An article claiming to explain why Liberals and Conservatives don't get along flashed across my friends page today.

It basically breaks morality down in to five precepts:

• Harm/care. It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering.

• Fairness/reciprocity. Justice and fairness are good; people have certain rights that need to be upheld in social interactions.

• In-group loyalty. People should be true to their group and be wary of threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty and patriotism are virtues; betrayal is bad.

• Authority/respect. People should respect social hierarchy; social order is necessary for human life.

• Purity/sanctity. The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of chastity and piety, are all good. Pollution, contamination and the associated character traits of lust and greed are all bad.

The general answer is that liberals and conservatives value different aspects of this. I'm not sure I agree with this - I'm not convinced that you can neatly divide and separate them when you are looking at specific issues. For example, the article says that Liberals generally are most concerned with the 'harm' impulse, but that Conservatives aren't. However, it later brings up abortion, and says that it is a touchy issue for conservatives because of their concern with the 'purity' impulse - essentially because of their believe in souls and the sanctity...of.... life? How is this different from harm? I would think that attitudes to abortion show that harm certainly *does* register as an important concern for conservatives, in certain contexts at least. Its not so neat as first appears.

Despite some misgivings, however, it is an interesting notion, and potentially useful if used carefully... Obviously I thought it was worth sharing :V

via earis, I bring you Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys's heartwarming little ditty, There's No One as Irish as Barack OBama!

:D

I am pretty sure that I don't actually need to encourage any of my American friends to get out and vote today - I know many of you already have, and some others are going to great pains to ensure that they can participate i your democracy, but I thought I'd make an encouraging post nonetheless.

Please get out and vote if you hadn't already!

And good luck for America's future!

A reminder to my American friends that they should vote today! 

Extra props to those who are planning to volunteer!

Once upon a meme, many people inquired about what guilty pleasures I indulge in. I maintained, and still do, that I really don't feel guilty about any of my pleasures. I still do, for the most part. Nevertheless I will confess one guilty pleasure:

The Rick Mercer Report webpage, located here. I always watch it when I should be doing other things, like, say, now, when I should be working on my thesis. Sometimes instead of just watching the little clips from the most recent shows, I'll go look through things I've missed in the archive and poke around other bits of the site.

Canada has great political comedy shows. I do't know if the US really has anything quite like it, or like This Hour Has 22 Minutes, or Air farce, or, going back to the old days of Radio, Double Exposure. That was the first show that got me hooked on this style of comedy. Anyway Rick Mercer is love. Most of the sketches from this week are pretty good, too :D I actually went to see if he had any amusing commentary on the cabinet crazyness, but alas, no. Can't have everything, I suppose.

The Toronto Star evaluates Harper's options in regards to McKenna as a potential rival.

The Calgary Sun states that McKenna is waiting to see whether or not he's keeping his job before deciding whether or not to run.

I wonder what Harper is going to do... Frankie's just an all around dangerous guy for him at the moment :o

I wouldn't put it past him to run even if he doesn't get ousted ;)

Well, that turned out pretty much exactly how people were expecting it to, so I'm not surprised. I am pleased to see more NDP in parliament though: good for them! My riding went liberal, of course. I'm also glad to see a relatively high voter turnout. Yay!

Now, I am going to make a long-term prediction. I bet this government will last another two years. We know Paul Martin isn't coming back. I am making a bet that the liberal take this time to clean up,, or at least change their clothes and put on some fresh deodorant, and that Frank McKenna will be back in politics, at the head of the party and as PM of Canada, fresh back from the US with good connections to protect our interests there (or that's how they'll bill it). ten years on, and ten years off... it's like they planned it this way. And then the world will phear the power of... the Hustler!

edit: I'm not alone in my thinking. Frank Frank Frank!

I will say that although I'd vote for Frank again in a second, I'm not sure I would vote Liberal, necessarily. It would depend on a bunch of things. Of course, depending on what happens between now and then, I may or may not even be able to vote. Depends on when it is called, and where I've been living :/