12.12.2014 02:49 PM

Are you now, or have you ever been friends with, Warren?

Who are the anonymous “insiders” who told a reporter that people are being barred from being Liberal candidates because of who their friends are?

No, we are not making this up. From the Winnipeg Free Press, this afternoon:

“Insiders also say Dinsdale was not high on the list of preferred candidates for a number of reasons, including that…there are concerns about his close friendship with columnist and former Liberal staffer Warren Kinsella.”

I don’t believe Mia Rabson would ever make something like this up.  So who are these McCarthyite “insiders,” pray tell?

 

46 Comments

  1. smelter rat says:

    Jeezuz….you’re punk rockers. Punks don’t even have friends. Are the Liberals that out of touch?

  2. Warren says:

    The House UnAmerican Activities Committee comes to mind, don’t it?

    And I plan to take you up on that offer, good sir. Thank you.

  3. MississaugaPeter says:

    Was there visiting my son and some university mates last weekend. How much lower did gas go this week than the 87.9 I saw?

    20 cents less than the 107.9 when I got back.

  4. Jay S says:

    I’m stunned. Are these monkeys in a competition for Stornoway?

    • MississaugaPeter says:

      Yes, Jay S.

      There are commentators here who will tell you that Trudeau is aiming for Stornoway in 2015 and 24 Sussex in 2019.

      I would suggest you apologize quick for calling them monkeys before they start calling you something worse.

  5. Lance says:

    I can appreciate that he wants to leave his own brand upon the party and wants to put in his own people, but jeeeeeeezus………..

  6. davie says:

    Libs might be over doing this shift to ‘youth.’

    “You friends with him? Well, you can’t play in my yard.”

  7. Matt says:

    He was the Liberal golden boy back in 2013 nearly beating the CPC in Brandon Souris. Now he’s tossed aside by the Trudeau backroom boys?

    They didn’t seem to mind you guys being friends back then. Something stinks here.

    They should be wanting someone with Dinsdale’s name recognition and family history in that riding.

    • smelter rat says:

      Read the story again. He was the nominated candidate, but support from senior levels of the party was tepid at best. I was here on the ground at the time. I don’t think they ever truly believed they could win, regardless of who the candidate was. It was a serious miscalculation. Rolf and some of the ground troops that came in to help put in long long days and were a fine bunch of people who knew better.

      • Terence Quinn says:

        Its all about improving the gene pool in the party. Doesn’t mean those not selected are rabid dogs just that they don’t fit the profile the party is seeking. The Libs will still have 95% of their seats selected in open nominations. Lets talk about the cons who might be at 50% once you factor that all sitting members are now safe from attack after the Rob Anders fiasco. The new Oakville/Burlington riding for one is a complete tory cluster fcuk with more hijinks that a three ring circus. There are several more.

        The big furor in that BC riding overlooks the fact each candidate that is still standing have sold over 25,000 memberships combined. sound like a problem to you?

  8. Skinny Dipper says:

    I think the next federal election will show a fairly wide shift in support in the average polls. I don’t expect the party leading now will be the party leading on election night. The winning party could be one of the others.

    • Terence Quinn says:

      Better take another dip in the reality world..maybe warm up the water and avoid shrinkage.

      • .. the electoral situation is volatile
        just like the weather is a response to the climate

        Think of The fatuous Harper Party/Government of One as a climate
        – a vast undemocratic, bloated bag of scandal, incompetence, duplicity ready to burst..

        And remember who has made himself the most ‘memorable’ ‘Conservative’ of them all..
        re Israel, wounded Vets, attacks on Environment, Electoral Fraud, Wheat Board, disgraced associates
        failed Procurement – F35’s, Afghanistan torture, devious Prorogues, Duffy & Nigel, Cabinet Confidence Clement
        Ray Novak whoever he is, partner of Communist China, Tar Sands – Fracking,
        hiding in a closet or bathroom, deficits, phony ‘Action’ ads,
        spying on ordinary Canadians, Omnibus ‘Cluster Bomb’ Bills, dead boreal caribou/wolves, Polluters don’t Pay
        Pipeline dreams, unelected faceless PMO = Parliament now,

        The endless list won’t be Harper’s ‘legacy’ – Legacy means Gift ..
        The correct word is Travesty
        With the opportunity of a lifetime – to be Prime Minister of Canada
        just look at the level of disdain, failure, duplicity, arrogance, conceit, secrecy & obstruction

        Ya think Canadians don’t notice this stuff ?

  9. William says:

    Funny, watched 42 again for like the 4th time yesterday. It’s all about playing the game to win, not about who plays it, or why some think they shouldn’t. Play to win, with the best players on the field, period. Criss…

  10. Greg Vezina says:

    What a huge disappointment our Liberals are becoming. Kathleen Wynne preventing many good local candidates running for nominations in Niagara Falls, and many other ridings, and now, after promising not to, Justin is doing the same thing. He is lot further away from power than she was/is and likely always will be now for sure. Get ready for Prime Minister Mulcair.

    • davie says:

      PM Mulcair…just a wish right now…but suppose an NDP minority…what would Libs be looking to trade for their support?

  11. cynical says:

    Liberals: Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in a riding near you!

    Does no-one in the LPC learn from the lessons of the past?

  12. Mark says:

    Another reason my >30 year relationship with the LPC has recently come to and end. What I would do for a good, thoughtful PC party now… Sigh. Trudeau’s turning into quite the little dictator. His “friends” are no better.

    • T Sullivan says:

      I quit the party May 8th, or at least withdrew my contributions and resigned from the association exec I was on and I’ve allowed the membership to lapse. This is after over 30 years of of knocking on doors, folding envelopes, making calls, giving money …

      It is not that I hate the Liberals. I just don’t care what happens to them, an that saddens me. We have a piss-poor government now.

  13. Brachina says:

    As a New Democract I can’t tell you how much this makes me happy, I’m giddy. No offense Warren, I like

    And I love the sound of Prime Minister Mulcair.

    Keep up with the Gaffes Justin! Keep on letting it all go to your head, and treating the LPC as your own private sandbox.

  14. David Beatty says:

    Friends with Warren? Yes. Grade Nine Social Studies. A very bright, funny and insightful individual.

  15. Kaiser Helmets & Motorbikes says:

    JT, master of damnatio memoriae… WK, two letters in the alphabet.

    Just remember, one of you worked your ass off for everything you have, the other is a JA riding his dad’s good name. There will be more elections.

  16. Jeff says:

    I am not a Liberal Warren but you would have been a good candidate. If we have people in politics that want to be nothing more than the next mouthpiece for same kind of politics that we see from 75% of people we get pretty bored in a hurry. People are dynamic.

    By the way, especially with this recent story I am starting to see this “open nominations” thing as like a total half-hearted Machiavellian kind of half truth to try to distinguish the Liberals as different. In their selective way they almost seem worse because they bring so much attention to it than I have seen in a long time.

  17. JH says:

    Jeez this is getting to a point where all Harper & Mulcair have to do is make sure some of their nutbars shut up.
    Trudeau and cronies are handling the rest.

    • Brammer says:

      “..make sure some of their nutbars shut up…”

      Harper’s secret sauce for election success since day one.

      • JH says:

        Maybe Trudeau should take a few lessons from Harper and Mulcair then.
        Someday, someone (Warren?) is going to write a book maybe entitiled Trudeau’s Croneyland Chronicles. I’m pretty sure the tales of how he’s getting his advice and from whom during this period of his time as Liberal leader, are going to make fascinating reading.

  18. Friends? Warren doesn’t have friends.

    I think “known associate” is more accurate.

    I’m a crony at best.

  19. Peter says:

    I’m thinking of standing for the Liberals in the next election. It appears I meet all the qualifications. True, I’m not a Liberal and have never supported them, but I don’t know Warren.

  20. ottawacon says:

    Made the comment in the Sun column piece, but did not expect such concrete evidence so soon. For about 15 years, there have been a mutable core of Liberals, originally Martinites, who have an essentially vampiric relationship to the Liberal leadership. I think Trudeau has come to the leadership too early, too unaccomplished, but he might have been able to get past that. But in the end I don’t think he is going to survive his own advisers now.

    • Terence Quinn says:

      You have not seen, and won’t, the quiet support coming from the Chretien people and PET’s old chief of staff whose son is in the middle of things for JT. You might also might not be aware that even Mulroney quietly supports JT.

      Yes, he is a rookie leader but has learned fast. His fund raising capabilities are bested by no one. His toughness will become apparent on things heat up.

  21. Joe says:

    Read an article by Tom Mulcair in which he opines the next election will be a ‘left/right’ battle. I tend to disagree with him. The battle will be a ‘competence/incompetence’ battle and a ‘democracy/dictatorship’ battle. The sad part is the Liberals have picked the wrong leader and end up on the losing side of the battle on both counts. I think the Liberal upper echelon needs a good mikveh to wash all its impurities away including most of PM PM’s advisers.

  22. Brachina says:

    Oh there is no denying Trudeau has a talent for taking people’s money, after all not going to work very often and doing the job he was elected to gives him plenty of time to fundraise.

    But he will still have no where near the kind of money the Tories will have in preelection advertizing both government based and party based and during the election, the spending cap will mean the NDP, Tories, and Liberals will have the same pockets during that key period..

    • Terence Quinn says:

      brachina, he will have more than enough to spend pre election. besides his very good use of social media comes quite cheaply. Harper’s social media ads are being hit hard by people who comment on them. Any Harper FB ads I have seen are running about 80/85% against him in the comments following the ads. most are quite brutal. Trudeau’s social media ads are not as many but get pretty good coverage and I would say only about 40/50% negative. I would also suggest that the cons have paid snipers posting on FB and other media where Harper gets trashed. They try to dampen that.

  23. debs says:

    warren and I share everything, were like BFFs, I bet the political world didnt know he is a brony.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Est3UNs-LIk

  24. sezme says:

    Party politics at its finest. Amazing how quickly in devolves into pure tribalism.

  25. Kevin says:

    Well, I don’t know. Didn’t some insiders also say that Dalton McGuinty was an “evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet”? I guess there were also concerns about that, at the time.

  26. Marta P. says:

    Re: McCarthyite insiders

    For someone to be McCarthy-like, one would have to be start from a Republican mentalite. In our present context, Stasi-esque is the correct adjective. Haven’t you noticed that anyone not towing the Moscow-Beijing line – basic dictatorship – is being systematically targeted and frozen out? One by one. Sitting MPs. Potential free-thinking MPs. For example, the absolutist stance on abortion is easily understood referenced to Maurice “licenses to have babies” Strong:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YCatox0Lxo#t=102

    If the Liberal Party wants rejuvenation, purge the Quislings. Time to wake up. Active measures are easily seen for those with eyes open…

    Further reading:

    Morality Play (alternative title: How Not To Do Propaganda)

    Gerald Caplan former NDP national director lambasts Stephen Harper concluding in the Globe and Mail that: “Stephen Harper doesn’t know how lucky he is that President Putin wasn’t more primed about the Canadian record over the past eight years. The Russian president might not have agreed to shake hands at all.”

    Mr Caplan can rest assured that someone who spent their formative years in the First Chief Directorate – an organ of the KGB – monitoring foreigners and consular officials is well “primed”. Indeed, the President’s CV includes coordinating efforts with the Stasi to track down and recruit foreigners. “What gave Mr. Harper the moral authority to order Vladimir Putin around?” asks Caplan. Diplomatic tensions aside, on this one question hangs the entire narrative of the Marxist-Liberal left in Canada.

    What of the moral foundation of the Chekocracy? Millions were worked to death in the Gulag slave labour camps. Millions of families were torn apart. Man-made famines killed millions in what the Ukrainians now the Holodomor, the famine-genocide. The Hitler-Stalin pact was drafted to ensure an orderly butchering and dismemberment of little Poland. Paranoid Stalin, having severely weakened the Soviet military by wave after wave of officer purges, ensured the war was far more costly and dragged on far longer than it had to. By the time the war was over, Europe and Asia lay in ruins. The iron curtain in place, Stalin’s socialism in one country began to resemble National Socialism more and more. The Jews again provided a convenient scapegoat. There was the brutal invasion of Czechoslovakia. The ill-fated Hungarian revolution. East Germany. Afghanistan. The Cuban missile crisis. The stagnation of Russian society in bread lines, shortages, and mass-alcoholism. Only the horrors of Mao rival these levels of mass-killing and social dysfunction.

    Today’s Russia features the persecution and sometimes execution of journalists. Flogging and arresting young dissidents e.g. “Pussy Riot.” “Gay propaganda” is ominously close to the notorious “Article 58” that sent millions to the Gulag the filmiest of “crimes”. The Kremlin is moving to a totally walled-off internet. Despite the name change, the FSB appears drearily similar to the KGB. The totalitarian machinery grinds on. But for Kaplan and Marxist-liberal fellow travellers, this is a superior narrative contrasted to Stephen Harper the Devil. Vladimir Putin, former KGB operative, current authoritarian quasi-dictator, operates on a higher moral plane than the Conservative Party. The beaver is more dangerous than the bear.

    Across the Anglosphere, organized labour appears corrupted. Andrew Murray, Chief of Staff of Britain’s largest trade union Unite, launched a group supporting pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine: Solidarity With The Antifascist Resistance In Ukraine (SARU). Introduced as representing the Communist Party of Britain, it branded the Kiev government “fascist.” Unite has given £28.9 million to Labour. Analysts observe that in return for its funding, Unite exerts an increasingly tight hold over Labour; some describe Murray as the single most powerful man in British unions. The reports of Leninist thugs stripping the dead passengers of MH17 of jewelry and cash and leaving them to bloat in the hot sun apparently did not register with Murray. Murray owns a luxury £900,000 townhouse in a gated community in Islington – evidently, all animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others. He ranted before a Communist Party of Britain meeting: “If the Government continues to govern in this way, it’s up to us to make the country ungovernable!” – surely a thinly veiled invitation to insurrection.

    Stephen Harper may well be a SOB. Politics unfortunately remains an oft dirty enterprise. But compared to Caplan, Murray and other Putin cheerleaders, Harper remains saintly. This is the Achilles’ heel of the “progressive” narrative.

    Homework:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1232766/Stalin-murdered-20million-people-including-grandfather–terrifying-Putin-turning-hero.html

  27. davie says:

    My own thinking is that it would not matter who the government in Russia was, after USSR dismantled the Warsaw Pact, NATO leadership would still have maintained itself and marched to the borders of Russia. Any government of Russia would be paranoid at what the west has been doing. Any government and people anywhere would be paranoid if an military alliance kept crowding closer. Anti Russian propaganda has become more shrill in the past 3 or 4 years…long before Ukraine doings.

    As you have here, channeling Robert Conquest fits the free world narrative nicely.

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