you might very well think so...

I'm pretty sure that Nino Ricci articulates my position far better than I can, or have time to. Please read his open letter to our current PM.

I've never been a fan of Harper, his policies, his tactics, or his party. I can't honestly say I've ever had much respect for anyone leading his party, since the days of Preston Manning (while I never really can remember thinking I'd agreed with Manning, I'm not sure I had the same low opinion of his integrity or behaviour that I've had for anyone running his party's show since his retirement).

"At least he's not Stockwell 'Doris' Day" is not sufficient or compelling reason to want to support Harper.

It's almost like this guy wants to actually make significant change to the status quo in the most militarized nation on earth...

But that won't stop us from desperately stuffing the senate before the end of the year, before anyone can mount a non-confidence motion and remove our ability to engage our traditional privilege of fiddling the upper house.

::sigh:: This administration seems to always remain classy, neh?

Every time I flipped past CNN on the weekend, I was treated to an image of

• Barack Obama looking pressed and confident, and perhaps just a wee bit smug

• John McCain and his pie-eating grin-on-cue, grimly worrying the corpse of Joe the Plumber and the "spreading the wealth around" trope (presumably, an invocation of the dreaded Red Menace?)

• Tired but resolved CNN pasteboard pundits offering meaningless commentary on above

While I understand McCain's tactic of leathering away at redistribution of wealth, do none of his supporters (or, indeed, his strategists and writers) recognize the irony behind this stance given (a) his support for the bailout package, and (b) his chicken-in-nearly-every-pot proposal to buy up the nation's questionable mortgage paper?

No wonder that grin seems so mechanical and forced, my friends; no wonder.

It looks to me like it's possible that McCain's "That One" gaffe may just turn out to be one of those memes that will seal up his electoral doom. I'm sure that someone has talked about how things like this work (for another political example, the PC attack ads depicting Chretien's "crooked smile"), but it seems to me that this might be a sort of strange example of the tipping point at work: a teeny tiny, perhaps off-hand comment that acquires larger-than-life significance and acts a sort of memic or discursive fulcrum around which public opinion decisively shifts.

Can anyone point me towards any theory that examines this phenomenon?

Let's see: how about making fun of untimely death during an election run-up?

To be fair to Ritz -- this is exactly the kind if ill-timed crap that comes out of people's mouths or fingers (mine included) especially during those "you gotta laugh so you don't cry" moments. But it's entirely possible that Maple Leaf Foods could cost Harper his political career: how eager will the Conservatives be to keep Harper around if he's on the tiller for a series of minority wins? My take is that to really be measured as a success, Harper needs to bag a majority government for his party.

Ritz is a symptom of the wonderful effect that unexpected crisis can have on politics.

Heck, I'm a spunky ol' white guy picking a first-ever-maverick-youngster to run with! Check!

You can practically see the strategists' gears turning, can't you?

Not as good as some big speeches I've heard and read in the past, but Obama's convention address had some pretty nifty rhetorical touches ("the change we need doesn't come from Washington; change comes to Washington").

Our dependency on inexpensive oil is too important to us (where us means, presumably, highly placed economic interests); the POTUS says we must go back to crapping where we eat. Just a gut reaction, but this strikes me as a hideously bad idea unless there can be some solid guarantees that this won't mess with the local ecologies. But then again, what's a few Pelicans; nobody'll miss them, right?

Well, actually that title is a bit misleading. Almost as misleading as the BBC's own head for this article. I guess we're meant to understand from the 'quotes' around the "best to take on McCain" part that someone else said this, and it's not an opinion necessary held by the BBC. So who holds the opinion?

Why bury the lede? It's Clinton herself who thinks that, according to the BBC article.

So, I wonder, why not "Clinton says she's best to beat McCain"? Because it uses one more word.

Gotta love brevity over clarity.