Jack Layton for Prime Minister

Conservatives are reading that heading and saying “dear god not this again”

If the liberals and NDP do form a coalition, they had better be very careful who they select as PM. Dion has already said he is stepping down; if he doesn’t feel he’s fit to lead the party- how can we expect him to lead the country? The other 3 liberal contenders were not candidates for PM. To give them the job would seem to circumvent democracy- not that we really have a democracy here in Canada.

No, the only choice would be Layton. He’s the only one who actually ran in
the election and maintains that he’s up to the job. To bad the liberals would never let it happen, they would never give up the power- even when its ill designed. That’s what Paul Martin’s government was all about.

"Grassroots"

Another term falling victim to language manipulation in the interest of political gain. Examine the metaphor. Many roots of blades of grass working together to grow into a lawn; many many small additions to the whole, together can create a powerful total. So ‘grassroots’ funding would be many many small sources of funding coming together to create one large pool of money.

Harper is always talking about his ‘grassroots’ campaign fundraising. The budget they recently presented eliminated government funding for political parties, meaning all parties would have to rely on their individual supporters for all campaign funds. The opposition parties are very upset with this because they know that the conservative ‘grassroots’ fundraising is far superior to their own.

So, it leaves the question, why is conservative ‘grassroots’ the most effective? Only recently have they been flirting with majorities, but Harper’s been going on about his ‘grassroots’ since the party was much less popular. Therefore its not by quantity of blades of grass that the conservative lawn is much greener. So where the hell is the conservative party getting all this green? It can only be explained by the quality of the roots. Conservatives must get more funding per source, each root being stronger on its own.

Well, conservative voters are traditionally older and wealthier. They have more money to pass along to the party sure, but that can’t be the only explanation. There have to be a few roots in that lawn that are very very large. Its no secret that the conservatives have many ties in business and receive much of their support from corporate sources.

Sorry but that is NOT ‘grassroots’ fundraising, its corporate. You can’t have a lawn made up of 50 giant blades of grass, it makes no sense. ‘Grassroots’ is a metaphor wherein the many weak bond together to become strong, its not applicable to the many strong bonding together to become even stronger. This is a traditionally lefty term, and Harper has brilliantly stolen it. It makes his party seem like it derives it greatest strength from the people which is total BS; the conservatives are strong because they have a leader whose great at playing the game of politics and a corporately stocked war chest for elections.

I’m sure Harper also can’t resist referring to his party with a term that sounds both populist and environmental.

Its all a sham my friends, we’re not all going to be out of work living in our cars. North Americans have one quality that guarantees our economic survival- we are the perfect consumers. Global conglomerates have invested fortune after fortune for generations convincing us to be the perfect little shoppers. We’ve been meticulously studied and prodded. They know how to sell to us, where to sell to us; they’ve been blasting us with their messages since birth. Think about it, we know the lyrics to jingles, we buy cheap equipment doomed to break constantly- we’ll wait for hours in the cold for a store to open when the latest crap is made available.

Then there’s the infrastructure. Look at a company like Walmart, with the reach and market saturation they’ve got in the USA. Do you think a company like that would want to pack it in and move out. Of course not, sure there is potentially much more consumption to be had elsewhere and they’re expanding abroad, but North American consumption is all set to go. The stores are here everywhere and we’re all salivating at the mouth to get in.

People in other parts of the world aren’t nearly as addicted to shopping as we are, they’re more like our grandparents. One set of dishes washed, none of this paper and plastic shit. A can opener that never broke. Baths instead of long showers. Our corporate masters have too much of a vested interest in this population, they know they can shit any garbage on us and we’ll scoop it up like dogs. They’ve got to keep us working to make this possible. These “economic downturns” are just opportunities for them to freak us out and make it okay that we didn’t get a raise this year, or that we took a terrible job and count it as a blessing. The working man’s slice is always shrinking.