Adam Hooper (the blog)

I can still remember the spin of campaign wheels.

Remember how candidate Barack Obama was "palling around with terrorists?"

Whew, glad it's over, right? When the confetti settled, the Federal Election Commission tallied that $1.3 billion dollars had been crammed into campaigning. That's up 61 per cent from the 2004 election's $820 million, which was itself a 90 per cent increase from 2000's paltry $430 million.

But now a law which restricted campaign financing has changed, which means the next slew of campaigns will likely make 2008's ads look like they were made with a camcorder in your basement, in comparison.

Maybe Obama cast the first stone, which has just backfired biblically. Shying from the conservative financing route, he relied on small contributions from the Internet, netting him flocks of donations most pundits had never spotted. Poor McCain had to shuffle in Obama's shadow, with less than half the budget to broadcast a solution to the economy that was letting him down.

In light of this, the American Supreme Court removed restrictions that capped corporate campaign spending yesterday.

Many companies may decide not to contribute because it would be seen as picking sides. The New York Times article (linked above) suggests that companies like Microsoft and General Electric fear alienating investors. Funny choice of companies: Microsoft and General Electric own the left-leaning cable television news station MSNBC.

Obama (and McCain, for that matter) are against the change, but the Republican National Committee seems to smell blood in the water already. In 2012, we'll see which companies bite. And when they do, we'll learn whether ads are more potent than policy.

Wonderful chitchat sprouted from my family visits this holiday season. In one pleasant gab, a thought struck me so hard I almost said something about it.

Conversations tend to orbit around age-old topics: news, weather and health. At Christmas in Quebec, we had plenty of all three. In the process I realized that banter about health proceeds differently in Canada than it does in the United States.

In Canada, we'll talk about cancer, infections, colds, flu and other forms of malaise the way my journalism professors tell me I should write news stories: on-topic, answering obvious questions. For the flu, obvious questions are "was that H1N1?" and "how many sick days did you take?" and for cancer, "will she be all right?" and "did the doctors tell us the odds it'll recur?"

In the United States, however, talk time is squandered on two off-topic questions: "how much will it cost?" and "how are you going to pay for that?"

Example: in Canada, I once had an ear infection and cured it with antibiotics. In the States, I had a concussion that led to a $7,000 hospital bill. I'm not ranting about the $7,000 (today, at least): I'm pointing out that in Canada, my synopsis covers the state of my health rather than the state of my wallet.

In Canada, dentist chats follow American tradition, inspecting price more than teeth. My braces extracted two years of coolness from my youth, but they also pulled two years of financial security from my mother's budget. Cost leaps into discussions about my teeth somewhere after "I wore a headgear some nights" and before "I had to eat through a straw when my braces were tightened every month." This implies the bank account hurt more than my mouth, even though I still have the odd nightmare about tooth pain.

I'm commenting on banter, not bills, budgets or politics. No matter what American health care reforms arrive in the coming months, I doubt most American dinner talk about cancer in the family will shed its monetary overtones anytime soon. But to me, every conversation about life and well-being that sidesteps money is a step closer to utopia.