Okay, SIMON SAYS resign. Is that better?

With sincere apologies to those (all) of you who are sick to death of political nonsense, I must state the following:
I am sick to death of political nonsense.
That said, the situation we find ourselves in since 5:45 p.m. yesterday is unprecedented in Canadian history. As such, I feel a comment is required.
We are currently being "governed" by a party deeply rooted in scandal. That in and of itself is far from uncommon: most governments descend into scandal after a long time in office. Because of this particular scandal, which is one of the worst since Confederation, the government faced a vote of non-confidence in the House of Commons yesterday...and lost it, 153-150. This, too, has happened before.
Never has a government ignored a confidence vote and tried to pretend it never happened.
Oh, the Liberals will tell you that this vote was a "procedural" matter and not a matter of confidence. Very loudly they will tell you this, in tones unsuited to a kindergarten classroom. And they'll keep repeating it, because everyone knows that if you say something often enough, it becomes true.
Here is the motion:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “that” and substituting the following:"the First Report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, presented on Thursday, October 28, 2004, be not now concurred in, but that it be recommitted to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts with instruction that it amend the same so as to recommend that the government resign because of its failure to address the deficiencies in governance of the public service addressed in the report.”

Yeah, I know, fantastically wordy, isn't it? You'd think that they could have just said something like: Be it resolved that the government must resign.
Except the Liberals made sure that the Opposition could not introduce such a motion, by unilaterally cancelling what are known as "Opposition Days"...days on which the non-governing parties may introduce motions to be voted on by the House. But the Conservatives were permitted to draft and present procedural matters...I guess even Martin believed censoring that ability would smack too much of dictatorship.
So the Conservatives took a procedural motion and changed it into a statement expressing non-confidence. (Why would you ask anyone to consider recommending the government resign if you had confidence in their ability and authority to govern?) They put this motion to a vote, and won it. It can therefore be said that a majority of the House has lost confidence in the Liberals.
The Liberals, who said upon forming this minority Parliament that they had every intention of governing as if they were a majority, predictably chose to ignore this reality. So the Leader of the Opposition challenged Martin last night to introduce his own confidence vote as soon as possible. There was no response from Martin until today, when he promised a vote on the Liberal-NDP budget..in eight days.
Eight days is a long time in Ottawa, as Martin well knows. Anything could happen in eight days. There are two Conservative MPs and a (possibly) right-leaning Independent who are currently receiving treatment for cancer. It's entirely possible that those three will not be able to vote on the budget in eight days...something else Martin and the Liberals are surely aware of. Three fewer votes for the government to resign would mean a tie, and tie votes are settled by the Speaker of the House, who is a Liberal.
That Speaker, Tony Valeri, said today that

"The leader of the opposition has shown how low he's prepared to go by suggesting that anyone would take advantage of someone's illness."

As PGS, a Toronto blogger notes,

"Actually Tony, suggesting that anyone would take advantage of someone's illness isn't nearly as
low as your party actually doing it."

Today, Harper showed that the Opposition, not the government, is in fact controlling Parliament now, by moving (again, a procedural motion, all the Tories are permitted to introduce) that Parliament be adjourned. They won that vote, too. And they've threatened to keep doing this every day.

You may think this childish. As it so happens, I do too. But Harper has a clear point, and he's making it. The Liberals are unable to govern. They should step down and call an election immediately.

The Canadian public does not agree with this, for some odd reason. Many seem to think that we can't afford the $250 million an election would cost. My take is: we can't afford not to have an election. Paul Martin is plundering the treasury in what just might be the most blatant attempt to buy votes ever. There's been better than a billion dollars a day pledged since Martin made his pathetic television address. Eight days to go until the government falls: could that be another ten billion dollars pledged before the campaign even officially starts? Yikes!