• Leitch in, Guergis out: I worked with Dr. Kelly in the 2003 John Tory mayoralty campaign.  She’s brainy, driven and intense: I don’t recall her being much of a social conservative, either.  She’ll be a formidable opponent, to be sure, but with Guergis running as an “independent conservative,” you can easily formulate a scenario where the Liberal candidate comes up the middle in what is a traditionally yellow-dog Tory seat.
• Apology and retraction: Res ipsa loquitur. As a matter of law, such retractions/apologies may mitigate damages, but they don’t necessarily always extinguish same.  Stay tuned on this one.
• Power and Politics: I’ll be on Evan’s show on Monday, which will be a lot of fun.  With my friend Tom Clark gone – and with my other friend, Kory Tenecyke, also gone from the political scene for the time being –  Evan’s show will dominate political TV for the foreseeable future.  Tune in if you can.
• When in a hole, stop digging: One of the things that drives me bonkers is the won’t-die notion that Stephen Harper is The Master Strategist©.  He isn’t. He isn’t! To wit: he needs women voters to get his lusted-after majority.  So what does he do?  He persists in bitterly flailing away at the long-gun registry, thereby reminding women – urban and rural – why they should never, ever vote for him.  To suggest that he always shoots himself in the foot is obvious, metaphor-wise. But it fits.

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Story here.

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Some Ottawa-based reporters have tweeted that former Habs coach Pat Burns is dead.

Except, um, he isn’t.

Post mortem, as it were, it’s been interesting to see a few of these selfsame Twitterers insinuating that the technology is somehow to blame. It’s a modern twist on the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” canard.

I guess.

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Corporate Death Burger gets hit, hard. NYT yarn here. Stomach bomb, anyone?

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…listen to Phoenix do their Lisztomania. It’ll cheer you up in seconds.  It’s Supertramp for the New Era, sure, but what the Hell.  I adore them.

And this, still, is the song of the Summer of 2010.

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Pull quotes from the latest Furious profile:

• “[SMITHERMAN HAVING] AN IDENTITY CRISIS RIGHT BEFORE OUR EYES…”
• “WTF? How did the front-runner in the race for mayor, the self-styled Toronto boy, the chosen one, go from king of the heap to flirting with disaster?”
• “…Smitherman didn’t seem to be in the fight…”
• “What if the next poll shows him sliding further? It’s not hard to imagine a slide like the one that preceded the defeat of his old mentor, Barbara Hall, in the 2003 runoff.”
• “…there’s no doubt the Smitherman campaign is showing signs of wear and tear.”
• “[Smitherman campaign] workers are weary, a few counting the days until it’s over…”
• “Smitherman hasn’t helped his cause by going through a political identity crisis right before our eyes, tacking to and fro with almost every blink.”
• “…he’s flip-flopping on a biz tax to create jobs for youth.”
• “The media, though, are conspicuously absent [from Smitherman media stunt]. Only a lone cameraman from Global and yours truly are here to take in the pathos. Perhaps it’s wasn’t the smartest idea to ask the media out to the burbs in the middle of rush hour traffic.”
• “This [Smitherman] bunch is getting a little punchy. [Campaign manager Bruce] Davis’s face betrays a hint of resignation when talking about the campaign’s own latest polling.”
• “…at the all-important rally…things look disappointing early on for what handlers have billed as a speech on Smitherman’s vision for Toronto. Maybe 75 people have shown up, and the room has been cut in half to make the gathering look bigger for the two television cameras.”

Actually, just read the whole article.  You almost feel sorry for him.

Almost.

FUN BUT HIGHLY REVEALING UPDATE: George tweets about going to a debate today. Which, um, er, is tomorrow.

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The one who was simply everywhere during the Toronto International Film Festival last weekend, including at all the kick-off parties, schmoozing with aplomb, and who supped with Mike Harris at a swank TeeDot eatery, and partied the night away with the beautiful and the boldface?  That John Baird?

Naw. Couldn’t be.

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Unseemly, def.: People who would not have dared to criticize Kory Teneycke, now giddily kicking him when he’s down. Syn.: Ottawa.

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Oh, really?  The Reformatories are “delighted” they are about to lose a huge vote?

With the greatest of respect, I say bullshit.

They’ve been labouring away at denuding the gun registry for years.  This is a major, major setback for them.

It also shows how the Liberals and NDP, working together, can help to make Canada a better place, by the by.

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My daughter hates it; my youngest son, meanwhile, always sings along with me – especially at the part about being taken to Ohio in a swarm of bees. The National’s melody, meanwhile, wakes you up at night. Genius.

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