While Everybody Slept: A third consecutive Conservative majority government is elected...and it's not in Ontario.
The Little, Sharp, Pointy Headed Look Is In: In Ontario, former Premier Ernie Eves claims that a "silent majority" of voters will give him an electoral victory. Well, he is proven right about the "silent" part, anyway...
If It Ain't Broke, Fix the Hell Out of It: Canadian caper film Foolproof gets American-style promotional treatment, proving once again that it's always possible to build a better fool. There appears to be no connection, though, between the release of the film and the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission granting licences to serve alcohol to some Famous Players theatres in Calgary and Alberta.
"From the back room at Queen's Park where the aging Tory whiz kids should be hanging their heads in shame (but are more likely laughing their asses off), this is The Irrational, with Joe Anchor."
After eight years, the Conservative Party of Ontario has gone down in stunning defeat. One of the province's less stunned citizens, Rahul Festrunk reports.
"Some people are blaming the massive Tory loss on the waffling of leader Ernie Eves. They argue that if he had stayed true to the Common Sense Revolution, the outcome of the election would have been very different. It sure would have. The Tories would have lost every seat they had held in the province.
"Will Eves stay on as leader of the Ontario Conservative Party? He claims that he has not made a decision. However, people have already seen Tory Jim Flaherty appear at barbecues wearing "Kiss The Opposition Leader" aprons. For The Irrational, this is Rahul Festrunk in Ottawa Centre-Lac la Biche."
How do you deal with the low morale of your military owing to poor equipment, low salaries and being stuck in a shooting gallery? As Ian Hawdogoatsing found, you hire a motivational speaker.
"The Department of National Defense will spend nearly $50,000 for a self-help training programme called Who Moved My Cheese? The programme is intended to help build morale and leadership skills among troops. If this effort fails, the Department is considering moving on to Who Blew Up My Cheese? and even Who Kidnapped My Cheese, Tortured It Into Making a Fake Confession of Being a Zionist Agent and Then Shot It In the Head? Sound cheesy? Well... This is Ian Hawdogoatsing in Kabul-Agincourt East."
Here at The Irrational, we have sworn off making "What were they smoking?" jokes in relation to government drug laws. However, as health reporter Sylvia Ferberance reports, sometimes you just can't help but go for the obvious gag.
"Prime Minister Jean Chretien joked yesterday that he might try pot, which he has never smoked, once it was decriminalized. Soon after, senior Liberal Party officials slapped their foreheads, pointing out that the Prime Minister had just invalidated a great excuse for all of the questionable patronage appointments he was making in the final days of his administration. From Ottawa West-Ogohonwhichyas, this is Sylvia Ferberance."
Remember the big kid who always beat you up in your grade school field during recess? Most of the time, he didn't even take your lunch money. Well, he claims that he didn't grow up to be a prominent police official, as Anson Bergecheck reports.
"Outgoing, in fact, positively gregarious President of the Toronto Police Association Craig Bromell said in an interview, 'I'm not a bully or a thug." Then, he added that he would get his buddies on the force to picket the offices of any news outlet that printed or broadcast allegations that he was. I know I feel safer. This is Anson Berg...uhh...dorf, Anson Bergdorf for the...the National Post."
Some people try to avoid Middle Eastern politics. Jian Gezundheight wades right in, as this report shows.
"Leonard Asper, CEO of CanWest Global Communications, said journalists who are lazy or Marxist are distorting the conflict in the Middle East to make the state of Israel look bad. Apparently, Israel does not send helicopter gunships to bomb Palestinean areas; they are actually frisbees emblazoned with images of Hello Kitty. And, when Palestineans die in Israeli police custody, they actually die of gratitude for being treated so well. And, the wall being built through the Occupied Territories - sorry, the Territories of the Free - is actually a really, really long badminton net. It's good to see the head of one of Canada's largest media conglomerates affirm his commitment to an unbiased press. This is Jian Gezundheight in Calgary-Rosedale-Westchester."
Am I a self-hating Jew yet, Lenny?
The fun in Ontario may have ended, but, as Eldred Cleavuntoer reports, the fun in California is still going strong.
"The California recall election is becoming increasingly absurd right on schedule. The frontrunner to replace Grey Davis if the recall is successful, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, in response to allegations of improper sexual advances, said, 'Yes, I have behaved badly sometimes...[but] I am deeply sorry.' In keeping with his kinder, gentler, more female-friendly image, when Schwarzenegger reaches under a woman's shirt to feel up her breasts, he will know accompany it with a lecture on the history of women's political enfranchisement, and when talks about how every man has wanted to shove a woman's head in a toilet and get away with it (as he boasted about a scene in Terminator 3), he'll be wearing a t-shirt with Mother Jones on it.
"Meanwhile, the major American television stations are sending their anchors to California to cover the event. 'This isn't just a California story,' Executive Producer of NBC Nightly News Steve Capus explained, 'It's a national story.' Oh, come on! If Schwarzenegger wasn't running, leaving Cruz Bustamente, who is to charisma what Roy Romano is to subtlety, as the frontrunner, would anybody even care? 'I resent the implications of - ooh, has Jennifer Lopez finally dumped Ben Affleck?' Capus defended himself. From Los Angeles-Rainy River, this is Eldred Cleavuntoer reporting for The Irrational."
Germaine Tims-Stimson, who has been reporting on the war on terror for what feels like...forever, continues to do so.
"Always eager to find retroactive justification for his preventive war, US President George W. Bush claimed that a tub of cultures found in an Iraqi scientist's refrigerator was, in fact, the missing weapons of mass destruction that were the war's raison d'etre (literally: edible raison). However, Chief US Weapons Inspector David Kay claimed that the tub actually contained yogurt whose best before date expired 10 years ago. 'It could make people very, very sick,' the President claimed. 'Is there no end to Saddam Hussein's infamy?' This is Germaine Tims-Stimson, reporting from Washington-Simcoe-Grey-Grey-Grey"
While few in Ontario seem sad to see the Conservatives go, a disproportionate number of those who do seem to work in the media. Irrational commentator Humphrey Puffy is a case in point.
"A lot of senior Tory politicians went down to defeat in Ontario's election. Good people. Kind people. People who deserve our sympathies. I mean, who could ever forget former Social Services Minister David Tsubouchi's classic pronouncement: 'Let them eat tuna from dented cans?' Where is the compassion for David? Hunh? Where is it? Or, Health and Long-term Care Minister Tony Clement shutting down hospitals because being able to see a doctor within six months was considered 'fat' by the provincial government? You think taking a lucrative contract with a private sector corporation will ever compensate for his humiliating defeat? I mean, really? And, let us not forget Finance Minister Janet Ecker, who either didn't know of or intentionally covered up a provincial deficit going into the election. Political giants all, they will be dearly missed. For The Irrational, this is Humphrey Puffy."
Later in the broadcast, the band REM is being investigated by the American government as a possible terrorist front because of its album title "Automatics for the People." Where is the NRA when you need it?