Political Insanity

Please note an update to my earlier post about this topic–I had neglected to thank some of the previous contributors, especially Babbling Brooks, and Steven Maich of Maclean’s.

Maich has written a rejoinder to some of the criticism he has received about the Joe Woods issue. It’s an excellent response, and certainly does a better job than I have responding to Ginny and Shannon and Sean.

Man oh man, I am hoping beyond hope that the CPC picks up on this matter for their convention this week.

Hey, maybe instead of the great Political Staples / Space Monkeys “I support Joe Wood” button, the Tory buttons can be a kind of tribute to Ayn Rand:

A journalism teacher at Northwestern University is desperately concerned about the growth of blogging in the USA:

“The public is finding it more difficult than ever to distinguish between legitimate news and unverified drivel. The problem is that most news consumers don’t realize that mainstream media reporters work within strict policies and guidelines that these other outlets don’t require.”

Let’s have a little quiz. When he says, “The public is finding it more difficult than ever to distinguish between legitimate news and unverified drivel,” this means which of the following:

(a) I am getting lots of phone calls from worried parents, who are concerned that their teenagers might be believing what they read in so-called weblogs, or ‘blogs’.

According to the TTLB Blogsphere Ecosystem, as of today, I am a Large Mammal. I remember posting about how happy I was to be a Mollusc…

This puts me in the same category as Let It Bleed, Small Dead Animals, Daimnation, and Colby Cosh, not to mention any number of high-power US blogs.

Obviously a very large part of this is due to being a member of two large blogrolls (Red Ensign and Blogging Tories), and a smaller part is due to saying really irritating and stupid things that cause other people to link to me, so they can refute my ill-advised opinions.

Strange to think I become a Large Mammal on the same day I decide to quit blogging forever.

This should be the Tories’ mantra heading into their convention: we’re on the side of the average Canadian, taken for granted by Mr. Dithers and his Power Corp. cronies.

Let It Bleed’s Bob Tarantino has the best political idea of the new year, even better than his advice to the CPC about the Martin budget.

Read. This. Post. Now.

At times like this, one feels one’s powerlessness in actually affecting Tory tactics. You and I can blog back and forth about it, but can we really make it happen? I suppose it depends who reads this thing after all. Hello, OLO! Are you out there?

There has been a lot of criticism leveled at Stephen Harper and the CPC over recent weeks: for example, from the so-cons, the neo-cons, and the permalinkless paleo-cons (actually I love John Robson–in a purely platonic sense–but I think he would agree with the paleo designation).

These critics are certainly entitled to their Monday morning quarterbacking, not to mention their peevish whimpering, negative nattering, and egocentric “if-only-they-would-listen-to-me”ism. However, we should stop to consider that Harper’s relative silence on the recent Big Issues Of The Day (BMD, Gomery, the budget) may actually be an intentional strategy.

1. Hands up, who thinks this is going to win us the next election?

Actually that’s it. That’s the whole quiz.

[insert sound of crickets]

Best Idea of 2005 (so far):

Step 1: tie balloons
Step 2: drive fast

Shamelessly plagiarised from Blackfive.net, via My Left-Wing Girlfriend

Worth doing, just to see the expression on people’s faces…….

The Red Ensign, edition number 16, is hosted over at The Phantom Observer.

Phantom does a brilliant job with the layout. If I ever get off my e-backside and host this burgeoning horde, I will no doubt plagiarize exactly this format.

There is an old saying that, in a democracy, you end up with the government you deserve. The existence of the Red Ensign brigade gives the lie to this statement. I’m not sure who it is that deserves Mr. Dithers, but it isn’t us.

Er, an av-wells-anche?

Anyway, Babbling Brooks gets Paul Wells to focus his readers’ attentions on Brooks’ well-researched analysis of Liberal defense “spending”.

Hear, hear!

As witnessed here, for example.

I’m removing his news aggregator from my links.

The two “hottest” political bloggers in Canada frankly deserve each other.