So, earlier today, on twitter (and then facebook) I posted the following:

http://bit.ly/bfvxp I love the surprise by the journalists & the reasonable commentators. The mask slipped. They walk among us.

Click the link, I’ll wait.

Ok, so we can all agree that, regardless of what we think about Obama, his policies etc, that the comments about his daughter and her t-shirt start at racism and wander out, way out, to Crazytown with some really nice stormfronty shit and some lovely death threat/near death threat stuff.

A bit later I posted this:

RT @novenator via @RawStory Freepers refuse 2 apologize 4 calling Malia Obama ‘typical street whore’ http://is.gd/1wqdB http://tr.im/s2q4

Again, you can click the links. I’ll wait.

So, in the face of criticism they’ve gone and busted out the Photoshop fun (where “fun” means “homophobic bullshit”).

To this I received the following:

@ronindotca That Kos is disgusting isn’t it? Talking abt Malia Obama that way & not aplogizing. Just like Bristol Palin.

So, let’s stop for a second and think about this, shall we?

1) Kos? Eh? Ohhhh.. I see you’re talking about a liberal website that you feel aggrieved by. Ok. Thanks.
2) Kos didn’t say anything about her.
3) The comments about Bristol Palin were not about Bristol Palin. They were about the hypocrisy of a woman who wants to tell people how to run their reproductive lives having a pregnant daughter. The problem was a whole “do as I say, not as my family does” thing.
4) How old is Bristol Palin again?
5) (psst: this is the important bit, so pay attention)  ARE YOU SERIOUSLY USING A SERIES OF JOKES ABOUT A YOUNG WOMAN GETTING PREGNANT BY HER IDIOT BOYFRIEND TO JUSTIFY OVERT, DISGUSTING, IGNORANT, KNUCKLE DRAGGING RACISM (WHICH CONTAINS DIRECT THREATS OF VIOLENCE) DIRECTED AT AN INNOCENT YOUNG WOMAN WHO DID NOTHING WORSE THAN PUTTING ON A T-SHIRT?
6) Honestly, I have nothing else.

Oh, I replied to her:

@jaxbchgirl521 Umm.. you’re an idiot.

What else could I say?

Oh, as a sort of post script, I encourage you to go and read her twitter timeline, it’s a wonderful jumble of bigoted ignorance. I would suggest the medical application of whiskey after you’re done.

https://twitter.com/jaxbchgirl521

My Dad has a saying, it may well not be his, but it goes like this: snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. 

This is essentially what the Liberal Party of Canada is in the process of doing. At the very time that they should be showing their organized, well disciplined side. At at time when Harper and his CPC are vulnerable, at a time when (in my opinion) it would be very nice to have people who kind of like Canada back in charge, they are embarking on one of their periodic bouts of stupid. 

Not content to just piss away the coalition, not content to get rid of Dion before the May 2009 leadership convention they seem to be poised to elect Ignatieff as leader via a conference call… 

Let’s leave aside the many issues with Ignatieff for a second (and they are legion) and stop and think for a second. The. Liberals. Are. Going. To. Throw. Over. Their. Leadership. Race. Via. A. Phone. Call. 

The only thing standing between a CPC majority at this point is 1) the fact that lots of Canadians don’t trust/like Harper and his gang of gits and 2) The Bloc Quebecois is still in play in Quebec. 

I know that Madame doesn’t want him to run again, I know that he is no longer a young man, I get that he’s done, but holy shit Jean Chretien must be sitting somewhere thinking “If you idiots don’t sort this shit out I’m going to come down there and and kick your asses.”.

This collection of electoral maps is just so fricking cool.

Ok, so New Zealand just had an election and here’s what I know: National (sort of Harper CPC with a slicker, but more worrisome leader) got the most seats of any party (59). On the right, they are joined by ACT with 5 seats. On the left, Labour got reduced to the second largest party, with 43 seats, after 9 years of leading the country in what looks like (to me at least) a pretty good way. Green got 8 seats, the Māori Party got 5 and the Progressives and the United Future each got 1. 

So far so good right.

Here’s the tricky bit. Many of the parties that now have seats never won a single riding. As in their MPs were not elected in the way that a North American or UK citizen would understand the term. If you look here you can see the count, but because New Zealand uses Mixed Member Proportional you can see that the results are broken down by Electoral Seats (as in seats actually won by direct votes) and List Seats (as in popular vote based seats that are then taken from a list of MPs). 

As much as the Canadian “first past the post” system is often unfair, and doesn’t represent the will of the popular vote, this system seems fraught as well. The Greens, for instance (who I largely sympathize with - I had a very nice conversation with their local candidate/MP here in Dunedin - their plans are smart, concrete and for the most part well thought out) didn’t win a single riding. But they have 8 seats. Again, I like the idea of them being there, but it still strikes me as odd.

If you’re a political junky like me you love elections. They bring everything into such stark focus. 

But honestly, enough already. 

Hot on the heals of the Canadian General Election came the US Election, which will be followed by the NZ General Election (this Saturday) and now Charest has pulled the pin and has called a snap early winter provincial election. 

Ok, he’s ahead in the polls, ok, Bourassa used to do this shit all the time, but FFS, an election in December?

Oh well, now I guess I get to figure out how voting at a distance works for Quebec.

That John McCain? The one that just conceded? That guy would have made a most excellent president. 

I really wonder where he’s been lately. p

Thank you. 

PS: Seriously. I mean it. Thanks. 

PPS: That tight shot of the weeping Jesse Jackson? Yeah that one put me over the fucking edge. Who do I bill for the Kleenex? 

Where I am it’s already late Monday, and you, my fine American friend, have a whole day left to make a decision. 

I know that he will still be an American president. I know that he will have to operate with in the confines of what all that means. I get that. I understand that he is not going to be the messiah, that he is not a panacea for all that is currently so very wrong in your country. I get that he will make mistakes, and that he will, indeed, defend America’s interests at home and abroad etc etc. and that this means that I won’t like many of his decisions. I am fully aware that the left in the US is often close to the centre, and often to the right, in many other contexts, of the rest of the world’s understanding of “left”. I honestly am aware of  all of these things. 

All of this being said, please understand me when I say that I lack vocabulary to explain to you how much you need to vote for him. Not just for you, though I know that your country needs him, but for the rest of us. 

Because we really need you to have grown up leadership right now. Because we really need to believe that you can make the right decision when presented with one so stark, so binary. And because we really want to start liking you again. 

When people like me, Canadian born lefties (and our ilk all over the world) are accused of being Anti-American, this is a gross over simplification. I love many Americans, I love large swaths of your country, I love the idea of America. 

What I don’t like is your current management. What I don’t like is that one of your political parties believes that the only way to gain power is to demonize and spew hate about anyone who isn’t them. Surely the Democrats are not blameless in this, but when you start implying (or actually saying) that the man running for President is a terrorist you have crossed a line. You have exposed a naked love of power at all costs that ranks as the most dangerous of all human traits. If our history as a species has taught us only one thing it’s this: the first step towards making it ok to kill someone is to dehumanize them. This is the process that the Republicans have started. This is why they are no longer fit to govern. 

So on Tuesday, please, look deep inside, and turn your back on the hate, on the religious extremism, on the badly informed decision making, on the fake folksiness, on the contrived “just folks” act from a millionaire son of a second generation general officer and vote for Obama. 

The rest of us will thank you. And you’ll be able to look at yourself in the mirror.

Hot on the heels of wheeling out his Mum to show he’s a nice guy, further insulting Quebecers by saying that their opposition to his stupidity is due to demagoguery and not that the policies are just insulting and moronic Our Maximum Leader Stephen The Wonderous and Most Smartiest™ has decided that the next member of his party that he must muzzle is, well, himself. 

To that end he will no longer be giving remarks to the press pool that is traveling with him. He will, how ever, continue to give speeches and one-on-one interview with local reporters as he travels. 

The point of the whole pool reporter thing is that the reporters traveling with a leader become experts on the leader. Think of it like a beat reporter who’s beat flies all over the country. So, in theory at least, these journalists will know the most about Stevie and his most excellent ideas and wonderousness and smartiestness™. So these reporters are, following this theory to it’s end, the most dangerous because, unlike the rest of the members of their profession and the general public, they get to hear Harper talk every day, they get access every day to ask him about stuff that he’s said or things that are happening in other leaders camps. 

Local journalists from smaller markets may well be very good at their job, they may well not be star struck by getting such a great interview, but they aren’t experts on Steven the Most High and Wonderful™. 

So, basically, what our PM is saying is that he doesn’t trust himself to talk to anyone who’s heard what he said yesterday or the day before and he doesn’t trust himself to talk to the best journalists that the various media outlets have put on his bus. 

So either a) he’s hiding something b) he’s scared c) he doesn’t really want to talk to Canadians or d) all of the above.

When exactly did the world “conservative” get redefined to mean “social conservatives/raging nutbars”?

All last night CNN and other media outlets were on and on about how McCain wasn’t doing well with “conservatives”. I kind of thought to myself “hmm.. he’s winning states, as a Republican, in the Republican primary, doesn’t that make him a conservative?”

Then they started to unpack what they meant during one of those little segments about demographics and exit polling and I discovered that what they meant.

At some point we have to stop and leave some words and their meanings be, right? Otherwise all this meaning creep will just lead to nothing having any meaning.

Also, if Wolf Blitzer says “the best political team on televison” or whatever it is he says one more time I vote he gets sent back to a war zone.