The Right is Less than Half

Speaking of arms, the Right is less than half a human, just as the Left is also less than half, but even when you add the legs of soldiers the human heart remains in the torso, in tune with the head, aware that right and wrong may be just words to the strong. As you do unto others you do unto I, Thou and us, bound to mercy through convalent weaknesses, our backs covered, or not. Let ancient shepherds speak to me of the Blood of the Lamb, and poets and psalmists, from everyone else's lips the words are the title of a list of do's and don'ts, manifest cant posted by the hard hearted.

Down the River with Huck

Yes Brian Mulroney was a liberal (capitalism is a 19th century laissez faire ideology, also known as liberalism, freeing capital to do what it wants is so 170 years ago.) Huck Farper is even more of a 19th century liberal than the allegedly Red Tory Lyin' Brian. Huck's Family values are a plank covering a hole that our children's families will fall into when traditional Conservative values like allowing the landed classes to complete the environmental degradation of Eden Earth leads our grandchildren to start killing each other over what's left of the clean water and edible food. If Huck is a conservative it's only because he's conserving the delusion that the ecological debt incurred on behalf of a consumptive population is less important than making the world safe for money.

Hating Islam in the name of Jesus

I once attended a renewal conference at the Toronto Airport Ministry. The basis of renewal theology is breaking down barriers between churches and the need for individuals to undergo 'the refiner's fire': spiritual reawakening. An American evangelist spoke about how she led Christians in Washington to pray against the mosques near their airport and urged Canadians to do the same. This was before 9/11. You reap what you sow. The Christian Right despises Islam. But then the Right is the work of irreligious imperial capitalism, Mammon poisoning the wells of faith, thou shalt hate thy neighbour's religion so the arms dealers, oil men and corporate privateers can profit off the politics of conquest, leaving believers reveling in their own self righteousness.

McCain's real POV

Just because he might become president and thus Huck Farper's ally I think Canadians should know this.

Washington Dispatch: In a taped sermon, the preacher McCain calls a "spiritual guide" calls on America to see the "false religion" of Islam "destroyed." Still, the candidate won't reject Rod Parsley's endorsement.

Christianity

I am an unmodfied Christian, I don't know what conservative Christians mean and the way they use scripture sometimes makes my skin crawl from the discernment of evil uttered in the name of the Spirit, but neither do I much understand Liberal Christianity, nor do the Christian Socialists make sense to me either, (nor do Catholic Fascists or High Anglican Imperialists). I don't really care what any of them have to say anymore. I'm an extreme protestant that way, I don't need a pastor, a preacher, a reverend, a minister, a holy father, between me and Love.

And so it slowly comes

And so it slowly comes, the electoral behemoth, the public relations part of the warm-up exercise as the candidates roam the hills and dales of the riding, meeting and greeting everyone they can, fund raising, smiling for the cameras, foot-slogging and phone logging and blogging and grogging and trusting their spouses to keep the home fires burning and safe.
All things considered, Guelph has produced a handful of high grade candidates.

While I think Gloria Kovach's cutesy pose on the cover of the Trib says everything I need to know about why not to vote for her (never mind her party's Bush League Republican repudiation of Canadian Progressive Conservativism) she does have some serious municipal chops and a well-oiled personal election team that doesn't need a united Conservative Party to do her proud. I'm hoping the Red Tories and Orangemen desert Huck Farper and his American oil idealogues and don't give him or her their votes and we can chuck the whole lot.

Liberal Frank Valeriote has deep pockets of both money and community service goodwill to draw upon,and as well as an amiable appeal to the left and right sides of the centre, so it is quite possible he could keep the riding Liberal. One thing his candidacy didn't do was split the local party. And yes the Valeriotes are from |San Giorgio Morgeto, and no, they don't appear in my books as bad guys.

Tom King has considerable stature in the country and in the progressive circles of Guelph, so he could pull votes from everywhere if he starts telling a story about a Canada that we've never quite been able to articulate to ourselves but have aways had on the tips of our tongues and in the wellsprings of our best intentions.

Mike Nagy is a whole other matter. The environment critic for the Green Party (surely no other party than the Greens has as many well-informed environment critics in their membership, let alone in their ghost cabinet.) Mike isn't flashy, he's a tough-minded, genial guy who's done his homework and is a fountain of fascinating facts and best-practice policy ideals. We could a lot worse. His best hope however is for the disenfranchised Progressives to realize that their home is with the Greens, because King and Valeriote are going to take a lot of the centre, leaving Gloria alone in the right wing wilderness.

What makes the riding difficult to call for me aren't the candidates but the electorate, it's where they are in the tipping point of things, how many are ready to face the future, how many are keeping their rose-coloured glasses on; whether the Red Tories and Orangemen are willing to defend the commons before the Republican Reform-a-Tories charter its bounty to their privateering friends.