Swompdonkey

When it all comes tumbling down...

So it would appear we have an election campaign on our hands. If Paul Martin is to be believed, this will be a battle between the forces of good vs. the evil "NEO-CONS" (watch for that nugget to surface time and time again in the coming campaign), and their nefarious allies, the separatiste Bloc (Formerly known as Sergeant Duceppe's Lonely Nationalist Hearts Club Band).

It was history-in-the-making. High drama, as MPs rose one by one to vote on a simple motion of non-confidence. When it was over, the ayes had it. The Gomery parliament, as Rex Murphy calls it, was toast.

Anyone else notice that Martin didn't even bother to stand up and announce that he would be visiting the GG in the morning to ask her to drop the writ? By God, Paul Martin will not be held hostage to parliamentary procedure! How dare ye suggest otherwise. Boy, with that big shit-eating grin he wore in the caucus meeting right after the non-confidence vote, you would almost think he had won the damn thing.

Shit-eating grins were not in short supply tonight. Stephen Harper, too, had one plastered to his pasty visage... of course, in his case, it came across like the pained grimace you usually see on a man suffering a particularly troublesome case of flatulence. Old Steve did a yeoman job rallying the troops. None of that "angry-scary boogeyman Harper" that Canadians have come to know and dislike. He was all about the bright and sunny future that will no doubt follow a Conservative victory in the next parliament. As for the other two: Duceppe was Duceppe --thoroughly unsympathetic and madeningly confident and competent. Damnit if I'm not starting to like the guy! Layton looked glum as he read his recipe cards-- I know his handlers have been telling him to try to look more serious and not so gratingly gleeful, but come on, Jack! You just handed Martin his cojones! Try to look like you enjoyed it a teeny-tiny bit, 'kay?

My verdict? Altogether unimpressive, as far as history-in-the-making goes.

...Hey at least the Eskies won the Cup last night. And who better to comment on their triumph than Edmonton's own, The Coshster?

But I digress... we are sure to hear the parties hold forth on a number of issues in the upcoming extenda-campaign (now with more wintery goodness), but one topic that is sure to be avoided like the plague is abortion. It's the one that just won't go away, though, as the Ottawa Citizen's Brigitte Pellerin tells us this week:

Last Thursday we learned that less than 24 hours before the start of the conference, religious (Roman Catholic) authorities at the Oratory had told the organizers to find a different venue. "In the past three days, we have been informed that protests on our grounds are being planned against the 2005 pro-life conference," said Rector Jean-Pierre Aumont. "We have come to the conclusion that we cannot guarantee the safety of people on the grounds of Saint-Joseph's Oratory during this event." Much scrambling ensued, but the conference began more or less as planned at the(Protestant) La Bible parle church in suburban Cartierville. Participants included a number of friends and acquaintances of mine, including longtime journalist Peter Stockland and Richard Bastien of the Quebec journal Égards. MPs Stockwell Day and Pat O'Brien, as well as former Bloc MP and unsuccessful Parti Québécois leadership candidate Ghislain Lebel, were also there. In the end, slightly fewer than 400 participants went about their business, and most deemed the conference a success despite the threats (I'm told a window was broken), graffiti on the church's steps - including a heartfelt "inquisitors to the stake" - and noisy street protests complete with banners that read, "If only Mary [yes, that Mary] had known about abortion" and "Take your rosary off my ovaries."
It's always nice to see such self-described tolerant and progressive folks in action. Quietly and peacefully protesting a conference is certainly legal, awful banners and all. For the record, though, I would like to state that anybody - whether clutching a rosary or, for that matter, a vacuum cleaner - who gets too close to my ovaries will experience a swift elbow to the chin. What's not OK, or legal, is trying to shut down other people's lawfully gathered conferences, no matter how distasteful you find them. Nobody has a right to use violence, or the threat of violence, to disrupt legal peaceful activities by private groups. As for the Catholic authorities at the Oratory who chickened out, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.

...Disgraceful