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The Daily Show on Canada’s election

So tomorrow is Election Day up here in the Great White North. I don’t have much to say about the election itself, other than that the probable outcome of a Conservative minority isn’t as bad as it sounds. The Conservatives don’t have any friends in the House of Commons, so a Tory minority government is effectively an even-handed Liberal-NDP coalition government, but with a broken cabinet. I think I’d probably prefer a Liberal minority government just for the international relations side of things. And I’d also love to see an NDP minority. And I’d like a pony.

But that’s not what I’m here for! Today I saw a rerun of the January 19th episode of The Daily Show, in which Jon Stewart talks about the Canadian election, our attack ads, and the televised debates. I don’t want to give too much away, but I grabbed the torrent of the episode and extracted the Canadian segment from it for your viewing pleasure here (35MB divx).

Incidentally, I’m going to be watching the results tomorrow using the Globe and Mail’s results tracker which Fweebles pointed out to me; it lets you choose ten ridings to follow, plus tracks all the big numbers that are on the news. If you can’t think of ten to track, you might like to follow LaSalle-Emard (Martin’s), Calgary Southwest (Harper’s), Toronto-Danforth (Layton’s), Laurier-Ste-Marie (Duceppe’s), and Parkdale-High-Park in Toronto (home of Sam Bulte, the supporter of American-style copyright laws that Michael Geist and other Canadian bloggers have been speaking out against.

Here’s an odd thing: Our riding, Ottawa-Centre, has both a Communist and a Marxist-Leninist candidate. Way to split that single vote, guys!

Rich

12 responses to “The Daily Show on Canada’s election”

  2. Our riding, Ottawa-Centre, has both a Communist and a Marxist-Leninist candidate. Way to split that single vote, guys!

    Errrr, to what political group(s) did you *think* the Life of Brian thing about the People’s Front of Judea / Judean People’s Front was referring?

  4. Um, yes.

    I once dated one of those undergraduate socialist lesbian types. Hearing her friends talk about all the various sub-groups just made me want to yell “Splitters!” and smack them all with a cricket bat. And yes, we’d always get a couple on the ballot paper every election… each differing by probably about one nano-principle from the next.

  6. Can you suggest a good DivX client for (ugh) Windows to someone recently (and temporarily) returned to low-latency-broadband-land? WMP, Quicktime and Real all claimed to know nothing about how to play this file….

  7. D’oh! I have to learn to check whether I’m logged in before blithely posting LJ comments. Not that you would have a hard time figuring out who this anonymous coward from Serbia might be, of course….

  8. I dunno! (You know how much I use Windows for desktoppy things.) Anonymous comments are screened, though, so I just unscreened it now, so hopefully someone else coming by here will tell you.

  9. When I was in high school (Sheppard and Bathurst area, North York), the local ML candidate came to the school to pass out literature. One of my classmates looked at the screaming headline “MAKE THE RICH PAY” and said “my dad is in the 86% tax bracket. I think we already do pay.” And she wasn’t even the one who drove a brand new Mercedes 450SEL to school.

  11. Dear ;

    We couldn’t get you the pony due to concerns from our animal rights working group, and despite our best results in a long time, winning even a minority government seems to remain out reach. But if it will provide any solace at all, we would like to draw your attention to the earnest and intelligent young man (Marion Dewar’s boy, no less) whom you and your fellow constituents have seen fit to elect to Ottawa Centre.

    Never say we didn’t give you nothing.

    Best,

    —
    The NDP
    *Pony emancipation for the people*