shadowspar

(Note: Trigger warning for transphobia, homophobia, and general assholery on some of the linked news articles.)

It's hilarious, at least after a fashion, how the conservative types always seem far more obsessed with sex than the racy lefties they decry. To wit: one Tim Hudak. Amongst other things, during this election campaign he denounced a sex-ed curriculum that the Liberals never implemented, and defended his party's use of misleading, homophobic and transphobic flyers to do so. After failing to win the election but successfully narrowing the seat difference between his Conservatives and Premier Dalton McGuinty's reigning Liberals, he held a press conference where:

...he said the Premier would be on a very short leash.
He said this a lot. At least a dozen times in 10 minutes.

Erm, you don't say.

Sometimes he noted the leash would not just be short, but tight.

Is it just me, or...

"Dalton McGuinty is willing to do backroom deals", he said.

O RLY.

You might as well just break out your fetish gear and get it over with, Hudak. Slashfic, anyone?

So Julian Assange has turned himself into the police and been arrested.

Kristinn Hrafnsson, a spokesman for WikiLeaks, said Assange's arrest is an attack on media freedom...

Uh, no it's not. It's an attempt to bring an individual to trial for criminal acts he's alleged to have committed -- rape and sexual assault, in this case. The charges predate Wikileaks' release of US diplomatic cables, FWIW.

I don't understand all the hand-wringing over this, like the media is trying to make out whether to drape Assange in a hero's cape or a villain's one. People do good things; those same people do bad things, and they should be praised for the former and held to account for the latter. The cells of Torquemada's prisons were apparently "large, airy, clean and with good windows admitting the sun....far superior to the civil prisons of that day", but you don't see anyone holding him up as a wholesome personage to emulate, and rightly so.

We can give Assange credit for his work with Wikileaks without letting him off the hook for his other behaviour. It's that simple.

• Turnout hit an incredible low. A lot of people have mentioned the lack of charisma evinced by Harper and Dion, which may be part of the problem. I think the biggest part of the problem was that this was an election without any galvanizing issues. It wasn't called to decide on a crucial issue of the day. It was called because Harper felt that flaunting his own election date law and spending 300,000,000 taxpayer dollars was a worthwhile price to pay for a chance to shoot the dice for a majority.
• Feeling less than enchanted with the NDP. While I think Layton by and large is pushing for the right things, he always comes off like a sanctimonious broken record. His rolled up sleeves, no doubt symbolising his solidarity with the working man, amuse me almost as much as Harper's sweater. Most of all, when the debates came around, the NDP -- a party that, historically, has bitterly complained about being excluded from the democratic process -- wasted no time in trying to shove Elizabeth May and the Greens out the door. The NDP tries to cultivate an image of being principled and not subscribing to "politics as usual", so the irony here was just waaaay over the top.
• Speaking of whom -- I thought that Elizabeth May did a bang-up job at the English debate, pulling together eloquent and pointed passages on the fly instead of repeating talking point after talking point. Unbeknownst to some, heckles are a longstanding tradition in parliamentary debate, so while she may have come off to others as rude, I thought her verbal jabs were great (probably the best of the night was a terse "Where is it?" when Harper started going on about his platform). If only the Greens would run a decent candidate locally! It would be enough to make me at least consider them.
• Duceppe was on top of his game in the English debate as well, delivering the most memorable line of the night. Asked what the first thing is that you would do as prime minister, he replied with the instant classic "Well, I know I won't be prime minister, and three of you won't be prime minister neither."
• It sounds like the knives are coming out for Dion already, which isn't a surprise given that the big story of this election hasn't been the rise of any party but the weakness of the Liberals. It's too bad; he seems like a decent guy, and even someone who I'd be interested in sitting down and having a conversation with over a few drinks, but his personality just didn't electrify the electorate. Not everyone has charisma in spades. That doesn't make him a terrible human being, just someone who's on par with the rest of us schlubs.
• While increasing the Conservative seat count, Harper could not make good on his shot at a majority, even with an incredible set of circumstances in his favour:
  • the Conservatives started off polling in majority territory,
  • the Liberals had the weakest leader in recent memory,
  • the right is united, no longer suffering the Reform/PC vote split,
  • the resurgent NDP and up-and-coming Greens are splitting the vote on the left, and
  • the economy is on everyone's mind, a topic that he and the Conservative party should be strong on.
  If he couldn't cash in for a majority this time, do you think he ever will?
• Finally, if you wanted to find a strong argument for Proportional Representation and an equally strong indictment of FPTP, you only need look as far as the third, fourth, and fifth place results in this election. The Bloc got 10% of the popular vote and was rewarded with 50 seats. The NDP took 18.2% of the popular vote and got 37 seats in return. The Greens received 6.8% of the popular vote, an atta-boy, and no seats.

Oh, what's this? For months -- if not years -- we've heard about how our banks are on a sound footing, how there's no mortgage crisis in Canada, and how the Canadian banking system is the most stable in the world...

Canada does not have banking crisis: Harper

Monday, October 06, 2008
TORONTO (Reuters) - Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday that the Canadian banking sector is not in crisis and vowed to help other countries cope with their financial difficulties.

...In fact, we've heard this all this week...

Canada's banking system kept high and dry by strict regulation: Flaherty

TORONTO — High banking standards have kept Canada's financial institutions afloat and out of the kind of trouble that has sunk many of their international peers, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Wednesday [8 Oct 2008].

...until this morning: with the Conservatives slipping in the polls because people feel they're not concerned enough about the economy:

Flaherty announces measures to stabilize lending industry

The federal government plans to buy $25 billion in Canadian mortgage-backed securities in a bid to ease a growing credit crunch faced by the country's banks and other financial institutions, Ottawa announced Friday.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said the government's plan is to buy the securities through the Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation and provide much-needed cash to financial institutions that sell the so-called "National Housing Act mortgage-backed securities."

Flaherty announced the new measures in an attempt to assuage concerns over the burgeoning global financial crisis and defuse criticism that the Harper government was ignoring the spreading lending crisis.

That's 25 billion dollars in cash money handed over to the banks, ladies and gentlemen...$748 for every man, woman, and child in Canada. While the taxpayers get a bunch of (probably not worthless) mortgage-backed securities in exchange, it's still nice to know that the gov't is ready to step in and hand the banks a huge cash purchase when anything comes anywhere near to causing them problems with their bottom lines. Honest to God, these guys have no idea what they're doing with managing the economy. Certainly they have no more idea than anyone else.

The worst part about it is that since the banks dole out credit, they have us over a barrel when it comes to economic growth, and the alternative of letting them sit on the mortgages and starve for credit might very well amount to cutting off our nose to spite our face.