Confessions of a Political Junkie

You know you might be a political junkie when, even though you have to get up at 5, you still stay up after midnight following the results of the Canadian elections. Perhaps an intervention is in order.

Mags pointed me at what was going on in our neighbor to the North, and the more I looked, the more I became fascinated by what I was seeing. Sixteen political parties! And yet, they still manage to elect an independent! When you have parties that cover everything from animal rights, to legalization of marijuana, to the communist agenda (two parties), to splitting off part of the country, how can you possibly not find a party that covers your beliefs?

The most disturbing thing I saw (which may be a foreshadowing of what is to come in this country,) was the banning of blogging about the election. On some level, I can understand the thought behind this; there have been several examples in our own history of media prematurely reporting on the results of an election, and thereby influence the results, but I draw a line between an individual writing about his thoughts and a corporation seeking to make money and maybe not-so-inadvertently influencing an election. Still the effort came to naught, bloggers on this side of the border were happily reporting results long before the imposed start time.

Can’t stop the signal.

The single funniest thing I saw was the MP or Marijuana Party. They seem to have great turnouts at their parties, er, I mean rallies, but nobody seems to show up at poll time. Of, course, it didn’t seem to help matters that the driving force behind the party, Marc Emery, seems to be serving a jail sentence for distribution.