My vote for 2011? The Water Jug.

John A Macdonald is reported to have said, after vomiting during a political debate, that his illness was brought upon by his opponents repugnant policies. I managed to make it through last nights AMS hosted debates for Kingston and the Islands without vomiting, something I found fairly odd until I realized that there wasn't really that much policy to find repugnant.

Artist's Rendition

I've been struggling for a way to format my post on Thursday's debate. Do I do it by candidate? Do I rank them out of 5 stars? Do I rank their performance in individual categories? Do I stand on the street corner and scream myself hoarse at how awful a display it was?

None of those really seem to fit. If I did the whole debate out of 5 they would all get a "what the hell were you thinking" out of "go find a different career." If I ranked each individual based on the individual sections I would have to give a unanimous "why the hell didn't you answer the question" out of "that doesn't even make sense." As far as screaming myself hoarse ... I tried it. It didn't really have much of an effect.

At the end of the day, isolating individual portions of that blind assault against both reason and competency is not the way to approach it. I could very easily go through the debate transcript and pick out every time Alicia Gordon said "I don't really know the answer to that" (approximately every time she started a question). I could also isolate the exact moments that Ted blew a chance to score a few political points or highlight a key point of the Liberal platform (approximately every question). That only highlights the candidates that have a chance at winning.

Realistically, all that would do is raise my blood pressure even higher and I'm too young to die at the hands of another humans stupidity. I need to wait until I'm at least 30 when an under-trained doctor at an underfunded hospital botches a basic surgical procedure and I catch a deadly infection from a super-virus while trying to recover because severe cuts to health care and public health programs cripple our ability to care for each other. (No, I'm not bitter...why do you ask?)

Ironically, the only super-virus I want to catch is the one I'm least likely to. 

In the end, all I can do is point to the common themes of the evening. First, almost the entire time I couldn't quite get a particular scene from Community out of my head. I'm talking about, of course, the scene from Abed's documentary filming where stand-ins try to perform the legendary "Spanish Rap" . At about the twenty second mark, Troy leans in to the two trying to recreate their performance and shouts "DO YOU HATE THIS? DO YOU HATE DOING THIS?"

All night, I couldn't shake the feeling that if Stephen Harper, and Michael Ignatieff had been sitting in the front row one of them would have stood up and shouted at the two individuals awkwardly pantomiming their policies something similar.

To be fair, there were to exceptions to this general malaise. The first was when Alicia Gordon actually leaned forward and chastised the audience, which was as close as we got to someone actually admitting that they hated being there. The second set of moments came when Ted "rose up" at various points and tried to inject some passion into his speech. It was appreciated, if a bit awkward, but I figure he deserves credit where credit is due.

Prison whats? Will Mother Nature fix that?

Second, and in honour of exams, I was reminded of kids sitting at the back of the class that hadn't done a single reading all year and were stunned that what they crammed for wasn't on the exam. If I had a dollar for every time the candidates just had absolutely no idea what was going on around them or what was in their party platform I would have enough money to fund my own damn campaign. Mr. Beals suggested that MP's are expected to know everything, and that is pretty hard. I would agree, but that doesn't mean they are excused for not knowing the basic issues in Kingston and the Islands.

I work for the Hon. Peter Milliken, and part of my job is helping with all of the letters that he receives on issues that matter to local Kingstonians. The questions that came up during our debate were, largely, products of those concerns. It was personally upsetting to see a general lack of knowledge on the part of almost every candidate, with the general exception of Eric Walton, on issues that anyone who paid attention during the class would expect to find on the exam.

On that note, I think I'll let you out of this exam early, and on a positive note. Rather than ramble about everything I hated about that evening I'll end on something that made me incredibly proud. Many of you saw, or heard, of the Queen's U vote mob. Many of you might also have seen the constant flow of students going to the various early polling stations to vote. This is excellent, and highly commendable. We might not have the best candidates this time around, but the fact that people are taking the time to engage with the system gives me hope. So, for all of my peers that have managed to make something good out of the turd sandwich that was the debate, thank you.

...I lied. I was going to try to make this non-partisan but just re-watched part of the debate. Go out and vote, but please don't vote for Alicia Gordon. During her response to the open Governance question she spoke briefly to the contempt motion that toppled the Conservative Government. She suggested that the documents were not read by committee (false) and that they were submitted (false). She also suggested that Peter Milliken charged the Government with contempt (false). I'm not sure where the stupid stops and the lying begins with this particular response and, frankly, the thought of anyone that is willing to put that toxic clustershit of an argument out in public representing my voice in Ottawa makes me sick.

/endrant