The Only Winning Move

Luke Burrage’s latest podcast pillories Robert J. “Canada” Sawyer’s Calculating God, a book so richly deserving of pillorying that this analogy is impossible to complete to anyone’s satisfaction. So it was great fun. If you hate Robert Sawyer and/or this book in any way, head on over to the Science Fiction Book Review Podcast for some well-deserved validation.

So, scratching about on Sawyer’s website after that, I came across this general bit of sense on atheist arrogance. In particular - it’s a rebuke of the general marketing approach taken by the Modern Skeptical Movement - their tendency to take as strategy the mocking of believers. And it’s one of those things that although I agree with the general point, I can’t credit many of the arguments.

The point is right on: atheists don’t have any positive beliefs, so they should stop acting like self-righteous believers. The obligatory money quote:

But atheism is no more a religion than not playing chess is a hobby

Right. And I think we’re supposed to complete the analogy that since no one goes around loudly declaring how much they don’t play Chess, or ridiculing anyone else for playing Chess, that Atheists shouldn’t go around doing these things on account of not believing in religion.

Oops.

Oops because, of course, people do go around ridiculing people who play Chess and making damn well sure that everyone around them knows just how often they never play Chess. People even get beat up for playing Chess. So there went that analogy - BOOM - in a puff of pale blue powder.

The whole essay is a string of category errors and cherry picking, in fact.

Here’s the complete wording of that section on not playing Chess:

More: the skeptics who trot out the FSM are playing into the hands of those who try to dismiss atheism as just another religion. But atheism is no more a religion than not playing chess is a hobby. In a world in which we have a war not on terror but rather on religiously inspired violence, in which sectarian fighting spills blood on every continent, it’s vital to keep clear that there is an alternative to religion.

Note the insidious assumptions. First - that if something is an alternative to religion, it will necessarily avoid sectarian fighting. But that is patently untrue. All kinds of things that are not religions involve sectarian fighting. All you need to have sectarian fighting are sects - ok, “factions” if you’re going to pick irrelevant nits about etymology - and plenty of things that aren’t religions have those! Then there’s the concommitant assumption that rejection of a thing can never constitute the basis for a group identity. But again, that’s patently untrue. To use a Canadian example that Sawyer can understand - Edmonton fans in NHL are proud of what they call the “ABC Rule,” where “ABC” stands for “Anyone But Calgary.” Part of being an Edmonton Oilers fan is, apparently, emphatically NOT being a Calgary Flames fan. So there.

But Christians don’t display a fish in support of creationism (something most educated Christians don’t believe in anyway; they know that life evolved from simpler forms, thank you very much). Rather, they’re declaring their adherence to a moral code: blessed are the peacemakers; if someone strikes you on the right cheek, offer them your left; forgive and forget. Responding to that with a smug joke about evolution not only misses what the Christians were saying, but it makes the atheists look mean-spirited.

I actually largely agree with this one. That is, I really agree that the Darwin fish are silly. Darwinism isn’t a social movement, it’s a scientific theory, and so ideally it doesn’t merit tribal symbols any more than any of the infinite iterations of String Theory does. Ideally. But here in reality, there is a disturbingly large number of Christians who fail to meet Sawyer’s description. It is for these Christians that the Darwin fish are on display. Yes, the Darwin fish are obnoxious - but they are no more obnoxious, I think, than the people who put fish on their cars NOT to advertise their adherence to a moral code so much as to display tribal loyalty. It’s an empirical question what constitutes the majority of the fish-displayers, of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised - and neither would Sawyer, if he’s honest with himself - to find that there is not much overlap between that group of Christians who adhere to the pacifist moral code and those Christians who feel the need to advertise their allegiance on their cars. And I think that because, frankly, there is nothing about adherence this moral code that needs to be advertised any more than there is any need to advertise one’s belief in widely-accepted scientific theories. The fish - on both sides - were never about what they purport to represent.

Where the essay goes really off the rails for me is the gratuitous nationalism at the end, though.

The skeptical movement in the United States has been an abject failure. It’s done nothing to prevent the election of an anti-science fundamentalist to the White House (and I, for one, certainly wish the guy with his finger on the button didn’t think there was a better world after this one). It’s done nothing to quell the fight to expunge evolution from classrooms. It’s done nothing to counter — and, yes, maybe even is responsible for — the public perception of atheists as evil, arrogant people.

It really does beg two questions - (1) what would constitute “success” for this man and (2) why are we only picking on the skeptical movement in the United States? As to the first - social movements take time. You don’t clobber together a movement and then - BLAM, SHAZAM! - things change! And he really ought to know better, considering he used this example earlier:

See, those who prefer same-sex partners brilliantly remade their public image by taking a word that had been quaint even when The Flintstones had used it in their theme song back in 1960 and giving it a vibrant new meaning. “You may be happy,” they said, “but we’re gay.” And with a cheery rainbow logo, colourful parades, and self-deprecating humour, they won over almost everyone whose first name isn’t Stephen and whose last isn’t Harper.

Again with the factual problems. They haven’t won over anything like “everyone but Stephen Harper” (even allowing for poetic license), nor are they all uniformly cheerful and self-deprecating. Even passing familiarity with the gay movement suffices to cought up tons of counterexamples, in fact. And there’s nothing so odd about that. The Civil Rights Movement in the US was anything but uniformly peaceful - even though one of its most prominent leaders was avowedly a man of peace. I think it would be hard to sell a version of Civil Rights history that lays all the successes of the movement at Martin Luther King’s feet and blames all the setbacks on Malcolm X. Real history is just more complicated than that - and while we can certainly appreciate the admirable restraint of the public face of the movement, it’s going a bit far to effectively make it the whole of the movement’s success. More likely, there was a kind of symbiosis there: Malcolm X and those like him made the threats of violence credible, and King capitalized on the fact that he was a mainstream-acceptable alternative.

But the point is really that - whatever view you take of what made the Civil Rights Movement so ultimately effective, you have to concede that it took time. It wasn’t as though Brown v. Board of Education got handed down and that was that - far from it! It’s half a century later and there are still racial kinks that need working out. Nor is it like gay rights in Canada are decided and over. Tolerance was imposed on the Canadian public by judicial fiat - Parliament was ordered by a court in British Columbia to draft legislation allowing same-sex marriage, which it did. But, for the sake of argument, let’s consider the gay marriage question settled in Canada and the racial equality quesiton settled in the US. It took about 30-40 years in each case, right? So why doesn’t atheism get any mulligans? And since when is the goal of the Skeptical Movement to keep anyone out of office who believes in God? I don’t think that’s a fair criterion of success - and anyway, if we adopt it, then Canada is hardly doing better: name even one Prime Minister who hasn’t been religious? (Nope, not Trudeau. I’ll buy Brian Mulroney privately, but somehow I think Sawyer is going to weasel and insist we stick to his public statements, something he of course wouldn’t do on other issues, like determining how sincere Mulroney was about Meech Lake, or whatever have you.)

But here’s the real howler:

But perhaps there’s a ray of hope. Despite its gift counter, the Centre for Inquiry, Ontario, has dubbed itself “A New Canadian Voice for Reason, Science and Secularism.” If that’s just an empty PR slogan, then it will accomplish as little as its American counterparts have.

But if the Centre can really bring a new voice (one that’s polite and charming) and a Canadian voice (one that’s self-effacing and inclusive) to the Modern Skeptical Movement, then it might actually do some good.

And then maybe, just maybe, atheists will start feeling comfortable about coming out of the closet.

HELLO! Out of the closet, here! As are you, Robert J. “Canada” Sawyer. And this guy. And him as well. And thousands and thousands of equally-prominent others. Though it’s a bit strange to have to “come out of the closet” for something that Sawyer earlier argued wasn’t an identity. Relevant to the point above: if the great virtue of the New Candian Approach to Atheism® is that it’s “self-effacing and inclusive,” how is it going to go about advocating that religious people be barred from office? I mean, if the purportedly non-inclusive US version can’t accomplish this, then how is an inclusive one going to? Doesn’t being “inclusive” sort of imply that you don’t mind religious people - even the “anti-science fundamentalists,” provided they don’t prevent you doing science - running for and winning office? So are we then judging the Canadian version by a different standard? More to the point, since when is “Canadian” synonymous with “self-effacing and inclusive?” That certainly doesn’t describe any Canadians I’ve met - most of whom go out of their way to be mean to Americans and to call attention to just how Canadian they are, and just how much better that supposedly is than the alternatives. Now - no doubt that doesn’t apply to all Canadians, but as anyone whose read Sawyer’s novels knows, it certainly applies to HIM, which makes it particularly ironic that he’s the one currently doing the peddling of this factually-challenged stereotype.

Of course, this kind of base nationalist pandering is every bit as bad - if not worse - than what he’s accusing the Arrogant Wing of the Atheist (non-)Movement of doing. The Skeptical Movement isn’t ONLY in the United States, it doesn’t seem to have had more success anywhere else than it has in the US, and if we’re judging success by how religious the general population is, then Canada has a lot further to go than most of the nations that have branches of the Center for Inquiry (though, admittedly, not as far as the US).

Alright, that’s probably too much metaphorical ink spillt over Sawyer. I agree with the basic point: yes, atheists would do better to drop the superiority act. But honestly, I know of very few who act the way Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers do. Most atheists are happy to live and let live - and that’s whether or not they’re Canadian. Sawyer’s an engaging writer, and his books are actually entertaining reads. Too bad - in his novels as well as his essays - he seems only capable of burning straw men.

And then there was one.

Bob Rae has dropped out of the Liberal leadership race and endorsed Ignatieff. It’s the right move.

Yes, no doubt Rae had an actual shot should it have gone to voting. Not as good as Ignatieff’s, mind you, but let’s call it 30%: respectable. Still, as went Dion, so goes Rae. The salient difference between Rae and Ignatieff - the only one likely to be a major consideration after the events of the past two weeks - is that Rae was a vocal proponent of coalition and Ignatieff was not. Rae wants to take Harper down as soon as possible and at apparently any cost. Ignatieff favors a more measured “wait-and-see” approach. Ignatieff’s approach is the right one - both morally and strategically. Morally it’s just sort of irresponsible to replace an already not-ideally-stable government with an even less stable one, especially with means as questionable as these. Strategically it’s not clear what the Liberals would gain from going in guns blazing at this point. Dion led them to one of their worst federal election defeats ever and then compounded the problem even further by staging his barely legal “coup.” The first move from here has got to be to suck out the poison and go to work regaining credibility. When you’re down, you dust yourself off and get up to fight another day to be sure - so consider this the dusting off. Dion’s been axed - so there’s that taken care of. Now with Rae graciously declining to drag out the infighting everyone is so tired of, the party can actually get back to work.

Ignatieff is the best choice not only for restoring party credibility, but also for going toe-to-toe with Harper. It’s exactly what the Conservatives were NOT hoping for (and what they indeed used under-the-table tactics to prevent in the leadership race of 2006), and I guess I should be disappointed now for that reason. But I think everyone is glad to see the situation stabilize.

Well, the good news is that it looks like the Liberal leadership race is winding down in Ignatieff’s favor. The bad news is that it looks like the Liberal leadership race is winding down in Ignatieff’s favor.

I mean sure, given how decisively Dion’s ass was handed to him on this latest toe-to-toe with Harper, it’s clear to everyone that he needs to resign sooner rather than later. The last thing the Liberals want at this point is Dion across the bench from Harper on January 27th when the new budget is on the table. Nothing drives home the urgency of limiting the damage Dion is doing to his party better than the unpopular Harper’s 20-point lead in the polls. And of the two remaining choices (the other being former Ontario PM and NDP provincial faction leader Bob Rae), Ignatieff is clearly the right choice. Why? Put simply, because while Bob Rae was a vocal supporter of the coalition with the NDP (no shock there - Rae is former NDP himself), Ignatieff was always skeptical. Given that the public isn’t a big fan of the deal, that indeed the unpopular Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are leading the Liberals by 20 points at the moment as a result of its failure, probably the Liberals will be able to regain some face putting a coalition skeptic and moderate like Ignatieff in the driver’s seat over the left-leaning agitator Rae.

The “bad news” bit of it is, of course, that Ignatieff is a worthier opponent. He’s smarter, more even-tempered, and generally less politically connected than Rae or Dion. I assume that if Ignatieff wins the situation with the Liberal Party is finally settled, and I’m really not so sure Harper can win a fair fight in Canada. Against Bob Rae - sure. Against Ignatieff? Well, maybe, actually. Ignatieff is a essentially a college professor, a relative newcomer to politics, having first stood for election in 2006. So maybe Harper can trip him up on general lack of experience and familiarity with domestic politics. It’ll be interesting to see whether the general lack of Liberal Party connections is a blessing or a curse. It could be a blessing in that it finally ends the feud between the Chretien and Martin factions. But in a party as patronage-addicted as the Liberal Party, it’s got to have its downsides as well. If hard to see anyone sticking around for very long who doesn’t know exactly which palms to grease.

But I expect most actual Canadians see this as a good thing. The unsettled nature of politics up there has got to be making everone a little nervous - especially with the world economic situation being what it is. Most Canadians would probably rather put all the Liberal leadership questions behind them and let the government get back to functioning … however it is that it functions.

Dion is expected to resign on Wednesday - for real this time. January 27th is plenty far away for the Liberals to sort out their leadership situation now that it’s down to two popular candidates. Whichever way they decide, things just got harder for Harper. If it’s Bob Rae, though, we can probably expect more of the same, just with a higher level of general competence. Since it’s the approach that’s wrong and not - as many commentators would have it - the communications angle or Dion’s superior attitude to party infighting, I guess Rae wouldn’t be too difficult for Harper to fend off. But since Ignatieff understands that the coalition is wrongheaded and that the Liberals are just going to have to ride out another year or so of Harper government, he’s an easier opponent in the short-term but a much, much more difficult one in the long term.

Ignatieff winning means Harper’s here to stay until at least October, I’d say. But it also makes me wonder whether he’ll make it through the next election. Ignatieff, like Obama down here, is a great unknown. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

To hear the press tell it, Canada’s Governor General made a “controversial” and “unprecedented” decision in agreeing to prorogue Parliament until late January. I think this is both true and misleading. On one level, it’s true that anything is “controversial” about which people argue, so in that sense the decision qualifies. But it’s disingenuous to imply that it’s really all that controversial among constitutional scholars. The press has taken pains to quote those scholars who disagree with it, but a more even-handed view is that precedent would suggest she’s right. A similar line of reasoning holds for “unprecedented.” It’s true enough that this decision is “unprecedented” on the basis of a lack of comparable past examples. But it’s the situation that’s “unprecedented” more than the Governor General’s decision. Calling her decision “unprecedented” without mentioning that there weren’t really any available precedents for her to follow isn’t the most honest telling of the story.

What opponents of prorogation need to sit back and consider is the Governor General’s job and the choices she was offered. Without calling an election, her choices came down to these. In one corner, there is Stephen Harper, who is tested in office, heads the largest faction in Commons, and who recently stood for election and won an increased mandate. In the other corner is a coalition of two parties plus one hanger-on that “gives its word” to support the coalition on confidence motions, but hasn’t actually signed any papers to that effect. The two official members of the Coalition add up to fewer seats than the Conservatives. With the unofficial member they have more - but stop and think who that unofficial member is. It’s a separatist party that runs candidates in exactly one of the ten provinces and represents no national constituency. To add insult to injury, the man who is supposed to keep this super-shaky alliance in order so that the country can function has already resigned the party leadership under pressure and will be replaced by someone as yet unknown in May.

Now consider that the Governor General’s job description is ensuring the stability of the Confederation. She is not supposed to make policy decisions, she is simply there as a final arbiter to make sure the government functions. If national stability is your main concern, can anyone maintain with a straight face that a maybe-two-maybe-three member coalition with uncertain leadership will be preferable to a single-member efficient voting block with a tested and competent leader? What else was she honestly supposed to have done? Granted, she could have called an election, and maybe she should have. But opinion polls suggest that it would have been a waste of time: Harper’s support has grown over this, not abated. More to the point, constitutional precedent does suggest that on having his prorogation request denied, Harper would have been expected to stand down anyway.

The Governor General is obligated to first meet with the Prime Minister and overrule his requests only when they threaten national stability or are unconstitutional in some way. Whether or not she likes him personally, Harper is a capable leader in charge of a disciplined caucus which had recently successfully stood for election. In addition, his prorogation term is reasonable. He’s only asking for an extra week’s recess all told, a suspension of activity for just over a month, which is a plausible amount of time to take care of the job at hand: putting together a budget the Opposition can stomach. The idea that she is supposed to have said “no” and turned around and handed government to the coalition of two, no three!, no two! opposition parties lead by Dion someone not yet chosen rather than give Parliament an extra week’s worth of a cooling off period is just crazy.

Yes, she could have called an election. It wouldn’t have been a popular decision, but at least there’s an argument there. I don’t really see an argument that her duties would have permitted her to hand power to an unelected and soon-to-be-replaced Dion.

The most disingenuous argument of all is the idea that Harper has somehow sidestepped the confidence motion. Wrong. The very first thing Parliament will do when it reconvenes is hold exactly this confidence motion. Harper is due to present another budget the failure of which will most definitely - and rightly - be interpreted as a vote of no-confidence, triggering elections. He hasn’t sidestepped it, merely postponed it - which is only fair, really, given that the alternative was to hand a shaky coalition of last election’s losers control of government.

Again, I can see the case that she should have called an election. But there is simply no convincing argument that Dion et al should be in government come Monday.

If this Globe and Mail article is to be believed, Bob Rae is using the Liberal Party’s disarray over prorogation to muscle his way to the front. The leadership battle apparently now comes down to positions on the coalition. Rae is very much in favor of it, while it seems Iganatieff is not and was, in fact, the very last prominent Liberal to sign the letter that Dion sent to the Governor General opposing prorogation.

Since the public seems pretty disgusted with the Liberals’ tactics of the past week, I’d say this gives Mr. Ignatieff the long-term advantage. Bob Rae may be jockeying to be Dion’s snap-judgement replacement, but if cooler heads prevail (and they will - Parliament is closed until late January after all) it’s becoming increasingly clear that Ignatieff is the better choice. Which is too bad, really, as I think Harper will have a harder time with him than with Mr. Rae.

Now and then real poetic justice does happen. Stephen Harper is riding high in polls after the Coalition’s failed attempt at a power grab. However letter-of-the-law legal it may have been for last election’s three runner-up parties to propose they be allowed to govern instead 7 weeks after these decisions were made official, the general public - and here’s a novel concept - isn’t too keen on the idea of a change in government without an election to certify it. Polls show the Tories fully 20 points ahead of the Grits - and well over the 40% mark generally necessary to win a majority government.

Analysts are saying the lead will vanish before Parliament resumes in January, and they may be right. Popularity spikes like these don’t tend to last - and I’ve yet to see the kind of alchemy that would make someone like Stephen Harper permanently popular in a country like Canada. I imagine the public’s opinion of him is pretty much what it’s always been: competent, icy, inhuman - the kind of guy they want managing their hedge funds, not necessarily their welfare state government.

Still, I wouldn’t bet on the analysts being right this time. It’s true enough that Harper isn’t personally popular, and when all is said and done the Canadian public by and large still thinks like the Grits. No other western country can boast so close a match between a political party’s general position and what the public wants than that between Canada and the Liberals. But if Harper is mildly unpopular then Stephane Dion is congenitally so. And let’s not forget why Paul Martin isn’t Prime Minister. The Liberals are in time out right now for general corruption - a treatment they get every 20 years or so. A display of party unity behind a charismatic outsider - a la Trudeau in ‘68 - would instantly solve all their problems. But of course, Dion is a weak compromise candidate who is no one’s idea of Prime Minister material, and the only reason he’s still around at all is because the party so obviously hasn’t resolved all its infighting issues. This was absolutely the worst time imaginable to stage the kind of oily gamble Dion and Layton just pulled. Now, things are worse.

So yeah, on the one hand, popularity spikes are temporary by nature, and it would take more than this to endear Harper to the public. On the other hand, the fundamentals of the Liberals’ problems are unchanged, and the crisis will only have reminded people why they didn’t vote Liberal in October. So while I can see the case for a drop in Tory popularity ahead of January, I wouldn’t care to put money on it.

Stephen Harper is unusually crafty and even-tempered for a national leader. I don’t think they’re spending “every waking minute” between now and January 26th hammering out the world’s most perfect budget like they say. What’s going on in those cloistered meetings is the Tories scheming a way to wrangle a new election out in January - or at least some time before the Liberals can hold their leadership conference in May. I sincerely hope they come up with something good. And given that it’s Harper we’re talking about, I won’t be surprised at all if they do.

Ok, so yesterday I wrote a bit about media bias.

You want media bias? I got yer media bias. Right here.

Under the charming title “Canadian Prime Minister Shuts Down Parliament to Keep Power” comes this quote from the AP:

Less than two months after winning re-election, Harper successfully asked the unelected representative of the head of state for the power to close down Parliament until Jan. 26, hoping to buy enough time to develop a stimulus package that could prop up the economy.

Yes, let’s just completely neglect to mention that that same “unelected representative” would be necessary to certify the proposed new coalition government, which would, of course, assume power without an election.

Governor General Michaelle Jean, who represents Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II as head of state, granted the unusual request to suspend parliament. Had she refused, Harper would have had two choices: step down or face a no-confidence vote Monday he was sure to lose.

Harper would not offer details on their conversation.

Did anyone ask her?

“He’s trying to lock the door of Parliament so that the elected people cannot speak,” Layton said. “He’s trying to save his job.”

(NOTE: ‘Layton’ refers to Jack Layton, head of the NDP - Canada’s Socialist party.) Wrong. Harper asked you guys to call an election, which is, after all, the normal procedure after you defeat a sitting government in a confidence motion. Why not simply agree to hold elections after the confidence motion? Had you done that publicly, the Governor General wouldn’t even have agreed to meet with Harper in the first place, and proroguing parliament would not have been an option.

The Liberals, New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois, which together control a majority of parliament’s 308 seats, signed a pact agreeing to vote this coming Monday to oust Harper and setting the structure for their proposed coalition government.

That’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it would be that any single party aligned with the Conservatives would “control a majority of parliament’s 308 seats.” Yet another way of looking at it would be to mention that the second-place Liberals have roughly half the number of seats the Conservatives have, and that the third party in this coalition doesn’t even run elections outside of Quebec because its only agenda is to break up the confederation.

Analysts said a governor general has never been asked to suspend parliament to delay an ouster vote when it was clear the government didn’t have the confidence of a majority of legislators.

Analysts also said that this was the only time in Canadian history that anyone has tried to form a new government without an election. But it wouldn’t be fun to quote that bit, eh?

What really kills me about this article is that there isn’t even a single mention of the Conservative side of things anywhere to be found. And there really should be - if for no other reason than recent polls show 64% (that’s a majority, in case the AP hasn’t noticed) of Canadians disapprove of the Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition takeover attempt. At the very least, the AP should mention that if an election were held tomorrow - which is an option in this Westminister system nation - that the Coaltion would lose on account of public outrage.

Crisis averted. Canadian Governor General Michaelle Jean, after meeting with Stephen Harper for two hours today, has approved Harper’s request to prorogue Parliament. This is an unusual measure that puts the government on ice temporarily. Parliament will close until January, when Harper and the Conservatives will be expected to table another budget.

For those of you not following this (by which I mean, roughly speaking, the entire world) - budget issues are always confidence motions. If a government fails to pass a budget, it stirs up all kinds of constitutional issues, sometimes triggering new elections. Since the budget announcement, the opposition parties (of which there are three in Canada) have been threatening to band together to form a coalition government to replace Harper. The math works out such that no two of them can do it, but if all three sign on, they have more total seats than the Conservatives in Commons. Upon failure of the budget, they could (and were threatening to) ask the Governor General to hand the government to them without an election. Stephane Dion - current but temporary leader of the Liberal Party - would’ve become Prime Minister in Harper’s place.

The reason they can kinda sorta get away with this without an election is because Harper and the Conservatives don’t technically have enough seats to form a government. Generally, you need an absolute majority - either from your own party or in a coalition deal with some other party. The Conservatives have what’s called a “minority government,” whereby they don’t have enough seats to pass legislation without help from the Opposition. Since Harper’s government doesn’t have a clear victory in the last election, it’s not technically ouside the law for a Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition to ask the Governor General to nullify the last election and let them form the government instead. In fact, they had that option at the end of the last election and neglected to take it - mostly becuase by tradition the party with the most votes gets the first chance at forming a government, and Harper and the Conservatives had formed the last government with fewer seats than they have now. It’s hard, under those circumstances, to deny the Conservatives a second mandate.

It must be stressed: contra to what Harper keeps claiming, everything the Coalition is doing is perfetly legal. It’s just that it’s unorthodox and doesn’t show much inclination to let the Canadian public have a say.

I think that given the circumstances, the Governor General has made the right decision. Parliament is closed until January, meaning the confidence motion coming on Monday that would’ve toppled the government and given the Opposition the chance to form a coalition government without an election to replace Harper will not take place. Meaning that Harper is still Prime Minister until at least January 27. Meaning, more importantly, that everyone has time to cool off and sort things out rather than resorting to melodramatic, legally questionable, and in any case undemocratic power grabs. If Dion and Layton (and Duceppe, but no one cares) have concerns with the federal economic policy in general and Harper’s leadership in particular, they now have a chance to air them publicly. And the government has a chance to address those concerns. This is the right choice: take your finger off the trigger for a minute and think about what you’re doing.

This isn’t at all how I expected things to turn out. GG Jean, it seems pretty clear to me, is no Stephen Harper fan. It’s to her credit that she passed on the easy opportunity to oust him and instead opted for a cooling off period. That, in other words, she did her job.

As charges of media bias become more commonplace, you have to get sophisticated to maintain credibility if you’re making one. So a common charge one hears these days - a favorite of Glenn Greenwald’s, actually - is that the media can be biased by reporting from a neutral standpoint on an issue that doesn’t really have one. Here’s a good example of the technique:

According to an Angus Reid poll for CTV, 64 percent of Canadians do not support Stephane Dion becoming prime minister in a coalition government, but 53 percent are against the Conservatives’ current economic policy.

Earth to CP: opposition to the government’s economic policy does NOT equate to approving of coups!

Flashback to October 14. There was a legitimate election. Stephen Harper and the Conservatives won - gained seats, even. True, not enough for a majority government, but let’s have a look at the numbers:

In what way is this not a Conservative mandate? If people had wanted Stephane Dion to be Prime Minister, they wouldn’t have handed his party its worst defeat since 1984. Those 26 seats didn’t vanish for no reason.

Now - granted that Canada isn’t the western world’s model democracy. The NDP polls 8% higher than the Bloc and still ends up with fewer seats because…the game is pretty obviously stacked. So I guess some caution is in order any time you talk about a Canadian election result as though it had very much to do with public opinion. Still - whatever you think about the Tories’ standing after the last election, it’s clear the Liberals lost. No party can post a 26 seat loss in a second-place finish and plausibly claim a mandate.

Things have changed since October - that much is true. If the opposition wants to put the government to a confidence vote, that’s certainly their right, and given the economic situation far from beyond the pale ethically. But they need to then hold an election to let the people they govern in on the deal. I realize that the Governor General’s duties don’t technically include deciding when elections will be held, but I think it’s possible for her to make it a condition of dissolving Parliament. That is in fact what she should do. Yes, Canada just had an election. Yes, it was poorly attended. Yes, it was the third one in four years. Yes, people are getting tired of things not being settled. But I can’t imagine anyone prefers the naked and corrupt power grab that the Grits and the NDP are proposing as an alternative.

And so I had to chuckle when I read the CP equating “opposition to the Conservatives’ current economy policy” with “not supporting Stephane Dion becomming Prime Minister.” It would sound harmless enough to anyone who didn’t understand that Stephane Dion’s “bid” for the PM slot was a brazen and only barely constitutional power grab that completely disregards democratic tradition, if not quite the letter of the law. The two questions aren’t even in the same league.

Come on.

UPDATES (2008-12-04):

Here’s Stephen Harper’s national address last night.

And a less oily version of the same speech given as a statement to the press earlier yesterday:

And just because it’s funny - here’s Stephane Dion not 7 weeks ago during the election explicitly rejecting the coalition he now proposes to form: