[Murph]

I'm also from BC and I agree with a lot of what Blackrose is saying. We're in a situation in this province specifically and this country in general where we vote for what we perceive is the lesser of the evils.

The NDP screwed up in BC, badly. So people vote against them. They voted for Cambell and the Liberals, and I don't think that you need me to spell out for you where that got us.

Now people don't like what the Federal Liberals have been up to. I don't like what they've been up to either. Massive waste, corruption, pork-barrel feeding on a huge scale, nepotism, Cretien's despotism and basically playing fast and loose with the trust of Canadians.

About par for the course for our federal government, IMO. So we're going to vote against them? Well, I am, anyway. I voted against them before, though. I've despised the Liberal government for years, for a variety of reasons mainly related to what I felt was their hypocracy.

But the problem I'm seeing here is that we're going to get another party that won't do a good job in their place. And if we vote conservative, we're going to get a party that is going to roll back a lot of the "liberal" things which I feel make up part of our national identity, things like abortion and gay marriage.

You say Stephen Harper isn't going to push hot buttons? Harper isn't even fully in control of his own party, and a "rabid" bunch is a good way to describe them. Plus, Stephen Harper got to the top of the Conservative Party by taking advantage of the rules in the party leadership race, and possibly commiting fraud (in the form of lots of suspicious new party memberships) in pushing the merger through in the first place. Not too auspicious a start, methinks.

If you like what's happening in BC right now, vote Martin. If you LOVE it, vote Harper.

I'm tired of voting for someone so that my "vote is counted". I'm voting Green, and I hope a lot of other people in BC do to. At least they say they're going to try and change things. Everyone else is just putting on bandages and hoping the bleeding will stop.

Even Layton has more of my respect than Martin or Harper (notice I'm not mentioning the Bloc, I don't even think they should be taken seriously federally at all) because at least he's telling us some of the truth.

And the truth is that we cannot afford to keep things going the way they are going. Not financially or socially. 1 billion on the federal gun registry is chump change. Small bills to government, and the sponsorship scandal was the pennies you dig out of your car ashtray. Not saying that it wasn't bad, but this is not the big problem.

The big problem is Health Care and the environment. I love health care, but when the boomers get old, it will kill our economy. I'm not saying scrap it, but we must change it. And the environment, by now, I hope people are starting to see that we are shaping up a catastrophe, and I'd love a government that would take that seriously.

If all you care about is your job, your car and maybe a nice round of golf at the end of the day, by all means, vote Liberal or Conservative, but voting for somebody you don't really trust because he's less untrustworthy than that other guy, thats what I call a WASTED vote.

Oh, and if you don't vote, you don't get to complain. You passed up on your say, and you did it voluntarily.

Sorry about the rant.