this christmas, the tiresome dinners and family get togethers are sure to become less dull if any of your extended family members bother to know what's going on in ottawa. chance to get into a heated debate with those pesky turned-american relatives on the merits of publicly funded healthcare and why as always bound to be a critical issue in the campaign. if not, dinner will be boring as usual.

and unless you live in a rural riding, this whole voting in the winter isn't that big of a deal. if anything, it's more work for the media per se. that's the whole misery about the january election. reminds me of that jon stewart skit in the runup to the 2000 US election where one of the reporters is sent to either iowa, vermont or some other desolate state during a winter month. it's fucking cold to be reporting out here. no one's bitching about this other than journalists. you'll get a chance to get out of the house as there isn't much you can do on a winter's monday evening. why not vote?

it seems that just a mere 17 months ago, we found ourselves in a rather similar position heading into federal election: same leaders, same issues, same "gripping" scandal. the only change this time is likely the change in weather when we head to the polls in january.

how does canada fair any differently than it did prior to june 28th 2004? same sex marriage is legal. people know the name jack layton. the sexy, yes that's right, the sexy belinda stronach--in that milf kinda way--is a liberal. and stephen harper is still a boob that central canada is scared off.

should we expect a different result? seeing as nothing has changed in the past year and a half, you would think liberals are bound for another minority government and the opposition parties becoming bedfellows with whoever at the most politically opportunitistic time.

but if history is any indication, minority governments heading into an election tend come back with a majority. the only exception was joe clark's 1979 conservative minority government fall that paved way for a liberal government.

the only major change this time around is the way the public perceives the ongoing corruption scandal surrounding the liberals. unless you live in quebec, quite frankly, the novelty of yet another corrupt liberal government has worn off. and certainly, there is nothing novel about corrupt liberals; it is canadian as maple syrup. then again, you can't marginalize the effect of the sponsorship scandal as it has contributed the current mood in quebec and breathed new life into the seperatists. expect another strong bloc vote in quebec, scattered liberal support, and quebecois continue to scoff harper as dubya-lite.

strategy for the conservatives? shake off the image as a fanatic right-winged party ran by western populist politicians. previously, fear mongering worked well for the liberals and certainly they'll be banking on regaining support in ontario by frightening the voters. since 2004, harper has done nothing to shake off that preception and is not helping himself by today announcing the first thing he wants to do is have a free-vote on same sex legislation. you don't want to start off a campaign but rehashing an issue that's already been settled. and certainly nothing as decisive as same-sex marriage. shit, even the supreme court gave gay marriage a green light. way to start the campaign harper!

the ndp under layton are in a tough position. out of the three leaders, layton has been the most effective but come campaigning, the liberals will paint the ndp as the wasted vote: a vote for ndp is a vote for harper. and looking at the polls with liberals and conservatives neck and neck, layton faces an uphill battle of reaching out to swing voters who support the ndp but at the same time are fearful of a conservative government. if liberals can maintain a 4-5 point lead in the polls way into the campaign, things look good for ndp. but if the polls fluctuate throughout, voters just may settle for martin to avoid the prospects of harper as the next pm. of course, layton has a stronger standing than he did in 2004 and the siphoning of votes tactic may be a harder sell.

the strategy for paul martin? seeing as there isn't much of a record to run on no matter what his party says, it's going to be about painting harper's conservatives as right-winged boogie man and telling voters not to waste their ballot with the ndp.

deja vote indeed.

procrasinating is fun, ain't it?

this picture has something like 74 band references. some obvious, some pretty hard, some like "wtf is that?" for music geeks, this activity is pretty fun as all other normal routines seize to exist in the quest to find the supposed 74 band references.

yeah, that's what i've been for the past while.

this week justice gomery issued his findings as to what happened to taxpayers' money in the sponsorship program. what? a scandal in canadian politics? no way! earlier this year, the commission listened to chretien's buddies claim they were either too senile or too drugged up to recall what went on when they worked in the government. classic.

so the judgment is that since the program was run out the pm's office, he knew or should've known public money was flowing into liberal friendly companies. but of course, chretien plans to challenge the report in court and the public is bound for onslaught of jean's aloofness. i've always loved his ability to answer questions, make statements without giving an actual answer the proof is in the proof!

really this was a scandal unlike others, however, the public's inability to fully grasp its scope was the difficulty of understanding what actually went on. granted, they were covering a story which was developing however the number of individuals, bureaucratic lingo, complex webs of lies could not make for easily packaged soundbytes for the evening news. for most part, news coverage of the comission remained vague at best to either avoid confusing people into not caring or they themselves didn't have the knowledge how to the angle the precedings.

so in the end, all we known is liberal friendly communication companies were overcharging, making up billing statements, the government officials not involved kept quiet fearing for their jobs, and others, like paul martin, had not clue what was going on.

the timing of the report is critical as to whether the present liberal minority government will survive the end of the year. in february, martin promised to call an election following john gomery's report but now the promise has been put off till gomery issue his second report three months from now.

then you've got stephen harper running around the country for the past 18 months "ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod, the government wasted money"and well, as big of an issue as it is, isn't going to get the conservatives into power. where do they stand on anything other than banking that the sponsorship scandal is the only thing concerning canadian voters? how about health care, rising oil prices, us-canadian trade disputes. and well, the conservatives are hesitant on bringing the government down before the end of the year not to disrupt the near-coming christmas holiday. in other words, we have to get our shit together because we've got nothing.

paul martin himself isn't out of the hole himself. sure, the story seems to be the old corrupt liberals have been swept out of the bowels of government and the morally superior martin team have cleaned the system. but it's still the same name and harper will undoubtebly pound such thoughts into the voting public.

gille duceppe just wants to get quebec the fuck out of the confederation and the sooner the better.

and yet again, layton anchors the balance of power.

so more than a decade after winning the stanley cup as the habs' coach, his new "tell-all" book reveals that jacques lemers is illiterate.

i can think of a million one-liners of those involved in hockey and unable to read or write. but this dude won a stanley cup so i'll spare you the toilet humour.

imagine how jacques martin feels right now? (of course, assuming he can read). he couldn't win in ottawa and it's not looking all the bright for him in the sunshine state as the panthers' coach. see, i make a funny.

in other news about the news, that ass-clown aaron brown over at cnn is leaving because he lost in time slot to anderson cooper. make what you want of it, but in my mind his ego could not withstand such damage of being pushed aside by someone who not long was hosting reality shows. brown has a journalism background, cooper hosted the mole.

being somewhat of a cable news junky spending most of my mornings flipping between cnn, foxnews and cbc newsworld, this story grabbed my attention in that mr. brown just wasn't what's the world i'm looking for..... good. pretentious, ah yes, that he was excellent at. in essence, the reporting of a host change for a news shows displays the #1 journalistic faux pas--at least i thought it was--news people arent supposed to be the news.

i'm lame & going to bed.