(Full story at 11.)
So I'm sick and tired of reading about American politics and their shit-for-brains leader walking around like the village idiot with an executioner's sword leaning against his shoulder. So I decided to go looking at what our fearless leaders are doing as far as running MY country. And I found basically nothing.
The top story at Canoe.ca was a
minor scandal involving a lottery winner… ? Since when was that news? That doesn't merit my attention for more than 15 minutes if someone from my own company has a bit of lottery drama.
Canoe had a lot of nothing, so I went to Google news. Surely there I might find some interesting Canadian news.
That's news? I read the whole article, it smacks of Reuters fighting hard to prove there's something politically news worthy at all. It's nothing I haven't heard before, the beleaguered liberal party here is trying to do something *anything* to prove that Harper's conservatives aren't thoroughly kicking their ass, and the only thing they can target at the moment are the manufacturing layoffs that have been occurring due to the floundering US economy. Woo… they want to devote some money to invest in manufacturing. That's not a solution! That's a band-aid, and not a good one either, more like one of those cheap band-aids with Spiderman on it that you give your kid after he comes crying to you that he scraped his knee even though it isn't bleeding and you really want him to go back outside so you can finish watching your CSI rerun.
Reading down…
Second top story is about how there was a car crash in New Brunswick and because of it the NB government wants to
ban the use of a certain type of van for transporting kids to and from school… basically enforcing internal policy regarding school buses. The story about the kids dying in the accident was last week's news, this is the story about doing something about it. The witch hunt if you will… look's like the Van's the witch.
3rd Story:
I'm not even going to bother reading that one, but I'll summarize anyways. There was a shootout between a few people with guns, someone got killed who the shooters didn't intend to kill he died in hospital after valiant surgical efforts. Then someone tells how everyone liked the guy and how much he'll be missed. The end. Moving on…
I actually read this one, it read like the advertising pamphlet for the luncheon, actually I wouldn't be overly surprised if it was almost directly plagiarized from it. It also summarized Blair's political career over the past 2 years. And this is in the top-Canadian-stories of Google news! Can Canada honestly get any-more boring?
Well yes in-fact it CAN! I scroll down and find an article with my Prime-Minister's name in the headline! Too bad the words directly right of his name are "
Keeps Cards Close to the Vest." This article I think is actually newsworthy though, it talks of the Prime Minister and the Premier of Saskatchewan speaking in regards to federal resource grants. The big thing that I take out of this is that SASK is doing well economically by developing their energy reserves, and while many of the Tory campaign promises included bringing a lot of the money made from the huge oil revenue's in Alberta and BC and sending them east to the less wealthy provinces, instead he's been forgoing the handouts in-favor of encouraging similar industries in those provinces and offering federal grants directly to those industries thereby inflating their economy. It's actually an example of withholding a campaign promise to instead offer something tangibly better. These are just preliminary talks though and nothing concrete has been said or done, so the press isn't getting much more to chew on.
So what does this all mean?
Well first-off it means Harper is a more savvy guy than anyone really gave him credit for. He dropped our Government Sales Tax by one percent last year and this year dropped it another percent again already, which while I admit isn't as nice as a big fat income tax drop would be, but it's noticeable and a popular move and was one of his campaign promises which he's publicly carrying through with so he can get he can get re-elected in 2 years. It also means that Canada doesn't meddle a lot in international affairs. We're just doing our thing up here and keeping our nose-hairs out of everyone else's salad. We do currently have soldiers doing peacekeeping in Afghanistan, though whenever one of them dies it's almost grounds for a national day of mourning.
Canada is also very closely tied to the United States economically, it's why I pay a lot of attention to US news. When the states is doing well then so too do we, but currently the US is in a recession and we're all waiting to see what happens when GWB is dropped and hoping that the next guy helps gets the states back on track.
Ultimately our news coverage reflects on Canadian's attitudes as a whole. We're a fairly polite people up here, not in that we open doors for everyone and offer a smile and nod to everyone we pass on the street. (Though we do those things too.) But more that we politely stay out of other's affairs, sometimes perhaps more than we should. We don't get in people's or organization's faces and demand answers, so it's not so shocking when something turns out to be not what we expected, but we roll with it and resolve to watch for that next-time, but we don't really and as long as no one's getting really hurt then it's all smooth sailing. We're concerned about fellow Canadian's, car-crashes, and shootings are national news rather than local news, and we're concerned about the things that effect us as a country. What we aren't concerned about are ideological issues or minority issues, we're learning that if we treat everyone the same then things generally work-out, though occasionally some minority rises up and demands attention and it's the foolish Canadian who gives them that attention and let's their issues become Canada's.
I think we try to be detached from it all, even when things effect us we pretend it's not our problem or our fault. We let other countries try to make the rules while we simply play by them, we don't start fights because all the other fighters are so much bigger than us… and what can we do? I wonder if perhaps we're not doing enough as a country, but all I can do is read what's going on and write about it on my blog. But there isn't anything going on up here to write about so I guess my fellow Canadians and I will turn back to looking at news from south of the border… you guys are much more interesting than we are.
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