You put your right wing in, and you shake it all about

What’s that? A CABINET SHUFFLE? Boy, that sounds like something a website ostensibly about Canadian politics should cover! Alright, wait wait, don’t tell me who moved where… first, I wanna make my guesses, y’know, get my fantasy picks into ProLine.

PREDICTED CABINET SHUFFLES:
Stockwell Day – Moved from International Trade Minister to Minister of La Francophonie; Peter MacKay – Moved from Minister of National Defence to Minister of Status of Women; Tony Clement – Moved from Minister of Industry to Special Emissary to the Mole People; A Nice Guy Named Fred Who Was Hanging Around The Parliamentary Cafeteria And Seemed Pretty Nice - Appointed to Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians; Stephen Harper – Moved from Prime Minister of Canada to Super Prime Minister, a new post which holds the same basic responsibilities of a Prime Minister, but more Super.

Alright, I’ve got my picks in, let’s see how I did on ProLine!

But first, let’s see what Cabinet shuffle-related headlines are flying off the sails of the Grand Old Ship Globe & Mail! First:

“PM taps Day to put a lid on spending”

I really don’t want to hear about why Harper “tapped” Day, thanks. Then:

“Analysis: Stephen Harper cracks fiscal whip and tries to make nice with Quebec”

And I really, really don’t want to hear about Harper cracking any whips against anyone. Was he cracking the whip after, or while he was tapping Stockwell Day? Uggghhhh. Let’s move on.

WHO WENT WHERE:

• >Rona Ambrose
• To: Public Works From: Labour.
• Analysis: This is a promotion from the humdrum world of Labour into the bright-lights big-time world of Public Works for the Conservatives’ resident hottie. Note that the term “hottie” isn’t my own opinion, she was voted Most Attractive Female MP by the Hill Times reader poll, but the only people that vote in that are a handful of bespectacled, hair-slicked Tory policy wonks, so I guess Rona’s their type. Anyways, now she’ll get all… Public Works-y, all up in your shit.
• Implications: Her three-way trade freed up the crappy Minister of Labour job to be filled by Lisa Raitt, who got bumped down for being incompetent in the Natural Resources job. Rona took Public Works from Christian Paradis, who had a blurb in the Globe as the shooting star to watch this year. That freed up Paradis to get promoted to Raitt’s old Natural Resources job. For our purposes, let’s never speak of any kind of three-way between Rona Ambrose, Lisa Raitt and Christian Paradis ever again.

• >Keith Ashfield
• To: Revenue with responsibility for the Atlantic Gateway.
• Analysis: Greg Thompson, a popular old-school Conservative from New Brunswick, resigned from Cabinet over the weekend. According to Wikipedia, about Thompson: “He resigned from his position in Cabinet on January 16, 2010 because he couldn’t face having to make a trip to New Zealand and announced he would not be running in the next election.” What the hell, dude? New Zealand? It’s not like they wanted you to go to war-torn Liberia. Hell, most people would gladly take a nice trip to scenic New Zealand as a lovely perk of their job, they wouldn’t resign just to get out of it! Do you have an irrational fear of Hobbits or something?
• Implications: Anyways, Thompson’s out, so this nobody Keith Ashfield got to snag the lesser of Thompson’s two positions. Honestly, he was probably just the first one in the caucus meeting to yell “Dibs!” after Harper announced “Revenue With Responsibility For The Atlantic Gateway, anyone want it?” after pulling the title out of a hat.

• >Jean-Pierre Blackburn
• To: Veteran Affairs From: National Revenue
• Analysis: And then Harper called out Thompson’s other vacant position, “Veteran Affairs”, and Blackburn was smart enough to yell “Dibs!”.
• Implications: Keith Ashfield probably feels stupid for calling dibs on the first one out of the hat.

• >Diane Ablonczy:
• To: Minister of State for Seniors. From: Minister of State for Small Business and Tourism
• Analysis: This is a subtle hint that Diane, 60, is getting on in years, and maybe should focus on “old lady” stuff. It’s like casually mentioning to your mom that you’ve heard good things about a local retirement home, not that you’re saying she should go to one or anything, just that hey, she’s not as young as she once was, is all.
• Implications: None. Are you serious?

• >Rob Moore
• To: Minister of State for Small Business and Tourism
• Analysis: He’s some nobody New Brunswick newbie backbencher who got to take Diane’s job.
• Implications: Meh!

• >Stockwell Day
  
• To: President of the Treasury Board From: International Trade
• Analysis: Harper wants a guy on point in the Treasury Board to institute some tighter monetary controls and stop throwing cash around to the provinces. Needing a hard-nosed, stubborn prick, he immediately thought of Stockwell “Doris” Day.
• Implications: Stockwell’s appointee for Vice-President of the Treasury Board will, in fact, be Jesus.

• >Christian Paradis
  
• To: Natural Resources From: Public Works
• I pretty much covered this one in the Rona Ambrose three-way trade mentioned up top, but he’s supposed to be the NEXT BIG THING. Look out, Natural Resources!

• >Lisa Raitt
  
• To: Labour From: Natural Resources
• Analysis: The third part of the three-way trade above. This is a big-time demotion for Raitt who, you’ll remember, well… let’s just copy and paste from the Globe: “She landed in hot water last year after she was caught on tape referring to the medical isotope shortage as a “sexy” issue. Her aide also left a damaging tape on the desk of a reporter in which Ms. Raitt criticized a cabinet colleague, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, and then left confidential documents at the offices of CTV News.”
  
• Implications: As the writer for a Canadian politics snark-blog, I hope her wacky gaffes continue in Labour! Anyways, the mini-scandals above would be the sort of thing that could easily be buffed out compared to the car-totalling crashes of scandals that you come to expect from watching American politics. Down there Congressmen get a slap on the wrist for wild corruption/sex with people who aren’t their wife/sex with people who are more male and teenager-like than their wife/all of the above, while here in Canada you’ve got Cabinet ministers getting multi-step demotions for being forgetful and calling non-sexy stuff “sexy”. Hell, I do both of those things every day!

• >Vic Toews
• To: Public Safety From: Treasury Board President
• Analysis: On paper, I feel like this one’s a demotion. “Public Safety Minister” has always struck me as sounding like a made-up title for a grade school hall monitor in an orange vest, warning people not to run or engage in rough play. Anyways, Toews’ a huge blowhard right-winger who wants to put the whole country in jail for imaginary thought-crimes, so I’m none too happy about him being in any area of social power rather than the relatively harmless number-crunching of the Treasury Board.
  
• Fun fact: Vic’s wife left him after he had a child out of wedlock with some other chick. Hey, here’s a Public Safety initiative you could head up: condoms!

• >Peter Van Loan
  
• To: International Trade From: Public Safety
• Analysis: This one’s a demotion for sure. I’ve read a few places that Van Loan “bungled” the Safety job, but not much in the way of elaboration. Apparently his views on the issue of corrections didn’t mesh with Harper’s. He’s still in Harper’s inner circle though, so he got shuffled to International Trade taking over from Stockwell, which is a pretty nice gig in its own right.
• Implications: Apparently, Van Loan’s old job at Public Safety was starting to heat up with a lot of terrorism buzz-talk and calls for a top-to-bottom review of everything from airport security to RCMP training to immigration, so now all of that’s on the plate of nutty old Toews. Expect the final report to consist of a mumbled “Deport all th’Gays n’ Muzzies”.

DAMNIT, I didn’t get a single fantasy pick right! This is the last time I play ProLine on Cabinet shuffles.

It’s likely the oldest and most singularly important question in the history of representative democracy. Hotness is an essential yardstick with which we, the voting public, can gauge the worthiness of our elected officials. And, just like other subjective measures of value for an elected official (intelligence, enthusiasm, creativity, dickishness, etc.) it’s very hard to judge something as subjective and personal as hotness.

Some people will tell you that Ruby Dhalla is the hottest woman in Parliament. Others are more Belinda Stronach types. Conservatives pretend to like Rona Ambrose. But not us.

[Editorial note: by "us", he means "him", I have absolutely no involvement with this post and think this chick looks like a homely Greek librarian -Jenn]

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Niki Ashton, MP for Churchill, Manitoba. She was elected in 2008, ousting her Liberal opponent after she gained the support of local unions and local polar bears, who have voting rights in Churchill.

Why she’s hot: The glasses. They’re so cute! It’s Tina Fey-esque. She seems hip. Belinda Stronach wouldn’t know where the cool indie bands are playing. Rona Ambrose wouldn’t pound jagerbombs with you at a hipster dive bar. Niki Ashton is the nerdy chick who liked you in high school. Niki Ashton will text you at 1 AM asking if you want to come over and watch her DVD collection of foreign films. Niki Ashton will knit you a scarf.

We’re even willing to overlook the fact that she’s an orange, Nee-dipper Commie.

Niki Ashton is, from this point forward, the official crush of Maple Rag, and we will periodically reference how much we love her until she agrees to go to prom with us.

Twins??

This is why this blog was started. For moments like this. For Dean Del Mastro.

Summary, if you’ve been oblivious to hilarious current events: Conservative MP for Peterborough and known lardbutt, Dean Del Mastro, was being a dick to some Liberals in a committee where he insisted that the Sponsorship Scandal (hey, remember that? Retro!) be called a “crime”, even though it wasn’t a crime. Anyways, Liberal MP and virtual nobody Michelle Simson, living a hood life on the mean streets of Scarborough, retreated to Twitter and made a hilarious joke about Dean Del Mastro being fat.

HILARIOUS! Get it? Because he’s childish, and fat. See how that works? COMEDY! Read on for the video followup!

Look, stop what you’re doing right now and just watch the Youtube:

Let’s break down the comedy. First of all, there’s the woeful, pathetic expression of Del Fatstro, reading out the tweet like it was a telegram informing someone of their mother’s death. Then, there’s the fact that he tries to call fat jokes “discrimination”, then he tries to twist the whole idea of fat jokes as a purely Liberal invention. Damn you Liberals, why did you invent the very concept of body self-image! Anyways, after his wounded-dog shtick, he whimpers:

Del Fatstro: I hear some people in the House laughing and that is unfortunate.

To be fair, they’re not laughing at your fatness, they’re laughing at the fact that you’d stand up to whine about Twitter insults regarding fatness. Okay, some of them are laughing at your fatness.

Del Fatstro: She may wish to consider that a number of her own constituents are less than perfect and she represents them as well.

Her constituents are from Scarborough. Have you seen Scarborough girls? It’s not like there’s a perfection epidemic going on.

Liberal MP Rodger Cuzner: On the same point of order, Mr. Speaker, for the benefit of the member, the lion’s share of the quips and giggles were coming from his side of the House.

Right, so then instead of letting Simson talk, Cuzner butts in to say this ridiculously stupid “nuh uh”, “you were”, “was not times infinite” comeback. Shutup, Rodger Cuzner. Next?

Simson, hater of fatties: To say one should grow up and not out was out of line and I do apologize. Growing up and growing out is not something I should have said to the hon. member.

MY HORRIBLE JOKE WAS SO INAPPROPRIATE THAT I REPEATED IT, TWICE, IN DRAWN-OUT FASHION.

Charlie Angus, some NDP chump who stands up to interject for no reason: However, I think it speaks to a bigger issue.

“Bigger like The Honourable Member for Peterborough’s ASS, am I right folks?” Yeah, basically this NDP guy stood up only to make this fat joke, then he tries to pretend it wasn’t a fat joke when a bunch of Tories start howling at him like the studio audience of the old Match Game after they’d just decoded a piece of Charles Nelson Reilly innuendo. My favourite part, this is how it’s recorded in the transcript:

Some honourable members: Oh, oh!

The hell’s that mean, a simultaneous MP orgasm? Ahhh, I love Canadian politics.

Miscellaneous line from the Globe article: “His staff uses Google to alert them to any mention of their boss.”

Oh, crap. Uh… heya there…. staffers? Maybe stumbled across this article, huh? Sorry about all the, uh… where we, with the name-calling, and the…

… FAT!

[Source: The Globe]