Categories for Feature

Friday night! SFH! The Bovine! Dance!

— 02.20.2020 09:50 PM

Friday, February 21: Shit From Hell is playing at the Bovine Sex Club.

Yes. That is the name of our band. Yes, that is the name of the club where we are playing.

Some other great bands are playing. We asked to go first, so we can hang out with our friends and dance. It’s the launch of my new book, Age of Unreason, too.

So, come on by and dance and have fun. I’ll sell you a Donald Trump Is An Asshole T-shirt and throw in the book. Records, too. (They’re taking up too much room in the basement.)

I know you’ve got other crap going on. I know. But we would be grateful if you came by and hung out, even for a bit.

Friday, around 9, at 542 Queen Street West. Come! It will be a blast, and great to see you.

W


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Dem debate: damn!

— 02.20.2020 08:29 AM



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JWR offers a solution

— 02.19.2020 05:08 PM

But Trudeau won’t listen.

He doesn’t like strong women who talk back.

Story:

Wilson-Raybould, now an independent MP, called for Trudeau to fly to B.C. to get personally involved in meetings, a cooling-off period in B.C. during which construction would cease and the RCMP leave the area, and the immediate tabling of long-promised Indigenous land rights and self-governance legislation.

Wilson-Raybould also made a plea to the Wet’suwet’en to take responsibility for providing clarity to Canadians about who speaks for a community that Canadians and governments understand is divided.

Wilson-Raybould was especially critical of Justin Trudeau’s failed promises.

Canada has known for decades “what needs to be done,” said Wilson-Raybould. “But here we are, yet again, in a moment of crisis because the hard work was punted.”

…She said the prime minister and his colleagues know this, “So please look in the mirror and ask yourself why?”

“Let us be honest — the prime minister has to learn to take responsibility,” said Wilson-Raybould.

She suggested Canadians have learned “the true history and the need for fundamental change” yet Trudeau has done little but talk.


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From the archives: Omar Khadr and Christopher Speer

— 02.11.2020 01:23 AM

[Khadr is back in the news because he was speaking at a university this week. It attracted attention. So, here is what I’ve written about him – and his victim – a couple years ago.]

Six days before he received the wound that killed him, Sgt. 1st Class Christopher J. Speer walked into a minefield to rescue two wounded Afghan children, according to fellow soldiers. He applied a tourniquet to one child and bandaged the other, they said. Then he stopped a passing military truck to take the wounded children to a U.S. Army field hospital. Speer saved those children, his colleagues said.

Speer won a medal for that.

I have a view that is different from many of my Liberal and liberal friends: while I don’t dispute that Omar Khadr was a child soldier, or that he was manipulated by al-Qaida, or that he was treated badly by the U.S. military after his capture – I also don’t dispute that he killed Christopher Speer with a hand grenade, or that Speer didn’t deserve that, or that Speer was mainly preoccupied with saving lives until the day he encountered Omar Khadr.

Speer had kids; Khadr was a kid.  Speer knew he was on a dangerous mission in which he could die; Khadr said he knew that, too.  What happened to Speer was a tragedy, and a lot of what happened to Khadr was, too.

All that said, I don’t think it is right that Omar Khadr should receive in excess of $10 million from Canada.  I don’t think he should get an apology, either.

He’s alive and free and happy, and the young guy who saved lives isn’t.  I think that should have ended the matter, but apparently others felt otherwise.

When he apologized to Christopher Speer’s widow, Omar Khadr said he had learned “the beauty of life.”

So, I’ll leave the final word to her, because her words should count, too.

Tabitha Speer, sitting in the front row, gripped the armrests of her chair during his comments, shaking her head as he spoke. When he stepped down and the jury left the room, she cried.

Earlier Thursday, Speer’s widow had testified that her husband was a “most generous, loving” husband before he was murdered by Khadr.

“He thought of me before he thought of himself,” she said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better father for my children.”

At times sobbing, she described her heartbreak at having to tell their children, then a three-year-old daughter and 10-month-old son, that their father had died.

“That moment a part of my daughter died with my husband,” she said, adding that eight years later, the children still feel the pain of his absence.

“I heard over and over how he’s the victim,” she said, glaring at Khadr. “I don’t see that. The victims … they are my children. Not you.”

Khadr’s defence lawyers did not cross-examine her.


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My latest: ten reasons why Peter MacKay has a shot

— 02.10.2020 02:34 PM

Peter MacKay has hit a rough patch.

Weird social media. Policy incoherence. Crummy French. Interviews going awry.

Sure, he’s coughed up the big entrance fee, and proffered the requisite number of signatures. Came up with a nice logo. Attracted the support of smart backroomers, and figured out how to avoid angering both of the Conservative Party’s warring tribes on the Left and Right – no small thing (ask Jean Charest and Pierre Poilievre).

But…it’s looked amateurish. It’s looked chaotic. It’s looked positively Stockwell Dayian, even.

Could a wounded, desperate political party rally around MacKay? Or is all hope lost?

Well, no. Ten reasons.

1. MacKay is likeable. Half the job in politics is being a HOAG – a Hell Of A Guy (or Gal). MacKay has that Earthy, aw-shucks, regular schmo thing down pat. He’s a HOAG.

2. MacKay looks the part. The other half of the job, when one is a political leader, is to appear Prime Ministerial. Not too regal (like Michael Ignatieff did), and not too stern (like Joe Clark or Tom Mulcair did). A Prime Minister needs to be capable of being suitably serious (say, when sending troops into battle) – but a PM also needs to know how to do cheery retail (say, when pressing the flesh on the hustings). It isn’t hard to imagine Peter MacKay doing either.

3. MacKay’s timing is good. Politics is like comedy – success depends more on timing than content. MacKay has come along at precisely the moment that his party is desperately in search of middle ground – and a leader who knows how to bank Left or Right, as circumstances warrant. One, too, who has been away from politics long enough to seem new – but who was also there long enough, in senior roles, to look experienced.

4. MacKay isn’t Justin Trudeau. Governments defeat themselves, and the Trudeau Liberal government has shown itself quite capable of doing so – taking a for-sure majority second term and reducing it to a timid, tentative minority. For voters scanning the horizon for an alternative to Justin Trudeau – and in October 2019, most Canadian votes were – Peter MacKay seems a sensible alternative.

5. MacKay isn’t a crypto-Nazi. Let’s face it: the Trudeau folks sought to portray Andrew Scheer as a knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, red-necked troglodyte, one who hated gays, women and refugees. And they were wildly successful – but only because Scheer became the embodiment of Hidden Agenda (dual citizenship, tongue-tied on social issues, not-an-insurance-broker). Scheer allowed the Grits to define him before he could define himself…

6. …but MacKay is defined. He’s a known quantity. He’s been a cabinet minister and an MP. He did stuff, and nobody ran him out town on a rail. He may be remarkably unremarkable – like that old pair of slippers you resist throwing out – but you generally know what you are getting with the tall, grinning, Nova Scotia guy.

7. MacKay is a conservative, but not too conservative. As shocking as it may sound to the prototypical angry Conservative – Langstaff 7832269, with a Twitter profile of a Viking holding an assault rifle – most Canadians are not as conservative as they are. Calling them “Libtards” and “Lieberals” does not tend to encourage middle Canada to vote Team Blue. Also helpful: MacKay thinks women should be able to decide what happens to their own bodies – and, also, that LGBTQ people should be allowed to be just as miserable as straight married people are.

8. MacKay is from the Atlantic region. Conservatives do not have a voting base that is as “efficient” as the urban and urbane Liberals do. To win majorities, Tories need to capture support in every region, not just the prairies. MacKay is a native son of the Atlantic, and he accordingly has the best shot at stealing needed Atlantic seats away from the Grits.

9. MacKay isn’t angry. Stephen Harper was Mr. Angry, sure, but he only won a majority in 2011 because Jack Layton surged in the final stretch, and snatched multiple seats away from the aforementioned Ignatieff. Before that, Canadians kept Harper on a minority leash because he too often appeared to be a misanthrope with control issues. MacKay doesn’t look angry. In fact, MacKay looks like he’s never been angry. About anything.

10. MacKay is a compromise candidate. For a country weary of Justin Trudeau (who too often seems all sizzle, and no steak) – and wary of Stephen Harper (who, as noted, too often seemed like a rageaholic encased in cardigan) – Peter MacKay is a reasonable compromise. He’s likeable, he’s a known quantity. He’s not a maniac. He’s not despised, from sea to sea to sea. He’s not unpopular.

Not yet, anyway.


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