Forget about the book tour, the US election and everything else: Lindberg has come back to Pennywise! Oh my Lord, this makes me so happy!

Yes, yes, I am weird. Whatever.

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Got to Vancouver’s airport at 5:30 for a flight to Calgary and more interviews. Folks were gathered around TVs, quiet, watching Sandy coverage, shaking their heads. Reminded me of walking through LAX the morning of the Oklahoma City bombing: travelers watching TVs, utterly silent.

At the speech at Cap College last night, we took a moment to send a prayer or good wishes in the direction of the East Coast. Afterwards, quite a few of those in attendance asked me what I thought Sandy’s impact would be on the US election campaign.

“Romney will now effectively disappear, he’s irrelevant,” I said. “But Obama has been given a chance to show us that calm, reassuring guy we first met in 2008, and we haven’t seen much of since. Sandy could help him win an election that, for a few days, he has been losing.”

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VANCOUVER — The conclusion to the interminable U.S. election campaign is within sight. After a myriad number of primaries and debates — and after the expenditure of in excess of a billion dollars in political ads — we will all soon be blessed with an outcome, and a relative return to sanity.

Up here, at least. Up in the Great White North, we’re pretty lucky.

For, if the U.S. election cycle has shown us anything, it is that our politics is strikingly different, and better. Take gender politics, for instance.
In the U.S., several conservative politicians have made statements about women, and women’s issues, that are impossible to imagine happening in Canada.

There has been a Republican who mused out loud about how some rapes are “legitimate.” There was another GOP stalwart who stated that pregnancies that result from rape are God’s “intention.”

And there have been several pronouncements about birth control, too. Some Republicans want to ban birth control, because they think it is contrary to God’s will.

To a Canadian observing U.S. politics, all of this is beyond crazy. While we have had our fair share of nutbars, it is hard to imagine many of them ever proclaiming rape as divinely ordained, or working to render birth control pills a controlled substance.

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This is the Globe’s front page this morning? This is a big story the morning after Sandy hit? With a graph? And a big turn inside?

This is Globe “unlimited”? Unlimited what, exactly?

I think I know.

UPDATE: Best comment comes from a conservative regular: only in Canada would a deal where someone lost money make the front page. What a joke.

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Right here!

Now, off to Cap College to talk about values and words! And conservatives! And progressives! And exclamation marks!

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There is no campaign try.

There is only campaign do.

Arrived in Van last night, and talked politics late into the night with Bjorn and Babs. They gave me Yoda, who I plan to bring with me to Cap College tonight.

I said to them a book tour seemed kind of trivial, what with Sandy battering one coast, and earth quakes battering this coast. But I figure it might be interesting to discuss, at various media outlets in Van and Calgary, how various politicians are handling this Act of God.

Of such things, Yoda might say, are Presidents made.

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It’s amazing, when you think of it.

You know, it being the new century and 2012 and all. Us being civilized and advanced and whatnot.

Up to now, there’s been things like reaching the moon, the Internet, air flight, the works of Shakespeare and Da Vinci, the Pythagorean Theorem, Beethoven’s Seventh, antibiotics, circumnavigation, civil rights, the Bible and the Qur’an, the Magna Carta, and so on. So many achievements, we humans have had, with more presumably to come. Not bad.

And, then, after all that achievement, after all those things that suggest to you that we’re advancing as a civilization, along come Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin.

Mourdock and Akin are alleged to be human, but you’d actually never know it. In the press, the pair is most often described as U.S. senatorial candidates for Indiana and Missouri, respectively. Being candidates for high office, you’d think they’d be impressive, too.

But they’re not. Mourdock and Akin are scum of the Earth. They are lower than bacteria. If you are in any way human — and, more particularly, if you have had a mother, a sister, a wife or a daughter — that’s how you should feel about Mourdock and Akin, too.

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Here!

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Got a Google alert on Fight The Right.reviewed in Calgary Herald. Good review. Even got a blurb out of it.

And then…gone. They took it down, and it hasn’t been up since. Weird.

Maybe they changed their minds, and don’t like it anymore!

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“Kinsella puts the left on the right track with new book…It’s not as if Kinsella, known for his combative work as a Liberal party strategist and outspoken blogger and columnist, doesn’t dutifully back up [his criticisms of conservatives]…This is not to suggest, despite his colourful way with words, that Kinsella is advocating simple name-calling. But exploring how progressives could use language for their benefit with the same skill as their conservative opponents is at the heart of Fight the Right…So, what is a progressive to do? Well, Kinsella’s long tour of duty on the front lines of Canadian politics has certainly given him an up-close look at what works and what doesn’t.”

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