blessed and stayed blessed in this budget."
- CBC News Online

Saint Stephen, eh? Maybe the Prime Minister should remember what happened to his hagiographic namesake. This sort of smarmy, patronising sanctimony would, if I were a Newfoundlander, make me sick to my indomitable stomach.

Laboring in obscurity...

...is not such a bad thing, really, especially when you read the kind of comments Jason Cherniak gets.