Turn Out the Lights

Time for the Repugnicans to break out the fine beach-size 400-thread-per-inch Egyptian cotton crying towels, because it's over, baby. Reports have the McCain team jockeying for a post-blowout take-down of Sarah Palin, who they claim has gone rogue on them. When Peggy and Cotton Hill finally sat down for their interview with Brian Williams of NBC, their body language spoke volumes. McCain suppressed the twitches, sighs, snorts and harrumphs that he featured to such edifying effect in his last debate appearance, but clearly these running mates were not feeling the love. Palin, for her part, has reportedly become fed up with her McCain handlers and, with 2012 in mind, gone off-message, publicly questioning the decision to abandon campaigning in Michigan and to not talk about Jeremiah Wright. 

And then there is Ashley Todd, 20-year-old Texan college student and McCain volunteer who previously worked with that model of rectitude, the College Republicans (of Jack Abramoff infamy). On Wednesday she called police in Pittsburgh to report that she had been attacked by what she described as a tall black man who, realizing she was a McCain supporter, carved a B (for Barack, you see) into her cheek with a blunt knife, but such was the assailant's finely modulated rage, he didn't manage to break her skin. She showed up with a black eye and sure enough, the red welty B was there, only it was backwards, exactly the way it would be if someone had carved it into her cheek while looking in the mirror. Oops. It didn't take the cops long to get Ashley to fess up that she made the whole thing up. A more pathetic end note for the McCain campaign can hardly be imagined: raving about what awful things that black man has done to  them, clutching their little Obama monkey dolls. We can finally retire all the old myths about McCain the reforming maverick, the man of honour, of sound judgment. He'll go down as running the dirtiest campaign in recent memory, and that's saying something. As for the Grotesque Old Party, it threatens to turn into a lunatic rump, powered only by paranoia and bigotry. Even Colin Powell—having permanently sullied his reputation by his disgraceful performance at the UN when he knew the evidence was, as he was reported to have said at the time, "bullshit"—couldn't take any more.

Palin of the Day: Zamboni

While I was away...

To put it tritely, since I last posted, some 62 trillion (that's 62 million million) chickens have come home to roost, and we face a future of diminished opportunities and cancelled retirements while we find a way to clean up the mess left by the wizards on Wall Street, which doled out $62 billion to itself in bonuses alone in 06. The meltdown has exposed the US as a clapped-out shell of its former self, creating wealth through the financial equivalent of musical chairs, passing ticking Financial Explosive Devices from one to another, pocketing fees and bonuses in the billions along the way. Millions of Americans are headed for ruin, and they are taking the world down with them.

I regret my amateur fascination with particle and astro-physics. I am now haunted by the likelihood that we may have already passed an "event horizon" and are now plunging into a black hole, our momentum now too much for us to overcome until all the wealth we have accumulated is squeezed into a forlorn single dollar. Or maybe the analogy of the boat headed toward the precipice of a great falls is more apt; past a certain point, all the back-paddling in the world results in diddly. At least in this scenario, we can hear the "roar" of our fall before we go over. Or maybe that "sound" is the flush as we vortex down, down, down into the bowl. 

Into a black hole. Off a cliff. Down the crapper. Take your pick.

There are, however, things to be grateful for. In two weeks, Obama will be elected president, and Conrad Black rots in a cell.

Of course, here we did finally have our election, to the tune of a quarter billion, which ended up changing nothing. An increased minority, but a minority just the same. Harper will have until next May to throw his weight around, at which point the Liberals will choose a new leader, and we'll essentially have a do-over of the last Parliament.

It came down to what I spoke of earlier: a tin ear on Québec. Trashing artists is always good to pump up the Tory yahoo base, but Quebecers actually like their artists. Québec has its own home-grown culture, with its own stars, and doesn't quite guzzle American pop culture like English Canada does. It also, quite unlike the rest of Canada, thinks highly of its record in keeping young people out of jail, and has the stats to show that it works. So it was manna from heaven for the Bloc, who came storming back to deny the Harperites a majority.

I agree with Lawrence Martin of the Globe and Mail that we are likely to see Harper leave before the next election (assuming he doesn't have one foisted on him). With everything in his favour this time around, he still couldn't get a majority. Next time out, he can't count on a Liberal leader as easy to defeat as Dion. And by that time, we all stand to be considerably worse off than we are now, which won't bode well for the Tories. So I think Steve will take a look at the landscape and pull a Mike Harris, get out of town while the getting is good.

Since my last post, the US election has taken what looks like will be its final shape, with Obama finally pulling away from Cotton McCain and Peggy Palin. McCain is now just a jittery old poot, reduced to flailing and mugging and Palin seems to be more interested in burnishing her far-right cred for '12. Is a chair on The View in her future?

Palin of the Day: Mutt