John doesn't like your tie. TAKE IT THE F$#K OFF!
I'll have several soundtrack reviews up shortly, as I was glued to the TV and internet, watching Monday night's election results glide in, and see the Toronto-hating power-monger (Steve) win a majority government that makes it impossible for all of the opposition parties to collectively thwart Steve & Co.
Party bulldog John Baird is probably sipping a glass of chilled acid in celebration, and Tony Clement can build another outhouse in Huntville with taxpayer funds for the next G8.
It's more than a day and a half after the federal election, and some bloggers have voiced disappointment in their country for electing a PM and a party who've managed to glide through ethics scandals, avoid facing claims of detainee torture in Afganistan, and unfulfilling Toronto shop owners of the monies owed for the G20 violence that destroyed property and goods.
"I think we need an Olympic-sized badminton court. Any dissenters?"
The Liberals were knocked down to 3rd party status because they refused to accept the fact their choices of leaders of late favoured professorial figures than political street fighters capable of a defensive return of character-attacking advertising (otherwise known as negative ads, or what I'd prefer to brand as fecal advertising). The Conservatives' main bullseye, Michael Ignatieff, refused to step down into the gutter with them, but did virtually nothing in the public's view to challenge or refute the claims in those tacky ads that ran for 2 years outside of an election climate.
It's the equivalent of running an ad in the city paper (print or web) against your neighbour or your boss, with the words Selfish Shit, Compulsive Fibber, or Slave Wage Exploiter without any provocation.
It's pretty loeathesome for a seated government to run 'He sucks' TV ads against any opposition leader, and ideally people ought to have recognized the tactic as base and a potential waste of taxpayer monies.
"I just bought new red running shoes. Doesn't that prove my sincerity?"
Instead, it worked, in terms of reinforcing or instilling the attitude that Ignatieff came from the U.S. and pompously presumed he could take the top job after living outside of Canada for a long while.
I don't doubt Iggy himself believed it was a national calling and a remarkable opportunity for a theorist to get into the machinations of a working government, but Ignatieff was victimized by his own vanity, fed by the Liberal party who undoubtedly parroted their supposed confidence that he was the right man for the job, while party veterans probably wanted to stab him in the back for coming out of nowhere and usurping the top party spot without any deferrance to seniority - the thing that makes it fair for workers to earn pay based on longer terms of servitude, and for eating years of B.S. with a smile.
An articulate intellectual, Iggy may have been humbled over the past year, but he deserves credit for running a campaign where reporters weren't restricted to shouting 4 questions per day from behind a riot fence; Iggy accepted a diversity of questions in live town hall meetings, but he was still wrong for the country's job, the party, and politics. As a party consultant on legal ethics, he's fine, but not as a leader.
"I will never let my son operate the video camera again. Not good."
Stéphane Dion should've been proof positive eggheads can't fight dirty to win, but the party just repeated their mistake with Iggy and deserved to lose substantially.
What boggles the mind is why central neighbourhoods in Toronto went Conservative blue. The G20 riots should've proved to the citizens how little the party and the PM care about T.O., and as as dumb as the city can be, neither the riots nor the police brutality would've happened had helmet head Harper not blockaded the city to house a useless international gathering that's solved no international quandary in the past 12 months at a cost of almost a billion dollars.
City inhabitants who pay federal taxes should ask exactly what did the G20 accomplish, how did it make the world a better place, and what positive programs were put into use, because I can't think of any goodness that stemmed from that waste of time.
My vantage isn't left, right or centrist: it's was all a waste of money, and brought out the worst behaviour in extreme rebels and rogue law enforcement members. The rest of the country can laugh at the city for getting some just desserts, but imagine if Huntsville had been beset by riots, had stores smashed up, and endured kettling of local citizens. Laughter would've been replaced with disgust, and Tony Clement would've had to explain to his constituency why he felt his riding needed such a high profile mess.
The likely answer: no one liked Ignatieff. He was a cuckoo that had been dropped into the party nest and a Toronto riding, and the pretender was doomed to fail in an electrion after showing no spine to the Conservatives, and heading a party with no vision and no platform that not only failed distinguished themselves from the competition, but from past Liberal agglomerations. The party has become irrelevant, and needs to rethink what it is if it wants to avoid losing further seats, and reaching the ignominious non-party status.
Meet Captain Jack Multifaith.
Jack Layton proved himself to be a slow and steady racer in the campaign and made huge gains in Quebec, quashing the power of the Bloc Quebecois because they too had become as overconfident and banal as the Liberal party. Moreover, Layton showed his smarts at being a veteran politician, a savvy fighter unwilling to take the bait but defend himself by providing simple contrasts to Harper's own simple contrasting arguments for voting Conservative.
At the start of the campaign, Layton was the lefty getting over cancer and hip surgery whom people feared lacked the stamina to survive a campaign, but the C-word disappeared from media reports once the CBC's Peter Mansbridge followed Layton during a daily campaign grind in the east coast: Jack was back, and as fiscally irresponsible as his billion dollar plans for social programs seemed, he won the second top spot as opposition leader.
Layton's victory was partly a protest vote from Liberals angry at a party that had become arrogant and complacent, deifying themselves as the country's 'natural governing paty'. That, and an attempted flipped bird to Harper & Co.
Steve's weave is hand-sewn from 10,000 teflon strands, and is resistant to rust, falling objects, and ethics.
Because the opposition parties collectively lack enough seats to keep the Conservatives in check, Steve has a free reign, and 2011-2015 will yield at least a few scandals and abuses of power.
These things happen with every administration under any party colour, but the ideological Conservatives will further tweak and trim funding and arms-length government watchdogs, and they'll pee on Toronto again.
Or not.
With the Toronto victories and support from Mayor Rob Ford, it's possible the Feds will cosy up to T.O. and actually fund public transporation plans as a bribe for more votes in 2015.
They might invest in developing the waterfront, or perhaps token arts & culture projects.
There's also the provincial election this October where the Liberals could get knocked down to a minority government or perhaps lose power to the Conservatives, led by Tom Hudak, who always tends to come off as a paper-thin peoples' man.
Yeah. Speechless, aren't ya?
We have a buffoon for a mayor, an ideologue for a Prime Minister, and in Ontario we may have a poser replacing a lackluster Liberal for the Premiereship this fall.
At least the dollar still rocks at $1.05 U.S.
Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com
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