It's hard to believe that Stephen Harper is dusting off the attack ads he first brought out a few years ago in preparation for an election. For all the talk that none of the parties want one right now, it's hard not to wonder why it feels like we're smack in the middle of one. 

With Stephen Harper doing the media rounds under the auspices of reaching five years in office (My god, why does it feel like soooo much longer than that!) and a new, but not fresh, round of ads of the 'Smear” variety; And Michael Ignatieff back on the bus in a minor reprise of his Summer tour, it feels very much like I'll be clamouring for a job with Elections Canada in the near future. 

But, my job prospects notwithstanding, I'm not sure I'm looking forward to the “Ground Hog Day” of an election. The outcome is going to be the same, and the ads telling me that Michael Ignatieff is an anti-Canadian American mole are growing tedious, tiresome and trite.

I mean, seriously, in one of the ads, some guy with the dulcet tones of the Grim Reaper, sombrely warns us that Ignatieff would consider adding back the two percent to the GST that Harper removed, even though most economists, who rarely agree on anything except, maybe, cardigans – agree that it's more beneficial to individuals to reduce income taxes. But why do something that's good for the people if it doesn't appeal to the Conservative's base? How's that for self-interest?

And the ads just keep on hammering away at Ignatieffs time living ouside Canada, and most seriously, in the US. I don't know if Harper knows this, but you know, the Americans can hear you when you accuse Ignatieff of having cooties for living there. I don't know, Maybe you should cool it. After all, they are our best customers, and you do wanna keep selling the oilsands, don't you? I mean, those tailing ponds ain't going to fill themselves...

It just seems to me that, if after two-plus years in office since the last election, your lead hand is that Ignatieff lived in the US once, and not any actual accomplishments – I mean, I can't blame you, I can't think of any either - then maybe all you're doing is helping the electorate come to their senses. You might find this hard to believe, but a coalition government would not be the apocalypse. I happen to know this because Gilles Duceppe can't ride a horse.

I just wonder how many more rounds of this we'll take before we finally move on to another movie. Cause personally, I'm finally getting bored of this Groundhog Day.
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It isn't Stephen Harper's pig headed arrogance that upsets me the most in his handling of Omar Khadr, but the knowledge that way too many Canadians, who must also believe in Santa Claus, even though he repeatedly violates rules governing international air space, unquestionably buy the primary-school level logic that Khadr is guilty because some biased american 'authority' says so, even though law experts have lined up to condemn the entire Guantanamo process, and Canada's abdication of responsibility to look after it's citizens.

Never mind that the Canadian government is practically gleeful in its pride over how it treats someone who was only 15 at the time, in a grand 'fuck you' to the international conventions outlawing trials of child soldiers, to which Canada is a signatory.  This is the Harper Archipeligo, after all, and goddammit Democracy is whatever the hell he says it is. Lawyers know that evidence like the fact that it was an American grenade that killed Sgt. Speer, and not anything that Khadr possessed, is meaningless in this movie version of Alice in Wonderland as written by Khafka. 

And, if the comments on the media sites are anything to go by, I'm swimming in a sea of fear and ignorance. "That's what you get for killing someone" is a common theme, even though an actual unbiased trial would be a slam-dunk in Khadr's favour, in this universe, he has to plea-bargain in order to avoid life in prison in extra-terratorial space. Life in Guantanamo is the life of the un-dead, and to the untrained eye of conservative supporters, Khadr's life is neither here nor there.

Eight years he's plea-bargained for. Eight fucking years on top of the eight he's served. There's no "time served" in Alice in Kafka-land, so he'll serve 16, which, if you're Mullah Omar, is fitting as it delays his reunion with the 72 virgins, but for someone who is innocent, it's just tragic, and insulting to the rest of us who believe in a just Canada. We should have insisted on his return a long time ago. The Americans acually wanted, no, begged us to take him back. But Harper would have none of it. It wouldn't play to his base. Justice isn't worth pissing off the 35 percent of people who vote for him at election time. God, how I don't want to live in that world. 

The front-line of ministers, Lawrence Cannon-Foreign Affairs, Vic Toews-Public Safety,and  Peter McKay- defence, who is still acting out all this time after getting dumped by Belinda Stronach, have no interest other than towing the party line. Nuance need not apply.

I'll give ya this much. The rest of the Khadr family is pretty nasty. You'd think his mother would shut up already about how Americans should die. Omar Kadr is suffering for nothing more than the sins of his parents.

A pre-empitve note to the ignorant commentators to follow. No, you are.

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Would someone please explain to me what is so wrong with the notion of adults cooperating in a coalition government? Because it's pretty clear from the numbers that if Canada gets back on the election merry-go-round, we're going to end up in the same place yet again - a bunch of pissy leaders and the rest of us with vertigo, ready to barf up our cotton candy.

The insane faux-horror that ensued after the last suggestion of cooperation in parliament is enough to make us believe the denizens of a certain Street should be renditioned to Syria for cooperationist propoganda. You know - that dangerous movement that started in 1969 by Gordon, Susan, Bob, and Mr. Hooper - more commonly known as the Sesame Street 4? For god's sake, man, they were teaching children to cooperate! How dare they!

That great definition of insanity is on everybody's lips these days: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. The results will definitely be the same: There will be a minority parliament. But the outcome could be different, because three of these things belong together and one of these things just isn't the same. And if you guessed that three of these things are left-of-centre politics, then I think you're ready to play this game.

Because as much as Stephen Harper wants you to believe that a Canadian Axis of Evil wants to hijack parliament, I don't think it's unreasonable to see it as adults cooperating in order to represent sixty percent of the country. Any agreement with the block would go something like this: where common interests overlap, we'll work together to advance those interests. Quebec separation is not a common interest, and therefore is off the table. But of course, the religious faction of Harperville thinks gay marriage is a slippery slope to inter-species marriage, so why wouldn't they equate working with the block on EI reform, or our role in Afghanistan, as the first step toward mandatory poutine on Sundays?

I mean, it just doesn't make any fucking sense.

Of course, the Liberals and NDP are not making it any easier on themselves to work together without looking ridiculous, with constant accusations of who propped up who, and the Conservatives are happy to enlist the support of the separatists themselves in a case of selective amnesia worthy of a book by Oliver Sachs:  The Politician who Mistook the Separatists for a Hat. They all end up looking like hypocrites, and things will be really awkward when they decide to officially bless the union.

In fact, the time really has come for the Liberals and NDP to actually run on a platform of willingness to cooperate. Let everyone know what's on the table so there's no surprises. Stephen Harper is convinced that the country would not stand for a coalition government, and that the threat of one would deliver him a majority. I say we call his bluff. I mean, it's definitely time to try something different, that's for damn sure. There's no question that there is an alternative to the merry-go-round. Maybe those Sesame Street communists might have been on to something. Adults cooperating may be the only way off.
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In the run-up to the election of Barack Obama, polls showed that Canadians were falling over themselves in adoration as much as anybody. If Canadians could vote, polls showed we would have done so in the near-70 percent range.

So in one of the great disconnects in Canadian history, I can't figure out why we keep going back to the Stephen Harper well. We've all acknowledged that President Obama is more than just a pretty face. In this era of complex hardships, his Harvard law degree gives him street cred the way a bullet wound would give Snoop Dog his. Obama's moral leadership on the issues of torture and the illegality of Guantanamo has resonated with people all over the world, but Harper still clings to his faith in Gitmo the way a child hopes against hope that the Easter bunny more closely resembles chocolate than rabbit fricassee.

Now, nobody is saying that the inmates in Cuba are the ideal bachelor pool for your daughters’ prom dates, but we must not forget, for those of us who were ever aware of this at all, that the Americans went in to Afghanistan and practiced the military version of Japanese drag-net fishing: Go fish for tuna, and scoop up everything else as well, including dolphins. The dolphins don’t get tossed back. It’s statistically highly unlikely that there aren’t a good number of innocent people in Guantanamo. I’m not incapable of the extra-judicial thought that members of Al-Qaeda should be fried, in the most uncomfortable manner possible. But the equal and opposite thought is the revolutionary position that the innocent should be set free. It shouldn’t take a magnanimous rocket scientist to figure this out.

But Stephen Harper continues to be enamoured and all-faithful to the Gitmo process, Canadian citizens be damned. God forbid Stephen Harper should show a modicum of human decency and at least try Omar Khadr at home.

And with no one else to compete against, Harper can only one-up himself in the category of abject disrespect for the law, and he makes a sport of defying those far more learned than him.

Abousian Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen, is being refused re-entry to Canada because the Harper minion parade tow the line that he’s on a terror watch list, even though the RCMP, CSIS and the government of Sudan have said he’s not a threat, and UN officials have said it’s okay for Canada to bring its citizens home. It’s like déjà vu all over again.  At one point in the hearing to bring Mr. Abdelrazik back, the judge exclaimed “It’s like Kafka, isn’t it?” to the Government lawyers.

All Canadians should be deeply disturbed by this, including that fine category of Canadian who believes we shouldn’t go easy on “those people.” Look again, Bubbles, as far as Harper is concerned, you’re “those people”, too. 

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