“Liberals are calling on the Harper government to honour a motion passed in the House today to provide specific details of the $1-billion G8/G20 security boondoggle,” according to a party release.

I think in grade five we had a current events folder where you were supposed to be able to notice bias. “Boondoggle” is one of those words.

Everybody is horrible.

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.

Ignatieff suggesting Jean just remain isn’t too strange, but his framing seems off: “Ms. Jean has done a superb job. I am calling on Stephen Harper to reconsider his decision to replace her.”

Putting it this way implies that Harper’s replacement of Jean is an indication of some sort of failing on her part, and that Harper’s to be blamed for her replacement. There’s really no point in this. It’s true that whoever he selects will likely be worse, but I don’t know who this tact is supposed to appeal to. The left is already upset at Jean’s handling of various prorogation requests.

The Star suggests the concern is “that Liberals also would like Jean to stay in office in case the ongoing dispute between Parliament and Harper’s government, over the release of Afghan documents, lands in the office of the Governor-General to be settled.”

First, I’m not sure how it would land there. Second, with a minority government, if it were to land there it would only land as a bomb that would end the office.

It’s worth wondering why Conservative women don’t feel the need to stand up for women.

I’d assume it’s (in part) because while they may be women, they didn’t get to be where they are by acting like women. Women who care about women’s rights and are politically motivated are more likely to work with a party or group that shares similar views, rather than against a party that has opposing views.

There isn’t one, there won’t be one, any statement to the contrary is lying, according to Jerusalem’s mayor.

“‘There’s no freeze,’ Barkat told a group of reporters at a Washington restaurant Tuesday night. ‘There is building going on. There will be more building going on.’”

Well that settles that.

I’m nowhere close to an expert on Israel-Palestinian affairs. I’d describe my knowledge as “close to zero.” But thanks to the existence of the web, here’s my thought on the whole thing. It will never get solved in isolation. If it gets solved, it will be part of a solution for a much larger regional problem, and “solved” will probably mean tens of thousands of deaths. It will be solved as part of or in the aftermath of a regional if not world war probably having something to do with Iran.

There. It’s on record. Quote me in thirty years.

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.

Dan Gardner comments, by way of comparison against the general acceptance of widely exclusionary bilingualism requirements for top level legal/political positions:

It’s an interesting state of affairs, particularly when it is contrasted with one of the traditional arguments in favour of gender equality. Women make up 51 per cent of the population, this argument goes. If they are excluded, one-half the available intelligence and energy is squandered. Thus, a country, corporation, or government that wishes to accomplish all it can must make every reasonable effort to include women in their recruitment pool.

Um, yes, the benefits of women in the workforce are economic. The reasons for not disallowing women into the workforce are moral.

Also: “The consequence of mandatory bilingualism is as obvious as it is unmentionable in the polite circles of Official Ottawa: the top jobs often won’t go to the best people.”

That may be technically true, but it’s more or less meaningless. In just about any given job (including prime minister), the difference between the best person (if that person could even be discovered) and the hundredth best person is going to be small enough to be meaningless.

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.

Although I suck at updating this turd of a blog, I feel like it’s important that within 24 hours of our neighbour’s passing “historic” legislation I acknowledge that here, even though this forum is currently less public than if I were to shout out my window into a hobo lot.

I hope Obama is well-protected these next couple days. It’s hard to underestimate the number of nutcases running around. (Whenever one of these crazy people really does something completely insane, I will (do) blame the media. In part.)

I think (hope) that comment (the first two sentences) is less a statement of serious concern, and more a meta-statement on how concerning the concern over the concern of fearful morons is.

So the throne speech includes this: “Canadians live within their means and expect their governments to do the same.”

That sounds familiar: “But families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same.” Obama said that not too long ago.

In both cases the remarks are vague enough to be both true and disconcerting.

The throne speech comment is followed immediately with “Spending designed for a rainy day should not become an all-weather practice.” Again, vague enough to be both true and disconcerting.

Spending isn’t necessarily bad. Spending more than you make isn’t necessarily bad either. So long as the spending is useful.

Also, I don’t know about the rest of the country, but there’s clearly a housing bubble in Toronto. You can rent for well below the cost of owning. Maybe this is a demographic thing with too many 20- and 30-somethings buying a house just because it’s what you’re supposed to do? I don’t know, it’s a hypothesis I’m not going to examine right now. Or a rush ahead of the increased restrictions? Are there readily available data on the types of mortgages being taken out? When everything crashes, the next mayor’s going to be fucked.

Why is it that whenever I see a headline along the lines of “[something something something] mayoral candidate says,” if I think “gee, that ‘[something something something]‘ is totally ass,” the “mayoral candidate” is Rocco Rossi?

The Star has an article regarding a video posted to Youtube.

In a tongue-and-cheek video posted by the politician on YouTube, Councillor Adam Giambrone shows himself working out to prove that he has the “years of physical and mental training that it takes to run the city.”

After a brief discussion of the video and some initial reactions (i.e. Youtube commenters, i.e. the worst people in the world), the article concludes with this:

Giambrone is expected to announce his candidacy for mayor on Feb.1.

In what sense has he not already announced it? He was on 102.1 a couple days ago in the morning talking about how he’s not confirming or denying that he’ll be running, but that everyone is invited to Revival on Feb. 1.

At the end of the video, the last thing (and the first serious thing) Giambrone says is “I’m Adam Giambrone, and I’m ready.” The video then invites everyone out to Revival on Feb. 1.

Either he’s running, or he’s being paid by Revival.

He’s running. He just hasn’t filled out the forms.

Do young people vote in municipal elections? Serious question.

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.

Busy packing/moving for the next week or so, but just saw that everybody in Connecticut thinks Joe Lieberman is a loser, which is exactly what he is and exactly what he deserves, and it’s kind of freaking me out that the right conclusion came out of the right circumstances.

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.

I never liked Ignatieff. From the beginning I found his statements lacking, from either a political or intellectual perspective. But I knew people who liked him, smart people. And those people no longer like him. It seems Liberal support has settled on the level of people-who-vote-Liberal-no-matter-what. Those who actively require vision have left for NDP or Green. Those who are assholes have left for Conservative.

With a potential election always potentially months away under a minority government, it’s not easy to replace a party leader without seeming to put the party into a position of election unpreparedness. I think the main Liberal strategy right now has to be not about how to take down Harper, but to determine the optimal timing for selecting a new leader. And the whole party had better quickly get behind someone (as they did behind Ignatieff), because any infighting will only hurt.

Despite (or because of?) his unwillingness to govern, I have a feeling we may be seeing Harper for quite a while still.