For Those About To Rock.....

This is the greatest goddamn music video of all time, and I salute the individuals involved. (Well, I don't salute some of the people depicted in the video, but still. LOVE THIS.)

I hope they'll be blasting this on repeat in the Etobicoke Lakeshore campaign office, which is where I'll be tomorrow.

There'll Be No Shelter Here

The NDP in Scarborough Guildwood can afford bus shelter ads. BUS SHELTER ADS. I found this to be so amazing that I took a picture and decided to share it with you. Here it is:

"Vote for us and we totally won't blow tax dollars on expensive stuff we don't need!"

 

 

You incredible bunch of failbots. You're fighting the Liberals tooth and nail and you have all this union cash flow and you decide to use it on this instead of something like, oh, I don't know, GOTV? You really think plastering Adam Giambrone's bizarre cube-shaped head on one or two bus shelters is going to be the difference maker? Look at his head! It's got right angles! Right angles, I say!

 

Yup, this is totally a party that is in touch with oppressed people who are desperately trying to stretch a dollar. You've got a white woman and a dudebro who bigfooted a woman of colour local activist for the nomination so that they could get back at the Liberals for poaching Ken Coran. If you want to convince people that the NDP have learned from the mistakes of the Bob Rae days, this is the way you want to go!

 

Whatever. Keep on splitting the vote, guys, it's what you do best.

The Honeymoon Goes Sour

So, Liberals are frantically trying to hold onto 5 seats and are pulling out all the stops to try and get voters to reward their incompetence, and what does the Premier and leader of their party say?

"There’s no way whatever happens in these byelections that there will be a Conservative or an NDP government so it’s a pretty risk-free way for people in ridings to send a message to government about upping a game."

Hooooo boy. I can tell you that the Liberals did not appreciate hearing that today. How are they supposed to scare voters with visions of Ford Nation descending on Queen's Park when the Premier is telling everyone that these byelections don't matter??

Hundreds of trendily-dressed Liberals are pounding the pavement in 90 degree heat, consuming gallons of hair product and caffeinated beverages in a futile effort to remain fabulous, and Queen Kathleen basically says that their efforts don't matter because the by-elections don't matter.

I ask you: When Alison Redford and Christy Clark were facing annihilation, did they say, "oh well, can't win 'em all?" Sandra Pupatello would have made Doug Holyday cry for his mommy and turned Adam Giambrone into apricot jelly. But no- the Liberals had to go and "make history."

It's really sad to see how much this Premier couldn't care less about the rank and file......hahahahaha. Nope. Sorry, couldn't keep a straight face for that one. It's actually really really funny.

Liberals Get the Giam-bone

Hellooooooo Scarborough vote split! With the kind of luck the OLP has been having with their candidates, I wouldn't be surprised if John Fraser gets stuck inside- and is forced to campaign in- the life-size Dalton McGuinty costume he keeps under his bed.

Gotta believe that this jabroni's sudden interest in Scarborough is retaliation for the OLP poaching Ken Coran.

This dalliance with the unions is working out sooooooo well for the Liberals!

Musical Chairs

How long do you figure it'll be before someone points out that Peter Milzcyn hasn't resigned his seat on city council yet either? (Well, someone else, anyway.)

Anytime, guys. It's not like you have a byelection to win.

Theory of Public Participation

There is way too much garbage flying around with these byelections to keep track of it all, so I would just like to step back for a moment and acknowledge how wonderful it is to be actually involved in the political system. I'm going to be involved in these by elections, in addition to just writing about stuff related to them and other political things here.

That may not sound like something to be very proud of, but let me assure you that it puts me miles above the thousands of people my own age who cannot be bothered to knock on a single door or engage with one single voter with the intent of changing the political system that they rail against on a daily basis.

I write stuff here about how awful it is that unions think they can conquer our province and appropriate privilege for themselves, but as much as I don't like them, I have infinitely more respect for them for actually GETTING INVOLVED than I do for all the other hipsters "fighting oppression" with tweets, with marches, with posters, with reddit threads, with conferences, with inventing words that nobody's ever heard of. If you have time to do all of this stuff, but you can't find the time to actually engage politically where you might change something, then yeah.....your "oppression" is basically your own fault.

The time I put into being a party member does more to change the way this province, this nation, is governed, than anything it is that these people are up to, because they can't be bothered to get involved in the political system. Not trying to create a new political system out of nothing like the Occupy fools did- getting involved in the existing one. They want to "stop Harper" or fight the Republicans from the safety of their computers and Twitter accounts? Don't make me laugh.

Silly ass articles in newspapers that talk about how Twitter causes revolutions and shakes governments to their core make me absolutely furious. Twitter does nothing. PEOPLE shake governments. PEOPLE cause revolutions. Politically involved people who spend their time being involved in the affairs of their own governments, not those who use cute hashtags or post Youtube videos.

Oh, the hilarious excuses people come up with for not actually doing anything. Politicians are all the same. I don't want to compromise my principles. I don't have time. The system is too corrupt. No- YOU are too lazy, or scared. You are LETTING these people get away with creating this so-called systematic oppression that enrages you so.

There can be no greater proof of how those on the left (and, it must be said, the right as well) don't actually want social change than how they devote all of this time to coming up with ways of expressing their feelings about how society is screwed up, but don't actually step into the political arena because they don't want to associate themselves with uncool people like me who actually do stuff instead of just talking about it.

Political activism is unsexy, populated by mostly unsexy people. It is not something that you can just pay lip service to or do for one afternoon with your skinnyjeaned friends. You don't make buckets of money doing it. You shut your mouth and you go to work, because changing the way a country is governed is the most goddamn important thing in the world. Politically involved people have trouble keeping marriages and relationships together for this very reason. If you want to be fabulous, or build up your resume, you probably should be doing something else.

Jerkass comedians like Bill Maher and Jon Stewart who spend their time getting hugely paid while smugly mocking the right think they are changing our political system for the better. They think they're making history, but they aren't reducing the population of the right at all. After they're done making fun, the political right still exists, and is still going to try again, and they're going to try until they get what they want. Because while watching Jon Stewart skewer Bill O'Reilly for the 1000th time is hilarious and makes you think social justice is happening, it isn't, because Jon Stewart is passing no laws and getting nobody elected or de-elected.

No, people want to remain at arms' length from the kooky world of politics while griping about what a mess it all is. That makes a lot more sense than actually doing something to change the way things are. Maybe, in the near future, once Canadians don't have to imagine they're living in a banana republic, but actually are living in one, they will take their governance a bit more seriously.

Welp

Rob Ford "ally" Peter Milczyn (the Toronto Star's words, not mine) and Civic Action CEO Mitzie Hunter- Civic Action being John Tory's outfit, of course-  are now Liberal candidates alongside union commissar Ken Coran, who, as it was recently revealed, backed the winner in the NDP nomination race for the very riding he plans to run in.

Milczyn is hilarious:

"Mr. Milczyn does not plan to give up his council seat to run, noting that regular meetings at city hall will soon stop for the summer. Mr. Milczyn, an architect who chairs the city's planning committee, said the jump to provincial politics was unexpected.“Over the course of the last week I was approached by a number of people – insistently so. It's an opportunity to move ahead,” he said."
Yeah, no biggie- some people came and asked, so I figured, what the hell, I'd do the jump to provincial politics. It's not like city council is sitting or whatever, so if I lose, I'll just go right back to my old job! It's not as nice as an MPP post, but it'll do just in case I don't win! Which I will!

And when you think about Coran backing the NDP candidate that he will be running against....he's really doing the same thing as Milczyn, isn't he? All this talk about parties and principles really doesn't add up to much after all, does it? We are ALL on the same team- the GOVERNMENT team. (And those who aren't are in for an eternity of pain.)

Sure, cynics like me can speculate that the unions are just keeping their bases covered, whereas Milczyn doesn't like the current closeness between Ford and the PC Party, and Hunter is running to stick it to the knuckle-draggers who undermined her boss John Tory at every turn while he was PCPO leader, but that's just sour grapes.

I need to stop being so serious, serious, serious about things and realize that we live in the most perfectest province in the most wonderfullest country in the entire universe!