No matter what they say, MPs have to sound ridiculous when trying to defend their unwillingness to be held accountable.

So let’s call that “baseline stupid.” Anything other than “Sure, here are the records” is going to be at least baseline stupid. And then there’s the next level:

“She is an employee of the house,” Liberal MP Scott Andrews said. “We appoint her. So why would she audit the people who appoint her?”

Oh god.

This post at Impolitical links to a Toronto Star online poll showing overwhelming public support for Sheila Fraser to have access to MP’s receipts. In this case I’m willing to believe the online poll results. The post ends up wondering, “Why no party is grabbing this issue for advantage… is a mystery.”

It’s no mystery. Even someone with only “legitimate” expenses is going to have something that they’d be forced to apologize for if someone else decided to make an issue of it. Then there’s all the illegitimate expenses. Nobody would come out of this looking good. Even if there are a few scattered individuals who could make it through an examination, within each party there will be at least a few bad spenders who make the entire party look bad. Frankly it would probably undermine confidence in our entire political representation. You could argue that so will not giving them up in the first place, but that’s not true, people forget things quickly.

For the record I’m for MPs having to give up their receipts to the auditor general, and think it’s horrible that they’re not. I’m just saying it’s no surprise.

So apparently a (female) Conservative senator said “We’ve got five weeks or whatever left until G-8 starts. Shut the fuck up on this issue.”

According to The Star, “Ruth’s remarks, intended more as friendly advice than a warning, were met with gasps of disbelief and even anger…” The article’s framing makes it seem as though it wasn’t a threat, but an attempt at help. The way a complicit mother might say to an abused child, “Please, just stay in the closet for tonight.”

Which is of course more disconcerting than if it were just some loony making threats. We’ve seen that before. In this case it seems much more indicative of vindictive policy decisions, which would seem to constitute something of a pattern.

It’s true that the leading party should have some discretion over where funds go. But a leading party in a minority government needs to tread more carefully. Or should need to.

I think we’ll get the hang of this minority thing eventually, once “coalition” stops being a bad word.

Or at least female politicians? I don’t know. I’m willing to assume that’s the case, generally. As to whether more female politicians would lead to more progressive legislation, I’m less sure. I think it depends on how quickly the shift were to happen. Right now, if women are generally more progressive, I’d assume it’s in part because as a group they have less reason to feel heavily invested in the male status quo. If all of a sudden Parliament (or at least the House) found itself made up of mostly women, I’d assume they’d look around and say “Well, the system works.”

Canada has more women (22%) in the House of Commons than the US has (17%) in the House of Representatives. It looks like in the Netherlands 42% of their house is female.

The most recent Conservative Party post, in its entirety:

The Liberals, Bloc Québécois and NDP came together today at the Canadian Heritage Committee just as they did when they tried to seize power through their undemocratic Coalition.

They voted AGAINST a Conservative motion to require CBC executives to explain themselves for using Frank Graves, a Liberal-supporting and self-described “progressive” as the network’s “neutral” pollster on party politics. By voting against this motion, they are endorsing Graves’ call for a “Culture War”.

Graves’ “Culture War” is designed to divide Canadians – East against West, young against old, urban Canada against rural Canada. It’s also ideologically consistent with the world view of the Liberals, Bloc Québécois and NDP.

At the next election, Canadians will have a clear choice between a strong Conservative Government, or a reckless Coalition that will aggressively wage a divisive “Culture War” to divide our country.

First, no matter what I’m against any political involvement in the CBC. I’d be happy to support a constitutional amendment ensuring their separate existence and guaranteed funding.

Having said that, I’m not exactly clear on how when three parties representing a majority of the country come together on an issue, that’s somehow “undemocratic.” I also don’t understand how something being “ideologically consistent with the world view of the Liberals, Bloc Québécois and NDP” is wrong. Because it excludes a single party?

Here’s the basic logic as I understand it (and I’m pretty sure I do). If YOU want it (no matter how many of you want it), it’s undemocratic. If WE want it (no matter how many of you don’t want it), it’s democratic.

It’s tempting to think that Canadian Conservatives are importing that sort of thinking from their batshit insane bretheren to the south, but I have a feeling it’s just a distinguishing feature of the right-wing mind.

Discussing the perpetually growing US deficit, Ezra Klein says “But at the end of the day, our deficit problem is likely to get worse slowly, and then get much worse all of a sudden. And it’s the consequences of that ‘all of a sudden’ that are likely to spur action, as the decisions are too hard for politicians to actually take responsibility for.”

He says some other good stuff too, in the post, which is worth reading.

And it’s not a deficit-fighting issue, it’s an any-large-problem issue.

This is the way I feel about climate change. If it can’t be solved at the last minute, we can’t solve it.

So the government owes Parliament the Afghan detainee documents, or at least a discussion on how to provide them. It doesn’t sound like this will go to the Supreme Court. It’s not especially interesting that Harper wouldn’t take this to the Supreme Court, but it would have been interesting to see whether the opposition parties would have taken it there had Milliken decided differently.

Sharpen your reading glasses.

As recommended, I watched the PBS documentary online.

Information sure did travel slower back then.

Also Booth came off to me as a sort of Ziggy Sobotka with a tweaked religious bent.

I don’t know how scientific this is, but I just added the rss feeds to my reader for the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP, and Greens, and within Google Reader the “subscribers” look like this:

Liberals 39
Conservatives 37
NDP 43
Greens 13
(And the Bloc has 12)

First thing, those all seem strangely low. Either nobody reads anything these parties have to say, or Canadians (the primary target audience, I assume) aren’t that likely to use Google Reader.

Second thing, it’s interesting how those figures generally correspond with the latest EKOS poll which looks like this:

Liberals 29
Conservatives 31
NDP 15.5
Greens 11.3
(And the Bloc has 10.3)

Combining those figures (all as percentages out of 100) yields this (rss/poll):

Liberals 27.1/29.9
Conservatives 25.7/31.9
NDP 29.9/16
Greens 9/11.6
(Bloc 8.3/10.6)

What I’m taking away from that is not that the NDP have a serious chance of leading the next government. What I’m taking away is that the Green Party’s reach and grassroots support may be overstated at this point. They have fewer “I’m seriously into this” supporters than one might have thought, and more “Fuck everybody else” supporters.

Again, to emphasize (with emphasis), I don’t know how scientific this is.

I was initially sceptical of the “But look at facebook” polling, but given there are 177,000 people in the facebook group for Canadians Against Prorogue, and that 58% (of the 67% who are aware of it) are against prorogue, it’s clear there’s generally large opposition to the motion. It would be nice to think that this could be the kind of event that would politicize a generation, awoken by a cynical act in such a pure anti-democratic spirit. It would be nice to see this play out in a meaningful way, to see the Conservatives branded as the big party that wouldn’t. Given polling on where the parties stand, I’m guessing it will pass with too much effect.

Harper will soon appoint new senators to give the Conservatives a plurality, if not a majority, in the Senate.

The original plan was basically to cap terms as a first step to abolishing the whole thing. Since he couldn’t get that accomplished, Harper said “Fine, y’all can go fuck yourselves” and made a bunch of appointments.

That’s not so much hypocritical as it is highlighting problems by creating those problems yourself.

But Harper could soon have a majority in the Senate. And he could have one in the House, depending on how things go in the next six months. If he gets both, and then doesn’t move on Senate reform, at that point he’d have some serious explaining to do. Though at that point, maybe that means there won’t be enough people caring to demand it.

The CBC image of the prorogation notice was 7:08pm.

The article at canada.com is from 8:06pm.

This blog post from the Prime Minister’s Office is from 4:23pm (according to the timestamp on my Google Reader):

Prime Minister Stephen Harper today announced that the second and final phase of Canada’s Economic Action plan will be launched following the Olympic Games with a new Throne Speech on March 3 and a federal Budget on March 4.

“Our priority in the new session of Parliament will continue to be rapid and effective implementation of Canada’s Economic Action Plan to benefit communities, workers and businesses,” the Prime Minister said. “At the same time, we are already looking ahead to future challenges. These include restoring a balanced budget once our economy is fully recovered and building a strong foundation for our economic future.”

Almost a year ago – in the face of the deepest worldwide recession since the Second World War – the Government of Canada responded to extraordinary times with extraordinary action. It introduced Canada’s Economic Action Plan, which included one of the most comprehensive stimulus packages in the industrialized world.

“While we see tentative, early signs that the economy is emerging from recession, the recovery is still fragile,” Prime Minister Harper said. “Now is no time to change course. In fact, we must press on with the second year of Canada’s Economic Action Plan.

“Our plan remains helping those who need it now, stimulating new job growth, protecting existing jobs and ensuring that our economy emerges from the recession in a stronger position than it entered it.”

The irony of the first two paragraphs is overwhelming.

Well it’s apparently official. Parliament’s been prorogued until March 3, 2010. Two months (and a bit) without governing.

Throughout the day there was no shortage of good reactions to the possibility of prorogation and a few of the potential effects.

Given the notably scarce conservative reaction, it struck me that this whole prorogation thing was just an idea being floated, to see the response, to see how it would play politically. Would it hurt among supporters would be the main question, since the non-supporters aren’t likely to be brought over anyhow. It seems the answer to that would be negative, given the assbackwards conclusion-first reasoning of some of the popular party dullards.

And here we are.

Does this happen elsewhere? Is this a surprisingly common thing in parliamentary democracies? I’m asking seriously, because I don’t know. But what I do know is that wherever it happens, it’s completely fucking ridiculous and seems the kind of thing we should be taking to the Ottawa streets over, though of course those of us who feel that way are also (as I’m sure the Conservatives figured) the people who have a general sense that being governed by nobody at all might be better than being governed by Harper.

Well, mark your calendars, enjoy the Olympics, and remember on March 3rd that Harper has to stop ignoring parliament, stop making us look ridiculous on climate change, and create 265,000 jobs. And that he’s just had a two month vacation and is a douchebag.

Of 200 nominations from the Obama white house, 75 were being held up.

A few have gotten through.

One of those finally approved was Miriam Sapiro, who had become the Obama administration’s prime example of stalled nominations since being chosen in April to be a deputy United States trade representative. Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, put a hold on the confirmation of Ms. Sapiro, an Internet policy consultant, to try to pressure the trade representative’s office to file a complaint with the World Trade Organization against Canada over a law that bans cigarettes with candy flavors.

Makes sense to me. Canadian policy seems so obviously backwards on this. How are you supposed to market cigarettes to children without fun mascots and familiar flavours?

It’s obviously wrong to assume that giving lots of people a position of power and a weapon that’s supposed to be less harmful will not lead to some of those people abusing that power and weapon (especially in cities named Ozark for some reason).

The thing with tasers, it’s easy to find and read about and watch examples of bad use (even when it’s against a jackass).

And those episodes have implications (from Visioncritical via TheHook). Apparently confidence in the RCMP has dropped significantly in BC (where the RCMP is going to have a responsibility with the Olympics) since the tasering and death of Robert Dziekanski.

When a single weapon can discredit a major security force responsible for safeguarding the very people who no longer trust it due to the use of that weapon, that in itself is an important reason to consider the review of that weapon.

I can see how it’s a useful tool to have, but it’s a problem that it’s seen as something much more minor than taking out a gun.

(It doesn’t seem necessary to describe Robert Dziekanski and “Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski.” Would we otherwise be confusing him with some other well-known Robert Dziekanski I don’t know of?)

This is terrible (via Paul Wells):

The people of Switzerland, whose country contains four minarets, vote in a referendum to ban the construction of any more. Apparently the women’s vote had much to do with it.

From the article regarding women supporting the ban:

A right-wing campaign to outlaw minarets on mosques in a referendum being held in Switzerland today has received an unlikely boost from radical feminists arguing that the tower-like structures are “male power symbols” and reminders of Islam’s oppression of women.

Also this gem:

“If we give them a minaret, they’ll have us all wearing burqas,” said Julia Werner, a local housewife. “Before you know it, we’ll have sharia law and women being stoned to death in our streets. We won’t be Swiss any more.”

Oh god. The Swiss. We’re doomed.

Why were all the vehicles in Mad Max gas guzzlers? Is the idea that before the world more or less ended there wasn’t a single gas sipping car available? Still, once everything went to crap, wouldn’t have somebody have figured out a way to run on biodiesel, like Doc with the flux capacitor? Or was the whole situation unique to Australia and the rest of the world was still doing ok?

In any case, prepare for it. Practice your screams. You’ll want to make sure to have a good “Help I’m being ravaged by racists” scream and a good “Why can’t I bring myself to end it, fuck it I’ll just scream into the godless sky” scream.

It’s probably true that most astro-wealthy people mostly just want to hold onto their money.

Some of the decent rich people out there should put some of that charitable goodness towards establishing independent media organizations, and not necessarily limited to any one specific country.