Artist's rendition of how a snap election in the near future might look

Feel that? A rush of warm air in the frigid, dry winter air? That hot tingle running up your leg? Feeling all fuzzy inside? It’s ELECTION SPECULATION FEVER SEASON! Have you got the FEVER?

The Conservatives have introduced their new Human Smuggling bill, and everyone hates it! The Liberals and NDP are gonna vote against it! But what if the Tories make the bill a confidence issue? Chaos! Human sacrifice, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria! After the 6-week Parliamentary Christmas vacation (if you’re not jealous of 6-week vacations, you’re either a teacher or pro football player), a vote of no confidence could mean a sudden 2011 SNAP ELECTION!

Is the tingle up to your torso yet? This is exciting! This is why you read politics blogs!

Elections! SNAP ELECTIONS! Snappier than normal elections!

But, wait, alright, let’s call calm the shit down for a second – why would anyone WANT to have an election in 2011?

Conservatives: Why now?

Say they decide to make the Human Smuggling bill a confidence motion, and stake their entire time in office on their God-given right to lock up all the refugees they want. If they do this, they avoid having to drop a doom-and-gloom budget early next year which would also almost certainly be voted down by the opposition, so either way it’s a precariously-balanced Jenga game that Harper sits atop for the next month.

But is now the time for Harper to pull the trigger? While still nowhere near a majority if an election were called tomorrow, by riding their new clustered-message strategy – long-gun registry and social issues in rural ridings, crime and jobs in urban ridings – they hope to take the odd Quebec seat, a couple of NDP/Liberal seats in the prairies, and raise the stakes all-in on the hope of making major inroads into what’s been Fort Liberal at least for my entire life, Toronto. With enough seats picked up, the Tories could pull ahead of a combined NDP/Liberal opposition, and while not a majority, they could at least buy another year of time on the government side of the House floor.

Liberals: Why bother?

This picture of Iggy standing on the side of the highway with the broken-down Liberal Express bus pretty much paints the whole picture

The Liberals of late have been a bit like the Toronto Maple Leafs of politics. The old-guard, well-moneyed establishment, each has struggled with identity issues in the past decade leading to a new leader, an infusion of fresh faces, and a new, aggressive strategy. The result has been the same in both cases: falling from passable to merely mediocre.

Literally nothing is working for the Liberals these days, their attacks are falling on deaf ears, Iggy’s eliciting the enthusiasm of a bowl of pudding, and the Grits are now looking so limp-dick vulnerable that even the fucking NDP now have their eyes set on the comfy confines of Stornoway.

Just like the only way for the Leafs to improve is by being awful enough to accumulate draft picks, the only way for the Liberals to take a stab at Harper’s stranglehold on power is to call an election they know they can’t win. A bitter pill to swallow in each case. At this point, the only thing that can bring the Liberals into power is a massive scandal, the type that managed to wrest power from the hands of Martin or Mulroney. If I were Iggy, I’d be stocking up on tape recorders, taking piano lessons, and patiently waiting.

NDP: Why not?

The NDP seems as feisty and fearless as ever, the lightweight boxer hopping up and down in his corner eager for a shot at the heavyweight champ. But realistically, Layton’s been doing this gig for a while now. Do they really think they can sneak into a second-place finish if the Liberals seriously shit the bed in a snap election? Being leader of the opposition comes with a nice house and a nice addition to your Wikipedia summary, but is that what the NDP wants: murdering the Liberal party at the expense of giving Harper a majority?

The voter: Why the fuck did I leave work early to stand around in a middle-school gym with old people just to vote in this shitty landslide riding?

Why indeed.

For some reason, the Afghan Police are proving difficult to train.

Today in Kabul we’re expecting a  balmy high of 38 celsius, overnight low of 0, chance of raining shrapnel stands at 20%, chance of a Canadian pullout in 2011… ehhhh… depends who you ask.

The Harper government’s original plan was to abandon all military operations in Afghanistan by 2011, a war Canada had entered to kill Bin Laden, topple Al Qaeda, capture vaguely-defined “evil folks”, win hearts and minds, stabilize the Afghan government, uh… I think the latest was “liberate women”, let’s go with that.

Then, after a lot of peer pressure by the cool, older kids in NATO who wanted us to hang around longer, we caved. We gave them a promise of 1,000 personnel for 3 extra years. Non-combat, though. 950 military troops, 50 police trainers, and maybe some support staff (hopefully they don’t close Kabul Timmy’s – Iced Capps were our secret shock-and-awe weapon!)

Is this what we wanted to do? Harper gave a classic bullied-kid response: he didn’t really want to commit until 2014, but hey, if it’s gotta happen, he’ll suck it up and take it. Most Canadians support the extension, but also wouldn’t mind a parliamentary debate on the topic.

To start a parliamentary debate, though, you’d need an opposition party to call shenanigans on the Government for playing the old “when we said 2011 we meant 2014″ trick. Y’know, one of those opposition parties who loves shit-disturbing, who’re they called again?

MOI, PEUT-ETRE? C’est vrais, the Bloc are ready to go to war over this War in the next few days, and it could lead to a full vote. Should be a fairly simple vote – Conservatives defend 2014 in the name of freedom/victory/morals/women/gittin-er-dun/etc., but with the mathematical majority, the NDP, Bloc and Grits…

Wait, the Liberals are supporting WHO? Michael Ignatieff has sheepishly shrugged his support behind Harper’s 2014 extension, spurned by the suddenly war-hawkish Bob Rae, a one-time mild-mannered, rosy-cheeked NDP peacenik who now wants to throw a few rounds of ammo over his shoulders and parachute the Liberals back into Kandahar. This G&M write-up on the Rae topic seem so curiously bewildered that the first page alone contains 29 question marks – a sign, no doubt, that writer Gerald “The Riddler” Caplan is now being paid by the punctuation mark.

For his part, the vile reptilian fuck-stain Joe Lieberman, a mumbly, simple bastard who does nothing but wheeze out awful, stupid shit, has congratulated the Canadian extension, so there’s that.

Hello people of Afghanistan, I'm Canadian television character-actor Peter Keleghan. Expect to see me in everything.

In entertainment news, Canada’s producing a hot new cop show to air on Afghan TV! As if these poor people haven’t been through enough, we’re now making them sit through fucking CANCON TELEVISION? Here’s a look at what else Afghan viewers can expect once we parachute a few more Canadian TV producers into Afghanistan:

Little Church on the Desert: In this wacky cultural mish-mash, a group of mild-mannered Canadian Anglicans try to set up a church in a small farming village in northern Afghanistan. In the premiere, pastor Tommy Thomlinson (Colin Mochrie) has a hilarious misunderstanding at the town chili cookoff when he mistakes the English word “basil” for basal (Arabic for onion), Bill’s wife Linda is captured and murdered by Taliban insurgents, and the lovable Jimmy (guest star Peter Keleghan) has his boss over for dinner… with wacky results!

Corner Gas Pipeline: A chubby, unattractive middle-aged men (Colin Mochrie) stands around making a series of bland wordplay-based observations at a military checkpoint guarding a gas pipeline. This will show impoverished, desperate Afghans that even rich Westerners can have tedious, sad and uneventful lives.

Buzkashi Night in Afghanistan: A Saturday night tradition, enjoy a double-header of this popular horseback sport where teams try to fling a headless goat carcass across a goal line (or watch as it goes past their own goal line, am I right or what Kabul Mahpool Li’ifs fans) and enjoy the wisdom of the Imam Don Sherri, a fan of good ol’ Afghan buzkashi players, unlike those pussy Asia-trash Uzbek players who wouldn’t even know how to grab some goat if they were at an Indian wedding buffet.

Being A’riqa: A 30-something woman travels back in time to her teenage (although still 3oish-looking) years in the early 1990s, so she can change her life in the era of acid-washed burqas and say “Ayatoldya so” to her smug therapist (guest star Peter Keleghan)

The Littlest Hobo Afghanistan: A lone German Shepherd (Peter Keleghan) travels the war-torn countryside, stopping only to solve mysteries, bust opium-smuggling warlords, safely detonate explosives and get to the bottom of widespread government corruption using only his expert knowledge of Middle Eastern civic affairs, his fluent Arabic and his cute little doggy paws.

The internet is really, really great. For porn.

Your Government advertises on porn sites. The Liberals are outraged. Also, there are naked ladies on the computer-machines, and you should be outraged.

That’s the storyline, but let’s break it down.

First of all, by “Government”, we mean the two saddest little lumps of apathetic-shrugs that make up your tax dollars this side of the CBC: Canada Post and the National Film Board. The former was used in the 1950s for grandmothers to send birthday cards, and the latter made that Log Driver’s Waltz cartoon several decades ago and is still being paid for it. Both institutions, clearly, are in need of some wisely-targeted advertising. What do Canada Post customers and NFB customers (old people without e-mail addresses, and weird jobless film-studies graduates, respectively) have in common?

They must fucking love porn.

Second of all, what do we mean by “porn sites”? (Because I have no idea what these things are.) Well, let’s go to the breathlessly offended Liberal press release on the topic, which is pretty infuriating when you read through it.

For starters, the headline of the press release – citing “Natalie Portman’s perfect little booty” – is pretty fucking lewd for a press release that goes on a strong anti-porn bend. The only supposed porn site mentioned in the Libs press release, HollywoodTuna.com, is blatantly NOT a porn site if you actually visit it: just a blog with, well, a bunch of fully clothes actresses, being hot. The sites mentioned in the Sun article linked up top are photography sites which happen to have a handful of artistic nude shots. So we’ve established that “Government” means “Two public corporations and not the government itself”, and “Porn sites” means “Not porn sites”. Anything else wrong with the sentence “Government advertises itself on porn sites”?

Well, how about the notion that anyone actually hand-picked these sites to advertise on. If you know how Google AdWords/AdSense work – Lord knows I do, CHECK OUT THE FINELY TARGETED PRODUCT TO YOUR RIGHT – you know that you don’t choose sites to advertise on, you choose keywords to advertise with.

This isn’t 1987. Eaton’s doesn’t call up a billboard owner to put up an ad for their new Betamax decks on a certain billboard for a certain timeframe at a fixed price. If you’re an advertiser, you pick keywords related to your business – for Canada Post, let’s say, “deliver +Vancouver +night”. If you’re a red-blooded male on the internet and the site you’re looking at has the text “Watch this Vancouver hottie, she’ll deliver her goods all night long” – then Google will classify it as relevant, and will throw a Canada Post banner ad across the header. It’s Google’s job to make sure they don’t advertise on porn sites, though.

And they do that job well, because – as mentioned – the sites above aren’t porn.

Look, I’m no Conservative cheerleader, but this is a non-story on every possible level. Would any Liberals who don’t understand how web advertising works like to step up and piss me off more? The floor recognizes Ruby Dhalla:

“The Conservatives are also paying for Google Adwords, so that whenever someone searches for the sexy female leads in the James Bond movies, for example, a government ad pops up,” said Ms. Dhalla

Hey, maybe the National Film Board was advertising using the name of Hollywood actresses because THEY’RE A FILM STUDIO, THEY MAKE FILMS, ACTRESSES ARE 100% RELATED TO THE FILM INDUSTRY.

JESUS CHRIST.

ANYONE OFFENDED BY THIS STORY IS SO DUMB. THEY ARE REALLY DUMB.

That’s Joe Pantalone in the middle, who is much shorter in real life, and Rob Ford on the right, who is much fatter.

Joe Pantalone had his chair hiked up so that he’d look normal-sized on camera, and not fun-sized, like a human that was shrunk in the wash. However, to us observant folks in the crowd, we could see that Joey Pants’ feet were COMICALLY DANGLING six inches off the ground, like a small child sitting on a tall chair at the barbershop. It was the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever seen in politics, and that includes the sparkle-toothed soulless Ben Mulroney, who MC’d the debate! I got to check out Ben’s ass for about 15 minutes when he was standing right in front of my face. The night before I got to meet Justin Trudeau, so that was two straight nights of sexy Prime Ministerial offspring. Not to mention that the day after, I got to third base with Diefenbaker’s granddaughter.

(Alright, alright, that last part was completely false and I apologize. It was more like second base, but with a healthy lead-off towards third.)

Best moment of the debate: Furious George Smitherman muttered to Pantalone, as Rob Ford was trying to court Pantalone supporters: “If your legs were longer you two could play footsies.” It was fucking funny, but I was the only one in the crowd who laughed, while everyone else booed, which was awkard.

I was convinced Rob Ford was going to crush this puny Ikea office chair, and that I would be killed when the flying steel shrapnel sliced me to ribbons, coupled with the indignity of having Ben Mulroney reporting on my death on-scene. He is so sweaty and fat and disgusting, he pretty much just spent the whole debate marinating in his own juices under the TV lights and testing the durability of Swedish furniture.

Also that’s Ben Mulroney’s ass at the left of the frame. I know, right?

Oh, the debate: yeah, read a real news source for the blow-by-blow, but I’d call it a draw. Smitherman kept trying to drive a wedge between himself and Ford by trying to project himself as the reasoned centrist, but none of his attacks on Ford seemed to draw any blood. Ford jumped around from topic to topic with his big, dumb smile almost infectious to the big, dumb pro-Ford crowd, but never managed to hit a home run. Pants tried to present himself as the spoiler, the unlikely dark horse who’ll stick to his guns, but then retreated back to the tree where we lives to continue making Keebler cookies.

The big winner of the night was me, because I got drunk before the debate, and I got to hang out with insane, gross slobs outside the debate in Halloween masks yelling crazy conspiracy-theory shit at each other about crack and immigrants. That was probably the best debate I saw all night.

Pictured: Canadian officials court the vote of international delegates at the United Nations (Image Credit: Reuters, New York City)

Boy, sure has been a pretty depressing failure of a week for Canada’s international image, huh? Without even getting into the public tongue-wagging from the UAE (Hey, “Camp Mirage”, there’s a top-secret base name that won’t arouse any suspicion), let’s get into our symbolic depantsing at the United Nations and our symbolic wet willy-ing in Delhi:

INSECURITY COUNCIL

Every few years, the high-school popularity contest that is the United Nations runs an election for student council. The Jock (USA), the Bully (Russia), the Teacher’s Pet (UK), the Arts Dweeb (France) and the Nerd (China) all get permanent membership on student council. But for the remaining spots, kids have to give out homemade election pins at recess and sell cupcakes at the PTA bakesale to be among the elite group of gossipy popular kids who, uh… decide who gets nuked. We promised that this year, we’d make student council and prove everyone wrong. We got proven wrong. The Grade 8 kids didn’t vote for us, and someone on the Football team spread a rumour that we had cooties, or something. The world’s most prestigious arbitrary popularity contest had left its mark: we were uncool.

WHAT THE EXPERTS THINK: The eggheads quickly got to work and narrowed down the causes for our embarrassing defeat: for starters, we supported Israel, which really put the kibosh on the whole Arab vote. We fuckin’ love oil, and the drilling thereof, which soured the European hippies. We diverted aid from Africa to Latin America, which nixed the African vote. Basically, the kind of post mortem you’d expect from any high school popularity contest: we didn’t kiss up to the right cliques. Opinion was also mixed between people who saw this as tarnishing Canada’s image (and specifically Harper’s), and others who thought the Security Council wasn’t really a big friggin’ deal to begin with (let alone to Harper.)

WHAT THE GOVERNMENT THINKS: The Conservative government blamed the defeat on… really? Who the fuck else. Blame-assigning is basically like playing “Seven Degress of Kevin Bacon”, except the end target is always Michael Ignatieff. Here, I’ll try:

So Brett Favre’s having a bad season… which is blamed on inaccurate passing… which is blamed on the invention of the forward pass in football at Yale University near the turn of the century… Yale’s need to develop the forward pass is blamed on the running style of their rivals, Harvard… Harvard isn’t good at sports because they spend too much on overpaid tenured professors… like MICHAEL IGNATIEFF. Leave Brett Favre alone, Iggy.

This is roughly as direct of a correlation as “My country’s failure to secure a UN Security Council position is the direct fault of the Leader of the Opposition who had literally no input on the voting procedures and had no visible presence to the voting members.”

WHAT WE THINK: Much like at any prestigious international event – the Teen Choice Awards, the Latin Grammys, etc. – delegates were given gift bags by each of the competitors to display their wears. Canada’s gift to the world’s heads of state? Maple syrup. Fucking maple syrup. When will Canadians admit that maple syrup, although iconic, is a sickeningly-sweet concoction of brown tree-slime with very few practical applications in world cuisine? Why do all of our gift shops have entire sections dedicated to maple syrup, as if there’s a community of sugar-goop enthusiasts in the world travelling to Canada to stock up? Next time, give them a Blackberry if you’re going to bribe ‘em.

COMMONWEALTH LAMES

One of the most prestigious and most-watched international sporting competitions in the world – behind only the Summer Olympics, Winter Olympics, World Cup, Paralympics, Pan-Am Games, Goodwill Games, World Track&Field Championships, World Baseball Classic, and a variety of regional billiards, curling and junior luge tournaments – is the Commonwealth Games, a once-in-a-while celebration of the horrible colonial oppression of the British. The British Commonwealth once ruled half the world’s landmass through slavery, ethnic cleansing and a systematic dismantling of native languages, beliefs and culture – and is now celebrated by a chance for rich white people to continue beating poor brown people, this time at rhythmic gymnastics and the three-metre pairs springboard.

Canada came a disappointing fourth in medals, ending a long streak of finishing top-three along with the other rich white people in the event, the English and Australians. This time, we were knocked off the podium by the emerging powerhouse India, who also played host to the game – that is, if you’re the kind of host who gives your guests shit-covered beds and dengue fever.

Canada finished a dismal 6th place in the 50-Man Spontaneous Dance event

WHY WE LOST:

Because India, born a lowly chai-wallah in the slums, used all of its life experience to shine on the world stage and win the big prize – now, everybody dance! Jai hoooo!

WHY WE REALLY LOST: Look at these sports! One of them, Kabaddi – I shit you not – is, from what I can tell, a game of full-contact Red Rover where you have to hold your breath the whole time. I was watching the coverage once (because the bunny ears on my TV can only pick up CBC, God help me) and it was disabled swimming – which is counted as a full-status, regular medal event, which is nice - but I don’t think all the countries got the memo on how disabled was “disabled”, because there was one guy WITH NO LEGS competing in the same race against a guy with a CLUB FOOT at the 100M freestyle – how in the fuck is that fair? (Sure, the guy with the club foot was the Canadian, and he won Gold by about half a pool-length, but still.)

We came out disappointed because there’s no Winter Commonwealth Games. Yeah Australia, think you’re hot shit? Let’s see how your curling team plays. Hey Kenya, you like marathons? Try biathlons, they’re marathons on skis, with guns. Hey Trinidad & Tobago, let’s see you Trinidad & Toboggan down this bobsled run. Hey UAE, how about you… I’m sorry, you what?

Dicks.

Did you know that eagles don't have tear ducts? For more information on the bald eagle, contact Hinterland Who's Who's in Ottawa.

September 11th was this past weekend, and unless you sell commemorative airbrushed XXL t-shirts with balds eagle crying American-flag-patterned tears or are Glenn Beck planning another one of your stupid shouty circlejerks for fat old idiots, 9/11 is kind of a shitty, awkward day. I just wish they would skip it and go straight from September 10th to the 12th, like they do with the 13th floor in buildings.

How did our politicians spend the week of 9/11? By accusing each other of secretly being evil Americans! Hey, remember on September 11th – like, the one in 2001, not the date that happens every year – when Americans initially blamed Canada for letting all those terrorists into their country, which we didn’t? In order to show the world that the mistakes of 9/11 will not be commited again, instead of Americans accusing evildoers of having Canadian ties, here are a bunch of stories about Canadians who are accused of having ties to evildoing Americans:

• >> CBC: “The Americans are coming!” CBC opened up a can of worms – a perfectly good can, which in a free world could be lined up and shot with unregistered rifles – with a report on how the NRA, a loose collection of rednecks, weirdos and the late ape-lover Charlton Heston that somehow became a hugely powerful multi-million-dollar lobbying empire, has been meddling in Canadian politics for years. The Tories later responded that the CBC was full of shit. Which leads to:

• >> Liberals to Harper: “Stop being American.” Grit House leader David McGuinty gets into the act, calling out the Conservatives for trying to pound away at divisive wedge issues like the long gun registry just to polarize voters. You know who ELSE used polarizing wedge issues? That’s right, HITL-… I mean, REPUBLICANS. McGuinty, having successfully made his point that Stephen Harper- a politician – used basic political tactics, then ended by slamming down his fists and shouting: “Your honour, given this evidence, I present to the jury that Stephen Harper IS IN FACT the lost bastard son of George Bush and Sarah Palin, I REST MY CASE.”

• >> Conservatives to Ignatieff: “Am not, you are!” Pierre Poilievre, stand-up comedian to the Prime Minister, responded to these charges of his party’s Americanness: “Well like, it takes one to know one, and like, Michael Ignatieff’s the only one hear acting all American, maybe because he like, LIVED IN AMERICA.” At this point Poilievre made an “L” sign with his fingers while mouthing  the word “Loserrrrr.”

• >> MOSQUETARD SIGHTING! This one doesn’t involve a politician, but a Canadian journalist getting involved in the newest incarnation of American failure-groups such as Truthers, Birthers and Teabaggers - a real-life Mosquetard! Except this article isn’t even in the Sun, or in the confused ramblings of an old racist drunk writing on his McDonald’s wrapper – it’s in the somewhat readable Ottawa Citizen! Resident sweaty idiot David Warren farted out a bunch of words about how Herp-Dee-Derp, Dem Muzlins Are Buildin’ A Mosk On The 9/11 Hole STOPTEHMOSK!!1! New twist: this wordy Warren jackass dances around the fact that he thinks building a harmless cultural community centre among hundreds of other religious centres in a massive, multicultural city, is WORSE THAN this moron in Florida who keeps threatening to burn korans. It’s one thing to have ties to the NRA, but David Warren, your ties to the Mosquetard movement are inexcusable.

Parliament’s on summer vacation and all of the MPs are away at politician summer camp, roasting marshmallows, having inter-party water-balloon fights and telling spooky ghost stories about the Reform Party coming back from the dead. That means no real national political news is happening these days (unless you’re Australian, what in the name of vegemite’s going on down there?) So today we’ll be focusing on dumb articles (and one non-dumb article with an embarrassing addendum!) that have appeared over the past couple of days in Canada’s most distinguished birdcage-lining newspapers.

• > EMBARRASSMENT #1: Did you know that racism existed a hundred years ago? A hundred Pulitzers to the Ottawa Citizen’s Don Butler, who spent the weekend holed up in the National Archives, smoking a pipe and flipping through dusty stacks of historical documents to bring you this earth-shattering revelation: many great Canadian historical figures would be deemed racially intolerant based on modern standards! The context of the story is whether or not Charlotte Whitton, Ottawa’s first female mayor, should be recognized as an important historical Canadian in light of her being a class-A Jew-hater. That controversy aside, I just love the way the Citizen eagerly “reports” that, indeed, historical Canadians from a hundred years ago would be deemed downright intolerant today. Of course the entire Earth back then would probably also be deemed racially intolerant by today’s standards, not to mention sexist, homophobic and xenophobic, because it was a hundred fucking years ago. These old-timey historical people also believed that drilling a hole in your skull was a valid medical procedure and that diseases were caused by an imbalance of yellow bile. Did you know that moral standards change over time, and historical people lived a LONG TIME AGO, when people believed a whole bunch of wacky wrong-headed shit about each other, and “people” includes “people who appeared in your Grade 8 Canadian History textbook”? Thanks a heap for the history lesson, Don!

• > EMBARRASSMENT #2: Durrrr, dem muslins gon’ build da mosque at da 9/11, HURF DURF RAGE: Can you remember the last time a story so minor, so petty, so downright weapons-grade retarded, managed to fill so many endless days of braindead cable-news coverage and self-righteous editorial columns? (Probably some other bullshit about a month ago, right?) A mosque is being built in New York City, alongside hundreds of other mosques in a massive, multicultural city, including one existing mosque a block away from the proposed one. Even though pretty much nobody in New York gives a shit, this has become a ridiculous cause celebre among the type of angry idiots in Cousinfuck, Arkansas who hear the numbers “9″ and “11″ and get a rage-boner. Somehow the memo has been passed from metropolitan Cousinfuck to the dusty typewriter of Sun Media moron Peter Worthington, so he could shit out a horrible, horrible column about this Tea Party-invented, bullshit, fake-controversy. Apparently there’s some Muslim in Canada who has the BRAVERY to stand up and say that this mosque is an affront to American liberty, and, ugh, Worthington has such a crush on this Muslim chick who’s clearly aiming to be the next Fox News Special Islam Correspondent. If you’re bulimic and looking to drop some of that poundage from your big lunch, save the toothbrush-gag and repeatedly read the part of this column where Worthington claims that all Muslims in Canada secretly stand behind terrorism. Ugggh God, I-, I’m gonn-BLLEERRGGGCCHHHH.

This is Woody's face upon hearing more Rob Ford crap on this blog.

• > EMBARRASSMENT#3: National D’oh!st: Chris Selley – who, despite looking like a Geico caveman, isn’t dumb, and is actually pretty good in his smart-ass headline-combing gig at the Post – got stung by the horrible bite of Rob Ford over the weekend, a bite all too familiar to anything edible in Rob Ford’s fridge. Selley was talking about how dirt-ass bankrupt the City of Toronto was (no arguments here) and then half-defending Rob Ford’s frontrunner status in the mayoralty race, arguing that as much of a greasy clown Rob Ford “F-150″ is, at least he’d be willing to cut the pork – if not from his diet, then from the budget. As an example, Selley points out the $600,000 the city is willing to spend to keep the humps of lightly-slush-coated compressed garbage it calls ski hills open. That’s right, BC readers, Toronto’s got ski hills – eat your heart out at those majestic slopes and weep in envy! You see, at least Rob Ford would never vote to fund some – I’m sorry, what? Fiscal boy-scout Rob Ford voted to fund the ski hills? Hah! Check the meek withdrawal at the bottom of the story, and then the complete turnaround, as Selley goes from cautiously optimistic about Ford in the story itself to downright vengeful in the addendum. I’m pretty sure this goes to show that Rob Ford is not only undefendable, he goes out of his way to make his optimists look foolish, like the ominous clap of thunder that sounds after a forelorn cartoon character says “Well, we’re trapped out here, but at least it’s not raining…”?

Our contestants: The Toronto Sun editorial team, Ezra Levant, and the smalldeadanimals comment section. Everyone loses.

For the past week, we’ve been hearing about a boat full of Tamil refugees slowly inching towards our shores, reported in the same dire tone you’d expect from Tokyo TV on news that Godzilla had once again risen from the Sea of Japan. As this rusty barge full of impoverished, hungry third-world refugees slowly made its way towards British Columbia, there was a general consensus: we’re doomed. The battle lines were drawn, and this boat full of sick, begging Sri Lankans would crush our military, destroy our society as we know it, and take control of our nation. Enjoy Canada as you know it, folks, if I’m to believe what I’m reading in the papers, the second we let these guys off the boat a Tamil Tigers flag will be flapping in the breeze over Parliament.

With all of this hullabaloo, we’re starting a contest: which media source can inject the most fear-mongering, over-the-top, end-of-the-world sensationalist vitriol into an article about 40-dozen-odd brown people landing a boat? Points will be awarded for doom-predicting, logical fallacies, breathless fury at Canadian society in general, irrelevant political talking points and overall retardedness of presentation.

Who’s ready to dish out a Sri Spankin’?

Contestant #1

Contestant Number One is from Toronto, he enjoys sports and bikini girls, and his pet peeves are kids these days and Liberals, say hello to The Sun!

First of all, let’s drop the “migrant” bunkum. It’s meaningless left-wing political claptrap.

Whoa, “bunkum”! “Claptrap”! Fantastic usage of words which are only used by 72-year-olds, and we’re only in the first sentence of this unsigned editorial! Plus, we’ve got kneejerk political reaction expertly woven in, with the claim that the very word “migrant”, meaning “one who migrates”, is left-wing in nature. Take that, left-wing claptrap bunkum!

Like queue-jumpers, scam artists, back-door home invaders, plus a terrorist or two.

Like scallywags, trollops, ne’er-do-wells and common rapscallions, says I! Got a boat full o’ people you know literally nothing about, who haven’t even been identified or spoken to the media? Are they brown? The Sun can tell you exactly how many terrorists are on the boat: either one, or two.

Alright Contestant Number One, here’s your final chance to impress our judges, put all of your retardedness on the line!

If the MV Sun Sea were carrying 500 “migrants” from Afghanistan, home base for the Taliban and al-Qaeda, would we be allowing it to enter Canadian waters, or would we put firing [sic] a shot over the bow with a message that the next would be midships? [sic]

Outstanding answer, Toronto Sun! You’ve combined a false premise, an appeal to emotion, an outright falsehood (Pakistan’s the home base of al-Qaeda), ridiculous chest-thumping bravado, and – best of all! – the writer has become so heart-poundingly outraged at the end of this sentence that he can’t even put words together, drifting off into a stream of furious, spittle-flecked nonsense. Or would be put firing, indeed! Thank you, Contestant Number One!

Contestant #2

Contestant Number Two is the failed abortion of a sewer rat fucking a Reform Party yard sign. His interests include suing blogs for libel, which he can’t do in this case, because the preceding sentence was factual. Meet perpetual clown Ezra Levant!

Ezra pooped out a column about this Tamil stuff, and it was run by a variety of newspapers which couldn’t fill the page space with something more meaningful, like ads for escort services. I’ll direct you to the version at the Belleville Intelligencer.

Great news for health care! The Victoria General Hospital is reopening a whole ward that had been shut down. They’re even contemplating dusting off an extra emergency department. No more waiting lists in that B.C. city! Just joking.

Oh, ha ha, hah haha, ho-ho, ha-ha, funny joke Ezra Levant!

Reports from the ship say there was an outbreak of tuberculosis. It’s a safe bet the B.C. department of health didn’t set aside millions of dollars in their budget for that Third World disease. No problem — just take it away from MRIs or cataract surgeries. No one will notice, and if they do, let’s just call them racist.

Alright, look, this is an open contest and all, but we didn’t expect any professional retards to enter. This isn’t even fair. This is a swimsuit competition, and you just showed up topless. Your level of retardedness is making a mockery of this retardedness pageant’s standards of fair competition. In that four-sentence bucket of brain-vomit alone, it’s worth noting the passengers didn’t have TB, no money is being diverted from regular provincial healthcare funding, and, oh WHAT THE FUCK with your racism-baiting bullshit Ezra.

We’re an awfully long journey from Sri Lanka, an island country just off the tip of India.

Good Lord.

Let’s do what Australia does. They have a small island 2,600 km off the coast of Perth.

What? No. Jesus, Ezra. No.

Let’s build a Christmas Island. We can do it on one of our remote islands off the West Coast, maybe in the Queen Charlottes.

Oh come on Ezra, this was supposed to be a fair, clean pageant, and then you had to come in here seriously proposing that we turn the national-park-protected, Native-administered Haidi Gwaii (formerly known as Queen Charlotte Islands) into some sort of Gitmo. Ezra, you’ve tarnished this wholesome beauty pageant with your swollen boobjobs of illegal idiocy, and you’re hereby DISQUALIFIED.

Contestant #3

Small Dead Animals founder Kate McMillan. Hint: the dead animal in question is a Cougar.

Our third contestant in our Parade of Irrational Tamil Fearmongering Sweepstakes says that she enjoys fast motorcycles, tight leather pants, and blog posts involving no more than 15 keystrokes. Say hello to Kate McMillan’s Small Dead Animals comments section!

They and the Taliban now know what cowards our authorities are when it comes to enforcing laws against non-European “citizens”.

And the judges are giving a 8.0 for grammar abuse and barely-veiled racism, fantastic start Small Dead Animals!

Immigration is like a credit card with a high limit; Instant gratification, then pain and misery for decades. If you are a leftist, you have no idea what I mean.

After reading this comment, our judges gave ace commenter “Friend of USA” a slow, deliberate golf clap. You see, the judges were trying to make sense of his metaphor – wait, who gets the gratification and who gets the misery? Why does this commenter have decades worth of painful credit card debt? When white people immigrate, is it more like a tax-free savings account? Then the judges realized – of course we can’t understand what he means. We’re leftists.

Kindof surprised Barry Soetoro didn’t offer them asylum just to p-off the Arizonians.

HOLY SHIT A REAL LIFE BIRTHER! Invoking Barack Obama’s top-secret Kenyan-Muslim name! And, “Arizonians”! The judges here are RISING TO THEIR FEET in applause for the sheer awfulness of this comment!

Since there are women on board and the ship has been on sea for three months, my guess is that quite a few are pregnant by now (either willingly or unwillingly through rape).

Just, wow. Alright Small Dead Animals, finish us off with one classic, awful comment!

Foreign ships up to no good should not be allowed into Canadian waters. Foreign ships engaged in human smuggling operations should not gain admittance to Canadian waters on principle: human smuggling is illegal. Other grounds include what is in the best interest of Canadians – what is in the best interest of human cargo destined to be utilized as sweated labour, or more chillingly, as operatives – and what is in the best interest of an ethnic community that has long endured Tiger fundraising shakedowns without recourse to Canada’s legal remedies

Hey, wait a minute, this comment’s actually free of spelling mistakes and uses legal logic instead of baseless vitriol, and even seems to defend the rights of Tamils, while – oh wait, nevermind, this wasn’t a Small Dead Animals comment, it was posted on a Neo-Nazi forum by white supremacist Paul Fromm. Sorry folks, I get all mixed up when I’ve got multiple tabs going in my browser.

Final Results

Although the SDA comment section was impressively retarded, I’ve got to give the edge to the Toronto Sun for being even more embarrassing and incoherent, while actually being published in a newspaper people pay money to read.

Congrashrilankans!