Obama - Best Week Ever?

Is it a sign of mental health to take great joy in someone else's happiness? If it is, then i'm having
a good day today.

Not that I should be - it's election day in the True North, and despite my best efforts to avoid it in every way except voting, it's impossible not to catch the grey gloomy wave of inevitability splashing coast to coast to coast that we are going to end up with a whole lot more of the same wretched thing we've suffered under for the last god knows how long: a Conservative minority... if we're lucky.

there may be a few seats shuffled back and forth among the ineptly progressive* parties of Her Majesty's Occasionally Loyal Opposition, but the only real effect will be to get them thinking about the next election, not this one.

the Liberals, the NDP et le Bloc can be counted
on to harrumph, gaffaw and obfuscate while calls are made and knives are sharpened, but none of them are likely candidates to do anything surprising between now and when the writ comes again.

their stunning lack of vision and their profound inability to articulate what an amazing country
this is, and to celebrate any possibilities of who we might become is one more shade of grey in the bathroom tiles of the public facility that is...
or at least was, Canada.

*

le Bloc, of course is special and unique. for all their proud talk of nationhood, le Bloc is a hustle, a grift, more well-paid white guys in nice suits who read wine lists, not bingo cards and keep more receipts
than promises.

call the question in Quebec? puh-leaze.

where's the money in that? Separation of the Nation is the timeless dream of the pure laine, and nothing so sullies a dream as reality. c'est si sordide. No, as the decades click by, le Bloc and the PQ shape are content to shape shift the idea of an identity into acting a spoiled brat, threatening  to hold it's breath til it's face turns blue and white if it doesn't get more.

victimhood is eternal, but patience is not. as my old man would say, shit or get off the pot, guys. and gals. the Bloc only exist as long as people in Quebec stick them to the rest of us. it's the Euro in them. yesterday is always better than tomorrow.

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the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.
i think it's also the opposite of inspired. when the traditional pre-election boomer twaddle about those "young people"** was trotted out again for this round of lotto-gov, i had a flashback.

when i was a kid, i had a paper route. i remember going down to the Liberal candidates office to get some Pierre Elliot Trudeau brochures and stuffing them into my papers because i wanted the guy to win.

i was 12. i couldn't vote... but my customers could and i was inspired.

if the "young people" aren't turning up, maybe it's not because"we" were better in every way back in the day. maybe they're not turning up because it doesn't matter.

is there anything inspiring in what the big red machine or the social dems have had to say? maybe. i didn't hear it, but then i haven't heard it for a while.

IMHO, it's all been grey for some time now.



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the greens? i am so not going there.

the Greens are what in the past were referred to as a tendency... the progressive wing of a larger movement. these days,though, it's more important to be right than it is to be effective, so 'they' are a party. they are also Steve Harper's ace in the whole.

as long as the Greens are around, swing ridings
are going to tend Steve's way. thanks for that.
merci...



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i'm not happy about Canada these days, and i miss that feeling. maybe it's a bipolar thing, maybe it'd the meds or a lack thereof. but i seem to be unduly sensitive to the constant caustic trickle-down contempt of Steve and his finger-puppets.

the Harper Government.

fuck you.

this country is bigger and better than they'll ever know. i dislike them, because they seek to make
us all small.
too.




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so yeah, it's all the more amazing to me that
in spite of all this bleagh, i'm happy for Obama. the man has had a hard ride, and a bum rap. there aren't many American presidents who have been dealt a worse hand - ending up in charge of a broke-ass empire in mad denial, with crazy expectations and a level of ignorance about even it's best friends that can still surprise...

if he's wasted too much time trying to get other Americans to see the bigger picture, i'm not going hold it against him. i'd rather tank with him than get rich quick with Steve.

cut to the chase.

first, he drops the long-form birth certificate thing. why didn't he do it earlier?

if i was a betting man, i'd suggest he let people all the way up to The Donald play themselves on it. smart, gutsy move.

then, he gets the Leading Republican on the guest list for the annual full press core dinner... where the Obam-ster rocks the house to the point where the Saturday NIght Live-r is reduced to "opening act"... including owning The Donald out loud and in public... and just to take it to the bonus round the D is widely observed to be a bad sport, of the "i can dish it, but not take it variety"...

sweet.

and no sooner has everybody scanned his long form than they turn to The Donald's draft record and Viet Nam, which turns out to be a very different thing than The Donald had been saying...

and then, the Seals take out Osama Bin Laden,
on his watch.

by anybody's standards, THAT is a sweet week,
and i'm happy for him... because when he wins,
we all win, i guess.

FOOTNOTES

*  ie: losers


** "young people" is an increasingly useless term in Boomerville, where it could be retired in favour of  "most people"

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