My New Hero/A Long Overdue Political Rant

I had heard something about the Tories going around rebranding the party as Canada's New Government, but didn't realize it had escalated to such levels of absurdity. It's good to see that someone stood up to the creeping corporitization of the federal government and actually got his job back.

Natural Resources Canada on Tuesday reinstated a British Columbia geologist who was relieved of his duties after refusing a directive to refer to the federal government as "Canada's New Government."

Andrew Okulitch, a scientist emeritus with the Geological Survey of Canada, received an e-mail on Sept. 5 advising employees to use the phrase in all departmental correspondence, with all three words capitalized.

Okulitch fired off an e-mail, which he described Tuesday as "less than diplomatic," indicating that he would not do so. In his angry missive, he called the policy "ridiculous," and an example of idiotic buzzwords coined by political hacks.

I'm in a wierd spot right now when it comes to the Tories. I've found myself leaning a bit closer to the NDP camp during the last few elections. Then the Tories boot the dirty Liberals out (finally) and actually don't seem to be hashing things up that badly. This gets me thinking that, hey, they're not near as bad as they possibly could be, especially since they're dropping a lot of the more silly and polarizing issues that end up wasting everyone's time and have basically been going about the business of actually governing for a change.

The we get goofiness like Jack Layton's recent pronouncements about getting the troops out of Afghanistan, which is one of the stupidest things I've heard recently, which has got me thinking that I don't want to vote NDP next time there's an election based on that stance alone.

Oh, and for those keeping track at home, I'm the guy who still hates the Liberals because they scrapped the helicopter deal back in the early 90's when they took power. Everything else they did or didn't do whilst in power was just icing on the cake.

Anyway, so now I can't vote NDP, because I actually DO support the troops in Afghanistan. I can't vote Liberal because I'd burst into flame and have to eat my own tongue in protest. Now I am starting to think that I can't vote Tory because, while they're doing a somewhat decent job in the day-to-day governance of the country, they're really doing a great job of looking like a bunch of power-hungry control freaks in the way they're trying to rebrand government, muzzle MP's and hit on Condoleeza Rice.

Sigh. Where's the Rhino Party when you need them?