Just when I was feeling all global and disconnected from my national heritage, along comes a story like “Alberta man admits selling prize antlers.”

Can you imagine a national news web site in any other country running a that headline as its number two domestic news story? (Okay, drop the “Alberta” part. Now can you imagine it? I didn’t think so.) Kinda makes you all proud and weepy.

Hats off to Paul Wells for finally doing the math and figuring out that the Conservative Party is actually kind of a, well, flop.

I know how odd that sounds. Aren’t the Conservatives riding high, buoyed in the polls and nipping at the Liberals’ heels? They’re certainly doing better than either the Alliance or the Progressive Conservatives — the two ingredients in the CPC recipe — were doing before the Alliance takeover.

But that’s well short of what the United Right was supposed to achieve. The combined party is polling a whopping 12 points below the 37 per cent that both parties received in total in the 2000 election.

In other words, in an election with no Groupaction scandal to drag the Liberals down and a truly godawful campaign by Stockwell Day, the Right did almost 50 per cent better than they’re doing now.

If that’s momentum, keep it the hell away from me.

The boosters of the United Right (a.k.a. “everything other than the right currently represented so ably by the Paul Martin Liberals”) were hoping for some kind of synergy — a whole that would be greater than the sum of its parts. One plus one was supposed to equal three.

Instead, it isn’t even making it to two. Appropriately enough, Peter MacKay and Stephen Harper turned the Progressive Conservatives into the Conservatives by getting rid of the progressives.

Yet Joe Clark’s call to support Paul Martin instead — tepid though it was — rings a little hollow. As the Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson points out today, “the irony is that the Liberals have never been less progressive themselves…. Progressives have no reason to feel at home in the Liberal Party. The only movement that would honestly welcome the remaining Red Tories, the only party that truly understands their soul, is the NDP.”

This would be the party currently polling eight to 10 points ahead of where it finished in the 2000 election.

I’m admittedly biased. But it looks to me like progressives from both the Liberals and PCs may be finding a new home.

Paul Wells was kind enough to reply to this post. Unfortunately, when I switched over to Blogger’s new commenting system, his words of wisdom were lost to the ages…

…until I resurrected them a few moments ago. Here’s what he had to say:

Thanks for the nice words. Now let me nuance my argument a bit:

There’s a pretty robust decade of history behind the analysis that Reform/Alliance always did better during an election than between election. Preston Manning’s Reform used to reliably stink out the joint every summer, drawing single digits before rising nicely in the 93 and 97 elections. Stock Day’s Alliance rose less spectacularly, but still quite smartly, in the 2000 election.

If that trend holds ? and seriously, allllll bets are off in what should be a fascinating Election 2004 Or ‘05 ? the Conservative vote could be expected to grow to, what, 30 or 33 per cent. Which would be devastating for the Grits.

But the NDP as the unacknowledged trend winner of the last four months? Yeah, I think that’s a perfectly valid observation. cheers pw

Thanks, Paul — and yeah, this is going to be the most interesting election in years.

The new flag of Iraq has been chosen by the people in a country-wide referendum, following a weeks-long process where ordinary citizens could submit their designs alongside the creations of award-winning artists and —…

Well, no. Actually, the 25-member governing council just kind of imposed it.

Now, somewhere in Baghdad, the graphic artist who turned the council’s design-by-committee process into the final artwork is lying in a dark room with cold compresses on his or her forehead. (Wild guess: let’s run with “his.”)

He must still be hearing the voices: “Make the crescent bigger! It needs to punch through!” “There must be four stripes! No, three!” “Can you make it more, I don’t know, edgy?“

And he’s probably trying to shake the uneasy feeling that what he’s created is the logo for Ikea’s next Midnight Madness Sale.

But I hope he’s feeling at least a little satisfaction over the job he did. He had the good sense to leave off the Halliburton logo and resisted the last-minute suggestion from Paul Bremer to include Re-elect Bush-Cheney 2004 in big letters across the bottom. (Bremer’s earlier suggestion of Mission Accomplished was frantically nixed back in Washington.)

Paul Martin and his cabinet sit down tonight for a discussion of election timing. Here’s a preview:

Martin: I’ll have the veal medallions with carrots, and the Cabernet Sauvignon. And thanks for doing this, Joe.

Clark: No prob. What will the rest of you predominantly gentlemen be hav–

Martin: Wait, wait. Is veal the right call here?

Robert Speller, Minister of Agriculture, Such As It Is: Absolutely. It sends the right message about Mad Cow, and a welcome slap in the face to animal rights nuts.

Albina Guarnieri, Minister of This and That: Well, some of those “nuts” are swing voters in marginal urban ridings.

Dennis Mills, Not Actually a Minister But Threatened to Resign If He Wasn’t Invited: I, for one, will quit if you don’t order the veal. And order enough to make a difference — eighty or ninety metric tonnes.

Martin: I’m going for the salmon.

Mills: Good call, and I’m backing you a hundred per cent.

Martin: I mean, probably I am. Hell, has this been researched?

Lucienne Robillard, Minister of Potential Massive Losses in Quebec: As I remember, venison tested through the roof in our Chibougamou focus groups…

Martin: Venison it is.

Robillard: …but pasta did surprisingly well in swing seats in Montreal.

Ralph Goodale, Minister for These Are Very Large Shoes to Fill But I’ll Do My Best, Sir: Jesus Murphy, it’s eleven o’clock already.

Martin: Your point being?

A long pause.

Goodale: Um, what a remarkably open and transparent decision-making process is going on right here.

Everyone: Very open. Isn’t it open? And transparent, too.

Martin: As you know, my goal tonight is to transform the way we do dinner in Ottawa. No more business as usual. We can seize our destiny and demonstrate a shining beacon of leadershiply goodness to the world and even beyond, to all the universe.

Applause.

Martin: (quietly, to Clark) Just ask the cook to send out whatever he usually made for Chrétien.

The Bush administration has had few real successes in Iraq. Capturing Saddam Hussein was one. And keeping the real cost of the war from Americans has been another.

A Pentagon policy has spared the war’s supporters the sight of flag-draped coffins coming home: “There will be no arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning to or departing from Ramstein [Germany] airbase or Dover [Delaware] base, to include interim stops.”

But an activist wielding an Access to Information request managed to pry some of those images loose from the U.S. military’s hands. The result: an online gallery, and a sobering reminder of what happens when glib ideologues control your foreign policy.

And to those on the Canadian right wing who complained so vocally last year that Canada should be sending troops to Iraq as well — not so much because it was a good idea, but because it would endear us to the Bush administration — these pictures serve as a silent but overwhelming refutation.

Ottawa — Canada’s democratic deficit rose four per cent in the first three months of 2004, the Ministry of Finance reported today.

The rise is mainly due to Paul Martin’s announcement in March that he would delay the Ottawa Centre by-election until Nov. 29, his appointment of candidates in British Columbia and Quebec, and politically motivated delays by the Liberal Party’s so-called “green light committee”.

Media concentration had already driven the deficit to heights not seen since the all-time postwar high reached during the imposition of the War Measures Act in 1970. Forecasters warn that the figures still don’t take into account Paul Martin’s impending appointment of B.C. party president Bill Cunningham over the wishes of local riding officials.

Bond rating agencies are expected to downgrade Canadian democracy should the democratic deficit continue to rise. According to observers, Canada’s current rating of “Pretty Damn Close to a One-Party State” could fall as low as “Banana-esque” or even “Might As Well Be Alberta.”

Last February, as usual, the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority’s board of directors started its meeting by adopting the agenda and the last meeting’s minutes, and then hearing from delegations.

What wasn’t usual was one of the presenters: Henry Orsini, the nine-year-old son of a transit activist with B.E.S.T.. Orsini has launched a campaign for a 50-cent transit fare for kids. He designed a postcard illustrating how Vancouver’s fares stack up against other cities’; it’s a compelling case.

You can voice your support at his campaign e-mail address.

I’m still reeling from this morning’s statement from Svend Robinson, the 25-year veteran New Democrat MP.

It feels weird to call Svend a “veteran” anything; he still looks every bit the fresh-faced crusading newcomer — even on a day as painful as this one.

I was at the news conference where Svend became the first gay Member of Parliament to come out publicly. It was one of those great electrifying instants in political history, and he’s given us more than a few over the years.

Which makes it especially sad to hear him say he feels he has let Canadians down. I don’t doubt him in the least when he describes this as a medical issue, and I hope his situation will receive the same kind of compassion that would greet anyone stepping aside to fight an illness.

Good luck, Svend, and best wishes.

Svend’s parliamentary e-mail address
Mail: 4453 East Hastings Street, Burnaby BC, B5C 2K1