
Feature, Musings —01.17.2025 07:24 AM
—Last normal Friday thoughts
The best thing about being a writer is being somewhere and someone quietly comes up to you, and they say something you wrote affected them and stayed with them. Happy, sad, anger, remembering: whatever.
That’s the payoff.
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In politics, the job is always hiding a lot of the unattractive things about the candidate – usually anger and impatience. Poilievre is fascinating because he doesn’t do that. He just is what he is.
That’s a big gamble.
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For the last few years, when I hear “never a dull moment,” I say to myself “I could really go for some dull moments”
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The thing about the carbon tax is that everyone was in favor of taxing polluters until they found out they were included in the list of polluters and then they were against it
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Carney’s problem is that he’s never been a politician and it shows. Freeland’s problem is that she’s been a politician and it shows.
Poilievre’s problem is Trump.
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The politics of this era is the politics of cruelty.
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Fans of CBC need to reflect on the fact that Poilievre has said he’ll defund the CBC about a million times, and he’s gone up in polling. If fans of CBC want to save CBC, they needed to do more than they’ve done.
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Carney: fail to launch.
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Carney and Freeland abandoning the carbon tax. Quoth the Bard: “God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.”
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Gladiator II: you be glad if you never watch it.
#WarrenMovieReviews
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This feels like the last regular weekday before everything gets way worse.
F-P Champagne, observing the dismal Carney launch, must be wishing he had taken more time in deciding whether to run.
Me thinks he would win in a romp.
Now, it’s Freeland’s to lose.
If they called it Gladiator II “The quickening” then I would have been all over it. Those who know, know.
FWIW, the Canadian markets don’t seem to care about Monday.
Warren, for all you have done, and continue to do, we thank you. I’m sure it hasn’t been all “ice cream and lollipops”, as an old friend of mine used to say. I think we (as in Canadians) desperately need a change of scenery in Ottawa. I’m not sure Poilievre can pull it off. It is far easier slinging mud from the opposition benches than it is making the tough choices in government (and IMHO, there are some tough choices on the horizon). Carney doesn’t impress me, but maybe that will change. I think Freeland is in over her head. Keep on keepin’ on brother.
I do not want to see the CBC go. But I get the impression that their entire upper echelon, and obviously a whopping majority of their writers and editors are politically tone deaf and spend all their time in a Liberal/proggie partisan bubble.
I think it was Konrad Yakabuski in the Globe (note, not some far-right wacko) who talked about the CBC’s incessant activism. They absolutely refuse to put anyone on air to articulate an alternative viewpoint on a whole host of issues: anything to do with First Nations, immigration, climate change and so on. They are reaping what they have sowed and continue to so, every day, every minute they’re on air. And I say that as someone who watches The National regularly and value what’s good about it.
Look what happened to Stockwell Day.
I happened to come across the old CBC 1993 election coverage (maybe a good recommendation for you this weekend Warren!), and my wife noted that Campbell’s concession speech didn’t actually sound that bad. The problem with her though was the subtle tone in which she spoke to people, even in that last speech. There was an air of smugness.
With that in mind, I just can’t see Freeland winning anyone over in a debate. It’s a different flavour, but the puppet master was always better-suited to mouthing the words coming out of Trudeau’s mouth from the side of the podium.
Except it was always obvious he had a puppet master when he talked. His tell has always been the side to side shift that gives him a couple of beats to come up with the talking points Katie put in his head.
Respectfully disagree that Carney failed to launch. I thought he was great on the Daily Show. I was worried he’d be Iggy 2.0 but he seems to have much better presence and political antennae.
I like Freeland a lot but I don’t know if she’s enough of a clean break. She also has a bad habit of making silly comments (cancel Disney+, “vibecession”, etc).
I think either of them can take it to PP, but I sense they are much more worried about Carney. I think are worried because with his resume, he can credibly tell PP “We have serious problems to solve and we need serious people to solve them, and your fifteen minutes are up.” (To steal a line from Aaron Sorkin.)
One of the many lines he wrote while hooked on crack.
Did Althia Raj say Mark Carney’s French is terrible? I listened to his French, and in my opinion it’s fine.