After the discussion with SciFi about why Canadians were so interested in the US election, I found this today. Gave me a good laugh.

Americans were really voting to become more Canadian

This is the amazing, intriguing subtext — or maybe it’s a dominant theme — of Tuesday night’s decisive Electoral College victory by incumbent and now, more than ever, history-making U.S. President Barack Obama: The United States is becoming, well, Canadian.

That will seem like a wild exaggeration to some, but consider: The campaign itself was as nasty and divisive as always on the advertising side, and at street level. But at the presidential level, especially, there was courtesy. Romney-haters will disagree. But at no time in this campaign, certainly not in public, did Romney bare his fangs in anything like a Rush Limbaugh-style display of rage. He was aggressive, but respectful. More to the point, his policy positions — during the campaign at least — were centrist. But it was too little centrism, too late.

Romney lost by a wide margin in the Electoral College. The popular vote, no surprise, was almost evenly split, with Obama winning narrowly. On the face of it, the outcome could have been quite different. But if you drill into results in the swing states, in particular, northeastern rust-belt jurisdictions clustered around the Great Lakes, such as Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio, it’s clear that Romney never really had a chance.

These states are populated mainly by white, working class folk who’ve been hit hard by the historic downturn in North American heavy manufacturing. They should have been disaffected with Obama and many of them were. But not enough. Blue-collar hero Bruce Springsteen, a huge Obama fan, seems closer to capturing the new ethos than, say, honky-tonk man and GOP favourite Hank Williams Jr.

In Florida, in 2000 the final arbiter, the results were even more striking. Romney absolutely needed populous Florida, with its 29 Electoral College votes, to counter California’s 55, always certain to go Democrat. He fully expected to win Florida. But in the populous counties of the southeast coast — Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach — Romney struck out, resoundingly. Not coincidentally, south Florida has a large Hispanic American population. The GOP, with its Tea Party-driven hostility to immigration, failed utterly to bring this group onside. Indeed, it didn’t particularly try. That was a fatal mistake.

This is a historic, demographics-driven shift, captured — ironically — by GOP backer Clint Eastwood in his excellent 2008 film, Gran Torino. In the movie, Eastwood plays a salt-of-the-earth white Republican of Eisenhower vintage, beset by Asian, Hispanic and black neighbours on all sides. His car, the mythical Gran Torino, is a metaphor for and homage to the old America — white, blue-collar, Christian, conservative and able to build things that last forever — that’s disappearing. The movie may as well have been crafted as a prelude to this election.

But it’s the state-by-state propositions, non-presidential ballot items, that truly jump out. In Michigan, voters turned thumbs-down in overwhelming numbers to billionaire Matty Moroun’s cockeyed scheme to stop a new bridge being built between Windsor and Detroit. That may not be explicitly a vote for Canada, but it’s certainly not isolationism or protectionism.

In Maryland, Maine, Washington state and Colorado, meanwhile, Canadian-ness is spreading like a bad rash. The first three jurisdictions approved same-sex marriage by plebiscite — the first time this has ever happened. The latter two have legalized recreational marijuana. These outcomes have national import: As The Associated Press’s David Crary points out, the U.S. Justice Department must now determine how to deal with legalized pot, which it still considers illegal, and the Supreme Court will be expected to consider new state precedents in future hearings on same-sex marriage.

Ah, I hear you say — but Canada hasn’t legalized pot. In fact, the Harper government moved in the opposite direction with omnibus crime bill C-10, imposing harsh new sentences for growers of as few as six plants. That may be so — but as Americans have once again shown, popular sentiment leads. The Harper government has gone all Grand Torino on crime, because it’s one area where it can court social conservatives in its base without sparking a fierce backlash among progressives.

But that doesn’t make the marijuana measures popular: Indeed C-10 was an omnibus bill for that very reason, lumping the good — tougher penalties for sex crimes against children — with the dumb. The best argument against decriminalization was always the one made by police: That easing restrictions here would cause too jarring a disruption at the border, given American official aversion to pot. If that aversion wanes, the goalposts here move.

For Canadian economic conservatives, this election may be a disappointment. But for social progressives on both sides of the border, it’s good news — and further evidence that a confident, diverse and tolerant Canada has the capacity to lead trends in the North American relationship, as well as follow.

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Tandt ... z2BdRABXRY

Except that Harper thinks he's a hammer and every problem is a nail. That's a totally dumb approach.

Americans voted to become more of what Canada WAS. What we ARE is what the Republicans want(ed) for America.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-seeks-to-give-charities-a-new-role-in-delivery-of-public-services/article5083926/?cmpid=rss1&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Every morning I'm confronted with news like this.

It isn't Canada... it's Orwellian.