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Election notebook
Debate Week in the federal election has been dominated by the fallout of Liberal aid Scott Reid’s now infamous “popcorn and beer” comment. Some, mostly Conservative candidates, are insulted that Liberals believe Canadian parents would spend a child care subsidy on snack food instead of on quality $3 a day child care.* Others, like Rick Mercer, are upset that beer is getting such a bad rap, and yet others are wondering, “Who eats popcorn with beer?”
* Quality $3 a day child care does not exist. Good thing for Stephen Harper that stupid Liberal staffers are distracting us from stupid Conservative policy. But let’s hope the Conservatives drop it soon, because they’re starting to look like the class dork repeating the same tired inside joke in hopes of getting invited to the bush party on the weekend: “Hey, guys, popcorn and beer, heh heh. Shut up Beavis, heh heh. Backstreet Boys are gay, heh heh.”
P.S. If you get bored watching the debates, check out this great party game – Debate Bingo – to track Paul Martin’s oft-repeated, empty rhetoric. Make up your own for Stephen Harper’s “I have never kissed George Bush’s bum” and Jack Layton’s “Results for people.” [e]
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On U.S. relations
U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins “rebuked” Liberal leader Paul Martin for his recent, excessive American bashing. Adding to his tough, empty rehtoric on softwood lumber, Martin commented last week last week at the Montreal Climate Change Conference that the U.S. lacks a “global conscience.”
“Elections are no time for the truth,” Wilkins may have been thinking. “You’d think we’d sponsored a coup against the Liberals led by a cabal of business leaders and militants trained by the CIA, for goodness sake. We have a lot of experience overthrowing democratically elected governments, and trust me, we’d come up with something better than the Conservatives. Even the numbskulls we used in Venezuela last year were better than those buffoons.”
Martin could have attempted to make up with U.S. President George Bush by offering comforting words upon news that Bush’s approval ratings have slid to 38%. “I’ve never had more than 37% of Canadians supporting me,” noted Martin in this hypothetical scenario, “and I’ve run the place like my own personal fiefdom.”
In a fictional follow-up meeting between Wilkins and Martin, the U.S. Ambassador clarified that he was more disappointed with the Prime Minister’s technique in dragging another country into election politics. “You see, for full electoral effect, you have to actually invade the country, a full two years before the election,” advised Wilkins. “Then you fear-monger and call your opponents wussies – that’s golden stuff.”
“Y’all should pull a hissy fit over Greenland and invade Norway over it.”
When the U.S. Ambassdaor was reminded that Greenland belongs to Denmark, he reasoned, “Yeah, sure, and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with Al-Quaeda, September 11th, or weapons of mass destruction. It’s like death row: you don’t have to have the right guy, you just have to have a guy, preferably a black guy. Then pummel away.” [e]
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Good guys win?
Last week, a French court acquitted 49 activists who uprooted fields of genetically modified maize in the Orléans region. The judgement ruled that the voluntary vandalism was justified: a “situation of necessity” resulting from from “the unbridled distribution of modified genes that constitutes a clear and present danger for the well-being of others, in the sense that it could be the source of contamination and unwanted pollution.”
Monsanto, the world’s real-life Snidely Whiplash, may have been upset at this clear infringement of their inalienable right to freely and fundamentally mess with nature in the name of profit, an oft-overlooked clause in the 1946 Declaration of Universal Corporate Rights. “There is no proof that GMOs are bad for people’s health or the eceological balance,” they may have argued. “It’ll take at least forty years for some of the most disgusting, horrific effects we are expecting to come to pass.”
Monsanto then twirled its long, dastardly moustache between two fingers, and swore that the activists would “rue the day they tangled with the Great Monsanto, muah-ha-ha-ha-ha,” the calling-card talking point of a global villain.*
Among the activists involved were two Green Party politicians – who unlike their Canadian counterparts don’t believe that tax incentives and voluntary sign-up sheets will solve the world’s environmental crises – a talking moose with a handknit sweater and a flying squirrel with pilot goggles, four pesky kids and a talking Great Dane, and the Deputy Mayor of Paris.
* The “4-ha Muah” is typically reserved only for arch-villains with Rollie Fingers moustaches. The 2-ha Muah (“Muah-ha-ha”) is indicative of mischievious activists acting on the side of good, especially since the end of the “tights and X-ray vision era” of the 1990s. [e]
Some of the anti-GMO activists absolved this week
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