November: A month of politics
In little over an hour the month of November will end and the final chapter of the year 2008 will be upon us. Normally this wouldn’t mean anything more than people looking forward to the Christmas season or in the case of myself for the last couple of years looking at how close I was to the top of the mountain only to realize that I still had exams still to do.
This year was different, for myself personally I’m working so the ups and downs associated with the school year no longer apply but also there is a distinct feeling that looking back upon this month a lot of interesting and somewhat groundbreaking things happened. The month started off with the American Presidential election which unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past year I don’t have to explain the significance of. It was extraordinary to see the depth and length of coverage after Obama’s victory from all different types of media outlets, I read about it from the traditional sources like CNN and CBC but also saw extended coverage in the BBC and even long conversations on my tech, gaming and sports podcasts.
Recently coming off an election of our own up here politics dominated much of the Canadian news as well especially with the looming recession. Also while there may be a rant another day on the specifics of the current economic crisis, all I have to say to the big three automakers is this: if you’re going to beg for billions of dollars because you screwed up don’t fly your private jets to the meeting. I mean seriously how inconsiderate and stupid are you? Even if for some ludicrous reason it didn’t cross your mind I assume someone in the PR department of one of the companies must have figured out it would look bad.
As always it seems like I’m taking the long winded approach to get to my point, anyway continuing on…
Next we come to student politics which well they don’t matter in any grand scheme and are only of minor importance in the school in which they reside they are still politics with all of the fun and insantiy intact. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2008/11/25/ot-081125-shinerama.html?ref=rss is where you’ll find the article and quite frankly this and some of the comments coming from CUSA afterwords make me sick. For years my Alma Mata has been home to this kind of group running the student’s union which I always found to be a funny title anyway for it as it made it sound more blue collar than it actually is. Getting back to the article at hand it baffles me that people who would attack and condemn anyone who had the slightest problem with the idea gay marriage that was somewhat recently pass into law would turn around and say that some people aren’t worthy of money to help them just because there not everyone. The sad part about this is that those people on CUSA don’t even get how racist there being, that in some twisted perversion of fate they’ve become the same as people who genuinely carry around these prejudices and they’re much more subversive.
And now after 500 words (which is a lot more than I wrote for many university assignments) I get to the core of this idea that made me at 10:00 at night and with the one hour of free time I had tonight site here and write this blog which may or may not get read by anyone, instead of playing video games or getting to bed early. It was just reported on CBC the the Liberals and NDP will topple the Conservative minority and form a coalition government. This is where my two main points come into play, first: common sense. Even though they failed to win a majority the Conservatives still have more seats then both the Liberals and NDP combined so I don’t pretend to know how all of the procedures of the House work but something tells me that if they can somehow form a government with less seats then something is seriously wrong, especially if that means the Bloc get the balance of power in the house which is quite possible in this senario. Also do they really think that in the midst of the economic downturn and the beating the Liberal party took in the last election this is a good idea, at best it will mean another couple of years were nothing significant gets done in the House and at the very worst it means another premature election which is wasting money that right now could be better spend on well pretty much anything.
For those of you still with me because you find this interesting or more likely view it as a train wreck and are waiting for me to flip over another time and burst into a ball of flames I thank you for sticking with me even if it was only for the comedic value (Jerks). Getting back on topic before the sun rises and I have to get to the office I hope that the somehow the Canadian public will have the common sense and the will to point out how broken this current system is, the American have jump onto a bandwagon of hope and change (I’ll admit only after hitting a pretty deep bottom) and for once since I’ve been out here the majority of Carleton students are actually speaking out with one loud voice and getting some results (Which probably won’t go as far as I’d like to see but the mere fact that CUSA has somewhat backed off is encouraging). So what I guess I’m saying is that even with the current and constant frustration with politics I hope there is a turn towards common sense which I hope keeps up as it would be better for everyone and especially my sanity. This also could be stated as a ultimatum to politics: Either fix yourself so everything works or stop getting my hopes up so I can just be spend my time being bitter and going on rants you inconsiderate jerk.