Jobber of the Week

The other weekend I saw his commercials plugged into CTV News (there's no National on weekend, and the other shows aren't streamed or are poorly streamed, so I go with that one instead). They were very much "vote Harper" instead of "vote Conservative." How American of him.

Here's Obama today on the whole lipstick BS: http://youtube.com/watch?v=0zAbeu3v3Wc McCain still has a record. This is a guy who said, boasted in fact, during an interview that "I've voted with the President over 90% of the time, higher than my uh, a lot of my-- even Republican colleagues." Well, what do think he's been saying? Contrary to GOP conspiracy, Obama doesn't control the media. The media is controlled by money, and they've seen fit to frame this as an Obama vs Palin race, probably because the primary race (which they helped drag out by rooting for the underdog all the time no matter who it was) made them a lot of money. I hate to say it, but CNN stands to make much more dough from Black Dude VS White Woman than they do any race involving the millionth rich old white guy. The Dems have pretty much given up the gun battle. Obama's record has gun control on it because he's from motherfucking Chicago, where 20 people can die in a two block radius over a weekend in the west side of town, and violent crime far surpasses property crime which bucks the trend anywhere in the nation. Basically, if you want to have your life taken by gunfire, the streets of that city is the most likely place to make it happen. If you're willing to settle with "the current laws are enough," then the Dems can work for you. We no longer have Di-Fi hauling AKs onto the Senate floor and holding them completely wrong while rambling about how dangerous they are. And this is why we need to go ahead and realize that the electoral college was created to deal with unique challenges from the founding fathers era and has no place in this present age. Good luck with that.

I think the amount of hurricanes blowing around the Gulf could be responsible for that.

No, I wasn't thinking of that either. Let me put it this way: I download episodes of Rick Mercer's CBC show, and around January or Feburary near the end of his last cycle he made a reference to a memo from Liberal leadership that was so defeatist it telling MPs to make sure their offices are clean. It was sorta just before NAFTA-gate, I think. That was when I remember hearing a lot of "I'm voting Green" "Green's position is to support Dion" "Aw shit."

If you saw "all those great speeches at the DNC", then you didn't see the convention the way normal people did. Most people didn't see the convention, they saw Katie and Keith and Wolf and Brit talking in the skybox while the speeches were being ignored somewhere behind them. Debates could be a fucking disaster. "I'll answer that, but let me get back to the Senator's last point..." *eats up the rest of his time* Look at Obama's issues page or for more information view his '"Blueprint for Change" document. Look at McCain's issues page. Find the issues you find most important and vote the way that reflects them. Vote for issues, not personalities. Please oh jesus don't vote for the best sound bites. Some of the issues one knows better than another. For instance, though I support Obama, I'll admit that McCain seems to have a better grasp on the immigration problem. Though both he and Obama thankfully address my feelings regarding who to blame for the illegal underclass (it's the employers, stupid) McCain's policy page seems to actually talk about a bit more things, and I'm impressed that he feels children of illegal immigrants should use the public school system so they don't form gangs or whatever else they'd do instead. I'm not sure he'd talk about that anymore since he's pandering to the base, but he's said it in debates. On the other hand, as far as energy goes, I like Obama more because he's talked about increasing funds for public transport (and god knows Biden can't shut up about his love for Amtrak) whereas McCain seems to keep it conspicuously absent from his energy plan. Since I plan to never hold a driver's license and get around on public transit until I'm too old and feeble to use it, that's a good thing for me. It also helps that I think getting more as many people into a transport as possible does gads more to help energy consumption than our current "one man in an Escalade driving to the store" trend, but make up your own mind. Above all, vote your self interest, not because you feel it's "wrong" that someone raises taxes on people who make way more money than you do or pays more lip service to some demographic like veterans or women. Those people all have way more lobbyists than you ever will.

Er, wasn't there an election of some sort of election over the winter? That's the one I'm talking about, not the one where Harper replaced Martin. I kind of talk about Canadian politics half-blind, going only by what I see on The National, but it's because I'm interested so help me out here. (blush)

But see, that poll and $9 will buy a movie ticket. If that was too charming for you, let me put it this way: That poll is worthless. These things fluctuate over time, and the only reason that poll is getting posted here is because, well, we follow polls on an almost daily basis in this corner. I will be very put out if just naming a woman VP wins McCain the election.

Yeah, but how many people approve of a woman being on the ticket and how many people are really going to vote two months for now because there's one on it?

So basically, affirmative action? I mean, realistically, the GOP has as many sexists who are turned off by a woman on the ticket as people who will vote just because there's a woman on the ticket. It all balances itself out. Palin's bump is by Jeezus freaks who thought after Huckabee dropped out that the door was totally closed on them this election. Too bad it wasn't.

"But Samantha, she goes against everything Hillary Clinton campaigned for, how--" "Boobs, Jon. Boobs." That's a hard row to hoe, and there's no way you can come out of it not looking like an asshole. Every pregnancy, every mooseburger, every oil pipeline story distracts from the fact that she isn't who she markets herself as, which is the most important. I mean, they're nearly telling bald-faced lies at this point, the truth is being twisted so hard you can almost hear it scream. Why focus on "lol she's so podunk!?"

Hell no, son, you don't have to be that fancy. You should see me when I ride subways, noticing all the different fonts that are just slightly different to one another. To some people passing by they look the same, but to me it looks like a jumbled mess. Toronto's is a mess, since you have Univers and Helvetica and something that isn't Helvetica and is totally shitty.

Christians really believe in a Dude who wrote out rules and will give them eternal paradise or eternal damnation after they die. Doesn't mean law reflects that. I guess what I'm trying to say is that my view is that law is imperfect, and which side of the life thing you take up, there's no getting around that. My position isn't so much that either take on the unknown is right, but that our law isn't based on the unknown.

It's funny to me that, to pro-choicers, any pro-lifer has a "crazy abortion view." Believe it or not, thinking that abortion is a form of murder, not birth control, is not a crazy view -- just a VIEW, numbnuts. There's two sides to this issue: 1) Opposing abortion in the case of rape or incest is REALLY extreme. Both are going to cause trauma to either mother or baby, and children of incest can often have crippling issues that may make them a debt on society. It's a lot to ask a girl who was raped by her Dad to give birth to the child, and when that child is born it's likely to be have a much harder time being adopted or finding any other alternative than a baby born under healthy circumstances. 2) Pro-life women confuzzle a lot of people, myself included. Pro-life men, at least, I can understand as a reaction to childbirth being strictly a female thing, a lot of fathers feel that a lot of power is removed from their hands regarding the choice to abort. Though it's also a child they'll have to support, their opinion is clearly second banana, and so they'd rather just remove the whole issue and not have to deal with the social faux-pas that occur when a man has an issue with what a women chooses to do with "her" child. Pro-life women, well, there's nothing there except a strong belief in that which cannot be proven, and a lot of people are uncomfortable with people trying to get any particular view on an unproven thing recognized legally as fact, since "life begins at conception" is as unprovable a concept as an omnipotent spiritual being.

In the last election, Green's policy was to simply defer to Dion and NDP was the only real left-wing protest vote that actually would hurt Dion. I have no idea if that's still the same. As far as tax and spend, well, that's a pretty catchall phrase. So long as taxation is progressive and the government isn't running deficits, taxing and spending is fiscally responsible, if not under everyone's idea of conservative. Down south, it's the only way we're going to be able to get out of this hole we're burning in China. However, didn't Canada hit it's first deficit in forever just recently?

Best Obama ad in a long time:

You know, according to Weekly World News, the Earth is hit with an asteroid next year that wipes us all out. Except two years ago we were destroyed by giant dragons, according to the same source.

He's their Chris Matthews, and as much as the right loves him there are political connections to him. I mean, there is if you think Tim Russert is biased because he once worked on a campaign, as someone at the other board once told me. Matthews/Olbermann is MSNBC's Hume/Kristol, but they won't be going anywhere.

The old joke is that CNN is a channel with a website, and MSNBC is a website with a channel. They rely on a lot of Dateline-esque documentaries and stuff to fill up time, I'm not shocked their primetime is a bit weak. But the fact is that all three of 24hr networks suck. MSNBC could help themselves by removing their executives from the Olbermann-O'Reilly bitchfest and recognizing what it looks like when two children go at it. Keep in mind who else they have on there: Pat Buchanan (far right), Harold Ford (Clinton/DLC middling nonprogressive), and numerous McCain proxies. The best thing they could do is limit Olbermann to his own show and let Maddow take his place as the left-wing personality at the table. Olbermann isn't the same if he isn't throwing papers into the camera and calling people names, anyway.

The environment should be the most important issue, but instead it's the economy mirroring US fears. I don't read enough Canadian news amnd political propaganda to be as informed as I'd like to be (and it doesn't help that BQ's English site sort of reflects not giving a rat's ass about anglophones), but at the meantime I guess I'd like to see NDP make some gains. Dion needs to just go ahead and work with them, and the only thing that will stop Harper from turning his party into a Canadian version of the American GOP is for Conservative moderates to take the platform back. That's really what's best for the country, for the red Tories that left when PC was absorbed to go back and string Harper up by needing their support.

There's a one in one trillion chance they could create a black hole that will begin to eat at the earth, leaving it swiss cheese'd in a few years. There's a lawsuit to stop them from running the thing, but I've known about this for quite a few years and always thought it was irresponsible. If something would go wrong it would be worse than a nuclear apocalypse because you'd not only wipe out the human species, but all known life in the universe.

For whatever reason, to a large segment of the GOP it's all about making a long-lasting ideological mark on the Supreme Court. If they get what they want, we'll probably see the first amendments in almost twenty years.

Olbermann really shouldn't be put in a position of news, but Matthews is great on election night. The dude will sit down at 2PM and carry on until 5 in the morning, comparing what's going on to obscure elections from the 1930s and so on. I remember two years ago I called him a fucking iron man. I don't know how he does it, although I suspect there's a nasty pile of bottles sitting behind that desk. I'll say. You're using IE?

She has two months, and in that time she has plenty of opportunity to say something stupid that she's going to have to clarify or apologize for in that time. I'm also convinced that the more they let her talk (and McCain was content to hang as dressing and look like a VP while she spoke about the economy today) the sooner she'll stop being entertaining and start being annoying. If you go after her, you only serve to increase her relevance. Hillary tried that as a teflon outfit. It worked for about a week and a half until the media started rolling their eyes and not letting it bother them. Also, I'd wager Obama kind of knows a thing or two about running against a female candidate by now.

What? You never watched The West Wing? Anyway, this election has extra goofyness going on because it's the first time in almost 90 years since both sides don't have anyone who has ever been a Prez/VP running. Usually, the incumbent is a bit more quiet, a bit less touring, a bit more "I'll campaign but you know I have to do REAL shit." That guy got a lot of TV time on PBS. I like the guys pointing at him but nobody wants to go over there and get in his face about it.