The CBC is reporting that Michael Ignatieff, the new leader of the Liberal Party, is ready to take down the conservative minority and form a coalition with the NDP if February's budget "isn't in the country's best interest." He also offered Harper some help in coming up with this masterpiece budget:

He said the Liberals will make known in the coming weeks the measures they believe should be in the Jan. 27 budget, but added it is up to Harper to make the first move.

"I'm not entering into negotiations with Harper. He knows where he can find me. If he needs any help ... we might oblige."

I don't speak Parliamentarian, so I'm not entirely sure what he means by this. The closest translation I can come up with myself is something like the following (and feel free to correct me if I make a mistake):

If you don't do what I want, I'm toppling your government. What do I want? I'm not gonna tell you. That means I'm going to go ahead and topple your government anyway. Nyah nyah na nyah nyah.

As an everyday Canadian who reads, votes, and follows politics a fair bit, what I want to see from the Liberals right now is better solutions to the problems our country faces at this time. What should be done about the economy? Should we cut taxes? What about the automakers? Who, if anyone, should get a bailout?

Unfortunately, this type of mature, problem solving ability that is expected in almost every specialized vocation in the universe is completely absent in our political system. Instead, they waste our time, our money, and our democracy with incessant childish bickering over who leads what. It's a classic struggle for power, but in the least Romantic way possible. And in the process of it all, they get nothing done. Dion certainly got nothing done, and from what I've read so far, I can't say that anything will be different under Ignatieff.

And then there's Jack Layton. The very same Jack Layton who just before the election took Harper to task for giving $50 billion in tax cuts to corporations. If I had a penny for each time during the campaign that Layton said "50 billion dollars" or that Harper is for the "board room table" and he is for the "kitchen table" I'd have exceeded the NDP's campaign budget by 500 per cent. And now, he has pledged to topple the Conservative government because they've not announced that they're giving billions of dollars in bailout money to corporations. What, exactly, has changed in the past two months to warrant such a swing in ideals? It's hard for me to believe that the NDP is being anything other than opportunistic.

So where does all this leave us? You guessed it.

screwed