I See Trees Of Green....Red Roses Too...

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...Bright Sunny Days....Dark Scary Nights

Very scary nights indeed.

Because Canada's House of Commons is now closed.

Which means that Mr. Stephen Harper's comedically nonsensical army of institution-destroying boweevils can really get to work for the next 45 days and nights doing stuff like this:

....The 2011 federal budget launched a process in which all federal departments would work toward a goal of reducing Ottawa’s $83-billion direct program spending budget by at least five per cent.

As the deadline for that work approaches, Conservative MP Brent Rathgeber told The Globe and Mail that he and other members of the Conservative caucus are urging cabinet ministers to cut more aggressively.

“Everything should be on the table,” he said, listing federal funding for the CBC and the Royal Alberta Museum as areas where savings can be found.

A committee of cabinet ministers led by Treasury Board President Tony Clement is currently reviewing reports from all federal departments. The departments were asked to submit two reports: one outlining what a five-per-cent cut would like and another describing a 10-per-cent cut. The final decisions will be announced in the 2012 budget.

“I’m hoping for closer to 10 than to five,” Mr. Rathgeber said. “I’m not alone.”....

Look.

There are (at least) two things that will play out here in the next few months.

First, the deficit that has been built, piece-by-piece, by a Strauss-inspired government that has left behind very little of real substance will be used to justify all these cuts and 'belt-tightening.

And second, the boys in the backroom will be cackling with glee as they begin starving programs just enough that they can go full metal Norquist on all of them as they take them to bathtub to start strangling them dead.

But.

There is one ray of hope that may shine through on this not so Wonderful World to come.

And that, unfortunately, is the fact that Canada's cozy financial bubble protector appears to be getting ready to peel away for real.

And if it does all that Straussianism that is the heart and soul of the Harper government will be packaged up by Canadians, placed in a hermetically-sealed bunker and buried, for good, ten thousand feet below the Calgary School where it belongs.

In the meantime, in the spirit of the thing, I reckon we can all use a little Joey to get us through the scary times to come.

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