Senate Residency Requirements

The easy part of analysing the ongoing scandal gripping Canadian senators' Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin that culminated in their decisions to leave the Conservative caucus over the last two days is condemning them as individuals.  These two people were Conservative appointees, appointees of a Prime Minister who in a previous life admonished the Senate for its uselessness, patronage, waste and culture of entitlement and who it turns out, through this saga, came to embody those very things.  The comment boards on line show a lot of booing, name-calling and righteous indignation, but there is no need to let our emotions get the better of us on this issue.  There is no debate to get fired up over.  These two individuals represent geographical regions they do not actually reside in, and so the multiple six figures of travel and housing expenses they have claimed over the last three years are invalid and bogus.  Simple.  And if you think resigning from the Conservative caucus means they quit their jobs or have somehow been punished, think again.  They will continue to sit in the Senate, collecting 168,000 in salary a year with impunity.  We as a nation are powerless to do anything about it.

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, as the Conservative government stymied all attempts to hold it to account and make it admit wrongdoing with lies, obfuscation, defiance and insults on several occasions during the 2006-2011 minority years. In fact, I've never heard a Conservative party apology or admission of wrongdoing in my life.  That's how these guys roll: they're divine.  So don't expect any accountability now that they have a majority: bring on the next wave of patronage appointments of party-friendly hacks and the next prorogue.  Nothing else to see here, so save your negative emotions for more important things.

But while we're here, let's ask ourselves why does it matter that a Senator is a "full-time" resident of PEI or Wadena, Saskatchewan?  Does somebody (especially big important Senators who worked for CTV in Ontario for 40 years) really need to be in their little remote buttfuck community when they already spend over 150-200 days a year in Ottawa?  Can't property ownership, historical ties and regular visits suffice?  After all, it's not a requirement for Canadians to live where they work, including in instances with real economic consequences like overpaid city workers whose wages are indexed to the high cost of living in that city fuelling real estate bubbles in the suburbs.  It's a really badly kept secret that many MPs, including the two opposition party leaders who intend to make hay out of this Senate scandal, do not actually live in their ridings.  This is well known yet is accepted and does not dominate headlines.  Are we past caring where people actually live in our new "global village", in which it can be argued that location matters less than ever? I answered yes when I wrote about the mobility of labour and the impossibility of stopping it two days go.

In this case the answer is still no.

When it comes to a position that almost exclusively consists of privileges that are inherited from the times of the aristocracy, residency does matter.  You are getting paid a ridiculous amount of money to represent a region; it is an insult to people in that region and to Canadian taxpayers to not reside in it.  Residency, despite our advances in travel and technology, is not a passé requirement; there is no substitute for living in a community, supporting its businesses, having your kids in its schools, using its roads, parks, and medical facilities and knowing to see people who walk down its streets.  Everybody has to do this somewhere - I have done it many places - but its hard to think of another job it as essential for as politician.  Think of how hollow, vague, and corny the average politician's speech is, and then imagine it after you find out they don't even live in the district whose name "The people of..." they repeat with tourette's like repetitiveness.  Forcing politicians to live in the riding they represent would go a long way to ending the culture of entitlement so endemic in the Canadian political class; by forcing them to adhere to basic bureaucratic framework like everyone else (like living where you say you live), we eliminate one more opportunity for crass political opportunism.

Rob Ford is on Crack

That explains the last three years.

Do I need to say anything else?

Probably just that I have become so accustomed to this idiot that I had to read the headline in four different newspapers before it sunk in.  I have become so good at tuning out the daily dose of Rob Ford moron antics that it turns out he smoked crack and I was like "Oh yeah? Hmmm. *Yawn*.  First of all because its not surprising, second of all because it was abundantly clear to most people with a pulse that this guy should never have got within a telescope's view of the public eye from the get-go, never mind mayor.  Each passing day confirms that, to the point where a crack-smoking video surprises no-one and probably isn't going to change anything.

It just slightly eclispses his brother admitting he drinks 4 litres of chocolate milk every day.

Who Cares Where Stuff is Made?

In recent weeks, the issues of off-shoring, sweat-shops, and labour mobility have resurged to occupy the news headlines once again.  The collapse of a textile factory in Bangladesh that left hundreds dead produced a temporary black mark on one of the eyes of the hydra of multi-billion dollar conglomerates that sources its garments in this part of the world.  Suddenly, twenty years after Kathie Lee Gifford cried on tv about her orphan-manufactured Wal-Mart clothes line (wow, I'm really dating myself here), there is collective shock and disgust that our clothes are still made in the third world.

Meanwhile in Canada, home of Loblaw Inc. who among others manufactured its own Joe Fresh line of clothes in that very factory that collapsed, much hand-wringing and griping has recently occurred over the issue of temporary foreign workers (or TFWs, as informed pros now calls them).  A haystack that was set fire to by one bitter obsolete employee at Canada's largest bank turned into a several-week long shit-storm during which it was revealed that not only this big bank but ALL the big banks, as well as politicians' office staff, lawyer firms, big telecom, and all the other six-figure earner employing, ridiculously profitable industries in this fair land were making use of the program.  In the face of all this anger, indignation, and angst at these two separate but related cases we must ask: Why all this uproar over what gets made or who does what where?

Please understand me: the title of this article, or that last sentence, do not mean I am an indifferent or callous to the plight of individuals trying to obtain economic security anywhere.  As sad as the deaths of 380 Bangladeshis are, I believe it is more constructive to pose basic questions than fall into righteous indignation, because I don't think they have been answered, and they provide more insight than righteous indignation.  You've probably already had more than enough of that in the mainstream media.  And the response to it doesn't allow us to cut any further to the heart of the matter: the anti-capitalist crowd sharpens its axes in preparation of marathon grinds and CEOs of multi-nationals hurriedly crowd-surf to podiums on their PR departments hands to reassure the world (and shareholders) that they are compassionate, well-meaning individuals.

The Globe and Mail, the virtuous paragon of humanity that it is, reminded us that deep down inside, we are all shareholders.  It asked the tough question days after the Bangladeshi disaster.  Something about the country being torn between this now crucial industry for its economy and the fact that, well, it's a dangerous and miserable occupation for all who do it and now the whole world knows that.  Okay, not that it didn't know before but its been reminded (humans have very short attention spans, and technology hasn't exactly helped the situation).  To put that in very impolite terms, what exactly do people in Bangladesh have better to do than sew $12 tank tops for 14 cents an hour?

I'm not sure, because I've never been to Bangladesh.  But I know there's a reason the clothes are being made there, and not in Central African Republic or Afghanistan (two dirt poor countries that come to mind).  Big, bad multinationals don't just walk into places they aren't wanted in 2013; they are aided by the tax deals and backroom handshakes of compliant governments, eager to get people earning incomes , paying taxes, and working 14 hours a day with no time to wonder how the government made their lives such shit.

The people of Bangladesh didn't ask for sweatshops, the government got them because it evidently made attracting them a top priority, and people didn't exactly turn their nose up at the work when it arrived.  North Americans' clothes have evidently followed a path of rising incomes through Asia, from Hong Kong to China down through Laos and Cambodia with extended stays in Phillipines, Indonesia and Vietnam.  All these countries have robust economies and excellent growth rates.

Does that mean the average person there doesn't still have an awful grind to get through to live day to day?  No.  But businesses will move anywhere or explore all options available to them to reduce costs and create value for their customers and shareholders.  If I draw the ire of some well-meaning "progressive" about promoting a "race to the bottom" then I reassure him or her that I would be interested in a system that rewarded people for their hard work and initiative and did not create instability and inequality at the same time.  The argument that this process also leads to worker exploitation and environmental destruction is, of course, irrefutable, but as the last five years in the wake of the widespread awareness of climate change have shown, people seem to be more interested in working to survive than figuring out how to solve really big complicated problems that involve coordinating the efforts of 7 billion individuals, millions of companies, and 192 sovereign states.  So nobody is really accountable to anybody and everyone just keeps telling themselves I'm just going to take care of business and do what I need to do until this cluster fuck all gets sorted out.  As of right now it seems pretty hopeless.

Anyway those same leftists are the ones pounding their chests in the media when Caterpillar closes a plant in London Ontario to move 500 km down the road to Indiana where wages are less than half, or when B.C. imports Chinese coal miners.  They are all about "protecting the environment" and "protecting Canadian jobs" which exposes them to be grovelling for the same working-stiff, joe six pack votes as all the other parties.  So the environment part is really just lip service.  Witness NDP leader Andrea Horwath this week in Ontario holding out her support to prop up a minority government over road tolls, badly needed to fund transit in a city choking worse than any in North America on its own traffic congestion.  It's so much easier for her (and so agonizing for everyone else) to blather on some bullshit platitudes about "families" and "ordinary folks" than to attempt to tackle a complex but urgent problem.

This is symptomatic of a larger problem of Canadians being alienated from and uninformed about where their "economy" that is the "most important issue" in every election actually comes from.  Corporations which employ Canadians and pay them good salaries have many operations abroad and make a lot of profits abroad.  And these companies and others import from abroad so that we can have cheap goods here.  Maybe it is not that simple but we could do a lot more to figure out how society should be run and be part of the solution instead of listening to idiot politicians constantly telling us that we are all entitled to good jobs and cheap goods and no pain because we are special.  If we were special we would be totally insulated and sell-sufficient; technology and petroleum have made that impossible.  Whether you think that is fortunate or unfortunate depends on your perspective, but what is 100% certain is that there is no turning back, and that's why I don't care who makes what and does what where.  I know there is still lots of work to do in Canada.

Middle Class State of The Union

In a sweeping bid to reassure markets (which are at 5 year highs), get the republican controlled congress on side (which it will never, ever be), and show all those enlightened people who entrusted their faith in him for a second term that he's more than just an inspiring pretty face, Barack Obama used his 12 page long state of the union address last night to pound and pound the thematic dead horse that politicos are convinced is in fact an electoral golden goose: the middle class.

The middle class.  If I hear this patronizing, meaningless, bullshit idiotic term one more time, I'm going to have to take to Lacking Credentials for a serious rant.  Oh, wait. Here I am.  Guess that was one time too many.

What possesses successful and mediocre politicians alike to so shamelessly, so blithely, and so frequently trot out this term? Why are we in 2013 witnessing the full-scale creation of a continent-wide mythology that lionizes this amorphous entity called the middle class, has us believing that there are legions of virtuous, well-meaning, salt of the earth (but obviously dumb as fucking dirt, if we listen to the speeches of those who claim to be carrying their torch) "hard-working folks" in North America, who were dominating the world and doing just fine until some vague mean and evil events which they had no do you hear me zero part in sent them for a shock and a ride from which they have never recovered.  An unwritten rule now exists then, that every North American political discourse, from the centre-left, "progressive" side of the ledger at least, must include this narrative and grab hold of it with a mission, a zeal, an evangelical conviction that middle class must be "rebuilt", that it must be "revived", that "good-paying, high value jobs" and "prosperity" must come back to North America.  Jesus Christ, you listen to these people and think we are standing in line waiting for soup before getting off our dust bowl farms and following the Joads to California.  Where is the context? Where is the perspective? Where are the facts in this middle class narrative?  And who is sitting around, thinking of themselves as middle class and complaining at the same time about how bad they have it? Is anybody really that pathetic out there? And if so, why would we be pandering to them? What should we make of politicians who do?

Answer: That they are know-nothing morons, or they sure do good jobs of playing ones on tv.  This is what one concludes from Justin Trudeau's cross-country campaigning, saying he learns in his travels that Canada's middle-class is its "backbone" and that it is "suffering".  What the hell does this guy know about being middle class, and who gave him the title of spokesman for them?

I'm just saying.  North America's political class members earn six figures for the theater work they do.  They own nice homes in nice neighbourhoods.  They receive pensions unheard of in any other professions.  Many of them are in demand, during and after politics, as authors, speakers, or highly regarded professionals in their fields.  These people know what money is.  They know what assets and educations are.  They know how the markets in North America work, how the tax system works, and they have highly qualified people managing their affairs in their best interests with respect to these systems.  Justin Trudeau and Barack Obama own very valuable properties in prime locations in very affluent areas of major North American centres.  So could they maybe dial down the "middle-class, joe six-pack" bullshit for a speech or tv?.

I used to work in collections, and although it does get tiring it is interesting work from a human psychology point of view, and unlike many hard jobs you can boil every single person you are dealing with into one of four categories: unwilling and unable to pay, willing but unable to pay, unwilling but able to pay, and able and willing to pay.  Similarly, I don't pretend that North America's social structure and institutions are perfect or that poor people are lazy and plutocrats deserve every penny, but it is simplistic and disingenuous to depict society as existing in three layers of poor, middle, and rich.  In fact all people's circumstances can be broken down in the same way as debtors receiving collection calls.

There are people who earn little and are unable to manage their affairs
There are people who earn little but are able to manage their affairs.
There are people who earn a lot but are unable to manage their affairs
There are people who earn a lot and are able to manage their affairs.

This is why I have a very big expletive problem with the vague, well-meaning, "middle-class" catch-all.  The middle class is made up of the two groups in middle, one of whom deserves to be there and one of whom we are supposed to feel sorry for when they meet the consequences of their own irresponsibility.  Instead of saving and investing the incredible wages the auto worker (or teacher, or government worker, or insert high wage earner with iron clad special interest group protection here) earned for ten, fifteen, twenty, or thirty years and becoming prosperous, we are supposed to take for granted that they should automatically be entitled to earn better wages than ever this year.  Someone who put all their money in stocks, bonds, investments and rental properties is the same as someone who owns time shares, snowmobiles, a fifty thousand dollar truck and a trailer in florida.  Someone who made terrible financial decisions deserves the attention of progressive politicians because these politicians decided they are "middle class".

Creative destruction has been crushing jobs in North America since capitalism started and yet new jobs are created every year.  No amount of politician bleating is going to save any "middle class" person who got "left behind" because of decisions they themselves made in their life as an adult.  Who is so infantile or so naive to believe anything any politician says about making their lives better? Hint: I bet you 0% of successful people in Canada waited around for Justin Trudeau to tell them they should be better off or they should have more opportunities.  I haven't seen such sickening corniness since Bob Saget's character on Full House, and at least we know now that he was just acting.

On the CBC podcast Q last week Jian Ghomeshi interviewed a hungarian translator and poet who observed that a right-wing fascist-type political movement has taken over his homeland and is propogating an anti-semitic, nationalist, return to the 1930s type of ideology.  When asked how this could happen in a modern democracy, he said they were gunning on the hope that Nazi Germany also gunned on, that if you repeat something often enough it becomes true in the collective mind.  I feel the need to speak out and say that North America risks to fall even further into complacency, mediocrity and selfish infantilism if we allow ourselves to be brainwashed by the myth of the "vanished" middle class and remember that awareness, action and personal responsibility have been the only way to achieve success here or anywhere, at anytime in history.  I don't care how many votes they represent, there is nothing admirable or noble about workaday losers who have no energy left for politics after commutes, cable, wal-mart and costco, with their zombie kids barely looking up from the ipads purchased on their parents' credit lines.  That's what the middle class is.  These people don't need inspiration to achieve the North American dream; they already have, and it's a fucking nightmare.

Just for fun...

I registered on the Liberal Party of Canada's website this evening as a supporter.

Why? I have the opportunity to send a message to the party I have criticized at great length on this blog.  I have nothing to lose.  And they made it easy.

I have become very disillusioned with politics in general, especially in Canada.  I just finished the excellent BBC book Nippon: Japan, New Superpower since 1945  and one of the main themes of this book is how the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan has held on to power for 60 years uncontested despite shameless patronage, systematic corruption and entirely undemocratic, authoritarian tendencies.

Other than some allowances for cultural specificities and their natural inheritance of a feudal, communal society's power structure, what was the LDP's biggest asset in keeping power for so long? A weak and divided opposition.

So I will vote in this Liberal leadership contest, but it is going to be for a progressive person, preferably a woman with independent ideas and above all a realistic perspective.  By realistic perspective I mean someone who sees the writing on the wall. I have had quite enough of the NDP and old Liberal hacks and Elizabeth May all strutting around with their chests puffed out like roosters saying their party is cruising to a majority landslide in 2015 without a sniff of irony in their voices.  It's time for Canada's non-CPC political class to hear a very blunt message from this disengaged voter who hopes he represents the grassroots when he says None of your shitty, inflated egos are going to matter when the cons cruise to yet another victory in 2015.  So get to the bargaining table, call up the fellow opposition members and start negotiating.  Even if it means something really irritating, like Liz at the cabinet table.

I am really doing this to see if the Liberal Party really has changed like it says it has.  Because this is its one chance to prove it.  And deep down inside I am sad, because I know I will be disappointed, just like I always am.  Smart, accomplished, pragmatic women like Martha Hall Findlay and Joyce Murray who could breathe life into the party and renew it will be swept aside by the behind the scenes machinations of power brokers, that same elitist downtown toronto backroom boys cabal who brought you the roaring successes of Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff, and the steady hand and managerial competence of Dalton McGuinty.  These guys are working around the clock as we speak to ensure we suffer the slow-motion train wreck that is known as Justin Trudeau.  At least they made it easy for me to go online and oppose it, before they prevail and I walk away once and for all.

Idle No More - Comments

It's an expression in our English lexicon, albeit a crude and pejorative one whose usage is usually restricted to a discussion between parties in reference to a third party they consider inferior: The Natives are Getting Restless. The five words, so drenched in disdain, yet so flippantly employed, developed meaning in a language whose speakers' world view was largely coloured by colonialism for over 200 years.  And when an occasion was given for this expression to be used, as it inevitably was sometimes, we turned our guns or whips or economic system or cultural superiority or whatever on them to put them back in their place.  Because what would happen if they got too restless and we just stood idly by?

I haven't written for a long time, and I'm not too fond of this subject because it's really complicated and touchy and I think it just caused me to use a bad pun.  I am glad that natives have forced themselves on the front page for several consecutive days and seem to be finally, really, genuinely fucking pissed off over all the fucked up shit we did to them.  Yet I know I don't have a hope in hell of being taken seriously writing this column, because I have already liberally used careless ethnocentrism - by lazily saying "we", I betray my white, middle-class, male, european-origin, urban, educated, bourgeois parasitism.  The days people like me could swagger around the world telling people what was up are over.  The natives of Canada, North America, who stood idly by while this country, as it exists today, was created without them, are idle no more.  They are demanding to have a conversation.

And for that, you have to commend them.  The first step to being relevant is refusing to be ignored.  Just like you had to commend Occupy Wall Streeters for their persistence, when faced with the reality of perpetual shit-eating grin sporters like Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein strutting around New York with their 8 figure salaries thinking they deserve every penny while 99% of the nation was eating real economic stagnation shit.  Of course, 16 months later the campout is long gone and these two individuals are still running the banks they were then, but that's beside the point.  99 and 1% permanently entered the vocabulary.  The conversation was, if not changed, nudged in a direction where something was acknowledged that wasn't before.

But will that happen here?  Only if three questions can be clearly answered; as of yet, from what I've seem, they haven't been.

What do Canada's natives want?

Who speaks for them?

What can change?

My thing is, I don't see how anything can change because it cannot come from Stephen Harper.  It cannot come from the Canadian treasury.  It has to come from them.  The natives.

All over the world, things are getting better.  That doesn't mean that they're going to go well enough soon enough to stop the whole thing from going to complete shit, but people are starting to move around. Go to school. Get on the computer. Start businesses.  Unless were talking about some last few hellhole countries where poverty is endemic, women have no rights, and people still use livestock as currency and decapitation as law enforcement (I'm looking at you, Somalia, Niger, and Afghanistan), modernity is sweeping the planet and nations are taking charge of their destiny.  If I could, I would invest in just about any country on earth (other than the three above where my money would disappear in a cloud of assault rifles and beards) before North America, Japan, or Europe.  Why? It's 2013, and everyone pretty much understands, suddenly, all at once, what we are supposed to be doing.  Making something of ourselves, whatever that might mean.

I'm reading a book right about how Japan, a country that in 1945 had two nuclear bombs dropped on it and more than half of its major cities firebombed into ruins, became the world's largest industrial powerhouse and 2nd largest economy.  Today India, Kenya, Pakistan, Peru, Tunisia, Egypt, and Uruguay are all on their way.  Even North Korea and Cuba are moving forward, glacially.  It doesn't matter if you were mismanaged, brutalized, or just not with the program for decades.  No better proof exists of that than China.  Look out for Iran and Syria if their poor citizens can ever overthrow the awful regimes that control them - the cultural richness and deep know-how of these populations is enormous.

My point is that all the citizens of earth have lived through trauma, death, suffering, disease, poverty, shame, backwardness, and shit.  A record number of people on earth, I believe, have decided to leave behind these pernicious forces that so severely restrain the human spirit.  It is time for native Canadians to stop focussing on the past, and start focussing on the future.  The future that they will define, what they want it to be.  But it cannot be the past.

What it will take is bravery and ingenuity on the part of aboriginal peoples to decide what part they want to play in this country's destiny.  Demanding to be heard is a commendable first step.  I'm for anything that embarrasses Steve Harper and gets him out of that smug, complacent "managing the economy" comfort zone which is all bullshit anyways.  But now that you've got him at the table, what do you think he's going to do for you? What are any of us going to do for you?

I'll tell you one thing - we're not going to build brand new ugly-assed, depressing houses in the middle of nowhere at prohibitive costs so we can continue a multi-generational cycle of poverty, misery and abuse.  I don't think it makes sense to live on the "land" of your "ancestors" because your ancestors didn't take planes to go the the doctor (or anywhere other than your isolated community) or pay $3.99 for 1 red pepper or $20 for tropicana orange juice.  Were your ancestors drinking 2 litres of coca-cola while they watched 42 inch Samsungs? I mean, people are living in communities you have to fly to, for christ's sake.  No roads. No railroads. And no economy.  And we are surprised there is no opportunity for "jobs, training or opportunities". The nearest cities to these communities are also buttholes. No wonder everyone goes back to the reserve.

I'm talking about an extreme example.  I'm referring to Attawapiskat, whose famous chief has been on hunger strike.  What about the natives living near Winnipeg, or Hamilton, or Thunder Bay, or Tsawawssen?  It's not so extreme there.

Let's get down to the brass tacks.  80% of the Canadian population lives in 9 metropolitan areas, add three more and I think you're up to over 90.  There are hundreds of thousands of first and second generation Italians, Iranians, Indians, Chinese, Eastern Europeans, Arabs, Filipinos and just about anyone you can think of from anywhere in these cities who control diverse business interests making up massive swaths of the Canadian economy and control enormous amounts of wealth.  Why can't the natives be part of this? What is impeding them from sharing in our countries success?

Is it free health care? Free university education? An advantageous tax regime?

Or is it being isolated in ethnic ghettos, themselves dating from a time where a false sense of racial superiority led the white man to believe he could segregate what made him uncomfortable on a "reserve"?  Is it being fundamentally unable to confront the demons that fester in such an environment and rationalizing them as okay?  Why don't native people "idle no more" in the face of domestic violence, teenage preganancy, substance abuse, sky-high high school drop out rates, and communities that are so fucking depressing, barely a single non-native Canadian has ever set foot in one unless it was to buy contraband tobacco?  Because if all of the social ills I mention also plague all Canada's communities to varying degrees, the isolation and monotony of reserves can only continue to exacerbate them to the degree that it already has.

Of course white people know that we f------ the natives over worse than anybody.  But we can't go back to 1700 to try this again knowing what we know now.  We want to natives improve their lot and I am fine being reminded of my oppressive ancestors every day.  Disputes, however, only get resolved when collective responsibility is taken by both parties (ask a married man with a young child).  Until inconvenient truths about the way natives live in Canada are admitted and meaningful steps are taken by natives for natives to deal with them, this Idle No More thing is just going to be a lot of blown smoke.  Demanding to shove more millions down a rabbit hole with no strings attached is just going to play into Harper's hands and probably contribute to a 2nd majority.  We all have to change but natives, especially, have to change, by coming and joining society which will force them to change and us to change.  Banishing themselves to isolated, ethnically homogenous communities will only continue to the cycle of ignorance and misunderstanding - the Canadian urban majority building the nation, chasing its dreams while a dependent, embittered native population suffers, forgotten by people who want to see them succeed, and f----- over by their self-aggrandizing, crooked "leaders".

Congratulations Barack, but...

...I don't know what conclusions I would have drawn this morning if I found out you were bested by a sprawling void wrapped in an empty vessel filling up a stuffed suit.  I was elated to learn that at least a razor-thin majority of your compatriots are not retarded.  I mean, seriously, how could anybody vote for that guy?

I could go on like a lot of disillusioned people about your "failures" but what's done is done, and guess what word comes after "fiscal" first now when you type it into google?  Cliff.  So deal with that.  Even though you are under less pressure to deliver results now that you have secured re-election, I know you will try.  Because you are a good guy.

And that's all I can say.  The Fed, The Pentagon, The military industrial complex, Wall Street, Big Oil, Big Coal, Newscorp, Time Warner, Apple, Microsoft, and Hollywood (McDonald's Starbucks Wal-Mart Nike) ran America on November 5th and they're still running it today on November 7th.  So I don't think you really changed anything and I don't think you are going to change anything.  But it still would be an honour to meet you.

Because you're biggest accomplishment has been laying bare the ideological bankruptcy of the republican party.  Let's face it, the American economy and public sector both being in the state they're in, this election was theirs to lose.  And what did they do with this opportunity? Draft a mormon who advances his positions with as much conviction as a pile of freshly cut toenails, give him an anti-government Ayn Rand-disciple crusader whose salary has been 100% paid by the taxpayer his entire adult life (and still is - he hung onto his congressional seat simultaneously just in case) as a running mate, and throw in a couple redneck nutjob Senate candidates talking about rape, abortion, and god in 2012 and yeah, this morning's pleasant surprise wasn't such a surprise after all.

I don't think the Democratic Party is a paragon of virtue, or hope, or sound management, or competence.  But two party democracy, flawed and undemocratic as it is, needs at least two parties.  So why don't you republicans try to find some real f------ politicians for next time (all but certain to be Chris Christie I think)?  And drop that "GOP" acronym.  Grand 'Ole Party? More like Goofball Obsolete Putzses.