Categories for Musings

I love Justin Trudeau. There, I said it.

Just getting that out here, about this.

Takes big constitutional balls to say what he has said, very clearly. Ipso facto, I (and Coyne, probably) love the guy.

As Premier Philippe Couillard appears set to kick off a renewed push towards negotiations for Quebec to sign on to the 1982 Constitution, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems to want to stay out of it.

“You know my views on the Constitution,” Trudeau told reporters in French on Thursday morning in Ottawa. “We are not opening the Constitution.”

The CBC’s French-language service, Radio-Canada, was among media reporting late Wednesday that Couillard is set to release a 200-page document outlining his government’s vision of Quebec’s role within Canada and laying out arguments in support of reopening negotiations.


Most brilliant Twitter exchange ever

You’ve probably seen this by now, but it still makes me spit my morning covfefe all over my desk.

Here’s the Unpresident:


And here’s my candidate:

Game, set, match.

Dear Agent Orange: she plays chess.  You still play checkers – badly.


It was fifty years ago today

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  A half century.  Incredible.

I don’t remember it coming out, on June 1, 1967.  I was six, and we were living in Dallas.  Much later on, I recall, certain songs would start to leave a mark – Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, Within You Without You (I shared George’s fascination with Indian instrumentation and still do), the title track.  All genius.

And, much later, I’d be amazed that the Fabs did what they did with just four and eight analog tracks.  Eight!  Last weekend, SFH were in a studio that had 64, all digital.  What would Sgt. Pepper have sounded like with that, I often wonder. (And McCartney essentially created DI for his bass! Seriously!)

Anyway: it was this song that remains, to me, the crowning achievement of that extraordinary album – and which is still the greatest pop song of all time.  Some days, I felt like it was written just for me.  You know a song is brilliant when it makes you feel like that.

So – happy birthday, Sgt. Pepper, wherever you are.  You changed the world.



CBC: Ex-ombudsman André​ Marin ordered to pay $68K in legal fees after failed lawsuit

Link here.  Story:

Former Ontario ombudsman André Marin has been ordered to pay $68,000 in legal costs to the provincial legislature and the Office of the Ontario Ombudsman.

The Superior Court of Justice ruling comes after a judge quashed Marin’s wrongful dismissal lawsuit against his former employers in March.

Marin has been ordered to pay $18,552 to the ombudsman’s office and $49,984 to the legislature.  They had requested $34,835 and $88,353, respectively.

He sought over $3 million in damages when he wasn’t reappointed in 2015 after serving two consecutive five-year terms, according to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. He alleged he’d been fired without cause or notice, stating that two years of notice would have been “reasonable.”

The legislature asked the court to dismiss the case due to lack of jurisdiction and the ombudsman’s office asked that Marin’s statement be struck from the record because there was “no reasonable cause of action.” Justice Peter Cavanagh agreed to both requests.

All together now: ha ha ha.


Scheer: the grinning extremist

From Michael Coren’s carefully-researched piece in the new NOW magazine:

  • “Scheer’s religious faith is especially significant. He is a traditional Roman Catholic, the son of a deacon. He is an opponent of abortion, equal marriage, trans rights and euthanasia. He voted against Bill C-16, which adds “gender expression or identity” as a protected ground to the Canadian Human Rights Act…While Scheer has insisted that he will not open up most of these issues for debate, he has also talked on the campaign trail about a “friendlier more welcoming Parliament for individual members to introduce legislation protecting pre-born human rights.”
  • He’s especially committed to home-schooling and independent schools, both very much part of the conservative Christian community. He has proposed a $1000 tax credit for home-schooled children and to make up to $4000 of independent school tuition tax deductible.”
  • “The influential anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia group Right Now wrote on its Facebook page on Sunday: “Still celebrating the victory of Andrew Scheer becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party of Canada! Thank-you to all our volunteers who worked tirelessly selling memberships and getting out to vote! You made the difference!” … Rest assured that Christian conservatives will remind Scheer and his people, many of them right-wing Christians themselves, how much they “made the difference” at every opportunity.”
  • “One of Scheer’s central supporters, campaign manager Hamish Marshall, a long-time conservative organizer and former Harper aide, is also a director of The Rebel News Network, the website run by Ezra Levant and that Maclean’s recently described as one of the “world’s top purveyors of conspiracy and far-right bombast.” …How much influence the Rebel gang will have with the new Conservative leader remains to be seen.”
  • “Beyond satisfying his supporters, Scheer toes the hard line himself. During Britain’s Brexit campaign, he wrote an ill-informed and rather callow column for the National Post supporting Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union…Aside from the intrusion of a Canadian MP (Scheer is also a former Speaker of the House) taking a side in a foreign nation’s vital referendum, he effectively allied himself with the right of Britain’s Conservative Party and with United Kingdom Independence Party on the issue, which has more than its share of racists and fanatics.”

A track from SFH’s new album leaks!

It hasn’t been mixed or mastered yet, and the engineer actually cuts the song off at the end.  But it’s rather Hot Nasties-ish, I must say. The addled Gregorian chant at the start? It’s an inside joke, like the whole band is.




The Liberal war room moves to the CPC leadership convention

Fun story in the new Maclean’s, here. I blabbed about how we made sausages. So shoot me.

Kevin Bosch, research director for the Liberal Party, wore a blue dress shirt on Saturday and a Conservative-branded nametag like everyone else. His partner, Braeden Caley, the Liberal Party’s communications director, slinked at the back of the room. On Friday, the pair brought backup of three aides. On Saturday, the squad included two members of Parliament.

Inter-party “observers” operate with three primary missions: to gather intelligence, disseminate propaganda to divide the host party, and, for the recognizable faces like Liberal MPs Adam Vaughan and Francis Drouin, appear in media interviews to give the enemy bad press. On Friday, Bosch and Caley targeted the media filing room and scattered about 40 black folders, jokingly titled “Top Secret,” tempting journalists to read a booklet reminding them of the hypocrisies of Maxime Bernier. They planted erasers around the room, with notes reading, “Andrew Scheer can’t erase the past,” and toy scissors representing Scheer’s cuts to government spending.

“Knowing how thorough Kevin is, my suspicion is he’s probably got information on all the top candidates,” says Warren Kinsella, a former special assistant to Jean Chrétien. “Their hotel and flights are costing the party a lot for them to be there. They’re not just there to do nothing.” Bosch asked not to be quoted. Kinsella says, “They’re gonna be nervous to say [what they’re doing]. Nobody likes to talk about how they make sausages.”

Retired from the disruption gig, Kinsella is more transparent. When he worked for Chrétien in 1993, he set up a “war room” at the leadership convention in which Kim Campbell was a candidate. “We were feeding [Chrétien] rumours and stuff like that we were hearing,” he says. “You’ve got all these people together who nominally belong to the same party. A lot of them hate each other’s guts. We would make use of that.”

Whether they are called “warriors,” “task forces,” or “observers,” troublemakers at the federal level are tolerated for the sake of democracy. Parties almost always give opposition MPs free admission as a courtesy to the media who seek a balance of input. But this weekend, Vaughan and Drouin were outraged to learn they were told to pay for passes, i.e. donate to their enemies. NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice was welcomed for free. Vaughan and Drouin ended up walking in a back door without paying.

This sort of mischief permeates politics at all levels. At an Ontario PC convention in 2007, Kinsella booked a room in the middle of the venue, using the fake name of a law firm. “In the middle of the night,” he says, “we conducted a press conference right there. They were furious. They were livid. They wanted to kick us out but they couldn’t.” At another leadership event, for Ontario PC leader John Tory, who was criticized for being a “rich kid,” the Liberals handed out silver spoons.

Behaviour got extreme in 2011. During the Ontario election, Kinsella’s team got a tip that PC candidate George Lepp, while drunk, had Tweeted a photo of somebody’s genitals—possibly his own—before removing the tweet instantly. Kinsella’s team caught the photo and hung onto it until the candidate’s speech, then sent it to media outlets. “Right when he was going on about family values, we blasted it out,” says Kinsella. (Lepp and the Tories denied the photo was of him and claimed someone had gained access to his Twitter feed.)

 


Frank Carter discovers love

I first discovered the wonder and mystery of Frank Carter ten years ago, when in Britain to see the Sex Pistols’ latest filthy lucre tour.  Frank was on the cover of the NME, because he was the coolest person in the world.  I was intrigued.

Bjorn and me and some other guys went to see Frank and his then-band, Gallows, play with Cancer Bats here in Tee Dot.  Here’s one of their tunes that my kids love.


Cancer Bats actually blew them off the stage, but Frank was just unbelievably captivating and charismatic and all that. He bled and sweat all over everything; he was a frenzied madman, spitting nails and barbed wire. I talked to him later at Gallows’ merch table, where he was happily selling T-shirts. No star affectations with this guy.

He quit Gallows, which was weird, because he formed the band with his brother, who I think stayed with Gallows. Anyway. He formed Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes. To say that they are different from Gallows is the punk rock understatement of the year.

To wit:



Anyway. I’m happy he’s happy. I liked it better when he was a madman and spitting barbed wire, however.