Election, final week: All right, all right. A small measure of hope

Leavened, as always, by a heapin' helpin' of caution.

The polls, to the extent that they can be relied upon, continue to show a surge in the support for the NDP, to the consternation of both the traditional parties. Bay Street, apparently, is shitting its drawers. And the gutter press is all but disappearing up its own ass in a desperate attempt to make a smear stick.

"Find new ways to protect Parliament?" WTF?

I'm sorry, dear Globe editorialists, your lips are moving and there are sounds coming out, but I can't understand what you're saying.

Stephen Harper's government has done more to damage Parliament and hamper its functions than any other government in Canadian history.

Misrepresenting and distorting the simple truth about parliamentary conventions.

Issuing instruction manuals for sabotaging the work of parliamentary committees.

Withholding information from Parliament and spinning the demand for it as partisan gaming.

Proroguing for spurious and contrived reasons.

Time and space simply don't permit me to go into the detail this requires, but with this editorial the Globe has demonstrated where its loyalties truly lie.

Related posts:

• Don't know who won the debates, but that's a short-term question
• Cue the whining about the left-wing media
• Are stories unflattering to Harper being pulled from corporate-media websites?

Some necessary truths about parliamentary convention

Really, it's not fair that pogge does most of the heavy lifting while I just swoop in, package his hard work with some off-the-cuff snark and then sit back and watch, but then who ever said life was fair?

Poll results, wishful thinking and realism

My dear friends, it's about finding a balance. There's nothing I'd like more than to see the corrupt, dysfunctional, self-perpetuating status quo shattered into a million little pieces. If we have to stick an Orange Crush label on it, well, I can live with that.

Steady on, progressive friends

That EKOS poll, thrilling as it is, may well turn out to be an anomaly. Sure, the corporate media love the momentary drama, but at the end of the day they'll do their duty and ensure that only the blue and the red –i.e., the two parties owned by Bay Street and/or the oil patch – are seen as "realistic" options. It's how they roll.

If there's truly an NDP surge, it may well turn out to be little more than today's Shiny Object.

Again, our priority has to be denying Harper his majority. That's got to be obvious by now, unless you like living in corporatist theocracies where ignorance, stupidity and belligerence are celebrated as civic virtues.

In that light, it doesn't really matter whether the Liberals or the NDP finish second; the acid test will be whether they can work with the Bloc to ensure that Harper, once held to a minority, does not secure the confidence of the House. Another Harper government is something this country may not survive.

Related posts:

• Wow. Just ... wow.
• To my dear Liberal and NDP friends ...
• When Liberals and New Democrats snipe at each other, who wins?
• Eye on the ball, comrades

Wow. Just ... wow.

Too early to say whether the wheels are coming off the bus, but ...

I'll just let this guy speak for himself.

Let's hear from a couple of Sun News Network fans

Because really, it's not fair of me to single out Sun readers.

Especially now that there's a TV network for them.