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…with my pals Supriya and Matt on AM640 this morning! You can listen in here.

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Hate him. 

The 70 per cent of Americans who self-identify as Democrats or Independents share one thing: they hate, hate, hate Donald Trump. They want him gone. Impeached, indicted, whatever. Gone.

The 30 per cent of who still call themselves Republicans, however, love him. They adore him. They stick with him.

No amount of controversy, no new outrage, deters them. They remain devoted to the Unpresident. As such, elected Republicans are afraid to oppose him. Those who detest Trump (cf. Senators Flake and Corker) fear the wrath of the lunatic Trumpian media (cf. Fox and Friends, Breitbart, Alex Jones). So they choose flight over fight.

Politicos and political scientists are frustrated by the stubborn Trump voter. Entire forests have been felled to print analyses about how pry lose Trump’s core voters. Racism allegations didn’t work (mainly because a lot of them are racist). Sexism allegations didn’t work (ditto). Allegations about mental instability didn’t work, either (sigh).

But, this week, something revisited the public consciousness. Something that just might work. And it was the product of “oppo.”

This writer has been doing oppo for political parties for decades. Oppo, however disparaged it is by the mainstream, persists because it works.

Now, notwithstanding the many mythologies that have developed around James Carville’s Clinton-era war room, and just about every other war room since, opposition research – “oppo,” as it’s called – is neither new nor glamorous. It is, instead, frequently boring work that has been done in political campaigns since the beginning of time. 

Sometimes it wins campaigns, and sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s always worth doing.

Oppo is just one part of a large and complex campaign organization, drawing together press relations, polling, field organization, debate preparation, advertising and the candidate’s own retail politicking. At best, an oppo team’s damaging revelation will throw an opponent off his or her campaign “message” for a day or so. But rarely will it win a race on its own.

By the early 1990s in the United States, oppo started to come into its own. Larry Sabato, one of the most acute observers of the unloved species that calls itself a political consultant, estimates that there was a 200 per cent growth in opposition research firms in the U.S. in this period. Such paid, full-time professional political consultants, as opposed to the ad hoc, decidedly amateurish political consultants that had preceded them, had become a big, multimillion-dollar business. 

Oppo is ubiquitous now. Technological advances have enabled the media, and politicians, to do things that had been previously only dreamed of. In the case of politicos, technology and the Internet (and its dangerous progeny, Facebook and Twitter) permitted even the most modest campaign to develop crucial databases containing information about opponents. 

James Carville once told me he doesn’t agree with the naysayers say about oppo. “Look,” he told me, “the best way to do this game is to get all your information, and then get all your information out. The voters deserve more information, you know? We’re not in this business to be mean or negative. We’re in it to draw distinctions, and to draw distinctions that favour our side. So we just go out and try and be very honest about these distinctions, these differences.” 

Which leads us, in a circuitous fashion, to this bit of oppo: there is a tape that exists, that real people have really seen. It shows something that happened in room 1101 at the Ritz in Moscow on November 9, 2013. Here, according to one of the people who has seen it, is what it shows:

“There were other aspects to [the target’s] engagement with the Russian authorities. One which had borne fruit for them was to exploit [the target’s] personal obsessions and sexual perversions in order to obtain suitable ‘kompromat’ (compromising material) on him. According to Source D, where s/he had been present, [the target’s] conduct in Moscow included hiring the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel where he knew President and Mrs. Obama (whom he hated) had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia, and defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him. The hotel was known to be under [Russian federal Security Service] control with microphones and concealed cameras in all the main rooms to record anything they wanted to.”

The target of the oppo effort – initially paid for by Republicans, later by Democrats – was one Donald J. Trump. 

So, read that passage above again, and then ask yourself: when this oppo work ever becomes public – and it will, guaranteed – will Trump’s voters stay with him? Will they remain loyal?

This war room guy’s hunch: they will do what has been long-predicted, and is long overdue. Namely:

Drop him.

 

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.@sljournal calls Recipe for Hate by @kinsellawarren “a compelling and jagged read.” It’s available now: https://t.co/qsIMJwVVV2 pic.twitter.com/NOdaPvY231

— Dundurn (@dundurnpress) October 30, 2017

With a title ripped from a Bad Religion song, this book does not try to hide its punk flair. X and Kurt Blank are best friends in Portland, Maine at the beginning of the punk rock movement. Kurt acts as a Nick Carraway figure to X’s Gatsby, narrating his story. Fueled by anger, music, and misfit solidarity, the boys are devastated when one of their own is crucified behind the local bar that hosts punk shows. With police who seem less than fully committed to finding the murderers, X throws himself into figuring out what is going on and uncovers a twisted plot of Nazi ideals…the story compels readers forward…The novel’s unpolished aspect, which in another book might be off-putting, adds a layer of punk rock attitude. It is a story analogous to modern times and will find a home in activist hands.

VERDICT: A compelling and jagged read, buy for the anarchists and misfits in your library.

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That Robert Mueller is one crafty guy.

He knew the Unpresident would say (a) the Manafort/Gates indictment doesn’t mention me or my campaign (b) they were bad guys I haven’t had any contact with in a long time, and (c) me and my campaign did nothing wrong.

Mueller knew Trump would do that.  He knew.

So what did he do? He waited until the same morning Manafort and Gates were being charged – and then he quietly let this bombshell drop: one of Trump’s most senior campaign advisors – one of the advisors who was with him after the campaign, too – has pleaded guilty to conspiring with Russian agents.  To get “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.  “Thousands of emails.”

Donald Trump is going down, hard.  It may take a while.  But he is done.

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Here is the first page of the multi-count indictment.

Read it. It is extraordinary. And there can be no doubt, now, that Trump’s campaign was effectively run out of the Kremlin.

Have a nice day, President Pisstape.  Your misery is just beginning, you racist, sexist sonofabitch.

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It will be such a good day, too!  My God Almighty, how I enjoy the misery and despair that will be unleashed today!

Trumpkins being bankrupted by legal bills! Once-close Trumpsters turning on each other before grand juries! The inner circle’s mug shots living on the Internet, forever!  Make Assholes Guilty Again!

Who do you think is heading to the slammer? Vote now, vote often!

 

It’s #IndictmentMonday! Woot! Who’s getting their very own mugshot today?

— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) October 30, 2017

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The OPP, as you may recall, criminally charged two Ontario Liberals for “deleting” some emails which weren’t deleted. The guy they used to do the deleting is Pete Faist. That’s well known. 

What wasn’t known until this afternoon is this: THE OPP HIRED PETE FAIST TO DO THE SAME THING FOR THEM. 

From someone who was at the trial today:

We learned that Peter Faist worked as a security and network architect for a number of large corporations – like BMO and CTV – and government agencies – like OLG and OPP. He never had any issue passing a security check. 
In fact, when Peter worked for the OPP Major Crimes unit, he was not assigned his own log-in and password but rather used an OPP staff member’s to conduct his work.  

So the process at OPP was identical to the process at OPO. He was signed in. Accompanied by a member of staff. Did his work using someone else’s password. 

Will media report this? Probably not. The narratives are so baked in…nothing seems to be breaking through. Even as the defense dismantles the more sensational allegations…

I don’t know about you, but I find this mind-blowing: when the OPP hired Pete to do this work, it was okay. 

But when the same guy was hired to do the same work at Queen’s Park, it’s suddenly a crime?

This trial is a fucking farce, now. That, or someone needs to swear a complaint against the OPP. 

Maybe I’ll do that. 

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From the just-out review of the School Library Journal of Recipe For Hate:

With a title ripped from a Bad Religion song, this book does not try to hide its punk flair. X and Kurt Blank are best friends in Portland, Maine at the beginning of the punk rock movement. Kurt acts as a Nick Carraway figure to X’s Gatsby, narrating his story. Fueled by anger, music, and misfit solidarity, the boys are devastated when one of their own is crucified behind the local bar that hosts punk shows. With police who seem less than fully committed to finding the murderers, X throws himself into figuring out what is going on and uncovers a twisted plot of Nazi ideals…the story compels readers forward…The novel’s unpolished aspect, which in another book might be off-putting, adds a layer of punk rock attitude. It is a story analogous to modern times and will find a home in activist hands.

VERDICT: A compelling and jagged read, buy for the anarchists and misfits in your library.

In case you don’t know (I didn’t), the SLJ is the world’s largest reviewer of books, multimedia, and technology for teens and young adults, etc.

Not bad!

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I don’t think so, and I said so to Mr. Nuttall at The Tyee:

Political consultant and former North Vancouver Liberal candidate Warren Kinsella rejects that idea.

Kinsella told The Tyee the Liberal strategy has always been to win as many seats across the board as possible. Although some “central Canadian” strategists may suggest trying to trade off seats in B.C. for gains elsewhere, Kinsella said he doubts Trudeau would go for it.

“That kind of calculus is pretty risky,” he said. “I just do not believe that of him, that he would discount the ever growing number of seats found in B.C. because somebody suggested to him he could make it up somewhere else.”

Kinsella said the Liberals do seem out of touch on some environmental issues in B.C.

But some of the groups Trudeau has upset in B.C., such as the anti-pipeline contingent, would have likely voted for the New Democrats anyway, he added.

The government has been “losing its sea legs” in other provinces lately and it’s not an issue specific to B.C., Kinsella said. “Sometimes you get into those phases where everything seems to be going wrong and you can’t catch a break.”

With an “untested” Jagmeet Singh leading the federal NDP and new Conservative leader Andrew Scheer a “dud,” Kinsella said Trudeau is still the contender to beat in 2019.

Others interviewed include Kai Nagata, David Moscrop and my friend Herb Dhaliwal. Check it out, comments are open.

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Twenty bucks will get you the book and the record (both signed)! Ten bucks will get you the bands and a bad rash.

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