What today’s court decision means:
• John Tory was right to oppose the provincial government’s move
• As Tory said, you can’t change election rules mid-election
• The province can pass laws about municipalities – but not limit voter rights as Bill 5 did
• Wow #topoli #onpolii

— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) September 10, 2018

Justice Belobaba's decision reads like John Tory's speech about Bill 5. Practically word-for-word. Huge vindication for Tory. #topoli #onpoli

— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) September 10, 2018

From the actual judgement from Justice Belobaba.  Read to the last line.  That’s something I’ve never seen before:

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So, the John Tory folks put together a fun little video about the expressed desire of Tory’s main opponent, Jen Keesmaat, to secede from the province and country.  Here it is.

Okay. So, Keesmaat’s folks didn’t like it. They’d been calling John Tory all kinds of nasty names for weeks, but they’re not too good in the dishing-it-out-and-taking-it department. They got all sniffy and told CITY-TV that John Tory “doesn’t want to talk about his record,” blah blah blah.

Anyway. Keesmaat’s comms guy is a good friend of mine, Chris Ball. I like him a lot. In this campaign, we’ve taken good-natured shots at each other, and at our opposing candidates. I tweeted (what I correctly thought was) a funny picture about Keesmaat’s transit and traffic plans, Chris responded with what he (erroneously) thought was a funny picture about Tory.

So I responded with the secession video above. Someone immediately favourited the video. Guess who it was?

I’ve been doing this for a long time, boys and girls, but that’s the first time I’ve ever had an opponent help promote an attack ad about that selfsame opponent.

Anyway, it’s never dull on the old campaign trail!  And, at the very least, it also heretofore eliminates Ms. Keesmaat’s ability to say her opponent is being too negative!

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The I AM PART OF THE RESISTANCE INSIDE THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION story was shocking for this reason: it details a high-level mutiny against a sitting President of the United States.  It describes what can only be fairly regarded as a constitutional crisis, one that will shake the world’s most powerful democracy to its foundations.

As a leak of Bob Woodward’s book Fear detailed the day before the resister’s tale was told, senior officials are now actively and regularly bypassing and overruling the decisions of the President.  They are even snatching documents off the top of his desk in the Oval Office, so he doesn’t see them.

The ramifications of the New York Times’ bombshell will be felt beyond the United States.  With the mid-terms just weeks away, with the Democrats maintaining a double-digit lead over Republicans, and with the Trump Administration falling apart at the seams, the resistance story will oblige Donald Trump to mostly give Canada what it wants in the byzantine NAFTA negotiations.

Ten days ago, Donald Trump was promising to exclude Canada from a trade deal, and mocking us.  Ten days later – and after the revelation in Woodward’s book, and the Times’ account of the resister’s palace coup – Trump cannot afford to lose the few Republican allies he has left in Congress.

`The moment that leak was published, Canada’s trade ambitions were rescued.

 

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