Two leaders, one ever more powerful, one getting flabbier by the day, find democracy a distraction:

The Harper government dismissed a pair of stinging parliamentary violations as a “distraction” and a “game,” while the opposition called them a blow to Canadian democracy — the latest in a public-relations war that could rapidly morph into an election campaign.

In the US, President Barack Obama has opted to keep his mouth shut while one of the most powerful attacks on trade union rights for decades has been unleashed by a Tea Party Republican against his own allies in Wisconsin:

[T]he White House mostly has sought to stay out of the fray in Madison, Wis., and other state capitals where Republican governors are battling public employee unions and Democratic lawmakers over collective bargaining rights. When West Wing officials discovered that the Democratic National Committee had mobilized Mr. Obama’s national network to support the protests, they angrily reined in the staff at the party headquarters.

Administration officials said they saw the events beyond Washington as distractions from the optimistic “win the future” message that Mr. Obama introduced in his State of the Union address, in which he exhorted the country to increase spending for some programs even as it cuts others so that America can “out-innovate and out-educate” its global rivals.

What future are we “winning?” Shades of Charlie Sheen.