Five-plus years ago suddenly seems like unfathomably long time ago, even though it’s clearly not. Or at least it really shouldn’t be, under normal circumstances. But that rarely seems to be the case these days, where everything under the sun now seems to be rapidly coming apart and wildly flying off in all directions.

What a curious situation.

Happily, Netflix and the production team assembled behind this groundbreaking project have managed to develop a streaming series that is not only a worthwhile successor to its namesake, but an intense political drama that is, quite arguably,  even  more fascinating and deeply engrossing than the original. Kevin Spacey is brilliant as the ruthless, scheming House Majority Whip out for revenge and grander things, so too is the rest of the excellent cast. After a few episodes you may well be expecting to see them on “Meet the Press” or other cable news shows, such is the verity of the series. 

Not a subscriber to Netflix? No problem.  You can still enjoy all 13 episodes free online by clicking here. Each link will provide you with a number of different sources (Note: you may have to play a bit of whack-a-mole to kill off the pesky pop-up windows that appear, some of which be warned promote NSFW offerings. Putlocker/Sockshare are usually quite reliable, as are Videxden and 180Upload.).

There’s little doubt this ad will hit home with its target demographic, but I suspect it also has sentimental appeal to a much broader audience; perhaps even including atheistic heathens that would have normally winced at the prospect of listening to Paul Harvey’s unctuous God-bothering treacle, don’t farm and, in fact, have no ostensible need whatsoever for a truck.

Quite simply, it is a remarkably beautiful ad.

Just for fun, let’s pretend this ridiculous poll is meaningful in some way and compare the primary responses given, shall we?

Conservatives were described most frequently as “untrustworthy”; Liberals were most often considered “bad/incompetent”; and the NDP were viewed as… wait for it, “socialist.” Oh, and for the record, the Greens were described as being “green” (shock!) and the Bloc as “useless.”

At the second tier, the Conservatives were described as “conservative” (duh); the Liberals as “untrustworthy”; and the NDP as “caring.” Following that, Conservatives were “bad/incompetent”; Liberals “Good”; and the NDP “bad/incompetent.” And on it goes with increasingly smaller percentages of idiotic respondents ascribing all manner of contradictory descriptions to the various parties. By the way, “bad/incompetent” was the artful term applied by Nanos to those responding with undefined expletives such as (one imagines) “fucktards,” “twats” etc.

So, what are we to make of this “survey”? Personally, I’d suggest absolutely nothing at all other than the utterly unsurprising fact that a predominant number of people think all of the parties are complete rubbish for the most part. Curiously however, Liberal activist, lawyer and ursine fetishist James Morton derives this brilliant conclusion from the poll: “We have to figure out how to be seen as trustworthy and competent again. I say review the shift to ‘New Labour’ in the UK — Tony Blair made Labour seem to be something it hadn’t been before.”

Well, perhaps… although I’m not certain what specific lessons Blair’s “third way” re-boot of the Labour Party has to offer the Liberals at this juncture.

Perhaps a more concerning issue than the “robocall” scandal and the minimal effect some purport it may have had on a number of marginal ridings may be the fact that, as now seems to be the trend, almost 4 in 10 eligible voters couldn’t be bothered in the least to cast a ballot in the first place.

Ah, but as things turned out, clearly not so.

It seems that Levant (his pre-election blog archive now makes for even more hilarious reading/viewing in retrospect) and other perpetually indignant tub-thumpers of the right-wing media elite utterly failed to appreciate the evolving dynamic of the Alberta electorate; especially that of the province’s increasingly diverse urban demographic which evidently has little regard for a collection of hateful bigots, witless hayseeds, ignorant cranks, anti-science crackpots, and religious kooks masquerading as “libertarians”…

While it’s a shame that opposition to the entrenched establishment had to orginate from the more extreme, crackpot wing of the conservative movement, it’s no surprise the ideological insurrection should have come from the imaginary rural hinterland given the PCs had gradually assimilated over the years much of the liberal urban social agenda and arguably become far more “progressive” than “conservative” in nature.

So, Alberta is now poised to elect a spanky new “libertarian” government with results that may well prove to be amusing and/or disconcerting to some. Whatever the outcome, it may well be a positive thing because there’s nothing worse than dreary stagnation, and nothing more stimulating to eventual progress than radical change.

Now that he’s the presumptive Republican nominee, I guess “Mitt” will also have to exterminate earlier iterations of himself such as the one that wanted to force women with babies out of the house and re-enter the labour pool so they could experience the “dignity of work” and the one that vowed to support so-called “personhood” legislation that would effectively make the pill illegal.

No surprise really, considering that in all probability he would otherwise have lost the primary later this month in his home state. Not only would that have been a crushing blow, but also a bitter personal reminder of the defeat that saw him ousted from the Senate in 2006. Better to end his improbable yet relatively successful campaign on a positive note rather than waging an ugly and futile campaign against Mitt Romney’s vastly better-financed attack machine.

Viewing his emotionally touching concession speech it’s not hard to see why so many people were attracted to Santorum – he comes across as warm, genuinely compassionate and, as pols say, “relatable”… What a tragic shame for Republicans that Willard Romney has absolutely none of those qualities to his credit.