I don’t see the need of the networks calling a winner. Fine to talk about the proceeding count, elucidate whats going on, but if one side has a big lead do we need an announcement? And if not, do we need one? Many a Canadian election’s included that moment of taking offense when the host pre-empts the proceedings with an hysterical call of the result, always like it’s an accomplishment to be the first to do it.
I’ve taken no more than 20 minutes to call off the television, sure there will be more interesting and amusing notes from the online world. Even reading of it in the papers today, the only thing that caught my eye as notable was on the amusing side, that at one big rally the out of touch Romney looked out to the crowd and asked if the Beatles were appearing, as a means of celebrating the enthusiasm of the crowd. The Beatles, whove not played a concert in more than 40 years.
Sheila Copps on tvo with the brilliant Steve Paikin brought up another Romneytoid: he was caught on film saying he only ever talked to Republicans, so he needed to know how to win over the other half of the voters. Partly he was likely playing the republican still in his quest to clear his reputation of being a massuchusetts moderate, but there’s a gaping presence there: to make decisions you have to weigh all the dimensions of it, and to lop off half the population from his mind, and specifically the leftward vestige in the democrats of concern for social policy, housing, culture, and present himself as utterly unexposed to views from that sizeable portion of the country is tree shattering. On his scales of balance there is apparently no other side, strictly the concerns of the wealthy and corporations.
Obama is at least tormented.
But politics is politics, and if it’s brought up, Canadian politics matters to me more.
Consider:
Pam Palmateer was on the radio today, and a clearer speaker and thinker one could not ask for. Strikingly dramatic in her conclusions, and with arguments I don’t see a comeback for, she was listing off modes of genocide against first nations here. Raised Mi’kmaw, she was told at a given age that she was not which was determined by federal rules, not Mi’kmaw rules, because her mother lost her entire status upon marrying outside Mi’kmaw …similar to the use of wedge issues in politics, this wedge was eliminating the number of people who will still be of that nation, allowed to live on the reserve in her own culture and all her subsequent generations. It was 100% gender based meaning only men could give birth (sic!) to full status or first nation citizens… It compares precisely with telling any Canadian woman that if she marries a non-Canadian she is no longer a Canadian. Utterly unsupportable.
During these last minutes we can still imagine either candidate winning.
With Obama you more or less know what you’re getting. Gridlock
in Washington, reasonable decorum, sensible respect of slightly more
individuals’ rights than Republicans give, trepidation about stepping on a rake
in the Middle East or China and Russia, and what a tend to think of as
modern adult consciousness, which I felt GW and Reagen, for two, did without.
George Sr was an adult alright, a golfing jackass from the CIA -
he was their candidate because he was a less threatening nerdy sort of guy
yet from the CIA – it made him tough no matter how little clue he had
and how he didn’t like to use the little ketchup packets because he
couldn’t stand getting some on his fingers. But yes, as a spy
he did know what went on out in the world, he just didn’t care much
and never seemed like more than the employee of unseen forces.
He was like the Hamid Karzai of the U.S.
One last thing in the news. I wish I had the clout to sponsor a Jason Kenney essay contest. He has the most unbalanced sense of world relationships imaginable. Have never seen him take up the interests of anyone but Israel. Not Canada, not Canadians or Canadian Immigrants, not the U.S., not even England. He seems to work only for Israel. I bet even his own party’s members are objects of his suspicion. Are they friendly enough to Israel? The rest of humanity and our wildlife are 0 for Infinity with him.
When arguable policy ranges are excessively narrow, and hepped up with a threatening edge, there is no meaningful debate at all. Anyone with a mind knows the complexities of relations between Israel and Palestine, or Shiites and Sunni’s or China and Korea are not for cowboy bluster. Pin the donkey on the winner and hold your breath Mr Kenney it doesn’t help. Romney flat out said, there will never be a settlement so just keeping kicking the ball downfield. It’s widely the assumption. In a full and complete democracy one state solution, votes would start to resemble knives. In a two state solution every border would be an issue, as would the amount of integration that exists. Would it be as bad as Republicans versus Democrats versus America’s vast independent community which may be the largest of the 3.
The independents are everywhere. I think most of my online groups and facebook people are 90% independents, the moreso those not using such media.
Few are ‘in’ the war, in the disputes as other than self-defined independents.
There’s no leader, little faith, expectations are so low.
I can barely tell Kenney and Nicholson and several of the others apart but there’s brutal meanness there. Wiping off the books five years of waiting list for immigration here – only wealthy refugees need apply what the fuck – no health care for refugees, when the whole premise of refugee intake is itself an emergency ward gesture. Fred Flintstones and some barn yard owls, thats what our genuinely stunning democracy delivered us. But “make no mistake” and “let me be clear” while change can seem forever to be what doesn’t happen, it does
Completely unanticipated wildly significant change does happen
and it’s usually not even predicated on present day considerations
and anxeities, it’s actual change. It’s just what happens.
The rest of time will be interesting, it will sure be interesting. No
predicting.
