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If you choose to suffer through posts below, I warn you that there isn't much in here for hot, young Aussies, but, be my guest, as per the title of this post.

On the bright side

Sure, I was a little too optimistic about the future in those heady days (10 months ago). But, on the bright side, she's finally single. I'm ready for the next step, JJ. I'm betting she just finished out of the top 10 (any of whom, by the way, I also hope will call should the tragedy of singledom befall them).

Attn: Mr. Ignatieff

He's the smartest person on Earth, Iggy, so think about it. Maybe you can be the first person to fuck up the best country on a completely different planet.

Who really killed Steve Irwin?

Yesterday, a ?friend? of mine was chatting with another body about 9/11 conspiracies. And, with the Quebecois nation resolution, the Liberal leadership race and with just four episodes left until this season's Survivor finale, I thought I'd spend a word or 250 on this hot-button topic.

Last week marked the 43rd anniversary of the birth of the granddaddy of all conspiracy theories. Now, conspiracy advocates have been around since God created the Earth 6000 years ago (did the Lord conspire with the snake in the Tree of Knowledge just to kick his freeloading kids out of his house so He could get on with His life...?) and they've gotten more sophisticated (read: stupid).

My favorite is probably Roswell. I was a big fan of Mulder and Scully in the early to mid 90's and I wanted to believe the world government was a gravelly-voiced chain-smoker who was selling my future short so he could have a nice 2 bedroom on Georgia and Burrard. But it requires of me to think the worst of my fellow man, which is easy on some days, but no less cynical.

And that's ultimately the problem with cynicism; it takes comfort in pessimism as if it were a justifiable world view.

Which takes me back to my friend, and the 9/11 conspiracy. I won't argue the fine points in this post; smart people do it here. I'll only offer this opinion of the whole messiness. A conspiracy of this size requires a lot of people in the executive governments (not just American governments), the military and the media to keep their mouths shut (and who believes that this guy can keep a secret?). Most people come clean about their crimes, even if only confidentially, but, with time, the truth will out itself.

Constitutional algebra

Better men than me have already chimed in on the Quebecois nation notion silliness, so I won't spit out someone else's ideas translated into Francese. Needless to say, it's a bad day for Canada and for her particular kind of federalism. It's a bad day for the Tories, the Grits, and das Kapitalers.

Quebec federalists lose by winning, Alberta separatists win by Reform attrition, and the Canadian nation atrophies from a diet of constitutional reform and a steady routine of navel-gazing.

Thus, the following: (see if you can solve for x,y and z. Winners get a diabetic coma.)

It won't be long into the future that the minimum conditions for x will be intolerable to y. z will say to y to be generous, to which y will balk and tell z to stop being such a pussy, show some self respect and stand for something other than the national anthem. z will go back to x, upset that everyone's fighting.

On a side note, partisan politicians should never agree on anything, not even the theory of gravity. When they do, they're always wrong.

BORDER GUARDS VS. CROSSING GUARDS

If gun control is your cause celebe, consider this.

I don't expect my fellow Canadians to get down with the NRA any day soon, but at some point, we should probably take a reasonable look at guns and their place in our culture.

We live a gun-a-phobic society, that much is clear. Recent tragedies have again confirmed for us the presence of guns in our midst, and the mortal peril the represent. And the last year had too many headlines involving those charged with our public security paying the ultimate price in their service.

So, it strikes me as perfectly natural that Canadians don't much care for an agenda that would expand the number of legal guns in our country. In fact, over the recent election campaign, a certain former Prime Minister promised to ban handguns, even though they were already largely prohibited.

I don't wish to speak to the specifics as to why the handgun promise was silly, the link above provides a 'Reality Check' that more or less explains the virtue of such a policy ( that is, if demagoguery is a Canadian virtue, which it increasingly appears to be).

The Liberal handgun ban was innefectual policy. ButI think it wasn't meant to be useful. Like other Liberal policies regarding socially unpopular touchstones (the long gun registry, choice in childcare, private health clinics, Shiela Copps, etc.), the policy existed not just to grab a headline in the Globe, but it operated as a kind of group therapy for the Tofu and organic edemame set. It doesn't matter to these people that such policies don't work, only that we make a national public statement condemning the existence of handguns in this little corner of time and space.

What will be interesting will be seeing how the Prime Minister-elect's respods to Tuesday's news. A quick but decisive move that may be seen as somewhat contentious would go a long way to distinguishing his stewardship from his predecessor's and avoid the dithering labels that Paul Martin bore and put a little more authority behind his slim mandate.

EAST IS EAST

Early dark horse favorites aside, the Liberals have a choice between two former Atlantic Premieres to lead the Liberals into the next election. All of the other candidates have a lot to recommend them, and I'll waste a lot of space examining them (by that, I mean, discrediting their candidacy). However, if Liberal renewal has come to mean anything in the last 25 years, it revolves around the one thing that Liberals believe in most.

A friend of mine keeps reminding me of the truth above, and I'm inclined to agree with him. I want to think that the militants in the party will want to stake out an ideological ground, a staging point for a counter-attack against the Conservatives for the next election. This means that they will make a stand on a policy issue with which the Tories disagree, and they'll make the appeal to the electorate that the NDP can't do anything to stop the Tories. This is what the Liberals do.

I want to think that will happen, but it won't. They'll pick a new leader who says all the right things, and run the same campaign with a different face. And both of these men offer the Liberals the opportunity to do just that.

First, they've both run succesful provicial campaign as leaders of their respective Liberal parties and won. They've held power and used it.

Second, they have experience that extends beyond the provincial level, and into international arenas. It makes Liberals all gooey inside when they think they're leader may know Chirac.

Lastly, name recognition. It doesn't matter what they represent, that can be filled in later. What's important, is that the latte and scone set will be doubling their Xanax prescriptions as long as Harper keeps doing what he said he's going to do.

On occasion, I am prone to wishful thinking. So, I say with guarded optimism that neither man will accomplish much by way of pushing back the Tory gains. Methinks that the Liberal party is in for a massive reorganization which could keep them out of power for quite some time.

But more on that some other day. The game's starting.

YEAR ZERO, DAY ONE

I don't really feel like gloating over Liberals tonight, and not just because the Tories didn't win a stronger mandate. And it certainly isn't because the reduced mandate makes governing exceedingly difficult for a bunch of relative neophytes.

No, I'm really going to miss hating the government. And I don't think that I'll have that opportunity for several years to come (10+ years is my guess).

I'm an unashamed partisan, on a good day, and I see a lot of sunny days ahead (metaphorically speaking; I live in Vancouver where what you call the Sun, we call the myth of the Big Yellow Orb). The agenda for Stephen Harper will be easier to enact than the numbers in the House would suggest.

Harper's big asset in his next electoral test will be the priorities he outlined in this campaign-- priorities he must, can and will deliver on. The Federal Accountability Act will probably get near unanimous support in the House, and should extend his government's honeymoon long enough to get his first budget passed. I expect the Grits to act like the Tories from early last year and abstain from the budget vote that reduces the GST and cuts capital, corporate and personal rates while laying the groundwork for the Tory childcare/baby bonus plan.

Just before summer, I suspect a private member's bill to address the status of same-sex marriage will be introduced, and soundly defeated. Just then, the government turns it's focus on crime and the first of a series of bills makes it's way onto the floor of the House. The NDP and the Grits will have to back up these measures, even though they would rather eat their own feet than further cede room to the Tories on this issue. But they won't have much choice. The Tories will have the newness of their government and the better financial resources in their favour.

At some point over the next 8 months, the Prime Minister will have to sit down with the provinces and start negotiating the fiscal imbalance. If and when a deal is reached, and it will be in all parties interests to reach a deal, Harper will look to Duceppe for support, and get it.

So, this is my dry, boring prediction for the year ahead. Although I don't expect it to be as smooth for the Tories as I would hope, I don't think the Liberals are going to have such a great time, either. First, obviously, is the leadership change. Which direction will they go? Right or Left? East or West (of the East)? Anglo or...other? Whatever they choose, they will probably beat themselves up for quite awhile, long enough for the Prime Minister to dispell the illusions about his agenda.

Second, most of the former Liberal cabinet will get pretty restless. It's one thing to go from opposition to power, quite another to go the other way. I suspect that, after a new Liberal leader is forged in the fires of Mount Doom, a lot of the tourists will take a powder (I'm looking at you, Iggy).

Lastly, I think the really bad news for the Grits will be the investigations into past malfeasance(s). I suspect we'll see something like Gomery II, probably around the time of the Liberal leadership convention. And I'm not as convinced as others about the unity of the Grits on the other side of the convention.

But maybe this is all just wishful thinking. I'll pontificate/daydream about the annihilation of the Federal Liberals in other posts, but in the meantime, I'm going to have to adjust to respecting Parliament again.

Careful what you wish for...you might be an idiot

At first glance, the Grits campaign strategy in Quebec and Ontario makes perfect sense for them. Make this election a referendum on a referendum and ask central Canada who do you trust to lose. I mean, what else could they do. The Atlantic region doesn't offer enough room for substantial gains in the House. In Ontario, the right-of-center vote has increased in each election since 1997 (the 'time for a change' impulse getting more and more traction with each ballot). And in the West, particularily in BC, the NDP is a bigger threat to the Conservative stronghold in most ridings.

So, the Libs look to la Belle Provence to improve their electoral fortunes. And they campaign the way they know best: we're the only federalist party that can save Canada from Parizeau/Bouchard/Landry/Boisclaire/Mistou. You know the drill.

You probably also know the counterpoint--that the Grits created this problem. Whatever the merits of the respective arguments, the problem that I see is the political reality on the other side of January 23.

Duceppe and co. aren't actively campaigning for sovereignty with this election, merely trying to drive up a seperatist presence that Quebecers will be reminded of over the next couple of years before the next provincial election. Whereas the Bloc and the PQ are most definately seperatist, not all of their supporters are. And a lot of the federalist supporters of the Bloc feel perfectly happy voting for Duceppe's team simply to punish the Liberal Party of Canada.

And why shouldn't they. The other mainstream parties have little or no presence in this part of the country and maybe a whole bunch of Quebecers think that the Paul Martin's Liberals deserve some time in the penalty box.

So the Bloc does remarkably well on January 23, 2006. If the theme of this election is a fight for unity, and the federalists get clobbered, what do you think the reaction of Duceppe/Boisclaire will be. My guess, they'll say it was a victory for the cause of separation, and the Liberals will have to back down from their rhetoric, in that awkward fashion that only they can muster.

But the damage may be severe. I think this is a case of the Grits putting their interests ahead of the nation's, purely for partisan reasons, and it could be very damaging to the cause they rightly defend.

Anyway, I don't have a clock in my apartment. But, if each empty bottle of Kokanee represents about 20 minutes, and I've been drinking since the start of the Sens game, then the Daily Show is about to start, so I must away.