Soros Seems to Be the Hardest Word

 

Hoo boy. So Erin Eric O'Toole wants Canadians to believe that he's going to take the Cons in a new "moderate" direction bereft of hate-mongering, conspiracy theories and connections to the alt-right.

Anyone who believes that? I've got beachfront property in Alberta to sell you.

Because it wasn't barely a week into the "new and improved" leadership that one of his dingbats in caucus started sending out anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Chrystia Freeland and... conservative boogeyman George Soros.

It took three whole hours before she deleted it and issued a half-hearted apology, one of those "I'm sorry you feel that way" kind of things that isn't really an apology at all.

 

 

The thing that worries me is, the media probably won't pursue it any further, even though they spent weeks on WeGhazi like it was Watergate 2.0 (or 3.0 considering their over-the-top obsession with SNC Blahvalin). They'll just say, oh, O'Toole said "no comment" and leave it at that. (While insisting that no amount of nice-hair-shirt wearing from Justin Trudeau is ever good enough.)

 

And it shouldn't be surprising, considering their composition and their own "blind spots".

 

Let alone the fact that their preferred partisan mouthpieces are literally echoing the same mentality about Canada's green she-covery as... the Canadian equivalent of Zero Hedge.

 

Financial Post, from a year ago — complete with a diss to (((Bloomberg)))

...and now, "Global Research".

 

 

Besides the fact that mainstream conservative media has become indistinguishable from the lunatic fringe, there's also the fact that it was retweeted (then quickly deleted) by one of the CPC's biggest "stars" and not just some no-name back bencher, who the oh-so-white #cdnmedia wants to protect at all costs because he's a ratings grab:

 

Stephanie Carvin is a national security expert who is well aware that these Soros conspiracy theories are not only fountains of hatred but pushed heavily by foreign manipulators. The same types, incidentally enough, smearing Freeland (and Soros) as a Nazi sympathizer. The ones she wrote about in her book about Putin's bagmen that she recommended Skippy read. (Once he learns to read, that is.)

But why should anyone expect better from Pierre Parentheses, aka Pee Pee the Frog? How quickly they forget (or ignored) what he said about Katie Telford's husband while they were manufacturing scandals about them just to slag Trudeau?

And neither should anyone expect the media to ask him about it the next time he grandstands with pigeon papers to call the prime minister Crooked Hillary again.

 

Findlay's nonpology isn't anywhere near good enough. She needs to answer for why she said that Canadians should be concerned about George Soros, or anyone in government having "closeness" to him. She needs to apologize publicly to him and to Chrystia Freeland. O'Toole needs to publicly denounce Soros conspiracies and QAnon, which all of this is tied in with.

But of course, he won't do that either.

 

Not when Harper's I.D.U. has close ties to Viktor Orbán of Hungary, one of the most dangerous and prominent anti-Soros militants and international alt-right icons, who shuttered a university founded by the Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor and philanthropist. It should be noted also that the dean of this university was none other than Justin Trudeau's predecessor as Liberal Party leader, Michael Ignatieff. (Old grudges die hard.)

The closeness of these two should alarm every Canadian.

And not when he's busy giving oxygen to the same sentiments as Maxime fucking Bernier at another "patriot" rally, and going off on another tangent about statues to genocidal prime ministers. Reminiscent of GOP culture-war crap about Robert E. Lee.

 

Sorry pal, but Sir Johnny A was the Canadian equivalent of Bloody-Bloody Andrew Jackson. You know who loves and defends Bloody-Bloody Andrew Jackson? None other than Bloody-Bloody Donald Trump. Besides, he wants to "build a better future" by "taking Canada back" — to a time when those inconvenient non-white people were told to just shut up, salute the flag and toe the line.

I give it a 0% chance he publicly denounces Findlay, let alone Poilievre. So much for the new and improved paint job on the old blue clunker, eh?

Even if the media won't do their due diligence, it's a good thing the Liberals (and their volunteer fact-checkers, who get denounced as "Liberal twitter") are going to come back hard with plenty of receipts.

You can run (for office, under the Q-servative Party banner), but you can't hide.

 

We know that this is a white supremacist party and we are going to fight you to the very last.

 

Don't believe us? It's Tru, deau!

Eric the Red?

 

Wexit Brexit Wilson, challenger for "Most Annoying Dragon" in stiff competition with Kevin "Whose Boat is This Boat?" O'Leary, has some, er, thoughts on who Canadians should choose if they want to, you know, choose forward. And by "thoughts" I mean keyboard-initiated mouth noises being randomly pecked into his twitter machine.

What's even funnier about White Bread's drunk tweet is that he literally tagged the guy in the same space as he spelled his name wrong... twice.

 

But that's OK, I'll take it under advisement, albeit with a more positive interpretation. Absolutely, Canadians should choose forward with "Eric," as seen in that photo above.

In fact, as a bonus, you're not only getting a prince. You're getting... a beautiful beast.

Darling, it's better down where it's wetter. Take it from me.

Weekend Coffee Talk August 29, 2020: Wa-kanada Forever

 

A bit of a late start for this week's Coffee Talk roundup. Summer is on the wane, a second wave is on its way, populist anger is intensifying in Ottawa, and T'Challa has passed through the portal. The only upside? Trump is facing yet another lawsuit, having started his 16,777,216th diplomatic incident with Canada. Other than that, it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.

• Rest in Paradise to 43-year-old Chadwick Boseman, whose all-too-brief cinematic breakthrough playing iconic Black film heroes as Thurgood Marshall and Black Panther, happened the entire while he was battling colon cancer. Here's to you, Jackie Robinson, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you. (Boseman's account on Twitter)
  

• Mentioned last week but still pretty cool and in reference to #42 for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Justin Trudeau's grandpa was a part-owner of the Montreal Royals, the minor-league farm team that signed Robinson before he made his way to the majors. Though "Charley" died well before Jackie joined the club, Canada leads the way again, this time helping break down baseball's colour barrier. "Mr. Trudeau, tear down this wall!" (Wikipedia)
  

• Hair Furor started another Canadian Bacon incident by pissing off Leonard Cohen's estate. Now the NSGOP are brushing up with the family lawyers. Leonard said we wanted it darker. Really, we didn't, but Trump wants it whiter, so props to the Cohen family for tying him to a kitchen chair to break his balls and shave his hair. (TMZ)

• #cdnpoli stuff. The Cons are invoking Trumpist populism attempting to portray the Liberals (and Trudeau in particular) as out-of-touch "elites." Chrystia Freeland is determined to bust through that blustering bullshit fomented by a billionaires' club pandering to the common clay of the new west. (You know, morons.) (Aaron Wherry - CBC)

• Important takeaway line from that article: "In neither [the WE nor SNC stories], nor in any of the previous controversies involving this government and questions about its adherence to ethics rules, has actual corruption been found." Though he goes on to say that "in politics, that's a limited defence," the fact of the matter is, all these "Trudeau scandals" were and continue to be Hillary Clinton smear campaigns aimed at painting a liberal leader as a "crook" and by extension, political institutions more generally. Watch for Errand Boy to start saying "Drain the Swamp."
  

• Erin Go Blah might come across as "Andrew Scheer lite," but he's really offering a smoke screen of blarney to cover for the arguably harder-right turn that Scheer took the Cons. And no, he didn't actually say he'd "show up for Pride"; he made it conditional upon their admitting cops, while still offering "free votes of conscience" to the wingnuts in caucus who do want to open the abortion debate. A few errors in this article but otherwise? Caveat Canadiana: Canadians beware. Don't be O'Fooled. (Alan Freeman - iPolitics)

• Data is from the dissolution of the 43rd Parliament, but the general overview of the parties is about the same. A pro-choice advocacy group has compiled a list of just how stark and extreme the composition of anti-choice MPs is in Ottawa — and big surprise, guess which party hoards almost the entirety of them. Eighty percent of Conservative MPs. Shame on Jagmeet Singh for brushing this off just to (again) "own the Libs." (Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada)
  

• Thorough examination of Canada's alt-right media landscape, though I take exception to their assertion that Canada "doesn't have a Murdoch monopoly" like its Anglosphere partners. It's called fucking Postmedia, and it's a blight on democracy. Other than that, a decent examination into the kook-o-sphere that Andrew Scheer promoted in his rambling farewell jeremiad... and which is backing Erin the Tool. (Infoscape Canada)

• Nice time. Justin Trudeau made a personal call to a kid who got gay-bashed for standing up to bullies, who broke his leg in the fight. Even being a Dipper, he held his tongue (during the phone call at least) and was as gracious to the prime minister as Trudeau was to him. Jag-bro and the orange Trump party won't acknowledge this, and the cons won't acknowledge this kid, so why tag-team together just to own the Libs? It's OK to disagree on policy points, but can we all agree that Justin actually does care? (Justin Morissette on Twitter)

And finally, a little fun fashion highlight that hopefully brings some cheer to this otherwise gloomy year

 From Omar Alghabra on Twitter. Damn, but does that delightfully eccentric PM have socks appeal!

Dearest Justin: Apple for the Teacher

 

In this week's Dearest Justin my open letter gets a little personal. PMJT recently made a funding announcement for a safe restart to schools, an issue that is near and dear to his heart "as a dad and as a teacher." Yet the opposition, now with Erin Go Blah at the helm, is still intent upon smearing him with tired attacks that should have faded over the summer vacation. Here, I draw a connection between what Trudeau's foes are trying to do to him and what "dad's kid" — my father, his father, and that side of the family's well-connected network of blarney bullshit — did to my poor mum, a teacher herself.

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Dear Prime Minister Trudeau:

It's me again, the American fan and supporter who's written to you a number of times when you and your government were facing tough challenges. As I wrote you in a previous letter at the peak of the "Charity-gate" smear campaign in which the opposition and media had stooped so low as to shamefully target your mother, I have a personal story about a similar situation that I hope to share with you.

It is my understanding that the Liberal government has just announced an additional "top-up" of funding for a safe restart of school openings to help families amidst this pandemic. This is a wonderful arrangement that should be celebrated regardless of partisan stripes, but of course, the opposition and media always have to find something to gripe about. What I found most endearing was that you mentioned in your speech that it was of personal concern to you as both a father of school-aged children yourself, and a former teacher. It infuriates me when the Conservatives sneer at you and claim that you never had a "real job" prior to entering politics, that you were a "trust fund kid" who coasted on his father's money and then used your office to pad that nest. It is the ugliest and cruelest of smears and unequivocally untrue, and in particular it reflects poorly upon them to suggest that being a teacher is not a "real job". My mother was a teacher, and she loved it; it was more than a job, but a calling, a passion, an identity. And it was all thanks to a horrible smear campaign against her by my father's side of the family why she was run out of that job she so adored, and became a battered housewife who never held a paying job again.

The new Conservative leader, Erin O'Toole, reminds me a lot of my father and his kin, and not in a good way. No disrespect to the Irish in general, but he as well as they epitomize the worst of the Irish stereotypes of arrogance, cliquish insularity, and even bigotry against anyone not considered "their own". I find it ironic that he mentioned his mother being a teacher herself in his victory speech after the shambolic leadership vote concluded, but has spent all the time since continuing the same ugly smear campaign against you. Ironic, but not surprising, as he is a Conservative after all. But besides the shared ethnic extraction and drive to humiliate someone he dislikes for no good reason, there are some other parallels between Mr. O'Toole and my father's side of the family that I would like to highlight. In two words, "dad's kid." Allow me to explain.

My father was the eldest of four children in what could be considered a stereotypically alcoholic and dysfunctional Irish-American household. The problematic parent in this case, however, was my grandmother, my grandfather being the "enabler" — plying his wife with booze while he maintained his carefully manicured status as a "pillar of the community." My father, his namesake, was never the brightest bulb, but something of a default winner of the popularity contest in the local school system because my grandfather all but ruled the roost there, as a senior educator and ultimately the principal, later district superintendent. As such, he became known as "dad's kid," or even just "dad". They ran the town, or thought they did. But that status in the community papered over something far more damaging and disturbing that they didn't want to get out.

My mother was the humble daughter of first-generation Americans who moved into this town while still in high school, and went on to become an elementary schoolteacher there after college. It was sometime early in the nineteen-eighties she went on to marry "dad's kid" — essentially, the boss' son. But it was when she came to realize how severe their problems with substance abuse were — the family matriarch being the worst and most unstable troublemaker — that she tried to get out, only to be pulled under by the powerful family she had married into, but had no idea just how destructive they could be if their "secrets" came to light. Things fell apart at the school where she taught, and my grandfather, with his connections, effectively "burned" her career. My parents never divorced, and my grandfather died about ten years into the marriage, but my mother was left trapped in an abusive relationship and a household that left me forever damaged by the scourge of mental illness and childhood trauma. All of this happened because "dad's kid" willingly played along in a coordinated smear campaign that ultimately ruined an innocent person's life. Once a well-liked schoolteacher, now a broken victim of abuse and a pariah in the place she once called home.

I bring up this tragic story because it's what I see "dad's kid" from Durham, Ontario and his associates attempting to do to you, even though part of the smear campaign is that you are too much of "dad's kid" yourself. Mr. O'Toole told an interviewer recently that he is less of an "elite" because he does not have a "famous last name." What populist bunk, as he himself is the son of a former politician in the same riding where he was elected. I see what they are trying to do, though, which is to frame you as being detached, arrogant and corrupt, self-dealing to your own powerful family and running roughshod over anyone who compromises that supposed goal, in the way that my father's family did. As someone who watched this happen firsthand and is of partial Irish extraction, I can assure you that I have a keen blarney detector and can smell the reeking stench of bullshit from kilometres away. (And I'm American, and don't really even know how far off that is because we still don't use the Metric System. But I digress.) Everything conservatives accuse their opponents of is projection for what they, themselves are guilty of. I have no idea what my paternal side's political leanings were or are, other than loyalty to themselves, but I can tell you in all honesty that everything they accused someone else of, like my poor mother, they were the ones doing first.

As a former teacher yourself, I'm sure you taught your students how to differentiate facts from fiction. That skill is sorely needed in today's political landscape where the one who lies loudest seems to be the one who carries the day. And it's discouraging, because just like my father and kin had their own "network" that came down hard on my mother for getting in their way, so too do Mr. O'Toole and the Conservatives have their cadre of enablers willing to push all sorts of lies uncritically in their breathless push to force you out. I know you have instructed your ministers to respect journalists. I'm sorry Mr. Trudeau but I don't consider hardly anyone in Canadian media to be a "journalist," rather a public relations stenographer for the opposition, acting on their corporate ownership's political bent and doing propaganda against you, your party and even your family. My grandparents had an agenda. The media has an agenda. Mr. O'Toole has an agenda, and the lying leprechaun hopes to get lucky in the next election. But he's got help at trying to make his own luck from a mass of people looking to rig the outcome in their favor: Heads they win, tails you lose.

In closing, I once again want to reiterate that I hope and pray their luck falls short. I should add that even though my mother has never been to Canada, my younger brother and I regard her fondly as the Canadian on the wrong side of the border, or at least what the (stereotypical?) Canadian should be: unfailingly polite, even to a self-sabotaging fault, and prone to apologizing for things which she isn't even guilty of, on behalf of other people who won't. That's kind of how I see you, Mr. Trudeau. Like her, you're just trying to be nice, but there are some not-nice people who see it as a vulnerability and seek to take advantage. I truly, truly hope that it will backfire on them and they will be sent packing to a lot more than just Saturday detention.

The opposition and media think you're a delinquent who deserves to flunk out. I don't. Like my mother, you've been to the school of hard knocks, but in my book, you both get an A-plus. "Dad's kid" is nothing but a dunce.

See you in September, Mr. Trudeau.

 

(P.S. I hope there's an early election and you get a grade-A majority.)

Nightmare on Wellington Street 3: The Retooling

 

So the #cpcldr shitshow aftermath is now into day 3, and it's pretty clear as to what track Erin Go Blah and his conniving handlers are going to take: complete and utter gaslighting Trump-style as a "moderate," with aid from a garbage #cdnmedia and other useful-idiot enablers (looking at you, NDP).

The entire media establishment is hell-bent on convincing Canadians that O'Toole is not the social-conservative boogeyman he's going to be made out to be, oh no, that's just "Liberal spin," as he calls it, completely unchallenged by the sycophantic press gallery.

We see you, and we know exactly what happened the last time the media adopted a "wait and see" approach to a wingnut candidate and shrugged about the likelihood that he would come after civil rights to satisfy his morally repugnant backers.

Can you say Erin O'Trump? I knew you could. Except you won't, which is why the Liberals and their team of truth-tellers have to do the work for you.

I admit to being very, very nervous about the sabotage being openly committed against Justin Trudeau's government by media gaslighters and the horseshoe backstabbers of the NDP. That being said, it doesn't look like the powerful Big Red Machine is going to let O'Toole just go unchallenged, and this thread by Mainstreet Research co-founder Quito Maggi leaves me curiously (albeit cautiously) optimistic:

I don’t believe that the @CPC_HQ will be able to make any gains under the leadership of @ErinOTooleMP for a number of reasons. First and perhaps most obvious is the hard right, social Conservative turn made by O’Toole during this race compared to #cpcldr 2017.

The choice made by members of @CPC_HQ seems to be a continuation of the @AndrewScheer leadership and the same social Conservative albatross remains. While the general population might consist of 10% or less of that demographic, it’s as high as 40% of the membership.

Among the general population or even @CPC_HQ voters at large, those social views simply don’t resonate, at least not in the right places to matter for #elxn44.

I would expect to see very little change in the polls in the weeks ahead as a result of the new @CPC_HQ leader. If there is a fall election, and let me be clear that I now firmly believe there will be, I would expect a substantial LPC majority despite recent events.

He goes on to respond to a Twitter user's question as to why he believes a fall election is likely by hinting at a piece he is working on for iPolitics that he says should be published soon. I can't wait to read it because boy oh boy, do I ever hope he (and pal Evan Scrimshaw) are right.

Because the media is even gaslighting about the arguably more right-wing "kingmaker" Leslyn Lewis, touting her as an example of the Cons embracing "diversity" just because she's a black woman, even though it was her anti-abortion and anti-LGBT cult that put O'Toole over the top. In short, she's the female Ben Carson of Canada but the media is either too biased or too cynically tepid about accusations of "racism" to bother raising red flags for how extreme she is and how much these views are representative of the party.

 

Once again it follows that for all the bad-faith griping Cons do about the #cdnmedia being "biased" against them (and all the pretzels the media then twists themselves into to prove they're not "liberal-biased," by going overboard in attacking left-of-centre candidates while treating cons with kid gloves), the only truth you're going to find is from the samizdat doing yeoman's work and shouting into the void on social media.

 

Like the due diligence that the press didn't do in parsing O'Toole's weasely fence-stradding on abortion:

[O'Toole] talks about being pro choice but has said he would protect health professionals from "referring patients for services that violate their conscience." The duty to refer was upheld by the Ontario Court of Appeal as a reasonable limit on rights.

Also his "pro-choice" stance seems to be only up to 3 months.... strikes me as someone who's trying to get initial buy-in from the moderate population (who may not know reasoning behind later abortions) and lay stepping stones to restrict abortion rights further down the road.

Or their selective amnesia when it comes to his support (or lack thereof) of the Canadian Muslim population vis-a-vis the unfairly controversial Motion 103:

O’Toole may also say he’s inclusive of people of all races & creeds, but he opposed the House Motion against Islamophobia in the wake of the Quebec mosque shooting. He was hung up on the definition of “Islamophobia” even though Canadians lay dead because of it.

Or his enthusiastic support from the bloodthirsty gun lobby:

The Canadian Coalition for Firearm ‘Rights’ gives O'Toole an “A” rating on his approach to firearms policy.

If this rating is anything like the NRA rating, Canadians beware. The gun lobby is trying to write our gun laws.

Or their bullshit narrative that pandering to the extremist base to win a leadership, and hiring a shitposting hatemonger as your campaign manager, before making a phony "pivot" while keeping those same thugs on board your team, is perfectly acceptable and just politics as usual, rather than sounding the alarm at full blast to judge a man by the dangerous company he keeps:

I want to push back on a point that was made repeatedly yesterday by media political pundits, and CPC and NDP political pundits across this country. They pushed a stupid, dangerous message.

YOU CAN AND YOU SHOULD JUDGE A CANDIDATE FOR PRIME MINISTER BY PEOPLE WHO SUPPORT THEM. Secondly, YOU CAN AND YOU SHOULD JUDGE A CANDIDATE FOR PRIME MINISTER BY HOW THEY CAMPAIGNED DURING THE LEADERSHIP RACE.

We now have more information about the person who tried to murder the Prime Minister, and the groups he was connected to. CBC conducted an investigation, which was just summarized on air (I don't know if there is an online story yet). He was connected to extreme right wing white supremacist groups. You know their names, I don't want to say them.

The people who helped elect Erin O'Toole, Canada/Ontario Proud? You might as well draw a straight line from those people to the white supremacist groups. As a Canadian, I judge Erin O'Toole by those people.

That is not paranoid or silly, as pundits recklessly and dangerously implied yesterday. That is being a responsible, informed voter. Unlike the pundits.

***You are who you encourage and accept help from.***

Erin O'Toole could have at any time said "No, I disavow you, go away". He did not. In fact, he upped the ante and fed them overtly white supremacist messages targeting black people.

I judge and condemn Erin O'Toole and the Conservative Party for that.

So should you.

But we know they won't. So once again it's up to the shamrock crew to fight the hooligan army as they push their blarney and bullshit.

I don't know about you, but I'm ready for a good old-fashioned Irish street fight.

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(NB: Fair use modification of that cartoon, which was originally about Harper's bogus last-ditch "spending plan" in the run-up to the 2015 election. I'm not fat-shaming O'Toole either. I'm describing the CPC as a hog rolling in the swill of bigotry and lies, and the "rebranding" of such an atrocious candidate being little more than... lipstick on a pig.)

Erin Go Blah?

We have some early new data in from the results of Erin O'Toole's surprise underdog victory at the #cpcldr shitshow and... uh, well.

Now, mind you, I did indicate that it was the first early results, but so far things look surprisingly good for mon premier ministre d'amour going into what will no doubt be a very hectic battle this autumn and possibly into next year.

 

As an aside, Evan Scrimshaw is standing by his shot-call from January that the Cons have already lost the next election, and that now, O'Toole's devil's bargain with the Jesus freaks only improves the chances for the Liberals regardless of when the next election takes place. (He still believes Trudeau should resign, but the chances of that happening are even less than O'Toole suddenly sprouting luxuriant Trudeau locks atop his Elmer FUD head.)

Some commentators have noted, however, that O'Toole could end up being a formidable competitor to Trudeau, more so than the staggeringly incompetent and decidedly unwell Andrew Scheer, and that a chameleonic pseudo-centrist "pivot" aided by the media could make the prime minister and team break a real sweat, in the run-up to and during the next campaign.

But even the most rabid Con media acknowledges that Trudeau isn't likely to take the leadership change in stride; quite the contrary, he's going to start throwing policy hardballs at O'Toole's big old cueball to see if he charges the mound after getting beaned.

"The price is wrong, bitch," seems to be the theme of the upcoming throne speech going big on transformative public-service investment, in response to Cons' calls for austerity that O'Toole is expected to put forth. Or at least, the underlying gist of it. (Who says you can't make a golfer out of a Canadian hockey player?)

In any event, I can sleep a little bit easier after seeing this poll, with the additional knowledge that the LPC Press Box is aware of Jeff Ballstothewall's troll farm operation, and that the upcoming calendar is so overbooked that Skippy and now the Foole's attempts to fling more pigeon papers about WeGhazi is probably going to get lost in the shuffle.

Which is not to say that anyone should get complacent. Quite the contrary; in politics as in sports, even when it looks like you're ahead, you always work hard like you're 10 points behind. Rather, at least we know where we stand, and right now at least, it's in a pretty good position going ahead.

And there's nothing in the blue Toole box changing the fact that I still stand with Trudeau.

After Midnight, We're Gonna Let It All Hang Down

 

O hai! #cpcldr is a shitshow with damaged ballots delaying the outcome! Where's the Canadian version of Jon Stewart to report on well-hung guys named Chad in Floriduh? Because it's 2000!

Conservatives can't even manage their own fucking leadership race. Why would anyone trust them to manage a country? Let alone during a pandemic?

Well, according to Andrew Scheer it's because, um, Justin Trudeau is a communist and he's enslaving Canadians to the cult of big government that something something Fidel Castro something drunk on a lot more than chocolate milk. Also too, the Post Millennial is Pulitzer-worthy awesomesauce and the fucking National Post is Liberal biased deep-state fake news.

Disband this party. They're incompetent, they're corrupt, and they have gone off the deep end into fringe Trump-esque hate territory whether the "very smart people" in #cdnmedia want to admit it or not.

But at least for a short while they gave us Liberal supporters a few laughs instead of heart attacks.

UPDATE 01:10 AM EDT: Elmer FUD aka Error O'Foole won, thanks to support from the religious wackadoos. At this point Justin Trudeau is going to be prime minister until he's 80! 🤩

I Have Come Not to Praise Caesar, But to Bury Him

 

My blogger-friend Simon, who came over from the NDP to support the Trudeau Liberals, has a post today marking the anniversary of the death of NDP firebrand Jack Layton. I've written here a number of times why I don't think the canonization of the man bears merit in the greater context, and that the NDP have been a dangerous group of rabble-rousers well before Layton came on the scene but that his Faustian handshake with Harper was the worst decision a self-declared progressive could have ever made. I nevertheless respect Simon's opinion that he still admires Layton and sees his partnership with Harper as having been a mistake rather than craven politics, but I still think there's more to the story.

I left a short message offering my polite disagreement and further explaining why I believe he was the precursor to our Bernie Sanders, and why that's not a good thing. The longer draft, I'll offer here in a post below. As the old song says, there ain't no good guy, there ain't no bad guy, there's only you and me and we just disagree.

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It wasn't a "mistake" to usher in Harper's government by bringing down Martin, any more than it was a "mistake" for Bernie Sanders to usher in Trump by attacking Hillary. (I will contend that it was a "mistake" for Martin to flush out Chrétien the way some of Morneau's flacks are apparently going after Trudeau.) The Faustian bargain with Harper was a long-game, horseshoe-politics strategy to destroy their mutual enemies of the LPC, just like Trump/the GOP hate Democrats, period, while Sanders focuses his ire on "establishment centrists" or whatever he calls them on any given day. Layton was Sanders before Sanders was a thing. What he did was an old and dirty hard-left tactic called heightening the contradictions. It worked so well in 1930s Germany that 100 million people died in a war against fascism, and they got the contradiction-heightening government they deserved good and hard, until the wall of totalitarianism came down in 1989.

The NDP of today are so embittered by Trudeau's "stealing the brass ring" in 2015 that some of their supporters have actually gone into full conspiracy theory realm, speculating that he had something to do with Layton's death just like Hillary Clinton "killed" Seth Rich and Vincent Foster. The reason for this is because they cling to the meme that if Layton hadn't died, Trudeau never would have been prime minister, he would. So naturally a cluster rushes to the conclusion that Trudeau employed the "CIA heart attack gun" or "CIA cancer gun," and they just look QAnon levels of ridiculous. When Sanders had bypass surgery during this year's primaries, there were rose fanatics accusing Hillary of trying to bump him off. This particularly hateful cadre at times ends up wishing similar ills upon Hillary and even Trudeau himself. So much for a message of, a new hope. More like "let the hate flow through you."

The fact is, the NDP's grand gamble of "Nach Harper, Uns" didn't pay off because of a quirk of fate, not because of Liberal malfeasance. Trudeau's leftish turn away from blue-Grit Chretien/Martin-ism as a throwback to his father's social-democratic platform has rendered the NDP irrelevant to little more than their hardcore base. Pierre after all, was briefly NDP but made their ideas palatable by joining up to lead the Liberals, because he wanted to win. So all the NDP has in their arsenal is to gripe about Liberals named Trudeau stealing the ball and copying their homework, then climb in the blue-meanie submarine and attack, attack, attack with the same old tired memes about "crony corruption". Should Trudeau fils depart the leadership at some point, they're already prepping their next Hillary-style attack, accusing Chrystia Freeland of being a Nazi red-baiter and a war criminal. Layton, like his strange-bedfellows ally Harper, left his party bereft of ideas and purely a vessel of anti-Liberal animus and rigid purity tests. Singh is merely a symptom of a deeper problem in the same way as Scheer.

Mind you, I don't wish ill upon his family. That's an NDP thing, as evidenced by Charlie Angus' deplorable smearing of Margaret Trudeau as a gold-digger who rode the coattails of her husband and son's political careers and famous surname. Indeed, this was the toxic, ideological-radical mess that Layton made of his party, doing damage to Canadian politics as a whole. I'm just as grateful that Joe Biden saved the Democrats from purity-populist extremism as I am that Justin Trudeau saved the Liberals from extinction. Bernie Sanders and his "squad" of rose-twitter trolls, cosplay-communist shit disturbers, and antiquated 1960s holdovers would have destroyed the Democrats just the same as Jack Layton did to the NDP.

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And that's the fact, Jack.

This is What Conservative Ideologists Actually Believe

 

If you ever want to read beyond the media gaslighting that portrays right-wing parties as a "credible alternative" to reality-based small- and big-L Liberals, pay attention to what they're saying right out in the open. Spoiler alert: it's as regressive and scary as you might think. If you live in reality, anyway.

I'm going to take apart this thread by CPC "strategist" David Tarrant (no, not David Tennant the Doctor) as to what the party will always stand for regardless of what puppet acts as their figurehead. My hope is that if they run on this platform, they'll get annihilated again.

 

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1/25, 2/25: He says he is "proud" to have contributed to a Globe propaganda piece that quite literally says it doesn't matter whether MacToole or O'Kay carries the party "forward"... which is to say, in reality land, stuck in neutral at best and moving backwards at worse. (Though I don't know how much further backwards than the Paleolithic Era they can actually go. Maybe witnessing the Big Bang in person will convince them of science? Nah.)

3/25-5/25: He nixes shedding the albatrosses of social conservatism and rails against "credentialed elites." Populist buzzwords ignoring the fact that the M$M in Canada is entirely biased in favour of his party and more specifically, against the Liberals and against Justin Trudeau. So basically it's the same as it ever was, same as it ever was: their platform is that Justin Trudeau sucks because reasons. Makes you wonder what are they going to run on when he eventually does retire? Chrystia Freeland sucks because (Putin has) reasons?

 

6/25-10/25: (Jedi hand wave) "These are not the abortion threats you're looking for." Also too, AUSTERITY IS TOTES AWESOMESAUCE.

11/25: "If you believe that even mild objections to our wild-west abortion laws are misogynistic OR that we have to destroy oil jobs to stop climate Armageddon, you long ago priced yourself out of CPC voter coalition." According to Abacus Data, that's less than half of the country. But OK, you do you.

12/25-13/25: Enemy-of-my-enemy horseshoe politics again. They know they can't win except by enlisting the help of the useful-idiot NDP to split the vote. That being said, they have no intent of ditching the regressives. They just don't want Derek Sloan to say the quiet parts out loud.

14/25: Attacking one of Generation-Z's activist icons on the climate front is a really good look and not something that'll alienate the youth vote at all. But OK, it's only Trudeau who "buys the youth vote" with charity appeals involving his ailing septuagenarian mother. Now let's talk about moar austerity plz.

15/25-16/25: "I'm proud to have worked for Stephen Harper." Yes, by all means keep saying that! By all means incorporate that into your "new vision" breaking from "old orthodoxies" and being relevant to today's voters! Vote for Pete, "Because It's 2003!"

17/25: If those guys are "bigger brains" than the not-Doctor, I don't know what to tell you.

18/25: Blah blah Laurentian elites (which, I should add, is an attack line the DipperCons are going with too). "Liberal bigotries"? Versus the party of the barbaric cultural hotline, the party that ran a kook who attacked the nation's top public health official as a PRC infiltrator, the party of niqab bans and scaremongering about dirty brown immigrants crossing the border, the party with an inextricable connection to Rebel Media... but but but but but blaaaaaaaaackface. Canadians delivered their verdict, and they determined that in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter. So do fuck off with that "smart populist" appeal to... attempt to frame the Liberals as the party of "bigotries and biases."

19/25: You already have lost the battle with Liberals over caring about people. You lost it in 2015, you lost it in this entire thread, and now you feel you have to resort to dirty tricks and "Justin's Emails" smear campaigns in order to cheat to win it.

20/25: The Cons aren't going to get anywhere with women by pitting Skippy against Chrystia Freeland. Try again. I know, maybe they can appeal to women by running a macho jerk who called his girlfriend a dog and started his leadership campaign with homophobic dog whistling that the prime minister is a sissy who likes yoga instead of manly-man hockey. "Trudeau is actually quite unpopular among men". Who fucking cares at this point. That's a problem with the toxic testosterone crowd, not Trudeau, and if you think you're going to win by appealing to Jordan Peterson incels and 1950s Mad Men, well, that's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it works out for you.

21/25: You answered your own question. The Liberals already have a plan.

22/25: Again, fail. The Liberals are the party of Unifor because Jerry Dias knows how to pick a winning horse. The NDP have gone mirror-universe Con, with no platform but Bernie Bro bashing of "Crooked Justin" supplanting "Crooked Hillary." Plus, why would you say the NDP has nothing to offer the "blue collar base" after basically implying earlier that you need help from the NDP?

23/25: Doug Ford stans for Chrystia and even Justin now. Your argument is invalid.

24/25: CARBON TAX BAD. Seriously, just pack it in already.

25/25: No one ever said China were good guys. But Trudeau isn't stupid and knows that Canada isn't going to win a fucking war with them. Also, most Canadians don't really care about foreign policy except as it pertains to the elephant directly to its south. Trudeau has gone above and beyond in wrangling the orange pachyderm tripping on bath salts and would get along far better with Biden. But if you really want to talk about cozying up to dictators, um, care to answer some questions about Harper and the I.D.U.? No? How about FIPA? No? Then do fuck off and continue fucking off until you reach the fuck-off point of no return.

 

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I really, really hope this is the platform that they run on and that the election comes sooner rather than later because I am getting sick and tired of them being touted as a credible alternative to the "natural governing party" when they come up with shit like this. Please, just disband already and go sign on with the GOP.

A Returnable Gift Receipt

 

There's an old saying that goes something like, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

While I don't like the implied stigma of mental illness coded in that axiom, it nevertheless carries some weight when applied to Canada's Republican-wannabe Conservatives and their one-track platform of "Justin Trudeau sucks because reasons."

Which is why I don't expect Potato Pete or his pathetic Pee Pee party to take Chantal Hébert's Sunday-morning advice under consideration.

Hébert suggests that "whoever" ends up as Harper's next installed stooge will have to present a positive alternative to Canadians for the post-pandemic recovery, rather than just attack Justin Trudeau for perceived "ethical lapses" and "prosecute" him relentlessly the way Andrew Scheer has been doing for the past two years.

If anyone saw Pee Pee Poilievre's shameful theatrics this past week, it's plainly evident that "positive politics" is not a performance they're capable of adding to their repertoire.

So while the headline, and some of Hébert's comments throughout the article, indicate that Trudeau proroguing parliament "just gave the next Conservative leader a gift" — time to recalibrate their messaging, apparently, and also let the principal's office be the one to "prosecute" him instead — it doesn't seem to me that this is a "gift" they're likely to take. All they know how to do is attack Trudeau, because their "vision" sucks. Plus, some of the other aspects of the piece don't quite add up. The timeline, for one.

If the WE Charity issue has legs, a parliamentary hiatus will hardly put it to rest.

After Jean Chrétien short-circuited the presentation of the auditor-general’s report on the sponsorship program by proroguing Parliament in 2003, the scandal came back months later with a vengeance, poisoning the tenure of his Liberal successor.

As in the case of the sponsorship affair, the Official Opposition can likely count on an officer of Parliament — in this instance, ethics commissioner Mario Dion — to breathe new life into the issue at some point down the line.

"Some point down the line" according to Stupid Mario is about seven months. If there's an election coming up very soon, and the Liberals manage to reclaim their majority government, they would have the opportunity to put a kibosh on the committee witch hunt and block him from testifying, like they did at the end of the Blahvalin affair. Which is why I'm not sure if Hébert made a typo when she said

If the Conservatives are going to have a shot at returning to government, they will have to look and sound less like a pack of attack dogs and more like a government-in-waiting.

On that score, time is almost certainly of the essence. It is not necessary to expect an election this fall to believe that Canada could well go to the polls before the end of next year. If not next month’s Throne Speech, the presentation of a federal budget in the late fall could pave the way to a winter election.

I'm assuming she meant before the end of this year (2020), and after the presentation of a federal budget in, say, October or November? I'm sure the Liberals know it's preferable to go to the polls sooner rather than later before the rap-on-the-knuckle report gets handed down, so I'm confused about this bit. Especially since this seems to be the whole reason why Trudeau is introducing the throne speech and the series of confidence votes now. Otherwise it just looks like a pointless exercise, which is not something that Justin Trudeau is apt to do.

In any event, the slightly skewed negativity towards the Liberals in this piece invoking Chretien and Sponsorgate, and the headline about the Conservatives getting a "gift" from Trudeau's prorogation, seems to just be a sop to the ToryStar's new owners, or a backhanded implication to the reader that the Cons aren't likely to take this advice. Because the rest of the article goes on to say that in spite of the (manufactured) controversies, Trudeau still has two advantages over the Cons — one of them completely unexpected:

There has also been a sea change in the Ontario dynamics.

At the time of the last federal campaign, a year ago, Premier Doug Ford was one of Trudeau’s most vocal provincial critics. Since then, he has become one of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s biggest fans.

Like his Tory predecessors, Ford has found that having the federal Liberals in power on Parliament Hill is more a blessing than a curse for a provincial government’s political fortunes.

The old Ontario two-step. In 2019, Trudeau managed to tank Andrew Scheer by linking him to a hugely unpopular Doug Ford. In 2020, Trudeau (and Freeland) stand a chance of tanking Peter MacKay by... well, not linking themselves to Ford, per se, but presenting the federal Liberals as the best option to "work across party lines" (ugh) and deliver for Ontario during (and after) the pandemic. Ford, in turn, gets to "rebrand" himself as having undergone an epiphany of his own (narrator: he hasn't) and present himself as Mr. Nice Guy delivering for Ontario by getting along with the feds.

Ontario likes to have a party balance at the two levels of government, which is also why it's likely that there will be an election sooner rather than later before voters have the chance to deliver their verdict on Ford.

But the greater advantage, again, in spite of the manufactured controversies, is this:

Whenever the next election does take place, the ballot-box question will almost certainly revolve around who has the best plan to lead Canada through the post-pandemic period.

On that basis, expect the government to draft an agenda and chart a fiscal course that it would be happy to campaign on.

I really don't think MacKay is going to be able to "unite" the party around an alternative plan to the "Tru New Deal," that out-Liberals the Liberals and risks pissing off the delusional cult out West. As Bruce Anderson of Abacus Data (which showed a polling rebound for the Liberals this week, Justin Time for the new Con stooge to be installed), said in a recent tweet about the big blue "brand":

[The Conservative Party] has to close a 15-20 point gap in "willingness to consider" among women, and those under 45. With no child care, income support or environmental agenda, pro guns & mixed signals on choice, diversity this is uphill.

The nascent western-separatist party may not garner very many votes but it does represent a unity issue within the CPC. For all the chatter about Liberal civil wars and invocation of "ethical conundrums" circa 2003, it's possible that the real civil war is happening between MacKay (Chretien) and O'Toole (Martin). It could be kabuki theatre, but it could also be a very real problem. This is where Morrissette's law of irony kicks in, as the Judas who sold out to Herr Harper, and is attempting to sell it as "uniting" the party, may end up being the one who breaks it apart. (And the Liberals have a much stronger case for saddling him with Harper than they did even with Scheer, let alone Scheer with Ford. Which, if that tangential guilt-by-association gambit worked last time, the "Stephen MacKay/Peter MacHarper" one might work even better.)

Because just like Scheer spent much of his time and energy not only fomenting hatred against Trudeau but doing so in part to chase after Max Bernier's spinoff group of populist whack jobs, so too will MacKay be forced to straddle the fence and try to keep the western yahoos and so-cons on side, thus risking the same "eastern alienation" that continues to sink the Cons in the provinces where most of the votes are, and thus the path to government. Or, he attempts to cut them loose like an "albatross" and the angry birds end up eating him alive. Not that I have any sympathy; he broke it, he bought it.

So with any luck, the grand prize of returning to power (even stronger this time) will again go to Justin Trudeau's (and eventually, Chrystia Freeland's) Liberals, while the gag gift and consolation prize of a return to opposition and another expensive leadership race with no talent on their front benches or in their party, will go to the Blue Meanies of the CPC.

And that would be an October surprise, a Thanksgiving bounty, and a Christmas miracle at the end of what has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, deplorable year. Because it's 2020. 

Bonne Anniversaire, Mme. Fuddle Duddle

 

My actual birthday is on February 29th but for as long as I can remember, I've celebrated it as an end-of-summer fête, because February 29th doesn't usually happen, and it's too damn cold to have a barbeque in the winter. (Plus, this year my mother had Covid so there wasn't much celebrating to be had anyway.) Calendar-wise, going strictly by solar orbits, I'm thirty-six; by actual date alone, I'm, er... nine.

But who's counting? Age is only a number, it's not something complicated like... quantum computing.

This year I'm going to make the same wish I did last year: that Justin Trudeau not only gets re-elected, but re-elected to a majority government. I only got half that in 2019, but I'm not complaining, since the most important part of that half-a-wish came true.

 

(Unpopular opinion, by the way: I thought his Aladdin photos were sexy, and damn if I wouldn't love to rub him for good luck like a magic lamp. He went from Peter Pan to Prince Eric to the Beast and now he kind of looks like a seasoned Jack Sparrow, so let's just say I'm really digging the whole Disney cosplay kick he seems to have been on for much of his professional career.)

There isn't really much in my lonely shut-in life that I have to be happy about otherwise. I'm disabled, in such a way that still garners hostility from society in spite of all the PSAs and advocacy that people like Margaret Trudeau have done. I don't have a job and probably never will. I lack "friends" outside a handful of anonymous bloggers and commenters. I live in a decrepit house with an abusive father who looks and acts like Donald Trump; my mother is usually the one to bear the brunt of it, and like Trudeau, she too was a kindly schoolteacher (and she has naturally curly hair, but I digress). So the present state of North American politics is for me right now an eerie reflection of the microcosm that is my personal home life. (And because that home life is so volatile, I can't even have a critter companion.)

Right now, the only thing keeping me going is seeing another season of the real-life crossover series of The West Wing and Due South get renewed for as long as possible into the foreseeable future. That is to say, and I'm not being overly dramatic here, but "deadly" honest. If Justin Trudeau leaves office on anything other than his own volition and not in the longer term (that is, losing an election, and specifically this next upcoming one, whenever it is), I'll probably give up and die.

 

Which sounds selfish on my part because I'm not in Canada, and wouldn't face the actual brunt of the abuse that the Conservatives would dish out. I would, however, be lacking an emotional anchor that has kept me from losing 100% of a semblance of sanity. And I'm not mincing words here: I do love him.

So if all I have is a set of candles and some late summer stars to keep hope alive amid tumult and chaos, that's what I'm going to make use of. I'm going to send all the fondest dreams and wishes into the universe and hope that fate is kind.

Bonne anniversaire, Miss Fuddle D. Duddle. May Canada forever be the happiest place on earth.

 

Even if my own tragic kingdom is not.

Pee Pee Parentheses

 

Slow fuckin' clap for Bay Street Bill's business boys in short pants. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but look at what those "anonymous leaks" from bitter gutter snipes in his office have fomented:

Jesus Pierre James Christ on a unicycle. The only thing missing from this tweet are the implied (((parentheses))). Simon has a very intriguing new post about what an abusive bully Skippy is. No wonder he wanted to make civil servants cry at that star chamber Benghazi committee. But as if that wasn't bad enough, apparently he's an anti-Semitic little shit too. As I wrote over in the comments there, he's Stephen Miller with greasy hair.

But of course, he's "only" reacting to the "news" coming out from the petty gossip-mongers wanting to knife Trudeau for turfing his previous FM for a number of disagreements, as is his prerogative to do so.

 

Everyone here needs to knock it the fuck off. I have no patience for this. Billy and the boys need to lick their wounds, shut up and move on instead of undermining the government and knifing the prime minister and his team for their own naked ambition and revenge. Get over yourselves; a woman can do your job better, and she absolutely fucking will. Stop being a goddamn Jody-with-a-penis heckling from the cheap seats. People's lives are at stake here. Quit playing with fire. You're helping the cons.

As for Skippy, he's irredeemable and he needs to be ousted right the fuck now.

Weekend Coffee Talk August 22, 2020: Calm Before the Storm

 

It's awful quiet right now in the great white north. But there are still rumbles and the possibility of aftershocks. The storm may be over, or we may just be in the eye of the hurricane right now.

Speaking of which: did you know that 2020 is such a shitshow that we're having a hurricane race?

 

 

Anyway, here's a few #cdnpoli tidbits for you to peruse through while I go board up the windows.

 

LOL so according to le Ceeb, the Dippers are willing to bankrupt themselves on "principle" just to own the Libs. BTW check this guy out:

Barry Weisleder, the [NDP Socialist] caucus's chair, fears for his party's prospects in a fall election. Weisleder, a vocal advocate for reform within the NDP, said the party ignored its grassroots when it cancelled a national convention scheduled for 2020 before the pandemic hit. The NDP postponed the convention because the gatherings tend to be expensive.

Weisleder said the socialist caucus still wants to see a virtual convention. Postponing one robs the party of an opportunity to conduct a critical 2019 election postmortem and a review of Singh's leadership.

"I fear that despite all the scandals surrounding Justin Trudeau that the Liberal Party may be able to secure a majority mandate," Weisleder said. "And the NDP vote and its representation in parliament will be even further reduced."

Fingers crossed his worst nightmare comes true. That would be my greatest dream.

Jays ball is on, albeit in Buffalo because Canada doesn't want anybody traveling north of 49 due to Trump's botching of the pandemic. Betcha didn't know, though, that Justin's grandpappy (Pierre's papa) was a part-owner of the first team to sign Jackie Robinson, the Montreal Royals. (Pierre's old riding is literally called Mount Royal, an English translation itself of "Montreal.") Some of these days the Bronfmans are going to team up with Justin to revitalize the Expos and win the Series they should have won in '94. Juuuuust a bit outside. (Wikipedia)

Kim Campbell is a rose in no one's lapel. She tells Fox North wannabe Vassy (Vichy) Kapelos about how fed up she is with the sexist double standards applied to Chrystia Freeland. Be nice if she could give a swift kick to Buckaroo Bill for trying to undermine the replacement at his old job. (YouTube - CBC's Power & Politics)

Random thought: Someone found out recently that there is a Quebec TV version of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I would totally watch a Canadian version of The Golden Girls featuring Kim Campbell, Margaret Trudeau, Maureen McTeer, and Aline Chrétien. Merci d’être un ami...

 

I would also watch a superhero or crimefighting show with Justin and Chrystia as the dynamic duo. (Can you tell I read and write too much fanfic?)

But I probably wouldn't watch a sitcom with Peter MacToole and Erin O'Kay. Even though the photo for this article about the interchangeable silver-spoon numpties is tailor-made for a failed pilot. That's gold, Jerry... that's gold. (Macleans - Jason Markusoff)

 

Speaking of odd couples: This right here is your new CBC buddy dramedy. About what, I have no idea.

 

Kid at Joe Biden's convention gives an onion-ninja speech about how Joe helped him be more confident despite his stuttering problem. I mention this because I, too, have a speech impairment — and so does Justin Trudeau. Michelle Rempel made fun of him for it, on the floor of the House of Commons, because she's a ceckless funt. Apparently it's sexist to point that out, but not prejudiced or hurtful to make fun of someone's language (dis)ability, especially if their name is Trudeau. Sorry not sorry, but she's a bitch, she's Trump in drag. Anyway, here's Brayden. (Twitter - CNN's Jake Tapper)

Chrystia Freeland's golden opportunity. Read this, then go get Plutocrats and Sale of the Century. (National Observer)

Speaking of Chrystia Freeland: Kevin O'Leary is still an asshole, still irrelevant, still owes money for his failed 2017 Con leadership bid, and still threw his wife under the bus (er, boat) for a hit-and-run investigation. In short, fuck Kevin O'Leary. That is all.

And finally:

 

HE BRUSHED HIS HAIR AGAIN. MARRY ME.

Gone Away from Stornoway

 

Time to say goodbye to Andrew Scheer. Oh Andy, you came and you took without giving. Does Barry Manilow know you raid his wardrobe? Nah, never mind. He doesn't give a dog's tail what you think of him being out of the closet. Fucking bigot and QAnon enthusiast, good riddance to bad rubbish.

Anyway, here's a long-distance dedication from none other than.... SCANDAL!

These last few weeks of holding on... such a pity to say, Goodbye to You!

Knock it Off, Bill

 

Hell hath no fury like a businessman scorned.

Just when it looked like WeGhazi was finally dying down, out comes "anonymous sources" from Morneau's office to offer up revenge as a shit sandwich served cold — to Justin Trudeau and the two most trusted women in his government.

Despite Katie Telford saying very plainly that she had no dealings with any contacts between the government and the company where her husband works, some randos in the Morneau camp are alleging that Rob Silver "improperly pressured" (here we go again) the former finance minister to farm out one of the Covid aid programs to his company.

Either these are cons attempting to foment a civil war in the Liberal camp or embittered former staffers doing their damnedest to sabotage good governance at the absolute fucking worst time just to get their egos assuaged.

What was it Jimmy Buffet said? Some people claim that there's a woman to blame? Or two, at that!

 

Because if the loose talk of a tiff between Morneau and Telford over his overriding her pick for Bank of Canada chair for another dude (Tiff Macklem) instead of the first woman (Carolyn Wilkins) is true, and now this round-two spat aiming to force Telford out just as Chrystia Freeland (her pick) replaced him, then I'm sorry, that's not only petty Martinite backstabbing that poses a danger to Canadians by helping the Cons, but the kind of abhorrent sexist pile-on that women have come to expect from the world of finance. That world, right now, is livid with Justin Trudeau and his government for pushing a social-democratic recovery plan and for appointing Mme. Freeland to the traditional boys' club of the Finance role. Most likely, on the advice of Mme. Telford. It'd be like if Barack Obama shoved out Tim Geithner for Elizabeth Warren. See my point?

For awhile I thought I was wrong about Morneau, but if these really are his people rather than cons, and he doesn't call this off, then I'm sorry, he's behaving no better than a goddamn Judas Jody, playing with fire during a fucking pandemic. And being an awful dude at that.

I hope — I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope — that the public is all scandal'ed out and shifting their attention to more important things as the summer tamps down and the second wave picks up. That's what a smattering of new polls showed this morning, at least. I hope this story gets lost in the Friday news dump and the last couple weeks of vacation and dies down before the pivotal throne speech moment occurs.

Because this is a really fucking bad look and it needs to end right goddamn now.

Dearest Justin: Good Luck, We're All Counting On You

 

In this week's Dearest Justin I offer some congratulations to his new co-pilot and some well wishes for a safe flight. Because surely the Axis of Evil can't be serious about a fall election, can they?

Dear Prime Minister Trudeau:

I have written to you a number of times before when your government was in for a difficult uphill battle. I am once again reaching out to let you know that I support you and the Liberals one hundred percent as you step back from a very tough summer season and prepare for what is likely to be a challenging fall session of Parliament.

I would also like to extend my congratulations to Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland for her precedent-setting achievement of becoming Canada's first female Finance Minister. Mr. Morneau served his country well and I wish him all the best as he prepares to exit public life, as I'm sure you do as well. But I am especially heartened to see such a brilliant woman leading Canada through the "she-covery" of the post-Covid economy and I am so pleased to see you continuing to stand up for feminist government in spite of all the flak from the overwhelmingly male pundit class. Things need to change, and they are, and they will, because of enlightened men such as yourself who do not fear strong women, but appreciate them — to coin a phrase, "because it's 2020."

As I have stated on a number of occasions, I never believed one word of the opposition's media-driven smear campaign involving the charity appeal and am glad to see the documents vindicating your testimony. But to borrow another phrase regarding the opposition's continued fishing expedition in committee after committee after committee aimed at damaging your public image digging for answers they want but will never have, "nevertheless, they persisted" — and why, in spite of the controversy over prorogation that former PM Harper created with his abuse of the perfectly legitimate procedure, I think it was wise of you to hit the reset button and focus Parliament's attention back on things that affect real people's lives. There is still a pandemic raging; a second wave is likely, and the economy needs to get back on track. I believe you are absolutely correct in saying that Canada needs to push forward and that they cannot risk reverting to an untenable status quo.

Which is why, even though I know you personally don't want to see a fall election come out of the upcoming confidence votes surrounding the next throne speech, I think it could actually work in your favour, and that there's no time like the present to seize the opportunity. If the opposition forces the government down, it is likely that they would be punished for sending the public to an election in the midst of a pandemic, manufactured controversies surrounding the Liberals notwithstanding. Don't just take my word for it: polling and expert analysis backs this up. Canadian political tradition holds that the party deemed responsible for triggering an unnecessary election sees it backfire on them at the polls. An unnecessary snap election in the midst of a pandemic would see a backlash like no other. But from a purely strategic perspective, baiting the opposition would probably be to the Liberals' benefit; I know public safety is your priority, as well it should be for all, but if the opposition stands to see their incessant complaining about angels dancing on the head of a pin finally silenced by a surprise Liberal majority, all the better.

 

Those of us in the United States — which has done a far, far worse job of managing Covid-19 — are constitutionally mandated to go to the polls this November; even though mail-in voting is a reasonable alternative, President Trump believes it would be detrimental to his re-election chances, so has dispatched his cronies to sabotage our constitutional right of exercising the franchise in a manner that is safe during a national health emergency. So as an American, when I hear or read the opposition-sympathetic punditry and press accuse you of "hamstringing democracy" as per the accusation in a recent Globe & Mail editorial, it infuriates me, because these people have no idea what hamstringing democracy really looks like. Though I suspect that the party they favour salivates for the real thing. Projection is always the forte of the right.

So if you do end up facing an "October surprise" before we do, I want to say I wish you and your Liberal team all the best, especially DPM/FM Freeland who, as I have mentioned to you previously, I believe would make a fine successor to your leadership some time in the future. As nervous as I am that the "outrage machine" stands to topple you from power, however, I was glad to see you enthusiastically confirm at a recent presser that you would "absolutely" be on the next ballot as Liberal leader. A big part of me hopes that you will follow in your father's trajectory and win back a third-term majority as he did in 1974.

 

Now, whether you pursue a fourth, let alone fifth mandate remains to be seen, but I am "Just not ready" to say good-bye yet, Mr. Trudeau. I know you're something of a polarizing figure in Canada, but I believe you have been a truly remarkable leader and that nothing of the opposition parties shows me they have the best interests of Canadians at heart. I expect gutter politics from the Conservatives. I am disgusted to see it coming from the NDP, who in my view have no claim to the moniker of the "conscience of parliament." For the Bloc Quebecois leader to use Liberal controversies as a shield to hide from allegations of sexual assault is equally as abhorrent. Positive politics continues to be the Liberal strength, amid a swamp of ugly Internet trolls and vile, misogynistic hatred from what I have begun to call the "Axis of Evil."

 

In closing, as you prepare for the next big fight ahead of you, I again want to extend my gratitude to you and the Liberal team, especially Mme. Freeland, for demonstrating what real, humanitarian leadership looks like in a time of great crisis. I hope that you will be able to use this opportunity to transform Canada for the better in the aftermath. In short, in the words of another great Canadian...

"I just want to tell you both: good luck, we're all counting on you."

As I'm sure many of your students once said: See you in September, Mr. Trudeau.