Category: In the News

The picture below comes from Stephen Taylor’s blog — it’s a shot of strategists from the three major Canadian political parties: Susan Murray (Liberal Party), Brad Lavigne (New Democratic Party) and Sandra Buckler (Conservative Party). If I had to sum up the election results using only one picture, I’d use this one.

A couple of days ago, Damian “Daimnation!” Penny wrote a blog entry in which he speculated how various characters on The Simpsons would’ve voted in last night’s election. It’s an amusing read, and the comments range from the  funny to the foamy (I suspect that that commenter is shopping for Asian mail-order brides and some marital brass knuckles).

I’ll throw my hat in the ring by suggesting that Harper use the speech that Sideshow Bob made after getting elected mayor of Springfield, with the appropriate word substitutions. I think it shows what attracts people to the Conservatives and how their policies simply replace the “nanny state” they despise with a “nunny state”:

Because you need me, Springfield. Your guilty conscience may move you to vote Democratic, but deep down you long for a cold-hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a king. That’s why I did this, to save you from yourselves.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a city to run.

I’d like to thank my fellow voters in the Parkdale-High Park riding for voting out Sam “Hollywood’s MP” Bulte and voting in Peggy Nash.

Some of the credit should go to Cory Doctorow, Michael Geist, Ren Bucholz and the EFF/Online Rights Canada and all the bloggers who spoke out about Ms. Bulte. It would probably be wrong to declare that “The Internet” or “The Blogosphere” was the sole factor in Ms. Bulte’s ouster, but it probably helped get the word out. A lot of the credit has to go to Peggy Nash for calling Ms. Bulte on her Big Content cronyism during her campaign, and a lot of the blame has to go to the way Ms. Bulte presented her case: with a toxic mixture of arrogance, contempt for her own constituents and a willingness to play fast and loose with facts.

Here’s how the votes broke down:

DISTRICT: Parkdale-High Park
Candidate	Party	Vote Count	Vote Share	Elected
Peggy Nash	NDP	20690	40.31%	X
Sarmite Sam Bulte	LIB	18489	36.02%
Jurij Klufas	CON	8767	17.08%
Robert L. Rishchynski	GRN	2820	5.49%
Terry Parker	MP	311	0.61%
Lorne Gershuny	ML	133	0.26%
Beverly Bernardo	NA	119	0.23%

 

If there’s a candidate I feel sorry for, it’s Marxist-Leninist Party candidate Lorne Gershuny. As I said earlier, he made articulate, impassioned, and humanistic statements and was considerably more personable than Bulte at the January 11th all-candidates meeting. Still, his party was beaten by the Marijuana Party by a two-to-one margin, even though their candidate Terry Parker passed on a few questions and was mostly unintelligible (and possibly baked) for the rest. Even worse, they were nearly matched by Beverly Bernardo, who didn’t show up to any of the all-candidate meetings, didn’t have any signage and whose candidacy was unknown to many voters until they saw the ballot. He’s probably thanking his lucky stars that the Communist Party wasn’t in the riding to further split the no-hope vote in a People’s Front of Judea/Judean People’s Front sort of way.

God Answers Kathy’s Prayer: “Mmmmmmmmaybe.”

My occasional blog sparring partner, Kathy “Relapsed Catholic” Shaidle, wrote:

American readers can do their part by saying a quick (or not so quick) one for us, as today we have the chance to maybe, just maybe, turn around the doomed HMS Trudeaupia.

Perhaps a lot of people borrowed a line from St. Augustine’s prayer book and and asked “Lord, give us the Conservatives…but not too much”: in the end, the Conservatives got a minority government (see this entry for details). Here’s how the seats broke down at the time of this writing:

• Conservative Party: 125
• Liberal Party: 104
• Bloc Quebecois: 50
• New Democratic Party: 28

I wrote after the previous election that I considered this the optimal outcome:

I strongly believe that reasoned compromise and moderation is one of the best ideals of the National Character: between English and French, between ties to the countries from which we came and the country we adopted, between free markets and socialism and yes, between being like and unlike our neighbour to the south. I think that a Conservative minority allying itself with the Bloc (who would agree on decentralization and granted more powers to the provinces, which works given Canada’s vast size) and an opposition alliance of the Liberals and NDP would’ve been a workable solution and would’ve given the Liberals the “time out” that they so richly deserve. At the very least, it would result in Paul Martin’s ouster.

Strangely enough, eye magazine, one of Accordion City’s alt-weekly newspapers and certainly not a bastion of Tory fandom, concurred in their January 19th editorial.

Today, Monday January 23rd, 2006, is Election Day in Canada. If you’re eligible to vote, vote!

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I was looking for some kind of “vote” image with which to embellish this entry. I used a Google image search for the word “vote” and found this comic on the second page of results. It was so silly that I had to use it:

(In case you were wondering, this seems to be one of a collection of comics at a site called  Holistic Forge Works, drawn using the MS Paint program and a mouse.)

Sam “Hollywood’s MP” Bulte’s greatest

contribution to the copyfight may be the phrase she coined at the January 11th all-candidates meeting in a

heat-of-the-moment outburst in response to being asked to take Michael Geist’s Copyright Pledge: “Pro-User Zealot”.

(Come to think of it, my greatest contribution may be having the presence of mind to capture the outburst on video and disseminate it. I can live with that.)

Should you want Ms. Bulte’s soon-to-be immortal words are in bumper-sticker form, wait no more — this CafePress site is selling them!

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They’re not yet purchasing zambonis in Hell, but they’re donning

windbreakers: One of Accordion City’s alt-weeklies, eye, is saying what I said after the last election — the best possible outcome might be a Conservative minority:

Our

fondest hope is that the Conservative momentum falls short of a

majority. A Harper minority may actually be the best possible result of

this election: with no right-wing allies in Parliament, the

Conservatives would be prevented from instituting the nightmarish

aspects of their agenda. Harper would be forced to work with Layton and

Gilles Duceppe (given that a Conservative coalition with the Liberals

is unthinkable) on more temperate shared goals such as parliamentary

and electoral reform, environmentalism and, perhaps, decentralization.

It’s not ideal, but it’s also not Armageddon.

Dan over at BlogTO is “throwing his weight” for the same result.

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Melanie McBride over at Chandrasutra writes about Tom Flanagan, who seems at first blush to be a Wal-Mart version of Karl Rove. Or perhaps he’s a Zellers next to Karl Rove’s Target. I’m sure there’s an apt metaphor somewhere.

She also touches on a very important topic: a lack of understanding

that we out here in the east have about western Canada (and probably

vice versa). What’s not helping is the prevailing attitude on either

side, each happy to maintain the worst possible viewpoint of the other.

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By the bye, I’m not the only Kickass Karaoke regular who’s out there fighting the good fight: I caught Mike D’Abramo (second face on the page, better known to Kickass regulars as “Mike D.” from Youthography (a youth-oriented marketing/communication firm run by fellow Kickass Karaoke regular Max Valiquette) talking on CP24

about their work in trying to get young people out there to vote. As

Mike says, you’re Canadian too, so make sure you have your say!