This Wednesday, Ontarians are going to the polls to decide whether Dalton McGuinty or John Tory is the least depressing fuckup. However, this particular election is of interest because in addition to the usual festival of dull that is a provincial election, there’s also a referendum to change our entire system of legislative government. This referendum offers the possibility of exciting, lasting and exceptionally positive change, which is of course one of the reasons that the Tories and Liberals have quietly banded together to do their utmost to make sure it doesn’t pass – starting with a sixty-percent supermajority requirement to pass the initiative and continuing from there.

The choice in question, for those of you who do not know, is between our current first-past-the-post riding-based system and a hybrid system entitled Mixed Member Proportional, or MMP for short.

First-past-the-post is of course quite simple to explain: you have X number of geographically-laid-out ridings (currently in Ontario this is 103, expanding to 107 with this election), each riding has its own election, whoever wins the riding gets the seat in your given representative body.

MMP is somewhat different, combining elements of both a riding-based system and a purely-proportional system. The number of ridings in Ontario is reduced to 90, but 39 new seats are added to the legislature. When you vote, in addition to voting for a candidate in your given riding, you also have a second vote which you issue to the party of your choice. Parties then get a number of seats from the list intended to equalize (or as close as possible) their portion of the popular vote to the percentage of seats they control in Parliament.

Example: The Rhinoceros Party wins 15 ridings and thus gets 15 seats, but their share of the popular vote is twenty percent (or about 25 seats in the legislature). The Rhinos receive ten seats from the list slots, for a total of 25 seats.

Now that we’ve explained the basics of the system – which, honestly, you could have done by going to the election services website, but I am nothing if not a provider of useful services – it’s time to explain to you why you should vote for MMP.

continue reading "The Obscure Legislative Analysis Post That Is Necessary And Quite Possibly Dull"

So, if you follow American political news, Hillary Clinton is at this point all but decided as the Democratic nominee for the 2008 presidential election, once again proving that there is no election that the Democrats cannot do their level best to fuck up.

However, there is still, I would argue, one last move that John Edwards and Barack Obama can do to counter the total Hillary surge.

The simple problem that the Edwards and Obama campaigns both have is that they’re both competing for the 55-60 percent of the Democratic vote which is anybody-but-Hillary. Depending on where you are and what day it is, one gets 30-35 percent, and the other gets 20-25 percent, and Hillary gets 35-40 percent without even having to try hard based solely on A) name recognition, B) pull within the party and C) dollah dollah bills, y’all. And this advantage has just steadily intensified for Hillary as the campaign’s progressed. The split Obama and Edwards are competing for is working to her advantage because as time goes on, her aura of inevitability grows.

The answer to this is simple. Edwards/Obama 2008. Announce it right now. Never mind that it’s easily the closest thing to a Democratic dream ticket that could possibly be imagined anyway; we speak here of two candidates whose policy positions are, while not identical, extremely similar, and whose appeal to the public is both broad and wide. Joining the two campaigns immediately will allow the larger-by-half anti-Hilary crowd in the Democratic party to finally muster together with full force, and the sole reason to announce a veep candidate later in the term (for a short-term poll bump in late spring) is almost meaningless in the modern media age. I understand that both Edwards and Obama are gambling on a surprise in Iowa, but Clinton leads in New Hampshire as well and beating the Clinton machine in both states will be extremely difficult if not outright impossible.

It’s swim together or drown alone, you guys. Which would you prefer? Do you want another John Kerry-style candidacy in 2008?

Hey, Diane Finley! First off, let me just say that you totally rock those tinted glasses and that having Graves’ Disease must suck. Mad props to you, D-Fin.

Now, as to the meat of this missive: Sweden is making us look bad. I know, I know, it’s already a bit of an uphill battle what with IKEA and all. Those meatballs are tough competition, after all. And plus, I think they have fjords, and that’s tough. But until now I think we’ve managed to acquit ourselves quite respectably.

But Diane. Come on. It’s the whole Iraqi refugees issue. Sweden has allowed in 25,000+ Iraqi refugees in the last two years alone. Meanwhile, over the same time span, we’ve admitted about a thousand. This would be a permissible ratio if Sweden was a much bigger country than us, but Canada’s population is over three times the size of Sweden’s. If we were taking in refugees at the rate that Sweden is, we’d have over 78,000 in-country at this point.

Now, I’m not saying that we’re bound to take in refugees at the same rate as Sweden, but could we at least manage a figure that’s not embarrassing by comparison? Please?

1944:

In nature, there are creatures that can only live at the expense of hosts, from the life of other creatures: Grape vine and vine louse — without a grape vine, it perishes. A tree and mistletoe — without a tree to support it, no mistletoe. The Jew is the parasite among humans. That is the natural law. He can not do differently. He needs a host people to be able to live himself.

1993:

We began by saying that a cockroach cannot give birth to a butterfly. It is true. A cockroach gives birth to another cockroach […] The history of Rwanda show us clearly that a Tutsi stays always exactly the same that he has never changed. The malice, the evil are just as we knew them in the history of our country. We are not wrong in saying that a cockroach gives birth to another cockroach. Who could tell the difference between the Inyenzi who attacked in October 1990 [Kangura falsely claimed that Tutsi forces had attacked Kigali] and those of the 1960s [who had resisted the Hutu revolution of 1959]. They are all linked … Their evilness is the same. The unspeakable crimes of the Inyenzi today … recall those of their elders: killing, pillaging, raping girls and women, etc.

2007:

The first and most basic element in all hate propaganda is the dehumanization of the target, for if the perceived enemy is considered to be nonhuman, the concept of killing them entirely ceases to be a series of murders and instead becomes simple, necessary extermination.

Be vigilant.

The current issue of Maclean’s features some (cheap) Photoshoppery of Dubya-as-Saddam on the cover, accompanying an article by Patrick Graham about America is now attempting to sign on former Hussein flunkies to smooth into a hopeful era of relatively stable government in Iraq. (Which is not particularly news, but we are on newsmagazine time in this instance, so.)

Unsurprisingly, Michelle Malkin doesn’t like it, and starts right out with this gem:

When your left-wing magazine is in need of some quick buzz and a cheap circulation boost, what do you do?

Oh dear.

Dear Michelle Malkin:

1.) Maclean’s is not left-wing. At most, it’s center-right. Understand that you are talking here about a magazine that runs Mark Steyn as a regular columnist, that published Barbara Amiel for far too many years and whose current most notable columnist is Paul Wells, who’s an intelligent political writer but also the author of Right Side Up: The Fall of Paul Martin and the Rise of Stephen Harper’s New Conservatism, and a regular proponent of good ol’ tax cuts. (This is not to say that Wells is a neoconservative, but he’s definitely got rightish tendencies even if he defines himself personally as an independent.) Over the last decade it has been consistently critical of the Liberal Party – who are actually political centrists, and I understand that this might be confusing, but it’s how we do things up here – and more often than not outright dismissive of the leftist NDP. Its current EIC is Ken Whyte, who is most notable for two things: an exciting design sense and a highly defined sympathy for Alberta-style conservatism. (And really, “center-right” is being generous, considering that when Ken Whyte ran the National Post, it was widely considered to be a house organ for the Reform Party, and he imported most of his Post senior staffers when he took over Maclean’s.)

2.) Maclean’s is also the best-selling political magazine in Canada. Any “circulation boost” it would get from running a picture of George Bush altered to make him look bad would be painfully minimal.

3.) This is because in Canada, George W. Bush’s approval rate hasn’t topped fifteen percent for his entire presidency, and more often than not he’s been hovering at about the five to ten percent mark. Canadians do not like the man and do not like his politics. A picture of Bush made to look like a jackass is not new or novel or even particularly interesting to us, you see. It is like, say, pineapple upside-down cake. We know it’s always there, and we can always get it if we want it, but when we see it, we don’t immediately think “yes I must have that.”

So, Michelle, you’re wrong. I know everybody will be shocked to hear that. Absolutely shocked.

This is quite possibly Sadly, No!’s finest hour.

Originally written September 10th, 2005.

There is this website called ConservativeMatch. The idea behind this website is fairly obvious: it is a dating site where conservatives can find other conservatives, spawned probably by the same company that made ActForLove for liberals, and at least the right-wing site has a less pretentious name, so let’s give them props for that.

Like ActForLove, ConservativeMatch (slogan: “sweethearts, not bleeding hearts” – no, really) doesn’t let you look at profiles unless you are a member. So I created a fake account with the fake Gmail account I use for porn sites investigative journalism such as this and took a gander. Because, hey, my love life is not the hottest tamale in the basket these days, so maybe I should consider these right-wing babes! Although, in fairness, I ignored everybody who said sex before marriage was a sin, because there’s only so much right-winginess I can take in such regards.

“Vicki-15296” (all the names are like that – surfing this site makes me feel like I am in The Island, and that Jordan-Two-Delta is right around the corner) says that “If you are pro-abortion or pro-homosexuality, move on to the next profile unless you want an earful from this very opinionated woman.” So I will do that, because I am all about the abortions and the homosexuality, you know. (Besides, she says that “My personality can be summed up by stating that I love Mozart’s Mass in C minor and I also love “Panama” by Van Halen.” If she’d said “Jump,” I could’ve taken her seriously, but “Panama?” Dude.)

“Heather-29691” says that “I am very Republican and would consider the week I spent at the Republican Convention in NYC in 2004 to be one of the most fantastic experiences of my life. Where else could Bono be shouted down and Brooks and Dunn cheered for?” Which is funny because I don’t actually remember Bono being at the Republican National Convention, and Brooks and Dunn would get cheered at any country music concert where the lead attraction sucked and people didn’t want to think they’d given Ticketmaster their hard-earned money for nothing. (Alan Jackson, maybe you’d have a case, lady.) Also, Bono can be shouted down lots of places. Just last week I ran into Bono in the supermarket and he was all “the Third World is starvin’, boyo” and I was like “I JUST WANT TO BUY SNAPPLE, DAMMIT.” He cried like a girl.

Then there are ten ads in a row that are cookie-cutter stamped, literally only varying the text in the ads by location, age, and “how conservative I am.” I vaguely suspect that these ladies do not actually exist, and are there only to give the illusion of a much larger female conservative online dating population then actually there happens to be. But I shouldn’t think that because that is cynical and mean and I am doing this in the spirit of optimism.

“Karina-33738” has plans! Her multiple-point-plan for healing all that is wrong in America is listed off in full in her profile! She is a detailed policy thinker, and you know I go for that, so let’s see… “5.) No foreign “students” over age 21. The older ones are the bombers. If they don’t attend classes, they get a “D” and it’s back home baby.” That’s brilliant! Man, I always wanted to find a chick who knew, just like I did, that all foreigners are inherently evil! ” 7.) Offer Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries $10 a barrel for their oil. If they don’t like it, we go some place else. They can go somewhere else to sell their production. (About a week of the wells filling up the storage sites would be enough.)” Because China and India don’t buy oil! GENIUS! But wait, she believes that all men are not created equal regardless of race, gender or nationality – but I bet she’s just being spunky about her ex-husband who knocked her up and left her to be a single mom! Because HE sure isn’t created equal! Two snaps in a circle for Karina-numbernumbernumbernumbernumber! She gets bookmarked.

“Kim-26626” states that “Antonin Scalia is MY IDOL!” Especially when he sang “Cryin'” by Tammy Wynette on Country Week, and Simon Cowell had to say “you know, Antonin, I had my doubts about you, but you’ve really stepped it up now.” Then Paula Abdul said something stupid, and Randy Jackson said Antonin was his dawg. But then she says “I like Bush 43, but he’s a bit too moderate…nevertheless, he was the better choice. So what do you think about a Guiliani – Rice ticket in 2008? You can never go wrong with an Italian!” Man, if she thinks Bush is too moderate, what’s she going to do when Rudy “pro-choice and dresses in drag” Guiliani shows up? I don’t think I could handle that drama. But on the other hand she says she really likes sex, which is good, because I’m getting the impression that a lot of these ladies want a wedding ring first. Mostly because they keep telling me that in their profiles.

“Phyllis-33105” looks like the Church Lady. She also says her favorite movie is “The Passion” (presumably “Of The Christ”) and that her favorite song is “Jesus! Get Your Praise On! God Bless America!” I Googled that and found this site, and I kinda wonder what “Holy Ghost Hop” on the Kids’ Favorites album sounds like, but then I realized that the man was making DEVIL FINGERS on his kids’ album cover and therefore, technically, is a false prophet. And did I mention she looks like the Church Lady? Because she really looks like the Church Lady.

…and that was basically it. There were only 156 ads for women between the ages of 27 and 35 on the site. In comparison, I tried multiple times to come up with a filter while searching for men that got me less than 500 hits (their maximum). I tried limiting it to a single birth year with different blends of conservatism, location, you name it – but still, always tons and tons of guys. So I think I’m not gonna go after conservative chicks. Because, man: talk about competition.

On the right: Cal Thomas!

Perhaps there will not always be an England. An exodus unprecedented in modern times, coupled with a record influx of foreigners, is threatening to erode the character of the land of William Shakespeare and overpowering monarchs, a land that served as the cradle for much of American thought, law and culture…Abraham Lincoln said no nation can exist half slave and half free. Neither can a nation be sustained if it allows conditions that result in mass emigration, while importing huge numbers of foreigners who come from backgrounds that do not practice assimilation or tolerance of other beliefs. When one factors in the high number of abortions (one in five pregnancies are aborted in England and Wales), the high birth rates of immigrants (15 times those of white Britons), it doesn’t take a population expert to predict that the days of the England we have known may be numbered.

And on the… well, not where Cal Thomas is, anyway… Warren Ellis!

(I bet if they ever met in real life, Warren would smack this dude upside the head with a frying pan. Or make him cry using only the power of his mind.)

James Joyner’s take on Rudy Guiliani’s foreign policy essay has to be read. (The essay itself is perhaps some of the most amazingly stupid claptrap ever written by any presidential candidate ever. Yes, including Dan Quayle.)

EDIT TO ADD: Also, Jim Henley, whose take left me gasping for breath.

Kevin Drum quotes from the Atlantic Monthly‘s current bio-piece on Karl Rove – but it’s really a George Bush anecdote from Dick Armey (no latte-sipping liberal, to say the least):

“For all the years he was president,” Armey told me, “Bill Clinton and I had a little thing we’d do where every time I went to the White House, I would take the little name tag they give you and pass it to the president, who, without saying a word, would sign and date it. Bill Clinton and I didn’t like each other. He said I was his least-favorite member of Congress. But he knew that when I left his office, the first schoolkid I came across would be given that card, and some kid who had come to Washington with his mama would go home with the president’s autograph. I think Clinton thought it was a nice thing to do for some kid, and he was happy to do it.”

Armey said that when he went to his first meeting in the White House with President Bush, he explained the tradition with Clinton and asked the president if he would care to continue it. “Bush refused to sign the card. Rove, who was sitting across the table, said, ‘It would probably wind up on eBay,'” Armey continued. “Do I give a damn? No. But can you imagine refusing a simple request like that with an insult? It’s stupid. From the point of view of your own self-interest, it’s stupid. I was from Texas, and I was the majority leader. If my expectations of civility and collegiality were disappointed, what do you think it was like for the rest of the congressmen they dealt with? The Bush White House was tone-deaf to the normal courtesies of the office.”

Armey only looks at it from a tactical standpoint, of course, because as a Republican he has a vested interest in not stating the obvious: that George W. Bush is an arrogant, self-centred boor.

Seriously, think about this for a second. If I knew that simply by signing some stupid little thing I could totally make somebody’s day – not even something serious like most autographs require, but a stupid scrap of paper – the temptation would be to sign as much stupid shit as possible. (Indeed, sports agents will tell you stories about how “autograph fatigue” for sports stars takes years to set in, and how they have to train their newer prospective stars to not give autographs upon basic request.) It would be not unlike crack. (And indeed, most people who sign a lot of things like to add their own flourish. When I got my copy of Mouse Guard signed, David Petersen not only signed it but quickly doodled a tiny mouse warrior into his name. And he had a line, so he was keeping busy.)

But George W. Bush sees the opportunity to do a tiny bit of good and sneers at it.

What a pathetic asshole.

…I give you sexual harassment happening on-air.

Disgusting, yes, but all the moreso for the sheer nerve.

Saw it pimped a few places, but David Rees’ magnificent smackdown of Michael Ignatieff’s ludicrously pompous and self-important op-ed in the New York Times Magazine simply cannot be pimped enough.

Money shot:

I was excited when I first saw this new essay: At last, Ignatieff was going to come clean about his super-duper-double-dipper errors. I expected a no-holds barred, personal excoriation. In fact, I assumed the first, last, and only sentence of the essay would be: “Please, for the love of God, don’t ever listen to me again.”