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Posts from the ‘political windbaggery’ Category

Jan 7

Happy New (Glurk)!

boxie2009

I decided to mix up festivities this year by apparently toasting in the new year with a large glass of influenza virus. In retrospect, I think I can see why “champagne” is probably the more traditional medium, as “general discomfort” really doesn’t do justice to the past few days.

I have trouble reading when I’m sick, but managed to squeeze some of my “unexpected bonus vacation” time to read through several collected Scary-Go-Round volumes I received over the holidays. Like clockwork, I’ve been rewarded for my diligence by John Allison turning his laser sharp pen to five brilliant panels which sum up the entirety of Canadian politics.

  • Cons: Allison may be in the back pocket of the monarchy – trying to reassert it’s colonial grasp
  • Pros: Heroic send-off for Stéphane Dion, Allison manages to avoid using (then subsequently having to define) the term prorogue.

Dec 4

Enter: Xavier Becerra

Given the large effect US intellectual property policy has on the world at large, it’s always good to keep an eye on there. The Obama administration has announced Xavier Becerra as it’s new Trade Representative. Laura Quilter over at derivative work has an excellent summary, as well as links to profiles and lobbyist funding sources for the democratic representative.

Sadly “supporting Hollywood” is often synonymous with “restricting copyright”, but Laura cites an instance where Becerra seems to take a more progressive approach with respect to patent law… so there may be hope yet.

Lots of good information on someone that will be worth watching in the coming months.

Dec 3

On politics…

I don’t have a strong position on the current Canadian political fracas, as I don’t have a partisan banner at which to rally. At the moment, I’m equally enthused with all of the major parties… and that’s not a good thing. I will, however, cross-post an edited and updated version of what I wrote in a comment thread over at Nunc Scio, just because it summarizes a couple of odds-and-end random thoughts I haven’t seen get a lot of play elsewhere:

I’ve yet to be convinced by anyone that the obvious course of action for Michelle Jean isn’t to just throw this whole mess back to the electorate, prorogue be damned. Given that she likely never expected to have to make an actual political decision – let alone one of this magnitude (the King-Byng being the only time something even remotely similar has ever happened in the history of the country) I always suspect the most likely course of action (regardless of what the pundits predict as savvy politics) is the one that will cover the most butt. “This is a decision that must be decided by the people, not an individual” is never going to be a vilified argument in the history books (even if it’s wrong, and absolutely no one wants an election). It’ll draw flack in the short term – but contrast that with the risk of letting a (potentially) explosive coalition (including a separatist party), led (albeit temporarily) by a party leader who has essentially resigned due to his perceived lack of compatability with the electorate – rule the country for an indeterminate period of time. “Option B” has the potential of being an all time hi-lite reel political melt-down. Read more

Oct 20

Schadenfreude II: The Schadenfreuduning

Oct 15

Deja Vu!

So 38 days later a record low number of Canadians have gathered to speak as one, in one voice, unified in a collective political belief. I have no idea what that belief is… perhaps that we don’t really like any of these guys so we’re pretty much okay with things the way they were… more or less.

Really the only real standout of the night was the schadenfreude of watching each Canadian news outlet fall over itself to clumsily incorporate some form of Web 2.0 lip-service in their coverage. The National Post allowed commenter liveblogging! Much Music was showing Facebook comments! The Ceeb was (bizarrely) charting the volume of election traffic on twitter (which Susan Ormiston kept, aggravatingly, referring to as “the twitters”). Christopher Bird gets the last word of the night over at the Torontoist liveblog by noting:

The CBC is reporting on what people are saying on Twitter. Remove the internet, and this would be the CBC going out into the street to see what vagrants on street corners are yelling. However, this is Web 2.0, where content is king and everything is serious because it is the future, baby!

It sure is. Except, like all the best sci-fi it is a future that’s eeriely familiar.

Ah well… at least a lot of sub-par legislation died on the order paper… let’s try to apply some lessons from the past, yes?

Oct 10

The Industry of Culture

While it was quite refreshing to see culture come up in the leaders debate there’s still an unsettling trend of framing the various issues in the context of “is cultural product important”? These are usually identifiable by such thrilling arguments such as:

  • I don’t think taxpayer money should have been spent on (Artistic Thing Goes Here)
  • (Famous Canadian Artist) is vitally important internationally because…
  • Canadian’s aren’t known internationally for their trade agreements, they’re known for (Music, Film, Literature…)…
  • The government shouldn’t be stifling freedom of speech!
  • The government shouldn’t be funding inexorable filth!
  • etc, etc, etc…

Defending the importance of the arts is important, and many people will do a better job than I at doing so (and lots of others will rebutt them). But in framing the entirety of the conversation in such a way we are ignoring positions that can be discussed without relying on personal preference and moral dogma. Read more

Oct 7

Shorter Entirety of American Politics

Overcompensating is one of those sites I could pretty much link daily. Jeffrey Rowland is not only one of my favourite webcartoonists – he is also too mean to die.

However today’s instalment pretty much summarizes the entirety of the US political arena. It is like a fractal – every single element of it is a reduced size copy of the whole.

Sep 25

U.S. Politics: Nyuck. Nyuck. Nyuck.

I promise not to make too much of a “thing” of US politics – others do it better and we’ve got enough issues of our own at the moment but, seriously, what exactly is going on south of the 49th parallel this week? Tim F’s excellent round-up of yesterday’s shennanigans alone doesn’t even get into the fracas of David Letterman’s ripping of John McCain (who it’s worth noting has not only been on “Late Night” dozens of times, claimed a friendship with Letterman, but also announced his presidential candidacy on the show). Incidentally the video of Letterman’s McCain comments is really worth a watch.

But the real winner has to come from that first BalloonJuice summary:

About why Secretary Paulson asked for seven hundred billion dollars:

“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

Across the country, satire writers sadly capped their pens and bookmarked monster.com.

Oh, a wise guy, eh?