, 02.09.2018 09:36 AM

Adler-Kinsella Show: in which I defend Trudeau on personkind, and on all kinds of pipelines

Every Thursday, I have a radio-via-phone encounter with my great friend Charles Adler.  This week, the encounter took place by luggage rack two at Calgary’s Airport (said airport having received more snow than the North Pole before we started wrecking the planet).

I valiantly defended the Prime Minister on personkind-gatewhich shows no signs of abating, and may be getting worse – because I actually believe him when he said he was trying to make a dumb joke that fell flat.  But you only get so many of those “it’s just a joke” mulligans in this business.

I defended him on the growing Alberta-B.C. spat, too.  I said to him what I have heard from so many partisan Conservatives and Liberals here in Alberta: they admire Rachley Notley’s intelligence and guts.  She may still lose to Jason Kenney, but there’s a lot of admiration for her here – particularly for how she’s taking on the nation-wrecker Horgan.

Anyway, here it is.  Me, I’m now off to many hours of lectures at the Faculty of Law!


21 Comments

  1. Matt says:

    Yeah “peoplekind-gate” is going to get worse when the alleged brains behind Trudeau Gerry Butts absolutely loses his shit on twitter calling anyone criticizing Trudeau an alt-right Nazi.

    Then he gets shredded by Piers Morgan…… PIERS F–KING MORGAN!!!!

    • Kevin T. says:

      Piers Morgan’s words have no weight in reality, he’s just a wannabe Fox News dingleberry.

      • Miles Lunn says:

        Actually Fox News hates him as although he is rather pro-Trump and doesn’t have a great reputation, he is strongly supportive of gun control which is a no-no amongst the right in the US. His opinions on gun control have made him hated amongst US right as in Britain, support for gun control cuts across the political spectrum whereas in the US one must be pro-NRA to be considered a conservative.

    • Ronald O'Dowd says:

      Matt,

      If accurate, there goes his credibility. The boss urgently needs to have speaks.

  2. Sjs says:

    I often don’t agree with you, and I rarely laugh out loud— but your reference to DoFo being the bear on the bicycle at the circus is a hoot.

  3. Charlie says:

    Fascinatingly, those who are proponents of Trudeau stepping in on the BC-AB issue, are the very same people who accused Trudeau senior of centralist government tyranny and would likely do the same if the current Trudeau government had a different position.

    I find the entirety of this situation to be almost satirical. We should all take a moment to appreciate that an NDP-Alberta government is in a spat with an NDP-BC government over a pipeline, with a federal Liberal government come down on the side of the Alberta NDP government and taking heat for their stance in coastal BC.

    The era of Canadian politics in 2018, folks!

    • The Doctor says:

      The fact remains that if his father were alive today and not a hypocrite, he would have decisively stepped in to defend the federal/national interest here. That’s what Trudeau Sr. was all about: asserting and defending the federal/national interest. All I hear from JT so far is a lot of motherhood boilerplate blather and so far SFA in terms of concrete action.

      Personally I think Butts is scared of alienating the left flank. But Butts for all his cleverness has forgotten that the Liberal formula has been that you campaign from the left and govern from the centre.

  4. Miles Lunn says:

    Also bad news for the federal NDP, whom will they side with. My guess is with their BC cousins since they have more at stake in BC than Alberta. For Trudeau from a purely electoral standpoint, it would make more sense to side with BC as the party is stronger there although he is between a rock and a hard place as both the Tories and NDP have rock solid bases in BC so he has to watch over both his left and right shoulder there unlike in most provinces where he is only threatened on his right side. So I am no fan of him overall, but think he is right here and unlike the Conservatives, he has more at stake (pretty much all Conservative voters in BC and potential ones support the pipeline, there are no anti-pipeline types who would consider voting Conservative whereas some might consider voting Liberal).

    It will be interesting to see how Horgan does on this, but in the Interior the pipeline is quite popular so this could kill any chances of winning back seats there. And without seats in the Interior, it will be tough to win enough in the Lower Mainland to compensate for this (note the well to do ridings in the Lower Mainland aren’t going to vote NDP for obvious reasons) so that is maybe why he is pushing PR so hard as last election he pretty much won every winneable riding in the Lower Mainland, it was outside of it hell fell flat as the Greens gained in Southern Vancouver Island while the NDP lost seats in the Interior (note the past three times they formed government they had strong support in the Interior unlike this time).

    While not sure what you think of the new BC Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson, I saw him interviewed and he mentioned the national unity and how the feds had approved the pipeline and BC should be working with them not picking fights. And last time the NDP was in power in BC, relations were not so good with the feds, whereas under Campbell and Clark, they got along well with Chretien, Martin, Harper, and Trudeau.

  5. Robert White says:

    The right wing in CANADA are beside themselves out of desperation to find any sort of political gaffs out of the Trudeau government that they can get their infinitesimally tiny hands on.

    It’s as though they have collectively become ashamed of themselves and are attempting to compensate for their infinitesimally tiny contributions on the world stage.

    Freud said that ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar’, but this political Penis Envy on the part of the Conservatives & so-called ‘Progressive Conservatives’ is a dead giveaway that they are feeling self conscious and insecure.

    A broken clock is right twice per day, and if the neocons wait long enough they will find that the Liberals, and leadership, is only human, and undoubtedly, when exhausted, are prone to making the odd self deprecating, & falling flat commentary. Wait long enough and you will see Trudeau bounce back and overcome the vitriol.

    RW

    • Matt says:

      So, you can honestly sit there and say if Trudeau had received near universal praise for his “peoplekind” comment instead of the near universal ridicule he got, he would still be saying it was all just a joke?

      Not likely. He’d have gone on yet another self congratulatory, vomit inducing rant about what a femenist he is.

      And when all you have to offer is insults about tiny hands, it seems you are the one who’s trying to compensate for something.

      PS – The only ones spitting vitriol are those on Team Trudeau

      • Fred from BC says:

        Agreed…but I think you’re feeding a troll here…

      • Ronald O'Dowd says:

        Scott,

        I choose to give the PM the benefit of the doubt. Trouble is, he himself didn’t really sound convincing when he explained it. It was like his heart wasn’t in it.

        But we do agree on something: NEXT. Moving on.

      • Matt says:

        Scott the Lib-bot says what?

        Frustrated? Nope.

        Trudeau now, after just two years in office has the same approval rating Harper did after 9 years.

        People are starting to clue in

  6. Ned Ludd says:

    Person, people kind….small spuds…..a three day wonder. My greater concern is that we have a Federal gov’t that wastes millions on some questionable projects(like the Parliament Hill skating rink) but cries poverty when it comes to providing for disabled Canadian veterans. That is what pisses me off.
    I’m beginning to miss the days of Stephen Harper…at least the man never made me cringe.

    • Robert White says:

      That’s because he was always hiding out in a closet or washroom to avoid the press. And when the press attempted to catch up to him he had the RCMP detail rough them up in front of cameras in order to telegraph to reporters/journalists that he was as accountable as Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, & Adolf Hitler.

      RW

      • Ned Ludd says:

        No great fan of Harper, but at least the man engaged his brain before speaking. If not for his name, hair and good looks, Prime Minister Trudeau would be a backbench M.P., nothing more. The real power behind the throne is Gerald Butts.

  7. P. Brenn says:

    Mr Butts tweet reads 4 am in Chicago …thats very early or very late…I dont function well at that hour

  8. Sam White says:

    If you’re wondering who’s side will Trudeau be on if it comes down to picking a side in the BC/AB spat, just take a look at the 2015 electoral map for your answer.

    My guess is that he’ll dither and dather as long as possible, hoping Kinder Morgan will just throw up their hands and move on to greener climes. Then it’s not 100% on him and he can say “well I tried..”

    Similar to what happened with Energy East, rather than just get stuck in regulatory hell, they’ll pull up stakes and go elsewhere.

    It’s no secret this is Gerry Butts end game, and the well funded USA driven mechanism to keep Alberta’s wealth land locked is working as planned.

    Just look at the new process which will need to look at “gender impact” – does anyone seriously think any more pipelines are going to be built in Canada now?

    Meanwhile, as the USA resource sectors prospers and they’ll soon be a net exporter, they rub their hands with glee as their Canadian useful idiots continue to do their bidding.

    • Miles Lunn says:

      True enough, although on Energy East both provinces affected are areas the Liberals need to do well in, but there are far more seats in Quebec than New Brunswick so I don’t think Trudeau will lose too much sleep over losing a few New Brunswick seats (never mind with the Tories still quite toxic in parts of the province probably only the traditional rural Anglophone seats will be lost which rarely go Liberal anyways).

  9. Fred from BC says:

    Typo in article: Rachley Notley.

  10. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Warren,

    The PMO seriously needs to up its game. And FFS, don’t let anyone tweet like a blithering idiot. Telford is known for common sense. Take the obvious hint.

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