Dipsticks

Happy Canada Day.

Had so much fun at WGAF that I stuck around for awhile. 

So much to process.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, reeking 0f DNA: "But, officeur, ah wahs merely trah-ing to give ze maid, 'ow you say, ze tip." 

Osama, we now know, had bin Wankin all this time to some primo porn. He just wanted to blow us all up with his torpedo of love, like Domi-nookie. Or Charlie Sheen. Or Newt Gingrich. Or Ah-nuld, the Sperminator. Or Mel Gibson. Or John Edwards or John Ensign or David "Depends" Vitter, he of the diaper fetish. Or Mark Sanford, who rode his bone down the Appalachian Trail and out of office. Or the king of them, the Most Aptly Named Person in History, Anthony Weiner, who never put his wiener to actual use, preferring to use it as a prop.

Penises sure are funny, blowing up in people's faces and all.

Sarah Palin, continuing her political cock-tease with the media who follow her around as if she was a Serious Person Who Will Run for President, says, à propos of doing just that, that she has "the fire in my belly." I have just sent her a note to reassure her that she won't burn in hell if she decides not to bring this one to term. Maybe hubby Todd can quench that fire with his own torpedo, maybe grow themselves another Palin. Baby name? Schmuck. 

Palin is headed to Britain soon, according to reports, and she made all kinds of noise about wanting to have a get-together and a cuppa with Maggie Thatcher, the Iron Maiden herself, or, as I like to think of her, Mrs. "Very-very-adjective-indeed". To her everlasting credit, The Thatchrix sent word through her fart-catchers that Palin "is nuts" and should sod off. This will knock a few years off Mrs T's sentence in Purgatory, when the time comes. 

The recent election was a bit of a shocker, revealing the sea change beginning to take place in Quebec around the "national question." The nuking of the Bloc and the  rending of the PQ in its wake throw Quebec back into play for federal parties. Layton was the main beneficiary this time, but the NDP is not institutionally grounded in Quebec the way the Liberals are. Some sort of understanding between these two parties would deliver the lion's share of the seats to a progressive party. Don't hold your breath.

However, even when everything seems dull and grey, there is always Conrad, Lord Black of Crossdresser, who thought he could get up in front of judge Amy St. Eve and impress her by reciting Kipling's "If" in its entirety: ("If You Can Keep Your John Thomas in Your Trousers While All About You Are Using Theirs, My Son"…). Apparently, the rumour that Her Honor scrunched her nose, sniffed, and complained "it smells of Biggles in here!" cannot be confirmed. Bottom line: another year in the slammer for Canada's own Churchill.

The least we can do in this time of travail is lower the poor man's taxes.

Stockaholics everywhere in panic after supply cut off

Japan reels in the face of a near-apocalyptic earthquake and tsunami, followed quickly upon by nuclear meltdown and mass evacuation.

And Stockwell Day decides to shuffle off the political stage. (No word on whether noted self-proclaimed Stockaholic Ezra Levant has been put on suicide watch.)

What does Day know that we don’t? 

The conventional wisdom is that this “clears the decks for the Tories” as they prepare for the election that is surely coming this way soon, as predicted in these pages last year.

It has been a while since his clownish and gaffe-ridden performance in the 2000 election and afterward as leader of the Canadian Alliance (basically the Reform Party in lipstick), which saw his own party splinter in Parliament, followed by his subsequent turfing in favour of Stephen “L’état, c’est moi” Harper. Since losing reins, he has pursued a much more low key profile, eventually earning a reputation in the Harper cabinet for being not a total disaster. In fact, he is considered a senior statesman. Draw from the latter statement what conclusion you will.

Day’s lowered profile was, to a considerable degree, a function of the short leash Harper put on all his ministers, who are drawn from a less than overflowing talent pool. Whatever he felt about this Day kept to himself, and so can be credited in the end with being a good Tory soldier.

The stars all argue for the wisdom of the move. Day has been in government railing about government for 25 years. He has seen what life in Harperland is like. The horizon offers only more of the same, more Stockboy than Stockwell; it certainly doesn’t offer another shot at being PM. Elections are coming every 30 months now. It’s as good a time as any. Time to kick back and start collecting that sweet government pension.

Tomorrow's Yesteryear

Where was I?

It’s been a mere 499 days since last I visited this space. Jesus and Mohammed clocked in at a mere 40 days away from the world before emerging refreshed and raring to take it on (actually, in their case, take it over). Pikers.

Just so there’s an entry for 2010:

When last I wrote, I was bemoaning the unraveling of the Obama project south of the border. It would take another half-year before health care reform was passed, and the result was, unfortunately but perhaps inevitably, a Rube Goldberg device. (I earlier predicted it would be an abortion, but since it mostly doesn’t kick in for a couple of years, the judgment will have to wait.) There was some financial reform, but given the propensity of this president to cater to Wall Street (his closest economic advisers coming from the ranks of those whose criminally irresponsible speculation with others’ money led to the crash in 08, including Robert Rubin), it is difficult to feel hopeful that the same thing that brought on the current Great Recession will not blow up in our face again. Obama has done bugger all to address the pit in this pustule: those who destroyed the livelihoods and retirements of millions around the world have not only been restored to their pre-Crash selves with money from the very people they had just finished ruining, they have gone on since then to award themselves record bonuses in the thousands of millions.

As if this weren’t enough, after spending the mid-term campaign season drawing a line in the sand on the Bush tax cuts, Obama folded, handing those who could not possibly need it a several-hundred-billion dollar windfall that only pours vinegar onto fresh wounds. Incredibly, he joins Bush in the pantheon of those deserving to be honoured for their work with the overprivileged.

Having said that, Obama remains by far preferable to anybody from the Grotesque Old Plutocrats, with their collection of cranks and wankers. He has to be given credit for finally getting “don’t ask, don’t tell” repealed. And when you look upon the last days of this officially sanctioned anti-gay bigotry, and think of John McCain’s performance, you can not but be thankful that at the moment, it is Obama and not McCain who is entrusted with running the country.

McCain has shown himself unable, or rather, unwilling, to climb out of the vat of bile he has been swimming in since Obama whipped his ass by 10 million votes. Like that other GOP whore, Mitt Romney, who now pretends to rail against basically the same health care plan he himself implemented in Massa2shits, McCain has shown no hesitation in, as Sarah Palin would put it, refudiating everything he has pretended to stand for. Nothing so defines this shriveled erstwhile “maverick” in his political and personal decline than his tortured and petulant rearguard action to demonize gays in the military, this while his own wife campaigned to eliminate the bigotry fueling an epidemic of gay suicides. Following in the steps of that other one-time war hero Randy “Duke” Cunningham, McCain is further proof of the sad truth that military exploits do not automatically confer personal integrity. Public discourse can only get better once this cynical old poop, the man who brought you Sarah Palin, shuffles off the stage.

Would that it were otherwise, but here in the Great White North the political landscape is particularly barren at this juncture. Despite a succession of big events designed to boost his profile—the Olympics, the various summits—Harper has not been able to move the needle into majority territory, after 5 full years at the tiller. There will no doubt be an election this year, probably in the spring, and it will spell the end of either Harper or Ignatieff. If Harper were to win but still be unable to secure a majority, look for enough grumbling to surface that he will decide it’s not worth it for him to carry on, and will head for some soft corporate sinecure.

After all of 5 years, Harper finds himself with a gauzy legislative record. Unable to do anything of substance with his minority government, Harper and his Great Big Cabinet of Unsurpassed Tory Talent have been reduced to feeding bite-sized cubes of red meat to their hard core hyenas. On more than one occasion, it was reported that a Russian aircraft flew really close to Canadian airspace in the Arctic, but actually did not enter it. Gasps were audible all across the droolosphere as Tories took to their fainting couches. In the end, a little froth was stirred up, and all the little Vic Toews in Reformworld could go home and snort about how they gave it good to the Russkies. It also justifies spending up to $24 billion on new planes to counter this dread threat.

Lacking a majority, Harper has not been able to pursue a more vigorous, Repugnican agenda. As John Ibbitson recently noted in the Globe, the Tories are seen as adrift.

All of this should give some comfort to Michael Ignatieff and his Liberals, but they too seem to have hit a ceiling of 30% in support, which simply will not deliver them power unless in some kind of coalition with the NDP and the Bloc.

For whatever reason, the Liberals under Ignatieff have failed to light a fire, forced by circumstance not to force an election and thus effectively neutered in the House. This makes it difficult for the leader to affect a macho posture—remember “if you mess with me, I’ll mess with you til I’m done”? The spectacle last year of Iggy and Steve waving their dicks, each daring the other to trigger an election—en garde, varlet, sample my flesh blade!—was low-grade reality TV.

Anyway, it is a sad comment on the state of political leadership when the Liberal party can’t muster the mojo needed to take on a Tory leader who wears his tie to bed each night.

Ignatieff’s ascension to leadership was sold to many as the second coming of Trudeau: a heavyweight intellectual come to do his duty and give his country the gift of his leadership. Unfortunately, he has had all the impact of a 3 nanoton bomb.

Recent history provides a simple test of leadership and judgment, and that is the Iraq War. When Frat Boy Smirk embarked on his project to reshape the Middle East, it is helpful to remember that both Harper and Ignatieff supported this lunatic adventure, none more so than Harper, who was positively viagrified over the prospect of playing army in the sandbox with W. When Chretien nixed Canada’s participation in this right-wing circle jerk, Harperbot, with the laughable Stockwell “Wet Suit” Day in tow, waxed apoplectic about letting down a friend in need. They were joined by other solons who rushed in to bray about this historic mistake, in particular noted intellectuals Ralph Klein and chief Mike Harris fartcatcher Ernie Eves, reassuring Oedipus Tex that Canadians supported him even if their leaders didn’t, despite polls putting support for Chretien’s decision at 75%. A proud moment, to be sure.

As for Ignatieff, he signed on to Iraqapalooza at first, (the spectre of renovations to vast areas of the geopolitical map no doubt appealing to his intellect), even permitting himself to muse about circumstances where it would be okay to use torture, but had the menschitude to apologize for it later in the New York Times.

In any event, Harper can’t continue his smoke-and-mirrors government for much longer without finding a fight to pick, and Ignatieff can’t afford to be seen caving to Harper one more time, so expect to see Election Night in Canada sometime during the Cup playoffs.

Break out your vuvuzelas.

Free at Last

This is almost as deep into winter as you can get, and it feels like it. It was brass-monkey cold all last week, and the air has been thick with Bush's pathetic attempts to spin his place in history, a stupid man frantically trying to polish a turd. Many fatuous words were spoken about a library and a book from the Bushes—apparently Laura believes there's a lot we would pay $40 to find out from her. Frat Boy Smirk himself is said to be keen to sharpen his favourite crayon and give it a go. That would give him a two-book head start on filling up his new lie-berry. Presumably the new facility will feature stations where weary readers can go to have their reading calluses treated. Signs will hang from the ceiling reminding the various visiting Bush scholars: "REMEMBER: Lips together when reading."

One hopes for the day when Bush and Cheney will have their Pincohet moment, charged with war crimes and unable to travel for fear of being taken off the plane and sent to The Hague. The world showed it was serious when it hauled Milosevic and Karadzic (and soon, one hopes, Mladic) before the International Criminal Court. It should show no less zeal in seeking to add Bush and Cheney to this butchers' gallery. It would be worth paying to see W try to smirk and chuckle his way through a war crimes trial. He'd look good in orange.

Here in the Great White North, Prime Minister Doughboy gets a second chance to get it right with a budget next week. OpLeader Ignatieff makes noises that if it contains broad tax cuts, the Libs won't vote for it, and we're back to coalition time. However, Ignatieff never liked the coalition idea and will try to steer around it if he can. Harper may accommodate him, since he may realize that playing chicken this time around will see him in Stornaway post-haste. However, since he likes to campaign far more than govern, Harper may just decide to pull another adolescent stunt and force a crisis—election or coalition?—which would provide plenty of drama and keep everyone distracted from the world of hurt coming our way in the next several years. Harper may decide that now is not the time to be running things, since as the recession deepens, people will find out that at the end of the day, Sweater Boy, like his hero W, is really interested in rewarding his friends, and has no particular interest in, or talent for, running an economy for the benefit of everyone. Let's hope he takes financial wizard Patricia Croft's advice on how to weather the coming storm, delivered on TV on January 9: "batten down the hatchets."

Harper has decided his quest for a reformed Senate is doomed, as any first year poli sci student could have told him and Preston Manning back in the 90s, when this idea was trotted out as part of the sacred Reform canon. A quick look at the formula for amending the constitution (it basically requires unanimity from the provinces and federal government), not to mention memories of the great fun we all had the last time we tried doing it, could have saved the Reformistas a lot of grief. Then again, Reformers were never more happy than when angry and venting their own special brand of sour gas. In any event, Harper appointed 18 new warm bodies to the upper chamber, including media stars Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin, skier Nancy Green Raine and 15 other hacks, this while the House was prorogued. It might be argued that this is nothing more than facing political reality, and it is something he would rather not do if he had his druthers, but this can't be said of his decision to appoint a new Supreme Court justice without running it by a parliamentary committee, something he crowed about doing in 06. Apparently, Stevie doesn't think getting MPs' input on such appointments is worth it this time. Easy come, easy go. Back to Square One.

Still no word from the secret committee of anti-abortion MPs on how they intend to outlaw abortion without anyone finding out. Stay tuned. Or not.

Prince Harry, who distinguished himself a couple of years ago for showing up at a costume party dressed as a Nazi (perhaps in affectionate remembrance of his great-grand-uncle Edward VIII/Duke of Windsor, legendary bon vivant, Nazi sympathizer and likely traitor), has called a Pakistani member of his regiment "our little Paki friend," but we are told it is meant as a term of affection, as is, apparently, "raghead," another nickname he is fond of using. Harry comes by his racism honestly: daddy Charles affectionately refers to polo-playing friend Kuldip Dhillon as "Sooty", and Charles' daddy, notorious horse's ass Prince Philip, famously told British students in China they would end up "slitty-eyed" if they stayed there much longer. As for Harry, he continues in the tradition of other "spares" to the heirs, like Princess Anne, who must be kept occupied lest they open their mouths and Philip's genes kick in. If one prefers to treat things royal as a matter of animal husbandry, as is often done, Harry can soon be expected to get to work fashioning a suitable breeding arrangement, by way of marriage. His role as spare is not done, of course, until William suitably discharges himself of his responsibilities in this matter, with his own pair of spawn. And who knows? One need only look to the aforementioned Eddy8 to see the wisdom of having someone in the wings who can step in, someone who must share your blood, according to the rules, and, oh, by the way, definitely cannot be a Catholic.

Meanwhile, in the Unholy Land, Israel, having pulverized Gaza over the holidays, is getting out just in time before President Obama is inaugurated and has something to say about this latest murderous incursion. Sadly, it is hard not to see this as being as much about the upcoming Israeli election as anything else, as everyone trips all over themselves trying to out-Likud each other. Israel would like us all to see this as a one-off aimed at silencing Hamas rockets, with no reckoning being made of the effect of decades of Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian land, leaving the Palestinians something very much like the detestable Bantustans of apartheid-era South Africa. Media in this country and in the US have drunk the Israeli Kool-Aid; Israel is a fragile vulnerable country surrounded by fanatical mortal enemies, who need periodic doses of Israeli medicine to keep them in line. It is perfectly reasonable to kill 1000 or so Arabs every once in a while, just to show them.

I have come to the depressing belief that Israel and the Palestinians are doomed to a perpetual death-dance. Both are permanently traumatized populations who believe they can will their favoured reality into being. Do Tzipi, or the Ehuds, or Bibi really believe the claptrap they spout about how they will "topple" Hamas and replace it with a government more to their liking? What arrogance is it that looks upon the Palestinians as people allowed to elect only those who meet Israeli approval? As long as Israelis look upon their neighbours this way, there is no way forward.

The Gaza adventure exposes Israel as a country that wants not peace but only quiet. The biggest favour a President Obama could do for Israel is to tell them that they will not receive another red cent from the US until they immediately stop all settlements on Palestinian land, and submit a plan to dismantle the ones already there. If Israel is serious about long-term peace, they cannot pursue it while taking the land from under the Palestinians' feet.

Support for Israel on this side of the pond has sadly come down to support for the Likud view of never-ending violence and war, something dear to Netanyahu's heart. If, God forbid, he wins in February, Israel can look forward to more of the same, a debilitating prospect for anyone interested in her long-term security, but even more maddeningly, understandable in the short term, given Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran have made it a stated aim to see Israel wiped from the map. Welcome to Square One again. The future belongs to those with the rockets, guns and bombs.

I have been to The Beast, Tina Brown's answer to the HuffPost, and sampled some of Conrad Black's ageless prose. Actually, a while back, Black wrote a column in the Globe and Mail defending FDR from the revisionist claptrap of the right wing in the States to the effect that the New Deal actually made the Great Depression worse than it was. Black is always fun to read, and when he practises scholarship, he is at his best. It doesn't hurt that he writes coherently and in complete sentences, either. He seems to be unaware, though, of the ludicrous spectacle of him casting himself in the role of stalwart defender of the wrongfully convicted, something he has announced to the world from his cell through The Beast. Further outpourings from him on this subject are sure to be entertaining. We can look forward to five more years of his tireless work on behalf of those who have been shafted by the system, man.

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

Ritz Cracker

"Please stay and enjoy yourselves, but I have to warn you, the 10 o'clock show can get pretty blue. Oh, and try the veal."

Just when I think that Canadians might be wary of giving a majority to Harper, along comes the Canada's latest stand-up comedy sensation, Llyodminster's own Gerry Ritz, Minister of Food Humour. This listeriosis thing at the Maple Leaf plant that's killed a dozen or so people? Well, when you really think about it, it really is very funny, isn't it? Ritz riffed that the failure in the food safety system was causing the government a death of a thousand cuts "or should I say the death of a thousand cold cuts."

After the guffaws died down, when told that one death was in Prince Edward Island, the Ritzster hit it out of the park: “please tell me it's [Liberal agriculture critic] Wayne Easter" (who represents one of the ridings in Canada's toy province).

Ba-dum!

Last week, Harper moved swiftly to bring the hammer down on the guanofacient puffin and the wise-ass tiny Tory who dissed the father of a soldier killed in Afghanistan. With Ritz, he's decided to let it pass, saying that the remarks were part of a private conversation. But since when is a conference call with members of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency deemed private?

What this shows is exactly why Harper has garnered such a reputation as a controlling tightass. It has occurred to more than one person that he needs to be Minister of Everything because his caucus, generally speaking, lives in the shallow end of the talent pool. In one sense, this is not surprising. Just as Americans are awakening to the realization that if you elect people who tell you that government is useless, you end up with useless people in government, so too the Tories are short on people who actually want government to work. Thus we get a cabinet with such noteworthy lightweights as Gordon O'Connor, Bev Oda, Gary Lunn, Rona Ambrose, and of course, matinee meat puppet Maxime "my gal's rack is bigger than yours" Bernier. Even the unlucky-in-love Peter MacKay looks positively Prime Ministerial compared to these mopes. (MacKay enjoys the unique distinction of being one of the only men to have been dumped by his girlfriend not for another man, but for another political party.) Even jet-skier and rollerblader extraordinaire Stockwell Day, who thought the Niagara River runs from north to south and (to steal a line from Warren Kinsella) that the Flintstones was a documentary, has become a model of gravitas in comparison. So threadbare is the Team Tory bench that the only person Harper could find to replace Bernier as foreign affairs minister was David Emerson, who won his seat in the last election running as a Liberal, and is, sensibly, not running again. As for Gerry Ritz, here's a poli sci pop quiz for you. Until he made a name for himself in comedy yesterday, how many of you could say you knew who Gerry Ritz was? Enough said.

The Bernier mess illustrated one of Harper's big challenges: to find enough Quebec names to add to his cabinet. Hence the concerted effort by Harper to make nice with Quebec's soft and hard nationalists. To hear Harper speak now to them, you'd think that an Alberta firewaller and a Pequiste from the Saguenay were two peas in a pod. Unfortunately, this is, as it was when Joe Clark and then Brian Mulroney pursued it as a strategy, a marriage of political convenience rather than any real sharing of core values, a classic case of the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend.

I am old enough to remember back to a time when Conservatives were widely regarded in Quebec as largely unsympathetic to French Canada, if not outright anti-French. When the Liberals dominated Quebec federally under Trudeau, there was little room for a federal conservative party in Quebec. Small-c conservative opinion in French Canada did not gravitate to the Tories, and was largely consigned to rural Quebec and largely represented by the Union Nationale provincially (or should I say "nationally"?) and the Creditistes federally. It was only after these parties disappeared that the Tories were able to make inroads in Quebec, culminating in Mulroney's strong showing in Quebec in the 80s, when the PCs (as they were then) had the help of sovereignist PQ pavement pounders and door knockers. Then there was the Meech Lake fiasco, followed not long afterward by the splintering of the Tories. The Quebec-Alberta marriage under Mulroney ended in bitter divorce.

One of the animating impulses for the Reform party was outrage at what was seen as catering to the whining of Quebec for special status. Think back to the referendum campaign when Preston Manning persistently pressed Chretien to accept that a 50%+1 vote for sovereignty was enough of a threshold to permit Quebec to leave Canada. If one didn't know any better, one might have thought that Manning was just as happy to see the back of Quebec, and that if a yes vote in the referendum came along, well, then, sunrise, sunset. Quebec's more statist model and less-than-fundamentalist social tolerance were always anathema to the likes of Manning and Harper. If, as Harper once said, "Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term," Quebec would certainly have seemed even more so.

So it was amusing to see Harper taking advantage of every opportunity to kiss Quebec's wet spot, reminding them that it was he who stood up in the Commons and passed a resolution that recognizes them as a "nation," something mistakenly thought by a lot of nervous federalists to be the third rail of politics involving Quebec. Given the vitriolic response that the phrase "distinct society" evoked in the Rest of Canada in the time of Meech, this must make Conservative hair stand on end in certain quarters of Not-Quebec. However, as Chantal Hebert of the Star notes, Harper has come to realize that by simply uttering the sentiment that Quebec is a nation (a far more loaded term than distinct society, imho), he has sucked most of the oxygen out of the sovereignist project. Support for PQ-style sovereignty-association or independence in Quebec is at its lowest in recent memory, which means that the Bloc Quebecois stands increasingly exposed as clapped out. Bloc head Gilles Duceppe, I suspect, has nightmares starring Stephen Harper speaking in French and drawing cheers. It must gall him to see an Albertan come into town and pick off disaffected nationalists. Maybe he should try something bold, like propose that Canada is a nation. After all, he has a tidy Canadian MP's pension to worry about.

Some indication of how eager Harper is to stroke Quebec is his recent bizarre announcement that he will enshrine the practice of alternating French and English-speaking chairs of the CRTC. However, since the creation of the CRTC, the chairs have alternated between English and French speakers with one exception, when Konrad von Finkelstein (I'm betting he's not a francophone) succeeded English-speaking Charles Dalfen. Who was the nefarious PM who snubbed French Canada when its turn came? Hint: His name rhymes with Bleeven Darker.

Interesting political appeal: "Elect me: it's the only way to stop me from screwing you again."

Harper Valley SFA

Although the American election is the more fascinating and consequential, we also have an election here in Canada. The once sulky doughboy of Canadian politics, Stephen Harper has transformed himself, if you believe the laughable ads showing him in a blue sweater, into Mr. Rogers.

[Stephen Harper has dropped in for a visit with Mr. and Mrs. Sensible Shoes in Potemkin, Alberta. Sitting on the edge of the settee, diabetic music dripping in the background, and forcing a gluey rictus, he intones: "I think families are just about the keenest things there can be. I have a family, you know. Sometimes we sit around and play cards." Shit-eating voice comes over: "Stephen Harper. Not a resentful block of wood. A leader."]

When I saw the first fuzzy Harper ad in the pre-election days, what immediately flashed to mind was the image of Boris Yeltsin boogalooing his way to re-election in the mid-90s, with the help of hired hands from the U.S. There he was, in shirtsleeves, up on stage with some pop tart, shaking his booty and all eight of his fingers, sweating, letting his inner lumpkin out, doing his version of Clinton-plays-the-sax. Not surprisingly, he won (as did Bill). Both saw how merging politics and showbiz could work to change the channel and divert the electorate. Of course, Boris didn't need to change channels; he controlled all of them in the shiny new Russian plutocracy.

We have, in Canada, the mirror image of the political situation as it stood in the 90s. This time, instead of the right being fractured, it is the centre-left. One sure sign that the Conservatives are thriving is the spectacle of the NDP leader going around saying he should be seriously considered for the post of Prime Minister, something that looks like a bit of a long shot for Jack Layton. This situation is made possible only because Stephane Dion has been unable to connect with enough Canadians, if recent polls are any indication.

This is a pity in a way. Dion is much loved by anglophone federalists in the Liberal party for his part in challenging Lucien Bouchard in the years following the referendum, keeping Bouchard and his successor Bernard "Red Rag" Landry, on the defensive. In the process, though, he cemented a reputation in much of Quebec as a vendu, and to this day, he is widely loathed in his home province. It certainly says something about his courage that he has persisted in the face of so much ill will in Quebec, never bowing. Nevertheless, he has not, over the two years he has had to prepare the Liberals for an election, connected with Quebec enough to stave off the likelihood of a big harvest of seats for Harper in Quebec ["J'ai une famille. C'est vrai."] If this happens, we are into a Tory majority. Only the spectacle of spittle-flecked Reform Party hyenas being let out of their cages to howl about abortion and the triple-E Senate, and accuse people of supporting child porn, as happened in the 2004 election, will be enough to forestall a Tory majority.

The events of the last week have not done much to dampen such fears. The puffin taking a crap on Dion was straight out of the dying days of the Ontario Tories' Common Sense Devolution in 03. Harper had to step in and apologize for both the crapping puffin and for the sleazy imputation by one of his zeal-bots that criticism from the father of a soldier killed in Afghanistan was to be taken with a grain of salt because the dad was a Liberal supporter, so what does he know? Anyway, the perverse effect of these "gaffes" is to burnish Harper's self-styled reputation as a decisive leader. In fact, it is certainly easy to imagine this crop of Tories staging examples of Harper riding herd on his collection of mouth breathers, reassuring voters in the centre that he has banished the fanatics. Having a reputation as a control freak works for him here.

The meltdown of the American financial system will also help Harper appeal to nervous voters, who are not likely to migrate to Stephane Dion's Green Shift, let alone to Jack Layton. However, that could easily change if there are any more serious reverses in the economy and Harper looks as powerless as any of the other party leaders to do anything about them.

All in all, a bad news week if you think a Harper majority is bad news.

As for the American contest, the ongoing self-inflicted soiling of John McCain's name is, if nothing else, grist for many a playwright or novelist. Oliver Stone would be a fool not to do a McCain picture, say, in eighteen months. By that time, he will have been in the political wilderness for a while, or he is President. As it stands now, there is a frisson of fear among many nervous Democrats that McCain will repeat what Poppy Bush did to Dukakis, create fake controversies over hot-button social issues to distract from larger issues.

It is chilling to reflect on the Repugnicans' propensity to nominate tickets with one quite apparently capable person and one complete loon, and if I were the producer of the Andy Griffiths Show, I'd sue the bastards for ripping off the Andy/Barney Fife dynamic. W's daddy did it with Dan I-Can't-Spell-Potato Quayle. In W's case, the genius idea was to put the "genius" in the Naval Observatory and the idiot in the White House. With the McCain-Palin ticket, it is truly hard to decide who is supposed to be the leader, and who the clown. Is it the guy who vetted her for all of fifteen minutes, or the woman who, until she is reprogrammed by Dr. McCain-enstein, will go on saying the same patently false things? Instead of the intrepid leader of the Alaskan National Guard being with her troops in Iraq, we get Sarah being able to step over the Iraq-Kuwaiti border so that she could say she was in Iraq. That would be as far as she got.

The Obama campaign, to its credit, is fighting back in the ad war, but every time they have to respond to McCain, instead of making McCain respond to them, they let McCain define the campaign. The question then becomes, if McCain sets the agenda of the campaign, do you let McCain continue to act like the snivelling sell-out he has become, and let the American people judge what they see, and hope they will be as revolted as you are? It's a big risk.

In any event, one hopes that come election day, all Americans will look around them and see what has happened to them over the last eight years of extremist Repugs running the store.

Palins of the Day: I know I have fallen behind, so I will make up for it with a few:

Suvie, Wiper, Flit.