SPECIAL FROM CITIZEN X, BUCKHORN, ON. SUNDAY, APRIL 28, 2024. It’s raining up here in the exurban northern wilderness. — April showers that bring May flowers.

If only for a few hours I am trying to escape the troubling choppy waters of US politics on TV, in the new age of Trump on trial. For some reason I’m struck by what I recall as an old Will Rogers joke : “The Duke of Richmond comes from Richmond, England. He doesn’t have enough ancestors to come from Richmond, Virginia.”

Richmond, Virginia today deserves a somewhat better press. Will Rogers was born November 4, 1879 “on his parents’ Dog Iron Ranch in the Cherokee Nation … Indian Territory, near present-day Oologah, Oklahoma.” He “died in 1935 with aviator Wiley Post when their small airplane crashed in northern Alaska.”

(And as it happens the fateful US presidential election this year is on November 5, 2024 — the day after Will Rogers’s 145th birthday! Alas he died in the Alaskan plane crash 89 years ago when he was only 56.)

Even when I visited Richmond, VA for the first time in the early 1980s it was already becoming more of a hip place than it must have been in the 1920s, when Rogers’s career as a legendary folksy newspaper columnist, book author, radio personality, and movie star blossomed.

Maybe partly for that reason when I tried to google what I recall as an old Will Rogers joke about the Duke of Richmond, I couldn’t seem to turn anything up. But I did stumble across a number of earlier 20th century quotations from Will Rogers. And they somehow seem to fit the present troubling political scene of the USA in the earlier 21st century well enough.

What is going on politically in Democracy in America today is genuinely unprecedented in a number of respects. A former American president has never before been a defendant in a criminal trial, even one about payments to a pornography actress and a former mistress, designed to hide certain truths about a candidate in a presidential election.

Yet contemplating some Will Rogers earlier 20th century American folklore quips does suggest that much of what is happening now is familiar enough in the longer story of the United States since the advent of the present constitution in 1789 (also the year the French Revolution broke out, back across the ocean in Western Europe). While contemplating the trial in Manhattan that started this past week in April 2024, eg, consider these wise Rogers propositions from America long ago :

“Make crime pay. Become a lawyer … The minute you read something that you can’t understand, you can almost be sure that it was drawn up by a lawyer.”

“Things ain’t what they used to be and never were … Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke … If you ever injected truth into politics you have no politics … People’s minds are changed through observation and not through argument.”

“A fool and his money are soon elected … The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office … The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.”

“If stupidity got us in this mess, how come it can’t get us out.” (And my sources for these quotations are HERE and HERE.)

Thinking about these folksy Will Rogers Americana observations from the earlier 20th century has in any case put me in a somewhat lighter and more forward-looking frame of mind than reading two recent much heavier-duty pieces, on the current 2024 mess in Gaza and its echoes on “more than forty” US university campuses —

(1) Pankaj Mishra, “The Shoah after Gaza,” London Review of Books, Vol. 46 No. 6 · 21 March 2024 .

(2) Nadia Abu El-Haj, “Storm Over Columbia,” New York Review of Books (Online), Sat, Apr 27 at 2:52 p.m.

Meanwhile, former president Donald Trump’s Stormy Daniels election interference trial (for want of better words) carries on this coming week.

On one interpretation, for the wider American TV audience the trial so far has actually redeemed Trump’s public reputation somewhat, to the point where former Attorney General Bill “Barr, who said Trump shouldn’t be near Oval Office, says he will vote for him in 2024.”

Mmmm … It seems as well that all the grifting Mr. Trump needs to be acquitted in this case is a favourable vote from just one juror. And if the 12 + 6 alternates jury finally arrived at is remotely a random sample of the Manhattan electorate, that seems far from impossible.

Just over 12% of Manhattan actually voted for Trump in 2020. This translates into 1.4 of 12 jurors in a proper random sample. And on these numbers it is arguably hard enough to see how Donald Trump can possibly be convicted — even though he certainly is guilty of breaking more than a few laws of the land, from sea to shining sea.

And then there’s the current almost extreme right majority on the US Supreme Court … (no doubt cunningly engineered by almost extreme right forces in the larger American political system today — and for all too many years in the most recent past … and including Donald Trump of course!) …

It’s at this point— at more or less the same time as the hibernating bears are starting to arise and walk about this near northern exurban wilderness up here — that I start to think my counterweights colleague down in The Smoke, Randall White, may be onto something. And often enough nowadays I too “just start to pray … in the spirit of that old-time religion, that’s good enough for me. I don’t want to see the USA commit suicide next door” either.

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO . SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2024. Bill Maher’s latest misunderstanding of the Canadian real world (see eg “Canadians react as Bill Maher takes a swipe at Canada” on blogTO) reminded me that Mr Maher once admired Rob Ford’s ability to be both a frequent recreational drug user and Mayor of Toronto.

In this first respect current Ontario Premier Doug Ford is apparently different from his younger brother. (Probably?) And if Bill Maher were to somehow take a sudden liking to Doug Ford, he might have to confront the conservatism he sometimes seems to admire more directly.

(1) Summarizing Bill Maher’s new conservative Blame Canada tirade on April 12, 2024

Mr. Maher himself is apparently self-consciously moving in a somewhat more conservative direction lately.

See eg this hasty summary of the blogTO summary of his April 12, 2024 Blame Canada tirade (as reported by Irish Mae Silvestre) :

“In a recent episode of the HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher, the American comedian criticized Canada and its problems, calling it ‘a cautionary tale’ for his country … In an eight-minute segment, Maher described Canada as ‘what American voters think happens when there’s no one putting a check on extreme wokeness.’”

Ms Silvestre and blogTO carry on, as Mr. Maher more or less directly addresses we the Canadian people : “‘I’m not saying any of this because I enjoy it — I don’t because I’ve always enjoyed you,’ said Maher. ‘But I need to cite you as a cautionary tale to help my country and the moral of that tale is yes, you can move too far left’ … He added, ‘And this is why people vote for Trump. They say in politics, liberals are the gas pedal, and conservatives have the brakes, and I’m generally with the gas pedal, but not if we’re driving off a cliff.’”

Read the rest of this page »

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON, CANADA. FRIDAY, APRIL 12, 2024. For some among us (ourselves included) it is hard to believe that as we approach the second quarter of the 21st century in the modern Canadian confederation “MPs break into ‘God Save the King’” — after the defeat of a private Member’s bill, that would have made the old 1867 colonial constitutional oath to the offshore British monarch optional for federal MPs.

(A poll around the boardroom table here has just revealed that no one present has even heard the old so-called royal anthem being sung anywhere else in Canada over the past several decades, at least.)

As a further annoyance to Canadians seriously living in the 21st century, John Paul Tasker’s CBC News report presents what can only be called an aggressively monarchist slant on Vote #685 in the Canadian House of Commons on April 10, 2024. (At a time when, eg, an Abacus Data poll last May, just before Charles III’s coronation, found that “2 in 3 Canadians would vote to eliminate the monarchy in Canada.”)

Mr. Tasker summarizes the hard news here as follows : “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet and most Liberal and Conservative MPs on hand voted down the private member’s bill, while Bloc Québécois and NDP MPs joined some members from the two largest parties — most of them Quebec-based — to vote in favour of legislation that would have diminished Charles’s role in Parliament. The final result was 113-197.”

Almost two-thirds of Liberal and Conservative MPs who voted YES were actually from the rest of Canada

To start with, we have just completed some quick calculations. And “Bloc Québécois and NDP MPs joined some members from the two largest parties — most of them Quebec-based” is a misleading characterization of those who voted on the side of the future angels of this vast and geographically magnificent northern North American country of ours, at best.

Read the rest of this page »

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO . SATURDAY, APRIL 6, 2024. Very early yesterday morning the almost always interesting Polling Canada posted on X : “CPC lead is as wide as it ever has been?”

At the same time, one of my colleagues here at the office has suggested (like a few others) that the idle chatter in Canadian federal politics is starting to look up for the Trudeau Liberals (and Singh New Democrats) — a little. And in the latest poll currently consulted by 338Canada (Nanos Research late March 2024) the Conservative lead is somewhat smaller than it has been since the start of the year.

On TV the day before yesterday I was once again myself impressed by federal housing minister Sean Fraser. And this reminded me that whatever you might think of PM Justin Trudeau as an individual, he still has some strong Liberal cabinet ministers.

(And on the rare occasions when I can stand watching the Canadian House of Commons on TV I’m rarely impressed by any of Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative MPs as potential cabinet ministers. And then of course M. Poilievre himself has been described by the convicted US liar Alex Jones, who still owes Sandy Hook families untold millions, as “the real deal! Canada desperately needs a lot more leaders like him and so does the rest of the world.”)

Strong emotional dislike for PM Trudeau … and close November 5 election in USA

All this having been said, I remain cautious about the Trudeau Liberals’ ultimate election prospects, in or about (I continue to think myself) the fall of 2025. (Which is the date of the next legislated “fixed date” federal election in Canada. And the current Liberal-NDP Supply and Confidence Agreement seems to envision a next election around this time.)

I continue to be impressed by even people I know myself who have developed a strong emotional dislike for Justin Trudeau — as an example of so much that is wrong with even Canada in this strange new era of global turmoil. I also continue to wonder how much this emotional dislike may count in some ultimate “choice not change” contest in 2025, that finally pits Trudeau against Poilievre (in a federal political arena less friendly to Alex Jones).

Read the rest of this page »

SPECIAL FROM ROB SPARROW, HIGH PARK, TORONTO. MARCH 28, 2024. When the Toronto Blue Jays finished their 2022 season, they made a determination that the status quo wasn’t acceptable.

To that end, both a strategic and cultural shift for the Blue Jays in 2023 featured a vastly different style compared to many of the teams that came before.

(1) A Bitter Ending to 2023…

A one-dimensional offence heavily reliant on right-handed power hitters added left-handed bats in an attempt to balance the order. Outfield defence was prioritized to improve athleticism and limit extra-base hits on the defensive end, albeit at the expense of offensive production.

Overall, that off-season strategy was to upgrade the pitching and defence to complement an everyday lineup designed to beat teams in a variety of ways. This group wasn’t going to sit back and wait for a homer, it intended on applying pressure by hitting balls to the gaps, moving runners over and taking extra bases. These moves were all in service of creating a more well-rounded Blue Jays team that emphasized fundamentals, improved defence with a more serious-minded approach – minus the home run jacket and joyous dugout sunflower seed shower celebrations that fans enjoyed.

Yet by moving away from a part of their fun-loving identity that people were drawn to, the Blue Jays left themselves with precisely one avenue to connect with their fans: Winning. By not meeting expectations in that area (falling to a third place 89-win regular season), the frustrated fan base was left feeling that they had received little in return for what it had lost.

The failure to launch Blue Jay 2023 season was punctuated in the Wild Card round by another controversial managerial pitching decision that took centre stage for the second straight postseason. With Game Two scoreless in the fourth inning and starter Jose Barrios steamrolling through the Minnesota Twins lineup, manager John Schneider strolled to the mound to bring in Yusei Kikuchi (a pitcher that had not relieved all season) who promptly gave up the only two runs in the 2-0 elimination game loss – their postseason “next level” run was over before it really began.

Manager John Schneider’s ill-conceived move of taking starter Jose Berrios out created friction throughout the team; between the front office and manager who both deflected blame while throwing each other under the bus, and between the entire organization (front office/manager) and the players. Some of Toronto’s players discussed the move after the game, with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. saying “everybody was surprised.” Veteran Whit Merrifield was more critical in his post-game comments. “I hated it, frankly,” Merrifield said, “It’s not what cost us the game, but it’s the kind of baseball decisions that are taking away from managers and baseball.”

We got beat up two years in a row in the playoffs,” Bo Bichette told reporters, choosing his words carefully but clearly intent on making a point. “I think there is a lot or reflection needed … from players, but from the organization from the top down. Everybody needs to reflect to see what we can do better.” Parsing his words, it was clear who Bichette was referring to with “everybody”. Another lost season of baseball by the CEO Mark Shapiro/GM Ross Atkins tandem that is entering its ninth year with little to show.

Read the rest of this page »

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON, CANADA. TUESDAY, MARCH 26, 2024. We now know that : “General elections will be held in India from 19 April 2024 to 1 June 2024 to elect the 543 members of the 18th Lok Sabha. The elections will be held in seven phases and the results will be announced on 4 June 2024.”

The Wikipedia article goes on : “This will be the largest-ever election in the world … Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be contesting … for a third consecutive term … Approximately 960 million … individuals out of a population of 1.4 billion are eligible to participate.”

India and Canada today : one roadmap to a Canadian republic?

This 2024 election in India has some particular interest for Canada — which shares with India what Canada’s Constitution Act, 1867 calls “a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom.”

(The Lok Sabha or “House of the People,” eg, is the lower popularly elected house of India’s parliament, equivalent to the Canadian House of Commons. And Narendra Modi is the leader of the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] — the political party with the largest number of seats in the current 17th Lok Sabha.)

In particular again India today offers Canada one instructive model with regard to such key current headlines as “Support for King Charles wanes as Canadians’ republican sentiment grows … Growing numbers of Canadians want an elected head of state, survey reveals.”

India provides a model of “a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom” that does not have the British (or any other) monarch as head of state.

The republican head of state in India (somewhat misleadingly called a President, from Canada’s point of view?) is indirectly elected by the members of federal and state (provincial in Canada’s case) legislatures.

(Ireland offers another model, with a directly or popularly elected ceremonial head of state in a parliamentary democracy. The holder of this office is also called a President, but without the day-to-day governing power of the Prime Minister. The president in such cases has a role more like the monarch’s role in the UK — or in practice the Governor General of (once upon a time) Ireland, India and (still now in 2024) Canada, Jamaica, Australia, New Zealand, and so forth.)

Read the rest of this page »

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO . THURSDAY, MARCH 14, 2024. Last night I heard an eminent CTV host urge that many (mostly Conservative) provincial premiers want the Liberal federal government to change its carbon tax policy.

Doesn’t this mean (the implication seemed to be) that the federal government should do just that?

This reminded me of a current concern of the unusually independent freelance “member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery” in Ottawa, Dale Smith.

On Mr. Smith’s view, the “legacy media” (and especially CBC TV) have been trying to hold the federal government responsible for glitches or worse in federal-provincial programs. In fact these troubles are the fault of “delinquent premiers who can’t live up to their promises.”

In the federal-provincial child care program, Mr. Smith explains on his website today, eg : “fewer than half of the promised spaces have been created, and they [the CBC in this case but legacy media at large as well] want to make this a federal problem.”

Mr. Smith goes on : “It’s not, however — the federal government did their part, and delivered the promised funding, and what is left is for the provinces to live up to the agreements that they signed, and put their own money into the system. Several provinces are not doing that ….”

Read the rest of this page »

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO . TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 2024. Individual polls vary on exact numbers. But by almost the middle of March 2024 all polls have been saying for some time that it is very hard to see how the Justin Trudeau Liberals could “win” a fourth Canadian federal election in a row, in any at all near future.

Some recent polls have placed the New Democrats within shouting distance of the Liberals as well. (See eg obscure footnote at end of this piece,)

This has inevitably led to speculation that Jagmeet Singh’s New Democrats, thinking they could at least replace the Liberals as official opposition in a fresh election, might abrogate the current Liberal-NDP Supply and Confidence Agreement, and vote to bring the Trudeau Liberal minority government down.

On these assumptions there no doubt could be a federal election in Canada in 2024 — along with elections in more than 60 other countries globally — in the fateful year we are living through in many parts of the world.

If there is a federal election before the end of this year, the smart money has to say what polling guru Éric Grenier said yesterday to prospective newsletter subscribers : “As we enter the spring, the polls aren’t getting any better for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, leaving the Conservatives with multiple paths to a majority government when the next election is held.”

On this same logic a Conservative Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre — younger and not remotely as rich but otherwise almost as twisted as Donald Trump? — is more or less inevitable before the end of this year. It still seems to me, however, that all this rests on a certain assumption about the ultimate objectives of Jagmeet Singh and his federal New Democrats.

The 2024 election scenario, that is, assumes the highest and/or most important objective of the federal New Democrats is just to replace the Liberals as official opposition. (There is absolutely nothing in current polling to suggest that the New Democrats could actually win even a minority government in a fresh election — ie replace the Liberals as a federal governing party.)

Read the rest of this page »

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 2024. Yesterday’s announcement of the state funeral for former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney (1984–1993) from present Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (2015–20??) is suitably couched in high-minded language :

“Brian Mulroney devoted his career to serving Canadians. He was an extraordinary statesman and distinguished politician, respected both here at home and around the world … To honour the legacy he leaves behind, a state funeral is being held in Montreal on March 23rd …”

Most of the almost ubiquitous other commentary we’ve seen has had a similar tone. And in this context we at least found online journalist Holly Doan’s posting of some much more unguarded Mulroney remarks on March 4 refreshing (or at least a more realistic change of pace).

The remarks were taken from Peter C. Newman’s controversial 2005 book on the “Secret Mulroney Tapes” (which Mr. Mulroney himself felt was a betrayal) : “Prime Minister Brian Mulroney: Ottawa is a ‘sick’ city that runs on ‘goddamned incest’: ‘They’re all married to one another. They’re shacked up with one another. Their wives are on the payroll of the CBC. It’s just awful.’”

There is no doubt some deeper truth in all this — which is of course why it’s interesting. (It’s also telling tales out of school, which is also why it’s interesting.) At the same time, it finally reminded us that we have a good enough and even somewhat more high-minded tribute to Brian Mulroney of our own, in the relevant pages of senior editor Randall White’s almost altogether completed work in progress, Children of the Global Village : Democracy in Canada Since 1497.

With respect and (as with so many others among us) some real admiration, here then are the first two sections on Canada’s 18th prime minister from Part IV, Chapter 2 of Dr. White’s draft Canadian political history book as it appears on this site. They start with a subtitle …

Read the rest of this page »

NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK. RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO . FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2024. I recently found two articles from The Tyee on the current state of government and politics in Canada’s Pacific Province unusually intriguing.

The opinion polling still seems to be suggesting that David Eby’s high-flying New Democrats will probably win a second majority government in the BC provincial election to be held on or before October 19, 2024. (Although see also this recent Polling Canada note!)

I nonetheless finished reading my two Tyee articles with at least some slight sense that there was one issue over which the Eby government has lately been having some trouble. And this could spread at least a minor cloud over the election this fall.

The first article appeared on February 21, 2024, and is headlined “Throne Speech Looks Ahead to October Election … NDP promises action on affordability, health care and reconciliation.”

The second article, from February 22, bears the headline ”NDP Hits Brakes on Land Act Reconciliation Plan … Opposition forces government to relaunch consultations; Cullen blames misinformation.”

The second article elaborates on problems with the third of the three main issues on which the BC New Democrat government, in office sine 2017, is apparently seeking to be re-elected on this coming October 19 (according to its recent Throne Speech). A few quotations from the article suggest the thickening plot.

Read the rest of this page »