A week can be a long time in politics, as the legend has it. And getting back to the home and native land from the counterweights Western Europe conference circuit suggests that two weeks and a few days can be even longer. It’s almost as if since we’ve gone the nights of Canadian politics have […]
[UPDATED MAY 8]. In this past Saturday’s Toronto Star Queen’s Park columnist Martin Regg Cohn predicted that the current “feel-good political chemistry between [Liberal minority Premier] Dalton [McGuinty] and [NDP leader] Andrea [Horwath] will prove short-lived.” A week is a long time in politics, etc. And despite the recent Dalton-Andrea budget deal: “Their parties are […]
MONDAY, APRIL 23, 11:45 PM ET/9:45 PM MT. So … Every now and then voters decide to ignore what one Alberta commentator has called “the media narrative,” and the opinion polls, and even the obscure hasty opinions of aging bloggers from another planet such as myself. They vote against what all the chattering classes and […]
To start with, happy earth day, of course. Meanwhile, on a vaguely related front (or more?), there are a full half-dozen texts for this Sunday’s “Sermonette,” on the almost religious prospect that Danielle Smith and the Wildrose Alliance just might win the Alberta provincial election tomorrow, Monday, April 23, 2012 : (1) “Wildrose Party to […]
[UPDATED APRIL 22, 23]. Contrary to many prognostications, the dance of Larry Zolf’s Winnipeg dialectic between Dalton McGuinty’s Ontario Liberals and Andrea Horwath’s Ontario New Democrats, over the current Liberal major-minority government’s Budget 2012, has not yet shown decisive signs of coming to some stable point of rest. (Well … that too has now changed, […]
Larry Zolf’s 117-page opus Dance of the Dialectic – on “How Pierre Elliot Trudeau went from Philosopher-King to the Incorruptible Robespierre to Philosopher-Queen Marie Antoinette to Canada’s Generalissimo and then to Mackenzie King and Even Better” – was published 39 long years ago now. In the strange spring of 2012, however, its title has taken […]
There is something to be said for the argument that sowing confusion among his enemies has become one of the mature Stephen Harper’s most skilfully wielded political weapons. And, whatever else, yesterday’s 2012 federal budget succeeds brilliantly at the task. As a case in point see “Ministers tout ‘modest’ Tory plan to slash spending, shrink […]
TORONTO. SATURDAY, MARCH 24, 2012. One thing I’ve remembered this weekend is watching the convention that founded today’s New Democratic Party on TV, as A Teenager in North Toronto, so to speak (humourously, ironically, sarcastically, satirically, or whatever), in the middle of the summer of 1961. Inevitably, I am not as enthused and hopeful as […]
Today’s by-election for Jack Layton’s old seat in Toronto-Danforth just kicks off two weeks of intense political mania at all three levels of government, in what was once mistakenly called the Toronto-Centred Region by Ontario government planners. Inevitably all this is of most interest to actual residents of the region. (See “Jack Layton’s Toronto-Danforth riding […]
Like millions of others in North America who remain far more interested in politics than common sense suggests we ought to be, last night I watched the HBO TV movie “Game Change” – about Sarah Palin’s run as US Vice Presidential candidate in 2008. And I agree that it “is gripping throughout, because it’s ‘well-acted.’.” […]
