TORONTO (January 15, 2008) -- I don't know if January has Ides or not, but if it does, today is the Ides of January and the Michigan Primary which is one more reason to Beware.  (Incidentally, has anyone noticed that Super Tuesday and Mardi Gras are the same day this year?  Things that make you go hmmmmm.)

My subject today is "Change."  No, not the change that the vast hordes of homeless drunks, squeegee kids  and mental patients who are turning Toronto into Calcutta ask me for every time I walk out of my apartment, although that kind of change usually comes into it somewhere.  The kind of Change that political wannabees are always harping on. 

Now, I may be reaching the Curmudgeon Age when things are pretty much the way I like them and the whole idea of having to re-do my whole life just Because has become a wasteful and tedious exercise.  But remember that the average age in North America now is 40.  Not 4 or 14 or even 24.  It's FORTY.  And except for the few men going through the Terrible Twos for the third time, the 100 million or so of us included in the Baby Boom are really not all that interested in Change anymore. 

We women have endured the Sixties, when about 1% of us actually looked good in streetwalker chic and a lot more of us, looking at the photos of us, can't even admit that was us in the first place.  Nowadays we live in classic clothing that fits us and whatever schmattas the latest gay designer decrees Women Will Wear can be safely consigned to the rubbish heap where most of them belong.  ("I wouldn't," says my next sister, "wash my car with that.")

We spent some quality time amassing a collection of cassettes, only to have to re-amass CDs when casettes became So Yesterday; and then came the stupid iPod which is something you can't just buy -- you have to go on line (I hear a lot of people in the upper age brackets saying STOP RIGHT THERE, SISTER!) and actually look for the music you might want, risking contamination by spyware and other rubbish in the process, and download it into this gadget that will be obsolete before you get it full of what you want to hear...but not before some young Victim of Exclusion (as thugs are called here in Kanukistan) hits you over the head and takes it away from you.  VOEs don't want CD players; those aer So Yesterday, maaaaaaan; far less do they want Walkmen.  Govern yourself accordingly.

Our antique (2001) cell phones make and receive calls, which is all we ever wanted from a phone; nevertheless, we receive countless enticing bombardments begging us to "upgrade" to a phone that is so complicated that we can't figure out how to make calls on it, much less do any of the other stuff it does, even if we could see the weeny keys or the ittybitty screens.

Likewise with our politics.  Those of us older women who have male chums in the 25-30 age bracket are used to spending an afternoon or evening listening to said chum expound his latest great idea for saving the planet, and then gently informing him that (1) somebody thought of that in 1649 (2) and it didn't work then either.  I am beginning to feel that way when I listen to candidate after candidate expound and present as "change" something we have already tried and thrown out the door on the scrap heap of history (this was before recycling.)  Listening to Mrs. Clinton try to present as new the system Sweden (and Canada) is currently heaving overboard before its entire country collapses is just one example.  John McCain expounding the policies of Gerald Ford is another.  (Remember those WIN buttons?)  And forgive me for bringing this up, but any day I expect Obama to bring out some failed Carter policy and brand it the Moral Equivalent of War (which was sunk by its acronym when somebody realized that MEOW was hardly a call to action.)  I just cannot get excited about "change" that is only jumping into the Wayback Machine and trying something that did not work the first time or is not working now somewhere close enough to the Pol so he or she could step over and take a good close look at it and decide if this really is what she wants.

I am waiting for someone to start talking up the idea Neal Boortz has suggested: the Tenth Amendment Council, which would inspect each and every FedGov program and decide whether or not it passes the Tenth Amendment test; and if not, delete it instanter.  For example, there is no emanation or penumbra in the Constitution or its amendments that gives the FedGov the right to educate children, declare that airlines cannot allow smoking on board, or require hospitals to provide abortions (or anybody else, for that matter.)  Pick any ten FedGov bureaus, councils or Round Tables and you will find that none of them are in fact going to pass the Tenth Amendment Smell Test.  Now that would be my idea of Change.

But as for all the other Change, from Windows Vista to Universal Preschool, you can bundle it all up and shove it down the chute.  Been there, seen that, don't need it, happy with what I have.

And no, I have no "spare change"  either.  Get a job.