Good, wholesome, uplifting folk music from Canada, commemorating that time they totally kicked America's ass when it tried to invade. That second time, actually. The Yankees tried it once before during the Revolution, and that didn't go so well either. But I can't find any songs about it.

Are the Canadians the only people on Earth to have beaten the tar out of a US invasion twice? They're a scrappy bunch. Their obesity rate is only half the US's. When they're all hopped up on maple syrup they have the strength of a hundred beavers and can chew through solid oak. They can regenerate severed limbs using the power of socialism, and their thick, sturdy dollar is bigger than ours. Never underestimate them.

Today Canada voted! Again! And HogBlog is here once again to tell you what to think.

Not much, to tell the truth.

You can see fun little updating scorecards here and here and here and probably lots of other places too, if you like to keep track of these things. The writing's on the wall, and the Conservatives under Stephen Harper are going to get a minority government. Neither the Conservative win nor the Liberal loss are shaping up to be all that overwhelming. As far as vote shares and numbers of seats in Parliament go, to a first approximation they've just traded places.

It's been a boring election. Like, really boring. Even I can't get too excited about it. I was actually hoping the Liberals would lose more seats. Because, and let's be perfectly honest here, they were sort of lame. They made Paul Martin their leader, for god's sake. That's lamer than a one-legged duck made of cheese, which is very lame indeed, let me tell you. Paul Martin was disturbingly reminiscent of a US Democrat. (Not one of your Howard Deans, either.) Though he looked more like William Shatner. Only without Shatner's charisma and sincerity. If only he'd grabbed the microphone and shouted 'KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!', maybe he could've made it. But no. Hopefully, a Conservative victory means he'll quit, and maybe next time the Liberals can pick a leader who looks a little more like Leonard Nimoy.

The New Democratic Party, my personal favourite, has made gains. Their leader, Jack Layton, looks like Jack Nance, best known as Pete Martell on Twin Peaks. (There is no evidence yet that, after defeating his Liberal challenger, Layton phoned up Paul Martin to say 'She's dead. Wrapped in plastic.') They're the only vaguely interesting party up there. I was hoping Svend Robinson, their openly gay ex-MP who left Parliament after admitting to stealing a ring from an auction (which he blamed on a bipolar disorder), would win a seat again, but it looks like it wasn't meant to be. Winnipeg's elected a couple of NDPers. It's not such a bad place, Winnipeg. Some of the men are hot.

The Conservative leader, Stephen Harper, doesn't really look like anyone, so far as I can tell. Except for maybe some kind of oily golem-like creature made out of dough. It's not like he'll actually have the votes to do anything significant, though, so...who cares?

ADDENDUM (28/01/06): For real talk about real things and real people who aren't William Shatner, check out the comments to this post on Making Light.

Canada and Denmark are fighting a rudimentary infowar via Google ads.

It's official! Canada's House of Commons has legalised same-sex marriage throughout their wide and fair and bountiful and chilly and moose-infested land. The NDP, the Bloc Quebecois, and most of the Liberals backed it, although one Liberal minister left the Cabinet in order to vote against it. Naturally, the Conservatives were opposed, and Stephen Harper is threatening to 'revisit' the legislation if his party ever comes to power. Which just means we'll have to make sure they never do! Never ever ever never ever never never never ever ever ever vote for a Conservative. They have shown themselves to be small men with smaller minds and still smaller hearts.

For your convenience, here's the story in the Toronto Star.

"(This) is about the Charter of Rights," Prime Minister Paul Martin said earlier Today.

"We are a nation of minorities. And in a nation of minorities, it is important that you don't cherry-pick rights.

"A right is a right and that is what this vote tonight is all about."

...

But an Irish-born rookie Liberal MP was quoting Trudeau's famous line about the state having no place in the bedrooms of the nation.

Michael Savage spoke poignantly about a member of his own family, and described the tolerance that he says makes Canada special.

"I have not compromised my faith in supporting this legislation. I have embraced it," he said.

"The fact that we (in Canada) are among the first is not something we should hide. It's something we should celebrate. . . .

"(We are) a nation of equality. A nation of strength. A nation of compassion. A nation that believes we're stronger together than we are apart. And a nation where we celebrate equality. . . .

"We will send a statement to the world that in Canada gays and lesbians will not be considered second-class citizens."

And the Globe and Mail:

One Tory MP scoffed at the Liberals' self-proclaimed defence of human rights. He said the government has failed to protect the rights of children by refusing to toughen child-pornography laws or by raising the age of sexual consent above 14.

“I'm sick and tired of hearing people on that side of the House talking about rights, rights,” Myron Thompson said.

365Gay.com:

During the final hours of debate on the bill Conservative MP Dave Chatters of Alberta asked, "What will be the next step down the infamous slope?"

"Will it be legalizing polygamy? Legalizing prostitution? Legalizing hard drugs or maybe just working for organized crime to import strippers and drugs? God only knows, Mr. Speaker."

CTV.ca:

The legislation applies to civic weddings at public venues like city halls and courthouses. Religious groups still have the right of refusal to sanctify same-sex marriages, but opponents of the bill are vowing to keep up their fight -- fearing they could be sued for refusing to carry out same-sex marriages.

"(This) is effectively exposing people of faith to persecution and prosecution," said Charles McVety, president of the Canada Family Action Coalition. "I want to make it very clear today that this is the beginning of the formal fight against the definition of marriage."

...

[Alberta's conservative Premier Ralph] Klein said although some members of his caucus are threatening to use everything at their disposal to get around the legislation, "there are no legal weapons; there's nothing left in the arsenal."

What a great way to cap off Pride Month. What a beautiful, absolute, irreversible victory. Not just for gays and lesbians, but for the very ideas of equality, dignity, and justice.

Apparently George Bush made some kind of speech tonight. I wish I could sit him down in my living room tonight, look him in the eyes, and tell him to go fuck himself off a bridge. Because this has a hell of a lot more to do with freedom, and decency, and courage, and the triumph of hope than anything that tiny little man has ever dreamt of.

Thank you, Paul Martin. Thank you for acknowledging that I am human.

It's two human rights triumphs for the price of one: gay marriage in the Canadian military!

Let's let that sink in.

Not only does Canada allow gays and lesbians to serve openly with honour and respect in its military (such as it is)...

Not only does Canada (in most of its provinces) allow gays and lesbians to marry...

Now the gays in the military are marrying.

Pretend I have a photograph of it right here. No...Here. Down a little. To the left. There. Now look at it. Take a good long look. Use your imagination, god damn it. Play along. Are you looking? Good. This is what freedom looks like. Suck it up.

Freedom is on the march!

Freedom, I said!

Perhaps you are confused. I know that, according to no less an authority than the President of the United States of America, freedom involves keeping your trap shut and waving the flag while we rough up nations full of dusky people. Believe it or not, freedom is not in fact synonymous with escalating violence and deception while the media defers to a power-mad elite dragging virtually every facet of the nation into a gigantic clusterfuck (to use the technical term). One of the many horrible things about the American President is the way he keeps ass-raping the language of idealism. Freedom, in fact, involves being free. Like those two Canadian soldiers: able to shape their own destinies without the scolding interference of bigots.

Freedom is on the march!

...Of course, there's always someone ready to piss on the parade.

This is a bit strange, no?

ST. JOHN'S, NFLD. - All offshore oil platforms on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland are being evacuated before a U.S. missile test that could shower the area with debris. Offshore oil platform.

The U.S. air force will launch a Titan IV rocket on Monday from Cape Canaveral. The debris – including a 10-tonne solid rocket booster – is expected to fall near the Hibernia platform.

Non-essential workers are being removed on Thursday, while remaining staff will leave over the weekend.

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams said he and federal officials are attempting to persuade the U.S. air force to delay the launch of the rocket, or to change its trajectory.

"As soon as we were aware of it, we got on to it immediately," Williams told reporters Thursday afternoon.

The evacuation involves the gravity-based structure at Hibernia and the floating platform at Terra Nova.

The drill rig GSF Grand Banks, which is working at the White Rose field, is being towed from the area.

The Canada-Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Board said Hibernia's operators have been advised that debris may fall within about 27 kilometres of the platform.

Fred Way, the chief executive officer of the petroleum board, described the evacuation as "precautionary."

About 245 people work at a time at Hibernia, which is located about 350 kilometres east of St. John's.

Another 80 people work at the Terra Nova platform in a shift.

Oops. I spoke too soon. The story's been changed, and the launch postponed. Macleans.ca has more:

"This just simply can't happen," said Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams, who was briefed on the problem Thursday by the provincial offshore petroleum board.

Williams said Hibernia, the Terra Nova development and the drilling rig Glomar Grand Banks are all in the area.

"I don't think the Americans were aware, or had really thought it through, as to how close this was to the Hibernia platform," Williams said following two urgent phone conversations with Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan and a call to Frank McKenna, Canada's new ambassador to Washington.

"That has to be the case. Why would they drop a piece of space debris out of the sky and take a chance that it happens to be 15 miles in the right spot? If it's off, it could obviously have very serious consequences."

...

But the shutdowns could have had a significant economic impact, taking up to two weeks to return to maximum capacity again, Williams said, at a cost of $250 million.

What the devil is the Air Force playing at? Why on Earth is a Titan IV passing over that area in the first place? Is the DoD putting a satellite into a polar orbit?

A site called Spaceflight Now, which keeps track of launches and suchlike, indicates that the rocket is a Titan 4B, launching something for the National Reconnaissance Office:

Launch period: Exact time is classified but liftoff will happen sometime between 8 and 10:30 p.m. EDT Launch site: SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.

The Lockheed Martin Titan 4B, known as B-30, will launch a classified payload for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office. The launch will be run by the U.S. Air Force. Launch delayed from Dec. 18, 2001 and July 3, 2002. It was then transferred from the original launch site of Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, to Cape Canaveral. Delayed from October 2004. Delayed from Feb. 20 due to payload issue. Delayed from April 6. Delayed from April 10 due to ground equipment troubles. [April 5]

Seems very likely the satellite is destined for a polar orbit, then. The original launch site, Vandenberg AFB, as far as I know, just does ICBM tests and polar launches. It's probably quite a large satellite, as the Titan 4B is a heavy-lift booster. Could be a weather satellite, I suppose. As it's the NRO, it could also be some form of spy satellite. As it's classified, one can't help but suspect the latter.

This probably isn't a big deal at all, apart from the brainless fuck-up of dumping debris near something important...But given the current regime's interest in weaponising space, it might be prudent to keep a close eye on such things.

UPDATE (4/10): Not a polar orbit. Probably something like 57 degrees inclination. The mission was originally intended to launch from Vandenberg...Perhaps it was destined for a different orbit before? Or perhaps you can get it to the same orbit from either place. I suppose I could try to find out, but...I'm lazy.

....Okay, I checked. Titan rockets have been launched from Vandenberg, putting reconnaissance satellites into an orbit with inclination 57 degrees.

It won't be too long before the Canadian Parliament votes on a bill to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples all across that fine nation. But why the heck should anyone care what I have to say about that? I'm not a Canadian. Go read a Canadian blog instead. It seems that America's fucktards are trying to export their homophobia to the snowy north. I'd like to apologise, on behalf of America; I'd like to, but unfortunately I can't, as the fucktards down here aren't really sorry at all, and also happen to be running the country.

Canada, I really hope America can make all this up to you some day.

I've been slacking off with the blogging and the Canada and so forth lately. It's a good thing the world has Gary Farber in it, to shine the Light of Truth onto the latest blockbuster political scandal to strike our snowy neighbours to the north: Citizenship and Immigration Minister Judy Sgro has resigned following allegations that she agreed to protect a Brampton pizza-shop owner from deportation in return for lots of free pizza. Also garlic bread.

Sgro, you may recall, also made headlines last year during Strippergate,
when it was alleged that she provided a temporary visa to a Romanian exotic dancer who'd volunteered with Sgro's campaign. Larry Zolf wrote a column on that back in December, in which it is revealed that Sgro favoured importing exotic dancers to make up for a shortage of home-grown Canadian strippers. Won't someone think of the poor strip-club industry?

Of course, there's lots more on this in the Toronto Star, among others. If you slog through their free registration, you can still read all their articles. Unlike certain other papers I could name...

What can we learn from all this?

Let's compare and contrast Canadian political scandals with those of the United States for a moment.

In Canada, we have Pizzagate, Strippergate, and Sponsorgate.

In the United States, on the other hand, we have Lying-and-Fearmongering-Chief-Executive-gate, and of course Torturegate, and We-Totally-Fucked-Up-Iraq-gate, not to mention that old chestnut, The-Country-Is-Being-Run-By-Amoral-Mendacious-Buffoons-gate. Pretty much everything about US politics right now ought to be a scandal, really. There is simply no longer any connection between what the President and his chums say and any sort of objective reality.

It must be nice to live in a nation that can get all worked up over a couple of pizzas, where the populace hasn't been numbed into a sort of shell-shocked complacency by the sheer horror of being alive...

Just in case you were wondering.

In 2002, according to the OECD, Canada spent 9.6 per cent of its gross domestic product on health care, both private and public. Among the 26 countries surveyed, it ranked sixth in terms of health spending.

(The United States devotes 14.6 per cent of its gross domestic product to health care but consistently ranks lower than Canada in terms of results like life expectancy and infant mortality.)

...

But one fact appears to be true: The more privatized the health system, the faster its costs rise. The reason, according to virtually every study into the issue (including one commissioned by Klein), is that universal medicare produces tremendous economies — mainly in the area of paperwork and administration.

Three cheers for socialism!

World indifferent.

So the United States will be spending another four years locked into a paranoid nightmare where logic and reason cease to function, and the very idea that there might exist an objective reality or truth is shat upon by foaming political mullahs who value only loyalty and blind obedience in a way that makes one think it wouldn't be so bad if the machines took over, not so bad at all...

What does Canada make of this?

News flash: George Bush is still as popular up there as pustulent gonorrhea, and he's dribbling all over our the few pissy scraps remaining of our country's reputation. He is so reviled, in fact, that the White House is currently thinking it would be a bad idea for him to address Parliament when he visits Ottawa at the end of the month...As it would be bad publicity if he were heckled.

No final decision has been made, but those involved with the planning of the visit (Nov. 30 and Dec. 1) want to avoid pictures on U.S. network television of a president being booed or shouted at as he embarks on a second term seeking warmer ties with allies who had cooled toward his administration.

In fact, the Prime Minister was forced to expel MP Carolyn Parrish from the Liberal caucus for her most outspoken Bush-hatery. She has been something of a critic of Bush in the past, and said a few undiplomatic things in the wake of the election. I certainly understand and even share her sentiments; I hate damn American bastards too. But perhaps she was a little blunt, a little gauche, when she stomped on a George Bush action figure on an episode of This Hour Has 22 Minutes and then told the Prime Minister to 'go to hell'. Hating the bastards in private is one thing, but that's just silly. That's the sort of thing one expects of a blogger, not a Member of Parliament.

And that's in Canada; you know how passive-aggressive they usually are. Just imagine what the French are saying about us...

The provincial Progressive Conservative Party in Ontario has just elected a new leader, and his name is John Tory.

Well, I thought it was funny.

Excuse me?

I don't have to take this. Fuck you.

I'm never shopping here again.

UPDATE: An unrelated thing.

Peter Marshall: Is Billy Graham considered a good dresser?

Paul Lynde: No, but he's a terrific end table.

Manitoba is now the fifth province or territory in Canada to legalise same-sex marriage. A judge affirmed Thursday morning that marriage was to be a union of 'two persons' after three same-sex couples sued for exactly that; neither the federal nor provincial government opposed the ruling. Manitoba now joins Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, and, of all places, the Yukon in allowing same-sex unions. Wasting no time, at least two such couples tied the proverbial knot yesterday.

Manitoba is still the only province in Canada I've actually visited. It's also a really great band run by a mathematician. Watch the video for 'Jacknuggeted'. You'll thank me.

Oh dear...The Winnipeg Sun refers to an inhabitant of Winnipeg as a Pegger. For the record, to the best of my knowledge, heterosexual females in Winnipeg are no more likely to employ cunningly-wrought phalloid devices on their male partners than are such females elsewhere in the developed world.

(Aren't you familiar with Of Montreal?)

So how is same-sex marriage doing up in Canada these days, hmm?

Larry Zolf describes the politicking involved.

The Vatican refuses to accept the separation of church and state, and won't accept any civil union as a compromise, either. The many Catholic MPs in the Liberal caucus have been gun-shy on the issue. They like the fact that it will be the Charter that will give gays their legal marriage, and it will be the Charter that these MPs can cling to for fairness and steadfastness in murky political waters.

Martin's adroitness in handling the gay marriage issue, and his recognition of the Chrétien formula of avoiding trouble have worked. The majority of ethnic and Catholic MPs in the Liberal caucus reflecting their constituents were in open rebellion on gay rights. Getting the Supreme Court and the Charter to push same-sex marriage through is a gift horse those MPs refuse to look in the mouth.

It was the Liberals who took a bit of a beating on gay rights in election 2004. Dennis Mills lost his seat to a massive gay vote for NDP Leader Jack Layton. In other ridings gays and Liberals coalesced for victory. Mills was targeted by gays because he wore his Catholicism on his sleeve and gays took umbrage at his defiance. He became the only Toronto Catholic Liberal MP to go down in defeat.

Will someone please please please get Jack 'Nance' Layton to say 'There was a fish in the percolator' on TV? 'She's dead...Wrapped in plastic' would also be acceptable, although a bit dark.

Layton swept the gay vote, taking it away from the Liberals where it had rested since the days of Pierre Trudeau and his "the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation." Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe and his Quebec Catholic MPs do not share the angst of their brethren in the Martin caucus. The Bloc as usual departs from the Canadian and Liberal norm in its wholesale endorsement of same-sex marriage.

Another victory for the Gay Conspiracy! Our pink helicopters will begin deploying storm troopers momentarily.

Canadian election results are starting to come in!

So far the Liberals are doing quite well in Atlantic Canada...The new Conservative Party is taking in considerably less of the vote than the combined Alliance-PC tally from last time, which serves if nothing else to indicate that the Canadian population is not in the middle of a seismic rightwards turn. Queer Tory-turned-Liberal Scott Brison has been re-elected. Looks like about 10% of the ridings have their results in now, at least tentatively. 22 Liberal, 7 Conservative, 3 NDP. Although honestly who really gives a shit? Ontario's going to be the exciting part. Will Jack Layton win himself a seat? Will his wife win her's? Will the Conservatives have a breakthrough in Ontario? Will Stephen Harper rape twelve malamutes in an offering to his dark and terrible gods?

By the way, there was quite a good article in the latest Notices of the American Mathematical Society on the Poincare dodecahedral space and its possible connexion to the topology of spacetime. Can you believe that my old blog posting is the tenth site that comes up when you Google 'Poincare dodecahedral space'? Something is clearly wrong with the universe if an interesting 3-manifold gets so little attention.

Well piss my soul, it looks like the Bloc Quebecois just won its first seat of the election. That means we should soon find out exactly how hard an ass-pounding the Liberals have taken in Quebec. Is it a soreness-and-mild-headache sort of a pounding, or more of a teeth-falling-out sort of a pounding? I don't think it could be quite as bad as a swallowed-up-by-one's-own-inflamed-anus sort of a pounding. But don't take that as Gospel; I could be all coned up on rockies right now.

I really hope Transport Minister Tony Valeri loses; he's the chap to whom Paul Martin essentially gave Sheila Copps' seat. Some of the local Liberals are sufficiently miffed that they've been openly encouraging voters to go for the NDP candidate instead of Valeri.

Nothing particularly dynamic happening right this very pulsating moment, I don't think...I'm going to go for a pizza.

UPDATE: Change of plans...I got cheap Chinese instead. This election results business is going to take quite a while; maybe you should get a snack.

UPDATE: The Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada candidate in Mississauga East-Cooksville is ahead in his riding right now. I fucking love that.

UPDATE: Fun's over; looks like the Marxist-Leninist candidate has slid behind now. Oh well.

UPDATE: I need to buy a new sofa. I was looking through IKEA's catalogue online; it seems decent sofae are cursedly expensive. But that is life. A sofa is really an investment in one's future. Unless it is just a piece of furniture.

UPDATE: The Liberal candidate in Medicine Hat is named Cocks. So far the Liberals are looking unexpectedly strong: Ontario is being kind to them. Paul Martin and Jack Layton are both behind in their ridings right now, but only a teeny fraction of the votes have been counted so far, so this really doesn't mean anything at all, and so you might as well just disregard this update. Pretend I've been talking about fishing for the last paragraph.

UPDATE: The CBC has declared a Liberal minority government based on the results so far, thank crap; I think a Liberal-NDP coalition may just be a realistic possibility! And Jack Layton's catching up to Dennis Mills...Layton may just take this. (If he doesn't, he's probably finished as NDP leader.)

UPDATE: Layton's ahead by about 350 votes now!

UPDATE: That egg roll made me gassy. Better light some incense. Tony Valeri's lost!

UPDATE: A Liberal-NDP coalition looks pretty much inevitable now. The Bloc has apparently won more seats than ever before; the NDP looks to pick up at least 11 more seats, too. It seems every single pollster out there was totally and completely wrong about just about everything. Today's Jerkcity is just about the greatest thing I've ever seen. Ed Broadbent's won; I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts Layton will too.

UPDATE: He did! Unfortunately, it looks like Tony Valeri has pulled ahead again in his riding...Oh well. It's still going to be a Liberal-NDP coalition, just about the best outcome one could hope for. Layton talks about energy a lot; he sure does have enough of it. It's all that socialism. It's better than speed, you know. I'm cranked up on it right now. And it's beautiful.

And that's that! It's all over but the orgies.

Ed's Back.

If you like videos of elderly white men rapping about social-democratic politics, you should visit the website of former NDP Leader Ed Broadbent.

"Floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee, it's time for voting NDP."

This is quite outrageous.

Apparently Conservative operatives this afternoon sent out a press release entitled 'Paul Martin Supports Child Pornography?'

I know politics is a rough game and all, not really a place for gentlemen, but...Marketing your opponents as kiddie-pornographers? That's just sick. Sick sick sick. Sick and really opportunistic, given that Canada's been having a child-murder trial where the killer admitted to looking at child porn online. Apparently opposing child porn is enough in Conservative eyes to get one branded a 'supporter,' if one does it without being a Conservative.

They retracted it an hour later. They also sent out one saying the same about the whole NDP, which they did not retract. This is the worst and basest kind of political fuckery, without even the redeeming humour value of the 'Evil Reptilian Kitten-Eater' line the Ontario PCs trotted out in the last provincial election.

I could say more, but really it speaks for itself. So I will just say this:

Stephen Harper should be publicly bummed by a giraffe.

Ticktock!

Only ten days remain until Canada's federal election, called by Prime Minister Paul Martin in a spasm of twisted brainwrong. Things have not gone at all well for the reigning Liberal Party. Martin was originally hoping to make a grand sweep of all the Canadas; now the Liberals are struggling to stay neck-and-neck with the Conservatives, and the papers are full of stories about Stephen 'I'm Actually Quite Unpleasant, Really' Harper, the Conservative leader, predicting a majority government for his lot...There was this huge scandal business a few months back that really pissed people off at the Liberals, who have been in power now since 1993, and pissed off the Quebecois most of all, who have been defecting en masse from the Liberals to the separatist Bloc Quebecois.

The Bloc is a funny, funny beast...On most issues it's pretty social-democratic, as far as I can determine. It likes things like the Kyoto treaty, same-sex marriage, affordable housing, universal health care, and so forth. Unfortunately, there's this whole secessionist thing. And the Bloc's leader has toyed with the notion of propping up a Conservative minority government. Of course, he tacks on loads of conditions: the Tories couldn't attack same-sex marriage, they couldn't withdraw from Kyoto, they couldn't...essentially, they couldn't do any of the things they've said they'd do. Now that is just silly. Either the Bloc leadership is very silly indeed, or this talk of propping up minority governments is only there to make the Bloc look useful and unlike a total bloody waste of votes and space--I mean, where's the sodding point in having a secessionist party in the federal government? They can't do anything--or the Bloc leadership is actually quite unprincipled and, despite their social-democratic ideology, they really would prop up the Conservatives even without their unlikely caveats in return for a weakening of the federal system. That would be naughty.

The Bloc does seem like a horrible way to cast a protest vote. Why not just smear your ballot with feces? It amounts to the same thing.

There are lots of good reasons to be cross at the Liberals. They have been corrupt and arrogant, and they've been in power ten years now; they need a good shaking-up. But one can't shake them too hard, or else the Conservatives might weasel into power; and no-one wants that. Except Conservatives. And who cares what they think?

I sure don't.

Let's have a look at what Canadians for Equal Marriage have to say...

The Conservative Party is objectively anti-gay; it inherits the virulently homophobic Alliance's MPs. Also, Stephen Harper looks a bit like David Foley all bloated with venom and malice.

The Liberals, despite internal disagreements, are much, much nicer. I suspect that they would, in the end, however reluctantly and grumblingly, go along with same-sex marriage. They certainly wouldn't try to roll back gay rights any. Unlike the Conservatives. Also, Prime Minister Paul Martin looks like a worn-out old William Shatner.

It should come as no surprise that the New Democratic Party is the most gay-friendly. It's unashamedly leftist. It's greener than the Greens. It is led by Jack Nance impersonator Jack Layton. This poll has the NDP winning the support of 22% of the electorate, and they've been consistently pulling in over 16% even in the most pessimistic polls.

Who cares where the minor parties stand on gay marriage? The minor parties are there purely for entertainment value. And they do not disappoint. A Marijuana Party candidate was evicted from his campaign office for, of all things, marijuana. Apparently he was offering pot cookies to anyone who made a $4 campaign contribution. I'm sure it was a brilliant idea on paper, or at least it would have been if his hands could've stopped grooving long enough to write anything down.

If one wishes to scold the Liberals, why not vote NDP? They're jolly nice! While they're certainly not going to form a government themselves any time soon, a Liberal minority government propped up by the NDP would seem to be a Good Thing, and Canadian voters apparently agree. Why not give that a go, eh?

I hope to Jelly that Canadians aren't foolish enough to bring in a Conservative government. There's never an excuse for that. Conservatives are, after all, just wrong.

So you can follow along at home, here is the Toronto Star's election section. And here is the Globe and Mail's. And here is the CBC's. Here is Canda.com's, an appendage of media pimp CanWest, which owns the National Post, the newspaper for assholes. And that's all I can be bothered to link to, as I'm hungry and feel like poaching some eggs. Ta.

Just so we're all clear on this, the Conservatives in Canada are still evil:

"People are going to mobilize a lot more as they realize that Mr. Harper is a real threat to equality," said Laurie Arron, a gay-rights activist who trailed Harper from Hamilton to nearby Guelph, Ont.

Things turned ugly in Guelph, Ont., as Arron and fellow protester Bob Smyth tried to question Harper about his party's stand on gay marriage.

Conservative supporters shouted "shut up, shut up," and a frail elderly man punched Smyth in the face and bashed him on the head with a campaign sign.

Stephen Harper seems to have hit upon the strategy of being too boring to demonise in the way one could Stockwell Day, but he's still a big flaming horse's ass and a vote for his party is a vote for Republicanism Lite and bigotry hidden like Adam West behind a domino mask.

Hurrah! Another American praises the NDP!

There's an election coming in just over a month, you know. It's official.

Paul Martin accuses Stephen Harper of wanting to Americanise Canada.

Stephen Harper replies, 'My Canada will be as Canadian as any other Canada.'

Jack Layton still looks like Jack Nance. And, y'know, he's still standing up for social-democratic principles and values. And he began the official campaign season by partying with the Barenaked Ladies. You just can't lose with that guy.

This Ipsos-Reid poll shows the Liberals with the support of 35% of the electorate nationally, the Conservatives 26%, and the NDP 18%. The Bloc Quebecois is also bringing in 50% of Quebec voters. These numbers don't really mean as much as one would hope, for Canada's elections, like Britain's, tend to give the victorious party a disproportionate number of seats in Parliament. The Liberals' 35% would still translate, according to these pollster chaps, into a majority in the Commons, though just barely. The NDP is actually in second place, beating the Conservatives, in Atlantic Canada, and is just 8% behind the Liberals in British Columbia.

The Toronto Star even has an election blog!

What more could you want? (Besides an NDP majority government.)

UPDATE: Good news! The BC NDP is seven percentage points ahead of the BC Liberal Party, and seem at this stage to have a solid shot at recapturing the provincial legislature next year. And that's even with the Green Party factored in. The Green Party is well ahead of the Marijuana Party, which is a silly, silly party indeed.

It's a fact: Prime Minister Paul Martin looks like William Shatner.

(Why didn't William Shatner run for leadership of the Conservative Party? I have no idea if he's actually conservative or not, but it would've been fun.)

Some of Paul Martin's comments on the Liberal sponsorship scandal that is all a-bubbling Up North--something on the order of $100 million (Canadian) meant (so I gather) for PR work to promote national unity (this was just after Quebec nearly voted for secession) misappropriated under Chretien and funneled to Liberal-friendly Quebec advertising firms, about which Paul Martin claims to have known nothing--seem just surreally bizarre to me, when I think about them...

Martin repeated his comment from yesterday that he would resign if the facts proved he had prior knowledge of the sponsorship scandal when he was finance minister.

'I didn't do it, I swear to God. But if I had done it, and you guys were to find out, then I'd resign. But I didn't. So I won't. But I would if I did. Honest. You should believe me when I say that. Even though, if I had done it, most of what I've just said would have been a lie. Except for that last part, I swear. But I'm not lying. So there. PS QUEBEC RULZ!'

UPDATE: Unrelated but still Canadian, Conrad Black has decided to sue Hollinger International for defamation, for suing him for cooking the books and felching away company money.

"So you think just because you've lighted me on fire I'm going to stop my quest to continue my quest to stop you lighting me on fire, do you?"

Canada in Liberal Sponsorship Horror!

Jean Chretien to Paul Martin: 'I will burn your soul with my fury!'

Innocent Souls sucked through Portal to Hell!

Arafat Ablaze in Kerosene Oyster Hell!

Here's a bit of fun on the roots of Canadian (and British) political parties' nicknames. Knock yourself out.

Today's word is toque. A toque is what foolish Americans would call a 'stocking-cap', or related forms of head-shrouding. I wore one myself, today, after getting up in a manner some might dub 'extremely late', so that no living person would be forced to endure the sight of my limp and unwashed hair. It is a good toque, black and warm, with a little Canadian maple leaf embroidered on it. Also 'CANADA' in big cursive letters. I bought it in, of all places, Canada. If you can imagine that. I was told that this toque made me look dark and mysterious; I immediately felt like David Boreanaz. For about five seconds. Then I remembered I'm not tall, not muscular, not manly, and not on television, which broke the spell. But those were five sweet seconds. And I owe it all to the toque.

In other, not-even-vaguely-Buffy-related news (unless Premier Gordon Campbell is actually some kind of immortal, vicious vodka-vampire)...

Oh, look, yet another scandal for the reigning BC Liberals. Imagine that. Same old story...Resignation, denying any wrong-doing, blah blah blah, foul stench of brimstone and corruption. That'll teach them to privatise railroads. And stew babies.^*

^*Note that there is no evidence that the BC government does stew or wishes to stew babies.^**

^**Yet.

In case you hadn't heard, Lord Black of Crossharbour, the right-wing Canadian media baron who gave up his citizenship to sit in the House of Lords like an overstuffed gilt throw pillow, has been sacked as non-executive chairman of Hollinger, International; which corporation is now sueing the bejeezus out of him for naughtily looting loads of cash from the company while he ran it.

Here is the story, from:

• CBC.ca
  
• The Globe and Mail
  
• The Toronto Star
  
• The Scotsman
  

Gosh...This just seems to have hit the newsosphere in the last two hours or so. It is fresh and fragrant, like new bread.

I don't much like Conrad Black, in case you hadn't guessed. I feel a very personal animosity towards him for treating his Canadian citizenship, something some of us would kill (or marry) to have, so cavalierly, so he could wear funny wigs and watch an ancient institution slide into irrelevance and decay.

The Vancouver Sun is reporting that one of the aides targeted in December's RCMP raid on BC legislature offices, Dave Basi, had a hand in the financial fun bucket of drug-smuggling, and may indeed have 'breached the public trust' in some unspecified but undoubtedly thoroughly naughty way during his involvement in the deal to privatise BC Rail.

Also, some stupid bastard in my apartment building has left his laundry sitting unchecked and unheeded in the washing machine for the last four hours. Whoever you are, I want you to know that I don't like you at all. Not even a tiny bit.

The obvious conclusion here is that capitalism is objectively pro-crack.

Have a gander at this old posting at Pedantry to discover just how often the US nearly went to war with Canada during the 19^th century.

Speaking of Canada, the Vancouver Sun has more on the recent police raid on the offices of two aides to BC provincial cabinet ministers. It was all about drugs. No-one is saying why, exactly, these two aides were targeted, just that some unspecified information came up in the course of other investigations into drugs and organised crime. The Sun claims that at least one was directly linked to the drug probe,

...which the RCMP says was launched in the spring of 2002 into the involvement of organized crime in the sale of B.C.-grown marijuana in the U.S. in exchange for cocaine, which was then sold in Canada.

There is apparently some kind of police incompetence or corruption angle too:

Victoria Police Chief Paul Battershill has confirmed the drug investigation is connected to the suspension with pay on Dec. 15 of Victoria police Constable Ravinder Dosanjh.

Sources have told The Sun the drug probe is targeting a suspected influential Victoria trafficker related to Dosanjh. The alleged trafficker is also a relative of a Vancouver resident who has worked on provincial and federal Liberal campaigns.

The RCMP issued this statement, which stresses the organised crime aspect.

The provincial government insists the aide raid has nothing to do with the business of governance and doesn't reflect at all on the BC Liberal Party (which is, you'll recall, not actually liberal at all, and totally unrelated to the federal Liberal Party). Premier Gordon Campbell, convicted drunk driver, had very little of any substance to say, when The Sun interviewed him by phone; he's still on vacation in Hawaii, where he was arrested for drunk driving a year ago. Drunkenly. (BC premiers have a history of fucking up like that.) However, some people are trying to link this to the recent deal to privatise BC Rail, which the BC Liberals had explicitly promised not to do, and which seems like a pretty poor deal for the province.

I don't really have a particular reason for mentioning this at all. Except that it paints British Columbian politics as being a bit scummy, and portrays the province as being held in a testicle-clamp of fear by drugs syndicates.

The logical conclusion seems to me to be that, if marijuana possession, growth, and distribution were legalised and regulated, not only would these crime rings be mostly neutralised, but family farms and small businesses could boom, and $6 billion (Canadian) or more a year could be added to the province's (legal) economy, more than is brought in by logging or, indeed, any other industry in the province; just imagine the tax revenues...

Which would you rather have in a province: the Canadian equivalent of the Corleones, or a bunch of happy, harmless stoners who remember not to operate heavy machinery and think about robots a lot?

And a Happy New Year.

I hate to see the Internet used for evil, rather than good, but unfortunately a lot of people are doing just that. Some of them are, in fact, so thoroughly corrupt and maleficient that they use the Internet to attack Canadians, the most lovable and inoffensive creatures on God's green earth (except for hedgehogs and penguins). A perfectly nice and upstanding Canadian started this website, Canadians for Wesley Clark, which is perfectly sensible because a Clark presidency would improve US-Canadian relations dramatically, given that quite a lot of Canadians hate Bush, and that Bush has done a lot of things to screw over Canada. There is also, I should point out, a Canada for Dean whose stated goal is to encourage American citizens living in Canada to vote Dean. While searching for this site, I also found a really sad and dire piece of right-wing hatery called 'If you like Canada, You'll Love Howard Dean', which is, from my perspective, a very true statement: I think Dean would fit in very well with the ruling Liberal Party up north. The article's take is, as you might imagine, somewhat different. To the author, Canada is something bad, which just goes to show how intellectually bankrupt these people are. I won't link to the article, because it's not very good at all, like most right-wing propaganda. It compares Dean to Lenin, which pretty much says it all right there.

But this bit of tripe is a perfect example of a 'conservative micromedia' which lashed out against our valiant Canadian brethren and sistren. There are a lot of right-wing Internet gadflies out there. The Freepers, and their ilk. Matt Drudge. Bloggers like the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, or Little Green Footballs. Or even harmless old Andrew Sullivan, who, though he doesn't threaten liberals with personal violence or offer another forum for racists, still spouts a lot of untruths and half-truths and deliberate distortions (on everything except gay marriage and pot) while peddling conservative ideology. And that's just on the Internet, leaving aside the Rush Limbaughs, the Bill O'Reillys, the Michael Savages and so forth who infest television and talk radio.

As this gentleman informed me earlier today, these people discovered Canadians for Wesley Clark, and deluged it with hate-mail.

It seems to me--I'm no expert, you understand--that this conservative micromedia is behaving just like a good old-fashioned mob. It only needs some flaming torches and pitchforks. The mindless aggression, us vs. them polarisation, hysteria, and illogical thought are all there already.

Should these people alarm us? Well, maybe. Ask David Neiwert.

Nothing says Christmas like a colonoscopy.

~CBC News

It should not suprise you to learn that the deregulation of Ontario Power Generation by Mike Harris's Tory government years ago has left the company haemorrhaging money and generally fucked.

Do not deregulate your power companies.

"Be smart. Be socialist."

All hail Paul Martin, Emperor of All the Canadas!

Did you realise that if you Google 'paul martin emperor of all the canadas', the top two hits are me? Bizarre. I didn't invent it.

This poor man, a gay Tory MP, has defected to the Liberals...One can hardly blame him. Now that the whole Uniting the Right thing is in principle a done deal, the new Conservative Party of Canada will, one expects, be just pipping with eagerness to flaunt people like Brison as proof that it isn't as horrid and evil and bigoted as the old Alliance, no sir...Even though a lot of it will be. I would not want Stephen Harper's hand deep within my rectal cavity, working me like a sock puppet, if I were him.

One great advantage I have over most of Canada is that I am spared the horrors of winter. That's right. Still 9C...Beautiful blue day today...Blue clouds, some blue sky, blue sea, blue mountains, everything's blue. Except the grass. Which is all green. Lusher and more verdant than it was this summer, in fact. And balmy. I can run around in a T-shirt and my jean jacket. Are you jealous yet? Because I want you to be jealous. Get jealous. Now.

For I am a rock star!

--

PS. Dalek

This poll here gave me extreme pleasure, in a completely legal, safe-for-prime-time sort of a way, requiring absolutely no lubrication. This CBC national poll--which I know is an isolated thing which may mean nothing at all and have no real significance, et cetera--shows the Liberals (of course) with an overpowering, like really totally overpoweringly crushingly huge, lead among Canadian voters.

And in second place? The lefty social-democratic NDP! Beating out a united Conservative Party of Canada (that's the Tories and Alliance all rolled into one hellish political quiche) by almost five percentage points! Ha!

Ha, I say, and ha ha ha, and again, ha! I say 'ha' repeatedly, without limit. Unto the end of time itself.

A Canadian Alliance MP, Larry Spencer, just said some extremely stupid things about homosexuality. This should come as no surprise whatsoever. The Alliance has a long and colourful history of homophobia and intolerance, going right back to the Bad Old Days of Stockwell Day, a long and extensive list of whose pronouncements--sourced, even!--you can find right about here.

The interesting thing about the Canadian Press story on Spencer is the encyclopaedic attention to detail, while adumbrating Spencer's offensive remarks. They were quite thorough. I admire that.

And it just gets wackier.

Spencer is officially the Canadian Santorum. But whereas in the US the only consequences for our Santorum so far have been the association of his name with the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter which is sometimes the by-product of anal sex, the Canadians sacked theirs. Perhaps it was unimaginative of them, but one can't help but find their solution ultimately more satisfying...

Shitfoam comes, and shitfoam goes, but a good sacking is forever.

On a completely tangential note, Toronto's mayorial election may spell good news for the federal NDP and its leader, Jack 'Nance' Layton.

What I was really poking around for, though, was information on the privatisation of BC Rail.

This struck me, because I'd distinctly remembered reading in the BC Liberal Party's manifesto a promise that they would not sell or privatise BC Rail. As you can read right here. Where it says that they will:

• Not sell or privatize BC Rail.

Which seems fairly unambiguous.

My knee-jerk gut reaction was to grumble 'Shame, shame, what is the world coming to, why back in my day,' and so forth, because privatising things generally leads to trouble, distress, and the British rail system. But, to be fair, knee-jerk socialism is no substitute for informed decision-making. It could be that this was a really swell deal after all. It's a deal on freight service, rather than passenger, so it seems at first glance as if it's less likely to dick over the public.

So I started looking. I looked coolly and dispassionately. I would like to say I weighed the arguments pro and con with a careful and critical ear, but on matters of business and finance, I do not know my own fundament from a hole in the proverbial ground. I can listen to people who do, though, and having done so, it seems as if the purchaser, Canadian National, is making out like a bandit.

CN is paying $1 billion for BC Rail, the government trumpets. Only it isn't, actually, as the papers are pointing out. CN is forking over $750 million itself, and promising another $250 million to come from corporate tax write-offs inherited from BC Rail (which apparently has a pool of some $850 million in write-offs). So this $250 million won't really be coming to British Columbia from the company, but in effect from the rest of Canada, in tax revenues from CN the federal and provincial governments will be losing. Which doesn't seem like a terribly nice thing to do. CN is in effect paying $750 million for a 60-to-90-year (its choice, so make that 90) contract to operate all that infrastructure. The province will technically retain ownership of the railbeds, but CN will get to haul all the freight over them. This is not an unprofitable venture. As it stood, BC Rail had already been turning a profit; by the end of the third quarter of 2003, it had raked in over $70 million. According to the Vancouver Sun, CN expects to turn a profit of $100 million a year. This figure may or may not be reasonable and accurate. The BC government cites some $30 million in debt interest and $40 million in maintenance costs that this deal will supposedly save the province; but if the railroad is already profitable, it is hard to see how this actually counts as saving anything. It seems as if this is a very good deal for CN, but not nearly so good a deal for the province. If it was determined to sell, or 'partner up', or however they want to describe it, it should, at the least, have gotten a much higher price. Let's do a lot of rounding, and be generous. For the province to break even on this deal over the 90 years of the contract, BC Rail would have to average no more than about $11 million in profits over that span. Going by its recent performance, BC Rail would be likely to exceed this by quite a margin.

Unless something awful happens in the next 60 to 90 years, which is entirely possible. If miraculous cheap anti-gravity renders railroads redundant in 2008, the province will have made out like a bandit. Will rail take it up the dumper enough to bring BC out on top? We will see. I would not feel comfortable gambling a large sum of provincial money on it.

Here you can listen to an interview with someone who seems to know how these tax break thingies work, via CBC BC.

According to this Vancouver Sun story, CN was the worst possible choice of buyers.

And so forth.

So, all in all, it looks like it was a bad idea. My socialist gut was right after all.

Who knew?

(Mildly updated at 11.47pm.)

One of Canada's lesser-known exports is evil. In fact, a very significant fraction of Canada's annual evil production is earmarket for foreign consumption, like Celine Dion, and commercials starring William Shatner. The domestic market just isn't what it was, these days. Ever since Stockwell Day was booted out as leader of the Alliance, the evil market has been positively stagnant. The evil industry is looking at hard times; they ask themselves, looking back at the glorious successes and shining fortunes of their past, will they ever again find an evil commodity so marketable as press mogul Conrad Black?

He is a baron now. Not unlike Vladimir Harkonnen.

Conrad Black gave up his Canadian citizenship to accept a peerage in Britain. What an ingrate. He had Canadianness just dropped right into his lap at birth, and did he appreciate it? No, sir! There are starving socialists in Washington who'd kill to be Canadian, and Black casts aside this wond'rous gift like an empty tube of lubricating jelly. And all to become part of an atavistic vestigial prosthesis dangling feebly from the anus of civilised society. It's like he renounced a lifetime's supply of chocolate for a tube of Cheese Whiz and some pork rinds.

I would not cross the street to piss upon him if he were on fire.

Though I am sure that, were he to find himself unexpectedly alight, he would refuse my micturary assistance in any case.

It pleases me that his right-wing media empire is crumbling.

The Marijuana Party urges you to support the NDP. The Globe and Mail has the story. Hear and see Jack Layton in a clip posted to Pot-TV. He looks like Jack Nance. I respect that.

If Seattle were part of Canada, the NDP would have just won this city's votes.

It's quite a trip, seeing a federal politician giving an interview to anything called Pot-TV...

'...And welcome to Pot-TV.'

'Good to be here.'

Matthew Yglesias has things to say about Canada! He posits that, culturally speaking, non-Southern Americans and non-Quebecois Canadians are pretty much the same, which, in some respects, is certainly true...Canadians watch Survivor too, and listen to techno, and so forth. Day-to-day life is more or less the same, up there and down here. Outside of Quebec, the accents you're likely to hear are no more exotic than you'd find in Maine or Wisconsin or on the set of Fargo. But he goes too far! Quoth he:

Another way of seeing this is that if Québec were to seceed, Canada would have competitive two-party politics between the Alliance and the Liberals much like our two-party system in the US (complete with annoying NDP/Green types).

...Which is just silly.

I feel I would be remiss in my duties as Official Go-To Guy for Canadian local politics (anointed in the comments to Mr Matthew's post by no less a personage than the puissant and benevolent Patrick Nielsen Hayden, though I'm pretty sure I won this crown by default) if I did not raise my voice in defense of the NDP.

The NDP is not some Johnny-come-lately protest party of disaffected young people. The New Democratic Party is a real, viable, and active part of the Canadian political scene, with a heck of a lot of history behind it. Which is actually quite interesting. So I'll tell you about it.

The Ontario NDP has a rather extensive (by Internet standards) set of pages devoted to the party's history and origins. (A few of them, alas, don't seem to be there...But, mirabile dictu, I've found a backup.) And, warming the heart of dedicated readers everywhere, they offer an extensive bibliography. The NDP grew up from the most unlikely roots...A sort of union between Progressives, labour, and farmers. The NDP as such came into existence in 1961, but it evolved pretty directly from much older movements. Some of these, the United Farmers of Ontario and the Independent Labour Party, actually managed to win the Ontario provincial elections and form a government, way way back in 1919, the year of the Winnipeg General Strike. They held onto power for a few years, and later rallied round the socialist banner with labour and farmers' movements spanning Canada to form the Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation, an avowedly socialist party originally run by James Shaver Woodsworth, an MP for Winnipeg. (There's been a lot of Winnipeg in Canadian progressive politics. How curious that progressivism should sprout up in the prairies...) How socialist were they, you ask? Read their Regina Manifesto of 1933 for yourself, and see! They supported a planned, socialised economy, achieved through democratic reforms without violence. The CCF met with some real political success, electing MPs and winning power in Saskatchewan in 1944, under the short yet passionate Tommy Douglas. The democratic socialist CCF government lasted five terms in Saskatchewan, which I find an utterly gobsmacking feat in a rural, prairie province. Of course, the Cold War was not kind to the CCF; the damnable Stalinists were giving socialists everywhere a bad name. The CCF reinvented itself as a much less extreme party, dropping the Regina Manifesto's commitment to the abolition of capitalism and the creation of a centrally-planned economy, officially becoming the grudgingly capitalist but socially-democratic (as opposed to democratic socialist) New Democratic Party in 1961. You can see yourself how their views have evolved over time, through the declarations and manifestoes kindly assembled by the NDP Socialist Caucus. The NDP has been for over forty years a viable, visible, and influential party of the genuine left; though they haven't formed a government or official opposition on the federal level, they've come close to opposition status, and they have formed provincial governments in British Columbia, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, the latter two of which are still in NDP hands. (There may have been others, in the Atlantic provinces, but I don't think so, and I didn't feel like checking.)

They still tell the fable of Mouseland.

The next federal election probably won't be too kind to the NDP, but the party remains a political force with a genuinely useful role to play, not to mention its vitality on the provincial level. There really isn't anything in the US to compare with it.

There are a lot of things about Canadian politics that brook no comparison. The Republicans in the US have never gone through anything like the massive and amusing meltdown and factionalisation the Canadian Tories experienced after Jean Chretien's Liberals came to power, the Tories themselves slipping into obscurity, the firebrand quasi-populist asshole Reform Party raising up in the prairies and becoming the Alliance yet completely and pathologically unable to get a break anywhere east of Manitoba (though Reform did manage one MP from Ontario, once...once), and the weird regional dynamics of the conservative-with-a-small-c parties on the provincial level like the Saskatchewan Party and the BC Liberals (who are not liberal; mainly free-enterprise, anti-labour, small government, low tax pro-property rights types; though they did promise not to go around privatising anything)...Even if and when the Tories and the Alliance hammer out all the details of their reunion, and even if Quebec was magicked off the face of the Earth by tea-time, you would still not end up with anything remotely approximating the American system, with a runaway conservative party pissing in the eye-sockets of democracy, and the putative liberals desperately trying to remember where they'd hidden their proverbial cojones...What you'd end up with would be, well, Canada. The Liberals would still be pretty unstoppable, the NDP would still be considerable, the Conservatives would still get smacked down like the punk little bitches they are.

Not to mention all the other meaningful differences between America and Canada, like Canada's First Nations population, Canada's at times halfhearted and grudging but still meaningful bilingualism, its absence of American arrogance, its humble view of its place in the larger world, its far more reasonable football rules (the Blue Bombers are 11 and 7) and spelling...

And it's just so gosh-darned nice up there!

I rest my case.

Can't get enough of that sweet Canadian politicking? Watch the results of the Saskatchewan provincial election as they come in! Last time I checked, the NDP had 20 seats sewn up and was leading in 11 more, enough to bring them into a fourth governing term. The Saskatchewan Party had 12 seats and was leading in 14 more. Both party leaders handily retained their seats.

Make that 22 and 11 to 16 and 11...There are only 58 seats total--it's a small province; humans aren't big on Saskatchewan generally--so 30 would land the NDP a small but meaningful majority.

The Liberals aren't leading in a single riding, the scoreboard says. Although other reports claim their leader is just barely, barely ahead in his own.

The Saskatchewan Party is full of spammers.

There are some fringe parties in Saskatchewan, but they aren't very interesting. Not like the Marijuana Party.

Make that 23 and 11 to 16 and 8, advantage NDP. Keep your fingers crossed.

The urban areas are overwhelmingly going for the NDP; the rural areas are turning out for the Sask Party. Surprise, surprise. This is why you should live in cities. Or maybe it's because you live in cities. Or perhaps both. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

UPDATE: The digital magazine New Winnipeg appears to have a hottie skater as its News&Media Director. Oh, and they have a feature on Mayor Glenn Murray's proposed overhaul of Winnipeg's tax system. (Winnipeg is in Manitoba, not Saskatchewan. This is because nothing is in Saskatchewan.)

Shizz...The NDP has 29 seats, to the Sask's 26, three still in play. The CBC is calling it an NDP victory. Their theory is that, though people wanted a change of government, they hated Sask Party Leader Elwin Hermanson too much to put him in charge. The Liberal leader has slipped just behind the NDP challenger in his riding.

It's all over but the dry-cleaning, folks.

Tomorrow is a provincial election in Saskatchewan, in which, so they say, the reigning New Democratic Party is neck-and-neck with the right-wing Saskatchewan Party. Please, for the love of God and all that is holy, don't vote for the Saskatchewan Party. Do you want to be severely creeped out? Then try reading some of their platform. Their plan to deal with juvenile crime?

Boot Camps for Repeat Young Offenders

Repeat young offenders need to learn respect for themselves,for others and for
other people ’s property.A Saskatchewan Party government will establish Strict
Discipline Young Offenders Camps,sometimes known as boot camps,for
chronic young offenders involved in property crimes and car thefts.

That's right! They'll deal with juvenile delinquency by locking the kids up in boot camps. It's a stroke of genius.

If you think you're living in 1913.

Which, apparently, the Saskatchewan Party does.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

SASKATCHEWAN TRIVIA: The city of Saskatoon was mentioned in the Doctor Who novel Alien Bodies by Lawrence Miles. I think militia groups from the US were out to destroy it. Bloody Americans...

Apparently 'LaCrosse' is a slang term for whacking it among Francophone teens in Quebec.

Who knew?

Well, it shouldn't really be a surprise. Every word and phrase in every human language is a slang term for whacking it, if you say it properly.

George Smitherman, Ontario's incoming Health Minister, is openly gay.

I just think that's cool, is all.

The leaders of the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives on Thursday actually managed to come to an agreement on uniting into a single Conservative Party of Canada. I was taken my surprise. But then, that's the story of my life, really. It was not a smooth process; when I'd checked up on things last week, Peter MacKay and Stephen Harper were trading barbs and meetings were disintegrating into abject fruitlessness. You can find a fairly comprehensive sort of historical survey of the process here, thanks to those good folk at the CBC. About a quarter of the Tory membership is said to be vehemently opposed to the merger, including a former party leader (though it is only Joe Clark) and a leadership candidate. But in the end, the deal will be sold; it is the only sensible course of action for the two parties. The Liberal Party is a juggernaut, a big honking eighteen-wheeled poly-articulated road hog, driving which Jean Chretien has crushed all who stand against him like skunks beneath his tires.

The Conservative Alliance no longer stood a chance against such a force, if indeed it ever did. As I may have mentioned before, the Alliance is a party of freakish socially-retarded bumpkins. Their brand of social conservativism hasn't played outside the West. Thank Dog. They're historically homophobic, vaguely racist, anti-immigrant, religious, pro-capital punishment, anti-social services, anti-abortion rights, and basically Republicans. Oh, and they're anti-Quebec. They were born of a fire-and-brimstone evangelical prairie populist demagoguery, evolving from the Reform Party of Preston Manning, who was in turn the son of the Bible-thumping Social Credit Premier E. C. Manning. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this sort of regional politics hasn't played outside its region. I believe it is true that the Alliance has never elected an MP east of Manitoba. And they weren't about to start, either. Their support had peaked, and they'd milked their regional base for all they could. The Alliance had nowhere to go but down. They're just too creepy to be electable.

The Tories, on the other hand, just...sucked. They were haemorrhaging seats like there was no tomorrow.

A united Conservative Party of Canada does stand a better chance than either party did individually. This is because anything is more than nothing. But the Alliance's creepy factor, while perhaps diluted somewhat, will still, I think, be a force to be reckoned with. Moderate Tory voters might be pushed over into the Liberal camp, because incoming leader Paul Martin is basically their kind of guy anyhow, and they wouldn't have to worry about voting in Alliance freaks. And leftish voters who might have voted for the New Democratic Party because the Liberals aren't liberal enough might be scared into sticking with the Liberals for fear of splitting the vote and letting more Alliance freaks sneak in.

And how much electoral strength, really, will the Tories add to the Alliance? Especially if former Ontario Premier Mike 'Cut, Cut, Cut' Harris gets the Conservative leadership, the Ontario electorate who just resoundingly rejected the Tories and Harris's legacy aren't likely to warm to the new party. Quebec is out of the question. The urban parts of British Columbia, with their same-sex unions, blessed by their local Anglican church even, are unlikely to drink the Conservative Kool-Aid.

At best, the new party could become a credible opposition. Paul Martin is still going to bring the Liberals a fourth term in power. Beyond that, who can say? Given the sheer ineptitude the conservative factions have demonstrated in the past--electing Stockwell Day, for example--I don't think a fifth Liberal government would be out of the question.

Especially when it's the left-wing parties, federal and provincial, who have all the jokes and satire. The NDP has its satirical swipes at Paul Martin; the Ontario Liberals have their kittens...Oh, kitten jokes will keep Ontario in stitches for years. Premier-elect Dalton 'Kitten-Eater' McGuinty recently gave this triumphal speech:

"They said you can't win unless you run on tax cuts and we proved them wrong; they said you can't win unless you go negative and we proved them wrong; they said you can't win if your leader eats kittens and we proved them wrong."

To me, those kittens taste like another Liberal majority.

What will Prime Minister Chretien do after retirement? Smoke reefer!

Winnipeg — It's an unlikely retirement scenario for Prime Minister Jean Chrétien: he's at his lakeside cottage, sipping tea with his wife Aline — and smoking a big fat joint.

The 69-year-old prime minister has never smoked marijuana, he says, but he joked in an interview this week he might be willing to give it a try once it's decriminalized.

Mr. Chrétien made the joke in an Ottawa interview with the Winnipeg Free Press published in Friday's paper.

Mr. Chrétien was asked how it felt to have bills for decriminalizing marijuana and legalizing same-sex marriages as the exclamation points to his lengthy political career.

“I don't know what is marijuana,” Mr. Chrétien replied.

“Perhaps I will try it when it will no longer be criminal. I will have my money for my fine and a joint in the other hand.”

I can just picture him starring in a remake of Easy Rider.

All of Ontario is holding its breath today, and not for fear of SARS, either. It's Election Day! The Liberals are poised to wrest power from the reigning Tories in a victory of truly epic proportions, rivalling even the battle scene towards the end of The Two Towers when the Orcs are besieging Helm's Deep; Dalton 'Gandalf' McGuinty is even now riding up on his white horse with a legion of potential MPPs to smite the misshapen and darksome Tories as they have seldom been smitten before. What is the secret to the Liberal campaign's early and unquenchable success?

Seinfeld.

Tipped off by a mole in the Tory camp that Ernie Eves was about to call an election, the Liberals bought their TV ad spots a full two hours before the Tories, securing the coveted Seinfeld re-runs. Which, apparently, are now delivering power into their hands. Such is Jerry Seinfeld's power. Perhaps he will choose the next Pope. I would not be at all surprised.

Another key weapon in the Liberal arsenal has been the mighty T-shirt. A paltry four hours after a rather overenthusiastic Tory strategist accused Dalton McGuinty of being an 'evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet', the Liberals had an armory of T-shirts printed up, bearing kitten-eating slogans. Everyone wanted one. (I want one.) Thunderous legions were kitted out in this imposing garb. The Toronto Star reports they bore the battle cry 'Call me a reptilian kitten-eater, I want better health care.' The Globe and Mail, on the other hand, insists it was 'I'm an evil, reptilian kitten-eater because I support change.' The debate rages on.

I discovered, while Googling for more on these kitten-eating T-shirts, that Mr McGuinty had a small blog. Which he seems to have written himself. He likes Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. Mr McGuinty, if I were an Ontarian, you would have my vote. But why are they not selling T-shirts from the Ontario Liberal site?

Also, Google spat out this headline from the National Post: 'Liberal MPPs would be "trained seals," Hampton says'. As if this would shock anyone in this day and age. Non-hominid legislators are certainly not news; Robert Anton Wilson promised long ago, if elected governor of California, to 'Fire 33% of the legislature [names selected at random] and replace them with full-grown adult ostritches, whose mysterious and awesome dignity will elevate the suidean barbarity long established there.' I was expecting the NDP to be more with the times.

Pity California will get Schwarzeneggar instead. No guns and dope for Californicators now.

They should try to be more like Canada.

Canada's Progressive Conservatives, like big-C Conservatives elsewhere in the Anglophonic world, have long held the nickname 'Tories'. It has long saddened me that their left-leaning opponents seem nicknameless. But fear not! For the Liberal Party of Canada does, indeed, bear a nickname of its own.

The Grits.

Huzzah!

I vote we start calling the Canadian Alliance 'the Beavers'. It's vaguely suspicious without, technically, being dirty. And it's very Canadian.

In these dark days of deceit and disaster, not to mention death, destruction, and doom, in this land where the president and his closest confidantes seem to feel they can stonewall any investigation into an outrageous and objectively pro-Saddam violation of the law by two of their number, in leaking to at least six journalists that the wife of former Ambassador Joe Wilson was an undercover CIA operative, perhaps as a shot across the bows of anyone else who might, like Wilson, use heretickal facts to deny the Gospel of Bush...In such times as these, I say, when the American right exposes itself as some kind of venomous cross between a serpent, a tapeworm, and a sport utility vehicle, poisoning the very bowels of our nation's political life while getting very little mileage...In such times as these, I say that I say once again, it may perhaps brighten Yankee hearts to look once more to the neighbourly north, and behold Canada, from which a great and brilliant light shines forth like a great shiny forth-shining light shining forthfully, where the national right is but a twisted and deformed little toad, croaking feebly upon the pavement before it is crushed beneath the wheels of the 1956 Cadillac Eldorado of History on a taco run...

'Unite the Right' talks between the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance have, in point of fact, broken down inconclusively, with each party blaming the other, and some rather bitter things being said all around. The PCs seem to think the Alliance would've just gobbled them up, and used their larger membership to pack the new party with Alliance figures and positions. This is because that is exactly what the Alliance would have done. The Alliance rather snippily replies that not uniting will hurt the Tories more than the Alliance; their House Leader made what I consider some profoundly shocking and awesome comments to CTV's Question Time, claiming that the next election now is liable to see the Alliance hang on to 40 to 50 seats, while the Tories are utterly annihilated. (That would actually involve both the Tories and the Alliance losing about the same number of seats.) Not even the Right itself thinks it has any remote shot at power. Together, they might possibly have been able to become a stronger opposition, perhaps at the expense of the NDP; a united right might scare leftist voters enough that they vote Liberal just to make sure a conservative doesn't get in, even if deep down they like the NDP more (and who doesn't? It was founded avowedly socialist!). Separately, they're going to be hit by a figurative and allegorical bus, and will be so beaten and chafed and raw they'll have to unite in the end anyhow or bleed to death. There's even speculation in the Star that the Alliance could lose its standing as the official opposition to the NDP in a meltdown of truly dialectical proportions.

That probably won't happen, it's true. Just yet. In time, though...? Just think of it! Within a decade, it is entirely possible that the dominant political dialectic in Canada will be of Center versus Left. And that is just as it should be. (As opposed to America now, where it is either Center versus Right or Right versus Ultimate Timeless Evil, depending on how charitable I feel.)

Until the Left eventually triumphs utterly and we enter into a bold new age of socialist utopia. Of course.

Oh, and as a bit of icing on the cake, the Tories are about to suffer a massive, humiliating defeat in the Ontario provincial elections. Polls have the Liberals with 47.5% of the vote, the Tories with only 31%, and the NDP with 17%. Perhaps this is because the Tory budget proposal is a crock of proverbial shit. Of course, Tory Premier Ernie Eves is still chanting 'I've had worse' and 'Just a flesh wound' as his political limbs are hacked off...

Bask in the warm, non-conservative glow.

Dalton McGuinty, leader of the Ontario Liberal Party, is an 'evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet,' declare the Conservatives. Conservative Premier Ernie Eves has refused to officially retract the accusation, and Dalton McGuinty himself has not denied the allegations, adding only that 'I like puppies too.'

The notion of the evil reptilian kitten-eater from another world is not a new one; it has a long and honourable tradition among loonies. According to schizo nut-job David Icke, reptilian aliens descended to Earth during the time of the Sumerians and began to mix their DNA with that of selected humans, producing the 'bluebloods' which have dominated the world ever since. (It is speculated by Mr Montalk that bluebloods do in fact have blue, copper-based blood. And that Queen Elizabeth II is one of the mightiest and most evil of them all, and may in fact be a necrophiliac cannibal.) Via the Illuminati and Charlemagne and so forth, these evil reptilians have dominated the world ever since. Oh, and they can change shapes. Icke accuses both George H. W. Bush and former Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath of routinely transforming into reptilian aliens and nailing young children to their flesh to bathe in the blood. And he says that V was in fact deeply true to life. Which is probably where the kitten-eating thing comes from. (Though if I recall correctly the Visitors usually preferred guinea pigs...)

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that a Canadian political figure has been accused of evil-reptilian-kitten-eater-dom.

What sort of TV ads might politicians trot out if this style of campaigning catches on? I can see the Conservative Alliance doing a spot with a giant Soviet flag fluttering in the background, and a voice-over chanting 'Jack Layton: faggo peacenik.' If John Manley hadn't dropped out of the Liberal leadership race (a couple of months ago; I didn't notice, either), he could've done a charming bit with Paul Martin's laughing visage superimposed over a crackling Satanic inferno, and the caption 'Paul Martin nailed your mom. To a puppy. And then he had sexual relations with her.' Maybe something simple and old-fashioned like 'If returned to power, Ralph Klein has promised to masturbate while pistol-whipping you, because he hates you in a very personal, one-on-one way.'

It's probably just an Ontario thing, though. Go read Larry Zolf. And lock up your kittens.

(Via the invaluable CalPundit.)

Larry Zolf, writing for the CBC:

One wonders who Stephen Harper is listening to. Who's giving him the reality checks he badly needs to have? Harper's Unite the Right manoeuvres are as ill-founded as they've ever been. All polls show that the Tories prefer the Liberals to the Alliance as a second choice. Liberals added to by the NDP vote are clearly a majority of Canadians. There is no Right to be united and Harper hasn't been able to expand his western base.

Idyllic, isn't it?

APPENDIX: Stephen Harper is the current leader of the Canadian Alliance, the Canadian party of evil which is also the official Opposition. The CA, formerly led by Stockwell Day, who was more or less a walking, albeit sick, joke, is rightwing, anti-gay, pro-war, pro-Bush, et cetera, et cetera. It is outnumbered in the House of Commons by the Liberals almost 3-to-1; its support comes almost exclusively from the west, Alberta and British Columbia and Saskatchewan.

Despite this, strangely, the provincial legislature of British Columbia is overwhelmingly dominated by the Liberals, with 77 of 79 seats. The New Democratic Party is the official Opposition, with two seats. Funny, isn't it? Note that the Marijuana Party took in just over 3% of the popular vote in the last provincial election, well ahead of the CA or the Progressive Conservatives (who are federally puny these days), who apparently did not field any candidates at all.

The BC Marijuana Party: overgrowing the government!

Alberta is in the thrall of the Progressive Conservatives, though its Premier Ralph Klein is a pretty big asshole anyhow; he is opposed to full marriage for same-sex couples, and has threatened to keep it out of Alberta if it passes federally.

Note that Dr Ken Nicol, Leader of the Alberta Liberal Party, graduated from Iowa State University, my alma mater's perennial rival.

Saskatchewan is narrowly controlled by the New Democratic Party in a coalition with two Liberals. Note with some alarm that the NDP Leader is a clergyman, and the Saskatchewan Party Leader served on the board of a Full Gospel Bible Institute. I don't know much about the Saskatchewan Party, but it favoured de-insuring abortions, and has a lot of small-government, private-enterprise positions, like teaching entrepreneurship in the secondary schools. It's anti-affirmative action and favours harsher punishments for juvenile offenders. And it wants to amend the Charter of Rights to include a specific right to own property, which is just weird. And it favours 'traditional family values'. In short, as far as I can determine they're your run-of-the-mill social and fiscal conservatives, just like Grandma used to make. Saskatchewan is scary.

Manitoba is solidly New Democrat. The mayor of Winnipeg, Glenn Murray, is openly gay. Ontario's Progressive Conservative (despite the presence of Toronto); Quebec's now in Liberal hands, rather than those of its own Parti Quebecois. And then there are some other provinces too, but they're all teeny, and I can't be arsed to dig up details.

So the deal seems to be that the NDP has two provincial legislatures, but very little federal standing. The Canadian Alliance has some support federally from the western provinces, but does not exist on a provincial level. The Progressive Conservatives are feeble federally but control a number of provinces; the Canadian Alliance has approached them about a possible fusion of the two parties, but the Tories aren't biting, because the CA brand of conservativism (more religious, more American) just doesn't play in the East. And of course the Liberals are everywhere, with a solid lock on federal politics.

One last note, on the Alliance:

In 1999 the Reform Party was renamed the Canadian Alliance in an attempt to escape its perceived position as a party of western Canada, and with the express goal of "uniting the right" by merging with the Conservatives. The first name chosen for the party was the Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party, which the media quickly noticed created the unfortunate acronym, CCRAP.

AFTERWORD (25/08/03): To avoid confusion, the NDP is not a right-wing party; I threw it in for contrast in Saskatchewan especially. Historically it's been to the left of the Liberals, avowedly democratic socialist. How socialist? Quoth their Manitoba wing:

We wish to create a society where individuals give according to their abilities, and receive according to their needs.

In practice, though, Gary Doer's provincial government hasn't been especially leftist; it's clung to a lot of the economic politicies its Progressive Conservative predecessors embraced, like relentlessly balanced budgets and strict limits on tax hikes. They're sort of middle-of-the-road-ists.

Nationally, the party is more radical, favouring things like proportional representation, standing up to the US over softwood lumber, and of course same-sex marriage.

FURTHER AFTERWORD (25/08/03): A commentator at Electrolite reveals that the ruling B.C. Liberal Party in British Columbia is not in fact connected to the national Liberal Party, and is not even a liberal party, but a sort of conservative one in disguise, which suggests all manner of possibilities for creative political public relations. I should start a Republicam Party, and run for office on a platform of revolutionary Communism.

An excerpt from Prime Minister Jean Chretien's speech to the Liberal caucus:

All of us understand that Parliament must always act in accordance with the Constitution. In the case of same-sex couples, we need to be guided by how court after court has been interpreting the Charter of Rights. And the courts have been telling us that the notion of separate but equal has no place in Canada.

Separate but equal...What a splendid way to phrase it! Read more...Chretien says a lot of very decent things, showing exactly how a statesman and steward of a civilised democracy ought to behave.

But I have learned over 40 years in public life, that society evolves and that the concept of human rights evolves often more quickly than some of us might have predicted and sometimes even in ways that make some people uncomfortable. But at the end of the day, we have to live up to our responsibilities.

A longer excerpt:

Now, I want to address another important issue of concern to all of us that was not part of our agenda. I do not have to tell you how challenging the issue of the constitutional definition of marriage is for each and everyone of us. Many of you have written to me directly to share your concerns and those of your constituents. Circumstances demand that we deal with the issue now because of very recent court decisions based on the Charter of Rights. The Canadian Alliance has attacked the courts for years. They attack so-called judicial activism. It is code for their profound opposition to the Charter of Rights. A Charter that was passed by Parliament and that Liberals and all Canadians respect and cherish. So let us not fall into their trap on this issue. This is not about weakening Parliament. It is not about weakening traditional religion. It is not about weakening the Canadian social fabric. In fact, it is about giving Parliament its rightful voice. It is about protecting religious traditions and rites. It is about giving force and effect to Canadian values. Values of mutual respect, justice and equality.

All of us understand that Parliament must always act in accordance with the Constitution. In the case of same-sex couples, we need to be guided by how court after court has been interpreting the Charter of Rights. And the courts have been telling us that the notion of separate but equal has no place in Canada.

Therefore we drafted a bill that guarantees the absolute right of churches to decide what is required for a religious marriage and guarantees as well the equality rights of all Canadians. We are now asking the Supreme Court to tell Parliament what is in accordance with the Charter of Rights, because I know that Liberals, and the vast majority of Canadians, do not believe in using the notwithstanding clause. When Members of Parliament know what is possible within the framework of the Charter, then they will be able to vote in accordance with their conscience and with all the facts in a free vote with no instructions from party whips.

So I urge you all to give this careful consideration at the appropriate time. To cool the rhetoric. Not to fall into traps set by the Opposition. Believe me, for someone of my generation, born and brought up in the Catholic rural Quebec of my youth, this is a very difficult issue. But I have learned over 40 years in public life, that society evolves and that the concept of human rights evolves often more quickly than some of us might have predicted and sometimes even in ways that make some people uncomfortable. But at the end of the day, we have to live up to our responsibilities. And none of these are more essential than protecting the Constitution and the fundamental rights it guarantees to all Canadians.

The Vatican is shooting itself in the jigglies.

I'm sure you've seen news articles like this one in your paper of choice. It's entirely possible television news has even given it a mention; I don't watch television. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I did turn on Public Access twice, a few months ago.) The Pope has issued a venomously-worded denunciation of gay marriage, calling upon Catholic lawmakers everywhere to rally round the banner and stamp out gay marriage whenever it might rear its head. You can read the whole thing on the Vatican website. I won't quote from it, because it's grotesquely offensive. I find most fecal the passages saying that, of course, the Church condemns discrimination against homosexual persons; the lady, as it were, protests too much, methinks, given that such sentiments are immediately followed with the most despicable condemnations of homosexual acts and relationships, claims that gay people cannot love each other, claims that letting gay couples adopt children does palpable damage to the innocent tykes. (This last is especially funny, coming from an organisation whose clergy raped and molested over 1,000 in the Boston area alone.)

That being said, I don't think this bilious text will hurt gay rights in the least in the developed world. I am of the opinion that it can only further reduce the Vatican's dwindling influence, because there are a heck of a lot of Catholic legislators out there who don't agree with these hateful sentiments, and aren't going to obey. The Catholic Church as an institution is pretty horrid in a lot of ways. Catholics are not.

Jean Chretien is Catholic, as is his inevitable successor, Paul Martin. Both support the coming legalisation of gay marriage in Canada. Both have already announced the Vatican's outburst will not influence them in the least.

Charles Kennedy, leader of Britain's Liberal Democrats, is, at least nominally, a Catholic. He also likes David Bowie. By all accounts he's a dreadfully nice person, and it would delight me to no end to see him Prime Minister. He has also vocally courted the gay vote, supports Britain's upcoming pseudo-marriage partnerships, and even specifically mentions the transgendered. Britain, embrace him!

For that matter, also Catholic is the Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith. He's also 1/8 Japanese, apparently.) Even he has supported the partnerships. He couldn't switch sides now without another Tory revolt. (Michael Portillo was raised Catholic, too, and no matter what he might say, I'm convinced he's not only a total butt pirate but quite possibly Chris Morris's secret former love slave. Have you read the Paxman/Portillo slash? Making Light linked to it ages ago. I once saw Michael Portillo walking through a parking lot roundabouts Westminster Palace. His briefcase looked gay.)

Even Andrew Sullivan is Catholic.

Basically, what I'm saying is that Catholic politicians are now in a situation where they are practically and morally incapable of following the Vatican's line. It'll erode away the Church's remaining power, until the Vatican realises that it's become toothless and senile, a great gilded corpse. Minus the hyperbole, it means the Vatican can say all it wants, but the more it says, the less likely it becomes that anyone will listen. Which I think is an end devoutly to be desired.

Times change, and if the Church won't change with them, it condemns itself to irrelevance.

Canada has been rocked by another guerrilla pie-ing. This time the hapless target was Albertan Premier Ralph Klein, who has threatened to invoke the notwithstanding clause in the Canadian Constitution to keep gay marriage out of Alberta should it be approved on a federal level. The CBC reports:

Klein had just started his address at his annual breakfast at the Calgary Stampede and Rodeo when a man who appeared to be in his 20s hit him with the pie.

Klein recovered quickly, remarking that the banana cream pie tasted "not bad."

This is not the first time a Canadian nabob has been creamed with a pie to the kisser. Jean Chretien himself was splattered on Prince Edward Island in 2001 (PEI...An anagram of PIE. Cute, eh?). And who can forget, just months ago, the double-pied assault upon Quebec Liberal Leader Jean Charest, now that province's premier? And there's more. The Quebec-based Entartistes claim, through their spokesman 'Pope Tart', to have pied 15 to 20 Canadian politicians over the past five years. Is a wave of sweet, creamy insurrection sweeping over Canada? Will l'Internationale des Anarchos-Pâtissiers spread appetising havoc from sea to shining sea? We can only hope.

Oh, and by the way...gay marriage is now legal in British Columbia, too.

The Fourth of July is upon us, the day when Americans come together to celebrate their nation's independence and wave its flag and fill its skies with shiny things, glorify its flag, worship its ideals with messianic zeal. And as Americans do so, I have a very special message for them.

Bah, humbug.

Fortunately, the fine folk at Seattle's own The Stranger share my opinion, and bring you an entire issue featuring our glorious socialist neighbour to the north, Soviet Canuckistan.

The Canadian federal government will not appeal the Ontario Appeal Court ruling requiring it to recognise same-sex marriages.

Jean Chretien declares, beneath his somewhat disturbing portrait in the Globe and Mail:

"We won't be appealing the recent decision on the definition of marriage. Rather, we'll be proposing legislation that will protect the right of churches and religious organizations to sanctify marriage as they define it. At the same time, we will ensure that our legislation includes and legally recognize the union of same-sex couples[.]"

So there you have it. The more reactionary churches are still free to spew bile and venom and call down the wrath of God upon the unholy union of two men or women. Stockwell Day and his successors can Puritanically cry shame to their heart's content. But as far as the law is concerned, at last, in this respect, we are all equal.

They are all equal. Dammit. I forget sometimes that I'm an American. For a fleeting moment in the supermarket today, I thought a block of mozzarella cheese was priced at three pounds fifty.

More here. On gay marriage, that is; not my cheese.

The loonie, as of 2pm EDT today, was trading at 74.91 US cents.

Sign of the times, mate. Sign of the times.

Satirical roguery from Jesus' General, describing the next target in Bush's War on Terra:

One hundred and fifty years of shame The case for war against Pender Island, British Columbia (Part 1)

On June 15, 1859, those who hate America because we're free sent a pig into Lyman Cutler's garden on San Juan Island in Oregon Territory. That pig was a message. A message of disrespect for all we stand for. Lyman Cutler answered that message in the only way a true American can. He shot the pig. Thus began what became to be know as the Pig War.

...

The British terrorists moved across the Haro Strait to Pender Island. Their progeny live their today, smugly taunting America with their pigs and gardens. We may have the land, but the Pender Islanders have our stolen honor and they mean to keep it. That's why they have acquired weapons of mass destruction and have opened terrorist training camps. More on that in future installments.

Scroll up for vital information on the Pender Islanders' diabolical clams.

The Ontario Appeal Court has ruled, as have courts in British Columbia and Quebec, that denying same-sex couples the right to marry is unconstitutional. Previously, the British Columbia ruling had given the federal government until 2004 to change the laws to permit same-sex marriages. The Ontario ruling has gone slightly further.

Canada has gay marriage right now.

The City of Toronto has said it will begin issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples today. This day. Tuesday. Which is to say the day which it, in point of fact, happens, as it were, to be. Now.

The federal government has until 30 June to appeal the ruling, but it's entirely likely that it won't. None of the Liberal leadership candidates, not even Paul Martin, would appeal it.. And--get this!--a majority of Canadians, ordinary, workaday Canadians, actually support gay marriage.

It really restores your faith in humanity.

Homosexual men and women are being treated with the same dignity and respect accorded to everyone else in the eyes of the law. I think this is a wonderfully important step forwards; finally, gay people--gay Canadians at least--will be told that their relationships matter as much as anyone else's, that they can live ordinary lives and do the sort of ordinary life-y things people like doing, like falling in love, getting married, having kids, getting a dog, buying a house, getting tax breaks, and getting old, fat, and satisfied together. Being gay alone does not and should not define a person; it should not stigmatise a person, and cut them off from following whichever path they wish. Are all gays going to immediately settle down and join their local Parent-Teacher Associations? Gosh, no. But now they'll have the chance.

The message is this: being gay doesn't make one a freak; it doesn't make one less able to love; and it doesn't exile you from the mainstream of society. At last.

Some quotes from the Toronto Star:

"The existing common-law definition of marriage violates the couple's equality rights on the basis of sexual orientation under (the charter)," the 61-page written ruling said.

The court also declared the current definition invalid and demanded the law be changed. It ordered the clerk of the City of Toronto to issue marriage licences to the same-sex couples involved in the case. City Hall said in a release after the ruling it would begin issuing marriage licences today to all who meet the requirements, "including same-sex couples."

...

Heritage Minister Sheila Copps and federal leadership candidate said Ottawa should accept the ruling and not appeal it to the Supreme Court of Canada.

"You can't have a half equality," she said in Ottawa. "You can't say: `Well, you're equal, but.'

"When you're speaking about equality you're talking about allowing people to exercise all rights under the law including all rights that are available to all others."

Essentially the same story from the Globe and Mail:

Ontario's Appeal Court decision joins court rulings in British Columbia and Quebec that also back same-sex unions.

However, it differs in that it calls for the new definition to take place immediately, allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry now.

It also effectively forces Ontario to recognize the January 2001 marriage of Joe Varnell and Kevin Bourassa, who were wed in a Toronto church ceremony using an ancient Christian tradition that allowed them to avoid having to get city-issued marriage licences.

Theirs would be the first same-sex marriage in Canada.

...

Also celebrating Tuesday were Joyce Barnett and Alison Kemper, who picked up their marriage licence with Mr. Stark and Mr. Leshner and planned to wed in July 2004.

Their two children were ecstatic.

"I knew that nobody could say I didn't have a family," said Robbie, 11, who was born to Alison. "Canada has finally figured out it's unfair to deny this to anybody."

More from the CBC:

Holding their licence, Michael Leshner and Michael Stark, one of the couples involved in the court case, said they are getting married within hours.

"Today is the death of homophobia in the courtroom as we've known it," said Leshner, an Ontario Crown attorney.

"Absolute faith in Canadian values" helped him through the long court battle, said Leshner, who encouraged other countries to follow Ontario's lead.

"When we get married, we will have lit a match that hopefully illuminates the world," he said.

I am a happy man.

1. 90% of the Canadian population lives within 320 kilometers of the US border. They are all ninjas.

2. Why do witches ride broomsticks? Medieval witches used hallucinogenic herbs and ointments in their rites; the hallucinogens were absorbed through the skin. They would rub these ointments on a broomstick and straddle it so they could absorb the compounds through their vulvas, which, with their armpits, were the optimal parts of the body for it.

3. Guinness is not a drink; it is a snack.

4. No number larger than 12 ought to exist. If you see one, drop your chalk and back away slowly. Whatever you're trying to do is more trouble than it is worth.

5. At the beginning of the year, the loonie, or 'Canadian dollar', was valued at 63.40 cents US. The US economy, however, is so shitcanned that the loonie was trading at over 74 cents US just a week ago.

6. There is a Finnish band called The Cybermen. Their website includes a small Doctor Who-related graphic of a Servo Robot.

7. I am a huge dork.

8. There was apparently also a punk band of the late 70s called The Cybermen.

9. Dan Savage will name a sex act after Rick Santorum.

10. Numbered lists get dull after a while.

A newslet has landed on my plate this afternoon from my native country, Iowa City...

Lizard head found in Applebee’s salad

Presence of animal parts appears to be accidental

...Which I think speaks for itself. Less apolitical perhaps was the following quotation from today's Globe and Mail, on the changing American stereotype of Canadians, given Canada's failure to support the US in Iraq, and its impending approval of gay marriage and marijuana decriminalisation, amongst other things...The image of 'bland niceness' may be on the way out:

Imagine a story in the [Wall Street] Journal that reports: “A Canadian landed immigrant from Libya was late for his lesbian sister's wedding to a black activist, who runs Vancouver's public heroin-injection site, because he became confused about the location of the church while smoking pot on the rapid transit train from New Westminster on Saturday. The betrothed couple are planning their honeymoon in San Francisco.”

Which sounds like my kind of nation.

Also, my Latin dictionary describes the word 'prox' as a 'comic representation of a fart'.

This is all.

Until 1981, the Manitoba Legislative Assembly would end its sessions in a massive paper fight, when MLAs and reporters in the press gallery would pelt each other with wads of paper, transcripts, and, eventually, rolled-up magazines. Nine microphones were broken in this manner in 1980.

Click here to watch elected officials pelt one another like a bunch of kids after the first big snowfall of the year.

I like this.

If the US Senate tried it, the Senators would hurl anthrax and dirty radioactive material removed from Iraq's nuclear depository while it was left completely unguarded and unsecured by the invading US forces.

Those lovable little scamps.

Politics can be boring. Even to politicians. Despite his rumoured grudge against Paul Martin, or possibly his rumoured grudge against John Manley (no-one's quite sure), Prime Minister Jean Chretien preferred to watch an NHL hockey game to the first Liberal debate.

Chretien jokingly weighed in on a controversy around the Saturday debate between Paul Martin, Finance Minister John Manley and Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, saying he frequently switched to an NHL playoff game between the Ottawa Senators and the Philadelphia Flyers. "I watched TV, sometimes I switched to hockey, I came back, I'm like any other citizen," Chretien said following his weekly cabinet meeting.

When asked whether he found the viewing boring, Chretien responded, "the hockey, no."

Which is entirely reasonable. And displays exactly what I like about Canadian politics right now. It's safe. Even if Paul Martin has himself crowned Emperor of all the Canadas, the absolute worst-case scenario is still, well, not bad. Whoever becomes the next Prime Minister, they won't try to block gay marriage, or crack down on recreational drug use--which, in Thomas Pynchon's Mason&Dixon, is endorsed by no less a personage than George Washington himself--or privatise everything, or introduce a Total Information Awareness programme headed by a convicted Iran-Contra conspirator, or fight a series of unjust and cynical wars for political gain, or prostitute the nation to mega-corporations...

In short, Canadians have nothing to be afraid of. While, down south, George Bush is one of the worst things ever to happen to America, and there's unfortunately a very real chance we'll have four more years of him. And then quite possibly four years of his chosen successor, Jeb. And then plagues of locusts, and waters turning to blood, and the star Wormwood plunging from the heavens, and dead Reagan-era conservatives rising from the grave to take up important Cabinet posts...Living under the Bush regime is somewhat worse than having a cactus forcibly inserted up one's rectum. A cactus covered in poison. One is just waiting to see which of one's moral and intellectual orifices they'll violate next. It is very much like Kafka, I think. In Kafka--one sees it even in the comparatively lighthearted Amerika, which I've been reading--authority figures are all arbitrary, cruel, vengeful, petty, and out to get you. You. Especially you. Even if you're just the tiniest cog in their vast bureaucratic machine--it's hilarious what a baroque Hapsburg monstrosity Kafka conjures up for a simple hotel--and you're hardly worth the notice of your superiors, they will still take time out of their busy schedules to crush you personally and absolutely. Kafka populates Amerika with capricious wrestling rich girls, grotesquely fat businessmen, Head Porters with imagined grievances, policemen who ask for papers like something from the Soviet Union, manipulative Frenchmen forcing one into servitude...All sorts of authority figures for his poor hero Karl to run up against and be tormented by. He is at the mercy of anyone with money, or power, or strength. Even his uncle, Senator Jacob, is cold and distant and controlling, and casts him out in the end.

Kafka would've found the Bush regime very familiar, I think.

Politics ought to be boring. Politics ought not to inspire massive protests, or fear. Politics is not supposed to be about passions. It's supposed to be about muddling through and keeping people more or less not entirely displeased. Quietly and efficiently. Without interfering overmuch in people's lives.

Good politics are boring politics.

...Of Parliament, that is. The heat is on. On the street, even. The heat from the coruscating flames of Canada's Liberal Party leadership race! The race that will determine who will be Canada's next Prime Minister. The astute reader will recall that HogBlog recently began a series of blogging bits of bloggish bloggery devoted to the leadership race, to profiling the candidates, and to finding every reference possible to marijuana in Canadian politics. Let us now go one step further. We present to you the Official HogBlog Guarantee^[TM]:

'So that we can bring you total all-consuming coverage of this campaign, we of HogBlog will not eat, sleep, oxygenate our blood, or engage in any bodily functions whatsoever, placing ourselves in complete metabolic stasis, until the race is over.'^*

^*Recall the previous Official HogBlog Guarantee^[TM]: 'All Cretans are liars. HogBlog is a Cretan.'

First, marijuana. Manitoba's provincial elections in 1999 brought the New Democratic Party under Gary Doer to power. In this election, the Communist Party won only 0.09% of the vote. The Marijuana Party, however, rocketed into fourth place, winning more votes than the Greens, Libertarians, and Communists combined, with 0.58%.

And now for something completely different: issues!

III. Canadian Culture

Canada is a nation of some 30 million people, roughly equal in population to the state of California. It occupys the second-greatest land area of any nation on the face of this Earth, and contains world-class cities like Toronto and Vancouver. It should come as no surprise to non-Canadians, therefore, that Canada actually does have a domestic television industry. And I'm not just talking about Red Green. Recently, John Manley stirred a veritable hornet's nest, all of whose occupants then flew up his rectum, when he announced the government was cutting $25 million, a substantial fraction of the total funding, from the Canadian Television Fund, imperilling quite a few popular programmes. Among the shows this threatened with cancellation was This Hour Has 22 Minutes, which is a bit good indeed, clips of which are well worth investigating. This cut was just silly. As Jeffrey Simpson noted in his piece in the Globe and Mail on 25 April,

Not only is $25-million a pittance for Ottawa, but cutting that amount from the last budget ran against that document's grain. Total program spending this year jumps $4-billion from last year.

And yet, it remains a mystery why, amidst the cornucopia of new spending, with money being splashed in all directions, Finance Minister John Manley targeted one program for the axe: the Canadian Television Fund.

The CTF, begun in 1996 to assist the production of Canadian TV programs, had been receiving $100-million a year. At its inception, the government said the CTF would eventually be reduced as production companies found private-sector money to replace the government's.

Former finance minister Paul Martin, a booster of Canadian culture, never acted on the implicit assumption that the CTF would be reduced. But Mr. Manley did act in the weeks before his budget. He sliced $25-million a year from a program his very own budget document described as having "met with considerable success in providing new quality Canadian programming."

In the slash-the-deficit era, programs everywhere got the chop. In today's era of large surpluses, programs everywhere got new money. Thus the CTF cut was not a random decision, or a mistake, or an oversight. It was a deliberate act, for reasons nobody in Ottawa can fathom.

Mr. Manley has said he was merely acting on the old implicit assumption of an eventual reduction in the CTF's budget. But this explanation is awfully lame, given the praise heaped on the program in the budget, the new spending everywhere else and the huge government surplus.

No, it is widely assumed that Mr. Manley has little sympathy for subsidizing Canadian cultural production, unlike Mr. Martin, let alone Heritage Minister Sheila Copps. If Mr. Manley believes that subsidizing Canadian TV is a waste of money, that argument should be made now, as the Canadian Alliance does, because it certainly wasn't put forward in the budget.

Ms. Copps is said by friends to have been blind-sided by the cut. She is, after all, Mr. Manley's leadership rival, and the two have exchanged public barbs in recent weeks that mirror their testy private relationship. Cutting the CTF might have struck Mr. Manley as a clever little dig at the heart of Ms. Copps's political support in the cultural community.

Fortunately, after some days of confusion in which Manley attempted to use the fund as a political weapon against oppenent Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, Copps has emerged triumphant, securing the money to undo Manley's cuts and even boost the Fund's funds. Which means that Canada will continue to enjoy current-events satires such as this 'Apology to America', which is the source of much merriment here in the halls of HogBlog.

'I'm sorry we burnt down your White House during the War of 1812. I see you've rebuilt it. It's very nice.

..

'I sincerely hope that you're not upset over this. Because we've seen what you do to countries you get upset with.'

Which segues nicely into the next issue: America.

For those keeping count, with Manley's hostility towards Canada's cultural industries contrasted with Martin's and Copps' staunch support, and Martin's personal qualms about gay marriage--although keep in mind he wouldn't seek to block it, and it seems to have gained wonderful momentum--against his opponents' outspoken support, the score now stands at:

• Manley: 2
• Martin: 2
• Copps: 3

They all love pot.

In November, the Liberal Party's Leadership Convention will choose a successor to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. There are three candidates in the running: former Finance Minister Paul Martin, Deputy Prime Minister John Manley, and Heritage Minister Sheila Copps. If you are an incredible geek, and if you're reading this the odds are good that you are, then the first question to come to your mind is liable to be 'Who has the best website?' Paul Martin sweeps this one, with his very own blog (which he never updates); Sheila Copps gets multimedia kudos for a large animated maple leaf. John Manley redeems an otherwise uninspiring site by looking much like Bill Clinton, and having the almost pornographic name 'John Manley'. Which is not quite as good as 'Lance Manley'. I once lived upstairs from someone whose father was called Lance Longman...But he is not a candidate.

But what of those who are? Whither now for Canada?

I. DRUGS

Prime Minister Chrétien has very civilisedly decided to decriminalise marijuana possession.

"We will soon introduce legislation to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana," he told a Liberal party fundraiser. Amid applause, he quipped, "Don't start to smoke it right away! We're not legalizing it."

His successors all support the smoking of a bowl. Manley comments on marijuana:

"No, never," Manley deadpanned when asked if he'd ever smoked pot. "I regret that, now, because apparently it's 'de rigueur.' "

Sheila Copps tops him boisterously:

The 50-year-old, who attended the University of Western Ontario and university in Rouen, France, freely acknowleged she smoked marijuana in her salad days.

"As a young person? Of course," said Copps, before laughing self consciously.

And Paul Martin, while supporting the measure also, is sadly lacking in amusing quips.

After our first issue, it's a dead heat, one point all, though Manley and Copps win kudos for cool.

II. GAY MARRIAGE

The British Columbia Appeal Court has just ruled that refusing to allow same-sex couples to marry is unconstitutional.

In its decision the court gave the federal government until July 12, 2004 to change the law preventing gays and lesbians from marrying.

Justice Minister Martin Cauchon hasn't decided whether to appeal the B.C. judgment, he said Thursday outside the Commons.

Would the Liberal candidates support or appeal the ruling? Paul Martin wavers.

"It's an issue I'm wrestling with, as I think are a great number of Canadians," he said in an interview yesterday.

He would not appeal any court decision, however, that would require Ottawa to include same-sex relationships under the definition of marriage, he said.

...

Mr. Martin is clearly uncomfortable discussing same-sex marriages and several times over the weekend avoided saying where he stands on the issue.

The article also mentions that Martin is personally opposed to abortion, but supports a woman's right to choose; Martin, in short, seems to be shaping up as a personally somewhat conservative man who would put his convictions aside to groove with the liberal Zeitgeist. His opponents, however, are unashamedly, flamingly pro-gay. His firm Christian beliefs do not impede Mr Manley from making the very civilised proclamation that

"I think the issue here is if people make a life commitment then it is a matter for them to decide and the state should treat that kind of commitment the same regardless of who it is, or whether they are same sex or different sex or whatever. We have moved on to that stage."

And the very inclusive Ms Copps has a page on her site 'For Gays and Lesbians', very boldly labelled too, on which she states:

For many years now, I have called for recognition of gay marriages. To me it is an issue of fundamental human rights. It is also clearly an issue of inclusion and empowerment for young lesbians and gays who are struggling to be accepted and, in many cases, to build their own sense of self-worth.

Which brings the score then to two of two for Copps and Manley, and one for Martin. Though it seems a pity to penalise him for taking a position that would be considered quite liberal in the United States, where nominees to the Federal judiciary compare homosexuality to necrophilia.

On which note, join us next time, as we go deep inside Paul Martin, gently probe at John Manley, and explore every crevice of Sheila Copps. Who will win? Who will lose? And will they ever play the harmonium again?

It's official! May 1 is Loyalty Day!

Because May Day is for dirty Commies.

Our children need to know that our Nation

--'Our Nation'...Sort of like 'Our Father'. As in, 'Our Father which art in heaven'. Only more patriotic--

is a force for good in the world, extending hope and freedom

and cluster bombs

to others.

Especially others who live on top of rich and bountiful oil fields.

By learning about America's history, achievements, ideas, and heroes,

but not the Godless heresy of evolution,

our young citizens will come to understand even more why freedom is worth protecting.

...By shooting crowds of the civilians we've just liberated.

Repeatedly.

We must defend against all heinous unarmed parties our God-given freedom to be monitored by government agencies without regard for privacy or civil liberties. It's freedoms like that which separate the decent, noble United States of America from the filthy and degenerate Canadians.

God bless America.

This is why.

Deborah Wolfe, a Canadian citizen who was just breast-feeding her son and changing his diaper while en route between Houston and Vancouver, says her "subversive" actions led to her being threatened with detainment, RCMP involvement and legal charges for terrorist action against a U.S. citizen in international airspace while on an American flight during a time of war.

...

Wolfe began to nurse the baby again, using her own bib and blanket. She says the man got out of his seat, walked over to hers and stood staring at her. She says she approached him afterward and twice asked if he had a problem with her feeding her son.

"He marched past me and to the very back of the cabin to talk to the flight attendant," she wrote. "He told her, 'This woman just assaulted me.' ... He then explained that the asking of two questions by a 'foreign national' in international airspace made him feel the victim of terror and as such he wanted to file an assault charge."

She says the flight attendants also began to call her and her travelling party "foreign nationals in international airspace on an international flight during a time of war." And she was informed both of the complaint and that it could be upgraded to a Level 3, which meant possible mandatory detainment by U.S. authorities for 24 hours, RCMP involvement and criminal charges for an act of war upon an American.

Fly Air Canada. They have prettier planes.

PS...Turtablism is, I'm told, 'the act of spinning vinyl records on turntables and "scratching."'

The CBC reports:

MONTREAL - Quebec Liberal Leader Jean Charest said Sunday he will press charges against four people after he was hit with two pies.

and...

The four are reported to be associated with a group called Les Entartistes, which has threatened to throw pies at all three main party leaders in the campaign.

And who can fail to love an article with a title like 'Charest Creamed on Campaign Trail'?

"We represent no political party," said a man with a red clown nose, who spoke on behalf of the pie throwers.

I think the world has become some kind of satire. Some bits of it are just darker than others.