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Butler, who spent the weekend holed up in the National Archives, smoking a pipe and flipping through dusty stacks of historical documents to bring you this earth-shattering revelation: many great Canadian historical figures would be deemed racially intolerant based on modern standards!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…”?

Duuuuude, have you ever voted in a federal election..... on WEED?

It’s time for part 2 of our series, Better Know a Fringe Political Party Recognized By Elections Canada! Today, we look at the Marijuana Party of Canada – the fightin’ potheads!

HISTORY

To Wikipedia!

“The party was founded by Marc-Boris St-Maurice, an activist and member of the punk group GrimSkunk. After a 1991 arrest for possession of marijuana, he vowed to legalize cannabis.”

GrimSkunk was alright, but they were no MorbidRaccoon, and not even in the same league as ChurlishBadger. Anyways, how convenient of you, Mr. St-Maurice! “Dude, I got busted for pot… maybe I’ll create a political party, become Prime Minister, abolish my criminal record, and then my mom will totally get off my case about going to probation hearings and shit.” Actually, this is a more elaborate backstory than I was expecting, I thought the Wikipedia article would begin with

“The Marijuana Party of Canada was founded when some dudes got tooootally stoned while watching a Star Wars marathon on SpikeTV, and one dude was like, haha, let’s start a POLITICAL PARTY, and the other was like, dude, are you serious, that would owwwn, and he was like, yeah man, then they took another bong hit and totally called Elections Canada and now like, hah, are you serious man, we’re like, a political party!”

Anyways, to paraphrase the next few paragraphs of paranoid rambling on the Wikipedia article, the party was big for a few years in the mid-2000s (a 4th-place finish and almost 8% of the vote in the riding of Nunavut? What are those crazy Iqaluiters smokin’?) But these days after already getting their big victories (decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, legalizing medicinal marijuana), they’re basically just an obsolete old shell of their former self. With all of the serious members having already joined the Liberals, NDPs or Greens where they have a shot at actual marijuana reform, the Marijuana Party today is left as a loose collection of a few rambling, stoned weirdos.

It smells like the bus driver's jacket!

POLICIES

Weed rules.

No, seriously. That’s their entire policy. They have no official policy book, no plans, no opinions on areas like social issues, healthcare, finance, education… their one, single policy is that weed rules, and you should smoke weed. Hearing Marijuana Party candidates debate is hilarious, because although they’re free to stray from the norm and inject their own opinions to fill the gaps in their policies (i.e., every candidate has wildly different policies in every area other than “weed rules”, making the party fairly redundant), they still try to involve weed in any possible policy debate.

What are you plans regarding taxation? Smoke weed, it’ll help the economy, and like, everything’ll work out. What are your healthcare plans? If people smoked weed, like, everyone would be cured of everything man, check out this article about all the diseases weed cures, I got it from High Times. What would you do in Afghanistan? Send them weed, man.

MEMBERS

Alright, let’s go to their official forums, see what the most popular topic is…

“9/11 was an inside job. Terrorism and war is profitable to Bush and his friends. Harper is with them, call that Big Brother or New World Order.”

Oh, um, alright! I mean, this is probably just some loony who’s toked the wrong stuff, it can’t be like there’s… 461 replies… almost all of which agree with him, and get more and more tinfoil-hat paranoid…

Blair Longley: your next Prime Minister

Most of the posts in the forum are by Blair T. Longley himself, the actual leader of the party! Here’s one where some poor schoolkid got assigned to write a report about political parties, and being the class clown, he totally decided to write his report about the Marijuana Party. Since the teacher wanted the kid to write about the party’s stance on actual issues, and since the party has no stances other than “smoke weed”, he needed to go onto the message board and ask the leader of the party to address his questions. Sure enough, Blair answers! Talk about access, imagine Iggy personally writing you huge, semi-coherent message board posts for your Grade 10 Civics report on the Liberals!

Anyways, Blair does a pretty horrible job of answering the question directly (to be fair it was a hard question, a school student asking “Name any of your party’s policies” to the leader of a political party isn’t as easy as answering, say, “Water bong or vaporizer?”), and he gives a long, paranoid answer where he links this poor kid to all this Zeitgeist-y, debt-is-slavery, libertarian-ish gobbledygook. Poor kid. I hope he did well on his report, “The Marijuana Party: A Bunch Of Insane Old Stoners Goin’ Nuts.”

DUDE, I THINK IT JUST HIT ME

Maaan, it’s like, my brain’s floating out of my skull, I can feel it man, eheheahahaha, I can’t stop giggling, holy shit

DO YOU KNOW HOW TO MAKE QUESADILLAS

I want to make, like… 5 quesadillas, with like, melted cheese, quac, sour cream, and like, man, I’d put like those KFC popcorn chicken, you know, I’d put those into the quesadilla, it would be so good man

HAVE YOU EVER, LIKE, REALLY LOOKED AT A KEYBOARD

It’s like the keys are dancing up and down, they’re sticking out at my fingers, and when I press them, it’s like, they’re pressing me, you know? My mind is totally blown, dude.

PUT ON SOME FLEETWOOD MAC

I’m just gonna veg out on your couch for a while bro.