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Tuesday, November 29, 2005
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RETARD CAGE MATCH OF THE DOOMED : WHY IS THIS MAN SO HAPPY?
As you may have heard, the government of Canada, headed by Liberal Paul ("Dithers") Martin, Jr, was toppled last night. This might not seem like a big deal, but Martin's is only the fourth minority government to be brought down and the first to sall on a straight confidence motion.
In a Parlamentary system, a minority government falls on economic measures, such as a budget failing to pass. Last night the measure that passed said that the government had outright "lost the confidence of the House of Commons." Basically, the Parliament of Canada said, "It's not so much your budget, it's just that YOU suck!" Pretty harsh, no?
Maybe not so much. See that picture directly above? Well, that's Dithers entering the House last night, knowing full well that it was a mathematical certainty that his government would be destroyed in a manner so humiliating that it has no precedent in Canadian history.
So why does he look so happy?
Well, firstly because he's an idiot. You see, if Martin went out six - or even three - months ago, he probably would've won a majority and been hailed as the vanquishing hero he was supposed to be when he ran for the Libral leadership to begin with. As things currently stand, the absolute best outcome he can hope for is another minority, and likely a dimished one at that. And a dimished minority means that Martin might not be prime minister at all.
Here's how it works, a minority government needs to demonstrate to the Governor General that it has at least a possibility of being able to govern. If it cannot do so, the Governor General, in this case, the ulta-foxy Michaelle Jean, is to ask the Leader of the Loyal Opposition to form a government. Now, when the Leader of the NDP, Jack(!) Layton, abandoned the Liberals two weeks ago, he said that he had done so because the Liberals had lost the "moral authority to govern." How something as silly as an election can restore that moral authority if a majority of the people still believe the government to be criminal is beyond me. But Jack(!) Layton has built a life out of looking stupid and I can't see him changing anytime soon.
Having said that, it is unlikely in the extreme - if not the very picture of impossibility - for anyone win a majority. The country may well be too fractured for that. Of course, political party professionals don't see it that way. Both Martin and Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper are seen as so marginal, ineffectual and such bad friggin' candidates, that if one can't knock the other out completely, they may both be kicked out of politics forever.
Dithers might be the most ineffectual excuse for a prime minister in modern Canadian history. On my scale of being unable to get shit done, he ranks up there with former Prime Minister John Turner. And Turner has a much, much better excuse - he was drunk all of the time. Turner spent more time warming a stool at Winston's in downtown Toronto than he spent in the House.
This overlooks the fact that, for all intents in purposes, Jack(!) Layton has effectively been prime minister for the last 17 months. Martin could do nothing without a signed note from Jack(!) allowing him to do so, lest his government fall and be unable to get up.
Then there's Adscam, which I've described before. While not personally implicated in the scandal by Mr. Justice John Gomery, the defense of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) is that Martin was the Minister of Finance at the time and how the fuck should that make him responsible for knowing where a quarter of a billion dollars went.
Smart Conservatives everywhere will tell you that if Harper can't beat that then he's a born loser and should not only be thrown out of Big Time Politics, he should be killed in the process.
On the other hand, Stephen Harper has this special talent of scaring the fuck out of everyone.
Before I go further, let me explain my history with the Conservative Party.
The first vote I ever cast, all the way back in 1988, was for Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. I'm currently the only person in Canada who will currently admit to having done so. In 1993 and 1997, I voted for the Reform Party under the Great Preston Manning. I would vote for either again in a heartbeat.
Then came Stockwell Day. Day, almost from the time he entered public life, demonstrated that he's a special kind of stupid. The kind the glows in the fucking dark.
It all stared when he was in the Alberta government. There was a pretty famous child porn case there in the '90's. During the course of the case, Day had some problem with the defendant's lawyer and said that if he's defending someone with kiddie porn, the lawyer must like it too. This got Stockwell Day sued for slander, defamation and general stupidity just as he running for prime minister. Day settled and forced the people of Alberta to give the lawyer a few hundred grand.
Then, just winning a highly, highly divisie leadership race against Saint Preston, Day actually had the balls to DARE then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien to call an election. Chretien, being psychotic but not stupid crazy, accomodated him and Stock got his ass handed to him.
This was largely due to Day's beginning his campaign by saying that the world was only 6,000 years old and how could we not have co-existed with the dinasours? It worked on the Flintones, didn't it? Of course, this allowed Liberal charcter assassin Warren Kinsella to go on television with a stiffed Barney doll and say, "The Leader of the Opposition believes that we were neighbours with Barney!" Stockwell Day's unhinged stupidity managed not only to re-elect a criminally insane Jean Chretien, it made Warren Kinsella famous.
So I was pretty excited about Stephan Harper's running for the leadership of a unified conservative movement. Harper was famous for being Manning's chief strategist in the gloried days of Reform. Y'know, when he wasn't quitting. But I was sure that a political pro could at least show well against a douche nozzle like Paul Martin.
Needless to say, I was wrong.
The major obstacle to the conservative movement in Canada isn't so much their leaders (although Stock didn't help that perception) as much as it is the candidates they nominate. Various candidates in various ridings have aways crushed the dreams of Reform, the Canadian Alliance and the Conservative Party of Canada and their leaders are semingly ineffective in shutting them the fuck up.
There's something I should point out to my American readers. You're unique. You happen to be the only country in the world where overly enthusiastic religious folks can scream about dumb shit like abortion and gay marriage and be rewarded for it. In Canada, we find such discussion intrusive, offensive and boring. Here, you get punished, and hard, for bringing those topics up.
In 2004, Harper was up by ten points - in the neighbourhood of a majority - and his candidates started talking abortion and gay marriage. Harper had a stark choice ahead of him, he could either slap down his retards....or he could lose. Harper chose losing.
From this, I learned that Stephen Harper is nutless wonder and should be sterilized soon. If he can't tell some yahoo in Etibicoke-Lakeshore to shut up and sit down, I can't trust him not to turn my fuking country into a theocracy. So fuck him. I didn't vote for him them and I won't vote for him now. I'll find a drag queen to vote for instead.
If Big Paulie Martin can't beat the likes of Harper, Dithers' name is officially shit in the Liberal Party. He won't last as leader until Labour Day.
I'll begin my anaysis part of this post with my immediate strategy suggestions for each of the leaders.
Paul Martin - Liberal: Martin was very, very smart in allowing a Christmas election and this is why he looked so happy last night. Canadians don't want to bothered with an election at Christmas. This is because Canadians are stupid. If you're like me, a retard cage-match like this IS Christmas.
A Christmas campaign - so-called because the writ was dropped today and the votes won't be cast until January 23 - neccessitates a long campaign. A long campaign gives lots of time for the Conservatives to say very stupid things about very sensitive things like abortion and gay marriage. And the Conservative will do it, too. Just watch. Or don't. Harper already started.
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper launched his election campaign Tuesday by steering it straight into the electoral turbulence of gay marriage.
With the starting gun kicking off the eight-week race still echoing in the air, Harper went out of his way to reopen a politically noxious debate, pledging to restore the traditional definition of marriage - provided Parliament supports the idea in a free vote.
"It will be a genuine free vote when I'm prime minister," Harper said.
"I will not whip our cabinet," he added, referring to the process by which Paul Martin's ministers were forced last summer to support a bill that legalized gay weddings.
This is exactly the kind of shit that Dithers has been praying at night for Harper to say in public.
But roughly five courts - including the Supreme Court of Canada - have issued opinions in support of gay marriage, haven't they?
Most legal experts agree same-sex marriage is a genie Harper will be hard-pressed to put back in the bottle. He would have to circumvent court judgments allowing gay weddings, as well as a reference opinion from the Supreme Court of Canada.
Yeah, I thought so.
So what about the homos who already got hitched? What about them?
Either way, he promised to preserve more than 3,000 gay marriages already performed across Canada, though he wouldn't say exactly how.
"That's the commitment we've made and it hasn't changed," Harper said in the lobby outside the House of Commons.
So, Stephen Harper is proposing........absolutely nothing.
As much as Martin has done everything wrong from the day he was born, and as much as he (falsely) argued that he didn't want a Christmas election, having one - and a very, very long one at that - is to his distinct political advantage.
Stephen Harper - Conservative: Harper has already ignored my first piece of advice, which is to shut the fuck up about abortion and gay marriage and threaten to quit, mid-campaign, if his candidates don't. Ignoring that advice will mean that he will never prime minister for than 15 seconds, if at all. Could he win on "social issues?" Yes, but he would beat 138 years of Canadian political precedent in doing so.
Harper also ignored my second piece of advice, IGNORE GOMERY!
Here's one of the iron laws of politics, if you have a reputation of being an angry, heartless motherfucker, don't feed it by actually being one. This is especially true when there are any number of people who can do it for you.
Adscam, Gomery and Liberal corruption are winning issues. That's why Harper should let the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois make it for them. Harper can't win on being the bad guy, but Ducceppe and Jack(!) can win for Harper that way. Harper's piling on might just be seen as being "unworthy."
If Harper wants to possibly win a minority and keep his job, he should go fucking nuts and actually propose a couple of actual policies. In public and stuff. Y'know, have a couple of drinks and tell us what you'd do if you won.
Jack(!) Layton - New Democratic Party: Jack(!) has one of two choices in a long campaign. Either he can defend Harper from the left , or he he can lay down and die.
If Harper does well, Jack(!) does well because that indicates a collapse in Liberal support and could mean a check on Conservative whackjobbery. On the other hand, if Harper does well initially with both Dithers and Jack(!) attack him from the left, the Liberals peels off electoral support from the NDP. The Liberals only do well at the expense of the NDP. There's no other way around it.
How do I know this? Because its exactly what happened 17 months ago.
The NDP has a chance of picking up seats, but only if they can do well in the Greater Toronto Area and in British Columbia, and doing well in those places would indicate total Liberal collapse nationally. There is no way on fucking Earth that the NDP can do that on their own. But they'll have to put up with some shit that they find pretty distasteful to pull it off.
If Jack (!) were smart, he'd offer to marry Stephen Harper. For real. That's the only way he doesn't get annhiliated.
Gilles Ducceppe, Boc Quebecois: All good ole' Gilles need do is lay back in smile. The Bloc is currently in the neighbourhood of 50% in Quec and soveriegnty at about 60%. Gomery is particulrly pungent there, given that it happened there. This gives Ducceppe the lattitude he needs to go apeshit on Adscam that Harper doesn't without looking stupid, angry and mean.
This election is won or lost in Quebec. The Liberals hold but 21 of the province's 75 seats. That'll they'll lose ten is a guarantee. They could very well end up losing 15 or 17.
Those are 15 -17 seats that Liberals will need to pick up elsewhere just to stay where they are.
This'll get interesting yet.
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