Election, election, election... whew, I'll be glad when the US elections are over and the local municipal ones too. What with federal, foreign and local elections happening over a 5-week span, that's too many trips to the polls.

One thing I'm increasingly glad about - we don't have electronic voting machines to deal with here. Doing a paper ballot is labour-intensive, but there is something to be said for having a physical ballot. One choice to make, one piece of paper to mark, and a system in place to ensure as well as one can that votes cast are held securely and counted properly.

As one of those vote counters, it's a task I am very careful to do to the best of my ability. I take it seriously; my one day every two to three years (I work provincial and federal elections) to make the process work.

Yes, you wouldn't think I was properly Canadian - not a word about the upcoming election Tuesday. One, I don't see changing my usual vote. Two, for about the tenth time, I'm deputy returns officer for the Port Clements poll. Being in on the nuts and bolts of how the vote is conducted seems to lessen my interest in all the scenery-chewing by candidates and media. Three, for half the election campaign I've been ill and had less than my usual low urge to listen to political spiels. I either agree with what's being said (in which case, it's redundant) or I disagree (in which case, I'm frothing at the mouth and wondering why I'm wasting time listening to knotheads). Or I don't care either way and hey, why not re-read Norton's "Android Double" for the tenth time.

Thursday morning I was surprised by the CBC's early morning interview with Stefan Dion. Dutifully watched it, and the preceding day's CTV interview blooper. Then saw a clip of Steven Harper's comment on it. Ugh. What a nasty shot. Whether you agree with his politics or not, and I don't, Harper really has a knack for saying the wrong thing.

English is my first language, and while I could make a reasonable guess what the reporter was getting at with a hypothetical question - it seemed to me to be 'if you were the PM, how differently would you have handled this week's financial crisis?' I felt it was clumsily phrased, and the attempted clarifications muddied the waters completely. So Dion realized he was confused and had got off on the wrong foot and asked to begin again. It really didn't say anything to me about Dion, I know English is a second language for him and one he at times finds tricky. For all the years I spent studying French at school - and getting good marks - my French is rudimentary. I can read it a little, spit out a phrase or two, but I can't follow conversation at all. Stefan Dion's English is about 1,000 times better than my French.

I think CTV shouldn't have broadcast the bungled interview beginning, and Steven Harper should have kept his mean opinions to himself. I'm sure his mom told him if he didn't have anything nice to say, better to say nothing at all? If not, past time she did.

I am slowly recovering from a rotten cold. Possibly because I take antihistamines for my allergies, I don't get much of the typical runny nose with a cold any more. Instead, I get a miserably sore throat--the kind that calls for talking little, and that in a whisper--and after 2-3 days of that, the throat gets better and the coughing begins.

Even without having my nose run like a tap, my head feels like it's over-pressurized, keep having to 'pop' my ears. No fever, so no, not flu, although I generally do get achey. Well, more like feel someone should get the name of the bus that hit me, as I hack up big gobs of phlegm and sneeze, and sneeze, and SNEEZE!

I must be getting better, it's the ninth day, and I'm down to throwing a pity party. I'd overeat, but with a limited sense of smell, nothing tastes all that good. Time to go drown my woes in chicken noodle soup again.

How can you play the stock market without any money? I've been playing "Stock Star", a four-month stock trading game sponsored by the Financial Post. I'm sure no-one planned that the stock market would collapse practically as soon as I started playing, but it's been pretty wild. It's surprising how interesting playing with virtual dollars can be. Fortunately, there are prizes offered just for participating, so I have a chance of winning, as well as for best performance by mid-January.

I'm still following the US elections, even though Canadians are now heading to the polls October 14. Our election feels like a re-run of the last all-too-recent one, and I'll go out and cast my ballot the same way, unless something extremely bizarre happens in the next two weeks.

"Following" the US election means reading on-line mostly left-of-centre political opinion, which, with the Veep debate tomorrow, is refocusing on Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, Governor Sarah Palin.

I think most of the pundits are right in their take on her - that she's so far failed to demonstrate much knowledge of national and international issues, is capable of repeating claims which are either bogus (she did fire the Police Chief when Mayor of Wasilla) or true in such a limited, purely technical way that they might as well be bogus (like claiming she canceled the 'bridge to nowhere', but not mentioning keeping all the funds and her previous support), or completely pointless (being able to see Russia from Alaska as a surrogate for foreign policy experience), and is basically unqualified to assume the Presidency, which is the major point of being Vice-President.

What bothers me about Governor Palin is that she keeps repeating herself, fallacies, half-truths and inanities intact, and the crowds listening seem to swallow it all as gospel. She's previously shown herself to be good at presenting herself as 'just one of you folks' and of making media-friendly quotable rejoinders, while at the same time running a hard-ball 'gotcha' campaign against her opponents, which is how she got elected as Governor of Alaska, and as Mayor of Wasilla.

Personally, I couldn't imagine having the gall to label myself the 'first Christian' to be running for the office of Mayor if I knew the current Mayor personally and that he's a church-going Christian. Equally, I can't imagine claiming to be a fiscal conservative if shortly after becoming Mayor I spent $50,000 to redecorate my office. Or after two terms in office, I left my town with $20-million of debt and hiked the sales tax half a percent, which was a 25% increase. The fact that Governor Palin has claimed this without blinking and, in fact, while managing to look charming, isn't scary. What's scary is that people believe her, not reality. That believability, that appearance of sincerity, gives her a huge advantage if voters overlook her gaffes. And, given that gaffes are reported by the media, and the media is notoriously biased, and frequntly wrong, many voters automatically discount what it says.

It also helps that her gaffes so far are largely meaningful only if you are informed about national and international issues. I couldn't name another Supreme court ruling other than Roe vs Wade. I know there have been a bunch, but heck, I'm not a lawyer. I haven't met any international leaders, and funnily enough everyone later figured out that Governor Palin had too met the President of Iceland, so there. I'd probably sound like an idiot being interviewed by national media. I wouldn't vote for Governor Palin if I had the opportunity, but I can understand other voters finding her a nice, fresh, likeable face suddenly appearing at the end of a 2-year old campaign and being more than inclined to support her.

Fundamentally, politics is a popularity contest. She just might win.

I've been following US politics unusually closely the past month or so. Not the doings of the current incumbent - who apparently will distinguish himself yet again by vetoing anti-torture legislation this morning - but the fight for the Democratic party nomination.

I hope that Barack Obama wins it, and goes on to win the November election. After the past seven years, I don't want to see yet another Republican - or at least, another republican like the current incumbent - in that office. It's difficult to believe that Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican President; standards have certainly slipped. As Pierre Trudeau said, "Living next to (the US) is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast... one is affected by every twitch and grunt."

Given that my husband works in the coastal logging industry, I'm perhaps more directly affected than many by lovely bits of US market protectionism like the softwood lumber agreement. Not that I expect that will change. Of course, our allegedly 'liberal' provincial government hasn't helped by gutting the forest services act and otherwise selling ordinary workers out in favour of their company-owning buddies. Grrr. On the plus side, with the land use agreement now in place between the Haida and the province, at least we should be able to manage our islands forests independently and more sensibly.

Although, as following politics endlessly emphasizes, sense is in short supply.