Pierre Poilievre exhorted voters to “Bring it Home.”
The voters in his riding responded with “Send him Home.”
And so they did, those very wise people of Carleton, a riding in the South Ottawa area. They gave the seat to Bruce Fanjoy, the Liberal, instead.
It was an election that defied explanation, and yet I understand pretty much everything about how it went down and came to pass. But understanding is not the same as agreement.
Continue reading “THE CAPTAIN WHO WENT DOWN WITHOUT HIS SHIP”
I’m a little disappointed at the craftsmanship, the tone, the acting, and the messaging.
Disappointed in a professional sense, in that I come from a history of political marketing, promoting, and advertising. But that said, from a personal point of view, I’m equally encouraged that the failings alluded to in the first sentence are all to be found in the latest round of Conservative election television ads.
The usually sure-footed Tories have completely lost their way in an area where they were once kings. They now look like the cut-rate hired help. I suspect when they kick Pierre Poilievre out of the leadership of that party, they’ll be putting the boot to his communications guy, Sebastian Skamski, as well.
So these ads, while terrible, are beautiful.
Continue reading “CONSERVATIVE TV ADS ARE BRILLIANTLY BRUTAL”
I spent a few minutes before starting this trying to think of something good to say about Randy Briand. It was harder than it may sound, and in the end, I could only really think of one.
I don’t know Randy from a head of lettuce, so in fairness to him, I should make the effort to learn more about him before I weigh-in on whatever it is that he’s all about.
So I did.
Salt of the earth is Randy. Born in Petawawa into a military family, he served himself as a weekend-warrior in the Reserves, an infantry officer by his own account. A school teacher for over thirty years, with a couple of years way up North working with indigenous children before returning home to become an Ottawa Valley farmer. With a resume like that, what’s not to like, for heaven’s sake?
I don’t know of Randy’s formative years, where he developed his belief system and moral and ethical compass, but he apparently went through a catharsis of some sort when he met Grant Abraham, the leader of the Alberta-based United Party of Canada. Abraham either solidified Briand’s world-view or he totally knocked it on its ass, but either way, Briand has emerged as whole, a complete man, one who has found himself a home in a new political party when all the others had failed him.
Continue reading “BRIAND CARRIES UPC BANNER IN ARP”
I went to vote on Good Friday, the first available opportunity to do so.
I showed up at Ma-Te-Way and noticed that both parking lots were fairly busy, but there’s lots of stuff that goes on in that place, and I wasn’t really sure how a stat holiday like Good Friday would impact any of those things, so I just assumed it was the fitness and hockey crowds taking up those spaces.
As I pulled up, I did take notice of a number of people standing outside the main doors to the complex, and it looked from a distance that many of them had voting cards in their hands, but I just optimistically assumed that these were voters in need of a smoke. As a non-smoker, their need to pound back a dart or two before making a big and important choice was something I could understand, although my own choice had never been in doubt. So I clutched my own voter card, and dressed in my Good Friday Mass clothes, made my way to the place where the bright yellow election arrows were pointing, there to exercise my democratic franchise.
It was a line.
Continue reading “LONG LINES GREET VOTERS”
When Preston Manning speaks, people listen, that is until they cringe.
The populist evangelical western fear-monger has the kind of voice that ranks right up there with nails on a chalkboard, and it would be a real treat to hear him and American Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. having a conversation. That is, of course, before your teeth started to hurt and your eyes started to bleed.
The son of one of those strange bible-thumping preacher-premiers that only Alberta can produce, Preston seems to have picked up the Social Credit mantra of his father Ernest and carried it forward into the present day.
Continue reading “MANNING SQUAWKS ABOUT FEDERAL VOTE”
It’s times like these where we, as Canadians, usually rise to our challenges. Sorry, where we always rise to the challenge in front of us.
We were there at Queenston, at Chateuguay, at Ypres and Vimy. We more than showed up for Italy and Normandy, and even Dieppe speaks to our courage in the face of overwhelming odds against, some of those odds courtesy of our friends, the British. We fought and won the Battle of the Atlantic.
Were among the most-feared and most respected in Afghanistan, and lost over 150 good people in that demonstration of resolve.
We fought the Americans twice, in the Revolution and War of !812 and turned them back both times. We fought the Kaiser’s army in World War 1 and earned the reputation as “shock troops” by the Germans who were always carefully aware of where the Canadians were along the front line. We fought the best the Nazi’s had at Juno, up through Normandy and into the Low Countries, and liberated Holland before joining the Allied thrust across northern Germany. And we chased the Taliban off of every battlefield in which they faced us.
So, in short, we’re more than up for the most recent challenge, economic war against the United States.
Continue reading “VICTORY BONDS”
By now, everyone knows we’ve taken a 25% tariff hit from our erstwhile friends and compadres the Americans for the sole reason of, well, I don’t know because they make no sense to me. That puts me roughly on par with all the economists and tariff experts out there who are pretty-much all saying the same thing.
There’s no doubt that there’s something afoot about what Trump and his acolytes are up to something nefarious., including the possibility that he and they are all Russian puppets bent on weakening America and its western alliances, which if true, would mean they’re doing nothing less that one hell of a job.
I think that, as Canadians, we’ve also done one hell of a job of absorbing these hits to our economy and our sovereignty. Yes, we’re mad, in fact mad as hell. But I still hold on to the belief that what we’re seeing is another example of that famously stereotypical Canadian restraint. But our restraint is nothing compared to that shown by the inhabitants of Heard and McDonald Islands. Sure, they were only hit with 10% tariffs from the Trumpers, but still they’ve been victimized like seemingly everywhere else, and one would think that they’d show some sort of disinclination, disappointment, or outright rage. But they don’t.
Because they’re penguins.
Continue reading “TARIFFS, PENGUINS, AND DOCTORS”
When you’re at war, you usually find out pretty quickly who’s-who and what’s-what. It’s in moments of high import, or a crisis, where you find out a lot about the people in your life, whether they be family or your circle of friends and associates. Your colleagues at work fall into this as well.
We’re at war with the United States.
Economically, yes, but just like any shooting war, they aim to cause us harm, are doing it intentionally, and have as their end-goal the weakening of our own country to the point where we desperately request to be officially absorbed by them, or annexed if you will.
Whether it be done with bullets and missiles or tariffs and dollars matters little.
They have intentionally set out to cause us existential harm. That, to my mind, meet the criteria for a declaration of war.
Never mind their nonsense involving hordes of undocumented immigrants pouring over the Canadian border into the United States. And ignore their stated intention to stop the dangerous flow of fentanyl across that same border, a peril of epic proportions, what with 43 pounds of the stuff having crossed in the past year, about one one-thousandth of the amount sneaking into America through Mexico.
This is the casus belli of the American attack, their justification for being the jerks that they’ve become. But it really has nothing to do with any of that, since the real problem at the Canadian border has to do with hard drugs and guns that flood across in the opposite direction, as in into Canada from the U.S.
It appears that, when it comes right down to it, they’re the problem at the border, but that doesn’t sell at home, so they blame us for their own failings and use it as a pretext to come after us and our country.
Continue reading “STICKING UP FOR CANADA”
One is an angry Alberta populist, and the other is, well, just angry. The first was an old-school prairie radio talk show host in Alberta, the other was someone who attended two post-secondary education entities, but left both before graduation. The former is the former leader of the Wild Rose Party in Alberta, about as close as we can get, and it’s pretty damned close, to the red-hatted morons of MAGA. The latter served as a chief advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, but was chased out of the party after losing a Conservative Party power play with Eganville’s Ray Novak.
One is Alberta premier Danielle Smith. The other is Pierre Poilievre’s chief strategist and former romantic partner, Jenni Byrne.
Both have their political origins on the far right of the political spectrum, where dystopian anger is the watchword. Both are MAGA acolytes. One kisses Donald Trump’s fat ass, while the other has the red hat and wears it.
Both are dangerous to Canada.
Continue reading “SMITH AND BYRNE”
Who are the Bonnechere Algonquin First Nation, or BAFN?
To the uninformed or less-informed eye, the title suggests an aboriginal group of some sort, more than likely a First Nation. The word Bonnechere suggests a group who calls elements of, or the entirety of the Bonnechere River watershed their home, their ancestral home. And if you’re from around this part of the 613, you might understandably conclude that they have some affiliation with, or are actually part of the Algonquins of Golden Lake, or Pikwakanagan.
And although BAFN and Pikwakanagan are both listed as members of the AOO, or Algonquins of Ontario, the two barely talk to one another, if at all. Phone calls to the Band leadership in Golden Lake were initially warm and friendly, until I mentioned BAFN as my point of enquiry.
There’s been no communication since.
So who are these mystery people and what’s the reason for my interest in them?
Continue reading “THE BAFN MYSTERY”
NEWSMAGRENFREW 