…but a beautiful trend line, if you are Mr. Ford or Ms. Horwath.
Perfect split on the Left. For the only party on the Right, that’s about as good as it gets.
The graphic is a little ugly, but it tells a story that's ugly (if you're a Wynne Liberal). #onpoli pic.twitter.com/YqpWOt6kjJ
— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) April 10, 2018
…we live in interesting times.
…the FBI’s seizure on Monday of privileged communications between Trump and his private lawyer, Michael D. Cohen — as well as documents related to a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, the adult-film actress who has alleged a sexual affair with Trump — was a particularly extraordinary move that opens a whole new front in the converging legal battles ensnaring the administration.
Cohen is Trump’s virtual vault — the keeper of his secrets, from his business deals to his personal affairs — and the executor of his wishes.
“This search warrant is like dropping a bomb on Trump’s front porch,” said Joyce White Vance, a former U.S. attorney in Alabama.
…Tim O’Brien, author of the Trump biography “Trump Nation,” said the seizure of records from his private attorney probably would “smell of a mortal threat” by Trump. And, O’Brien added, “He is historically prone not to sit back and let the chips fall where they may. He is historically prone to come out with guns blazing.”
Cohen has long been a fixer for Trump, as well as his family and business, and associates said he was disappointed when he was not brought officially on board the campaign, and again when he was passed over for a coveted White House job.
“He’s done the dirty work that the president hasn’t wanted to do himself, and he’s been doing it for a decade,” O’Brien said.
Once again proving my theory that Justin Trudeau is the luckiest politician on Earth.
Conservative MP Maxime Bernier says in a new book that party Leader Andrew Scheer won support from “fake Conservatives” set up by the powerful dairy lobby during last year’s federal Tory leadership race – a claim that could threaten party unity 18 months before the next general election.
Mr. Bernier, the four-term Quebec MP who currently serves as the Conservatives’ innovation critic, lost by a razor-thin margin to Mr. Scheer in last May’s leadership contest. A key plank in Mr. Bernier’s leadership bid was to scrap Canada’s supply-management system, which Mr. Scheer supports…
“Andrew, along with several other candidates, was then busy touring Quebec’s agricultural belt, including my own riding of Beauce, to pick up support from these fake Conservatives, only interested in blocking my candidacy and protecting their privileges,” Mr. Bernier writes.
“Interestingly, one year later, most of them have not renewed their memberships and are not members of the party anymore.”
Ah, ye little Faith.
Not that little, actually. She’s tallish, slouching near the doors at Sun News Network, chain-smoking. Smirking.
“Troll with a tan,” someone at the erstwhile network said about her. Uncharitably, but not inaccurately. That indeed seemed to be the whole package: a suspiciously deep, orange-ish tan, and the sleeveless Fox News mien. That’s it.
When she first appeared on Sun News, they’d hand her a microphone and tell her to go stand somewhere and pretend to be a reporter. She’d slap on fake eyelashes the size of bats – and then she’d fire off words and sentences like a speed freak running an auction. She was terrible.
In time, she’d slow down her delivery, reveal a bit more décolletage, and start sharing her views on-air. Around the ill-fated right-wing network, it was pretty difficult to sound extreme: for many, fanaticism was the lingua franca. But Faith Goldy – with figurative snakes slithering thorough her veins, and a clutch of metaphoric maggots in the spot where a heart should be – sounded extreme even to the extremists.
When Sun News slipped beneath the waves, however, no one was surprised to see her clutching at Ezra Levant’s dinghy, the S.S. Rebel. The rightist trolls – living in their mom’s basement, pawing at their tiny gonads through their Avengers jammies as they eyeballed Faith’s clips on a continuous loop – loved her. They positively ached for her. Faith was the one they wanted to marry, at a ceremony with lots of Wagner’s Rienzi, Die Meistersinger playing, and possibly an officiant from the Aryan Nations compound in Hayden Lake.
But even as the rebels sought to curry favour with the so-called alt-Right, publishing columns titled “Ten Things I Hate About Jews” and doubting the Holocaust in commentaries, Faith Goldy went further. She was more of a race-and-religion rebel than anyone at the Rebel.
The breaking point came in Charlottesville, which she was sent to cover for Ezra’s online lunatic asylum – where she’d be seen doing a stand-up not far from the woman who was mowed down by a white supremacist. That terrible week, Faith appeared on the pro-Nazi Daily Stormer, opining that there was a need for a rise in “white racial consciousness.” She also proclaimed that National Socialist types have “robust” and “well-thought-out” ideas on “the Jewish question.” Levant, a Jew and no anti-Semite himself, finally fired her.
After that, Faith abandoned all pretense of restraint. She was fully alone, piloting in dark, dark waters.
She started reciting The Fourteen Words, the credo of neo-Nazi terrorists in the Order – “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” She went on someone’s show to promote a book about “the Jewish menace” – a book which calls for “putting an end to their unnatural, parasitic existence.” She advocated for pedophile Milos Yiannopoulos, simply because she was encouraged by his brand of foul racism. She tweeted “the future is Far Right.” David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, took notice and commenced cheerily retweeting her stuff. So did other lowlifes.
So, is Faith Goldy a neo-Nazi? Who knows. She certainly counts many Hitlerites among her friends and followers, doesn’t she?
Which naturally leads us to another question, one more relevant: is Faith Goldy someone with whom Canadian political leaders should be seen?
Because they were, they were. Lots of Conservative MPs – mainly male ones – scurried to get themselves photographed with Faith, for precisely the type of selfie about which they regularly criticize Justin Trudeau.
Faith’s biggest catch, in this regard, was one Andrew Scheer, aspirant to the Conservative throne. At their February 2017 love-in, Faith pronounced that she was “so honoured and so blessed” to be elbow-to-elbow with Scheer, and the two chatted amiably about free speech (all for it), parental leave (for), and property rights (ditto). At one point, Scheer suggested the two of them go duck hunting together.
Seriously.
Scheer gave at least two other interviews to Goldy’s Rebel network. The fact that his campaign guru helped to found The Rebel may have had something to do with that. Who knows.
But it is his congenial relationship with the vile, rebarbative Faith Goldy – and that of his fellow Conservative caucus members – that is likely to come back and haunt him. What, in the immortal words of Jay Leno, was he thinking? Is it ever wise to get chummy with a white supremacist, as Faith Goldy indisputably is?
No, it’s not. And Andrew Scheer will be hearing and seeing more about Faith Goldy and her ilk, as his party edges ever-closer to an election.
We opened for Mr. Pharmacist and we raised funds for the Humboldt Broncos. Was a good night.
I’ve written extensively about the highly-scientific HOAG concept, which I will claim to have invented if Bob Chant lets me.
From my book Fight The Right, which wrote about the then-coming Trumpocalypse:
That is, Bush was a Hell Of A Guy. As the political cliché goes, you can picture yourself at a tailgate party with Dubya, swigging Buds, telling lies about the ones that got away. With John Kerry or Al Gore, you just can’t. Eating quiche and sipping spritzers at a rich debutante’s coming-out party at Harvard, maybe. But are they HOAGs? Nope.
This is not to suggest that Liberals are incapable of HOAGism. Chretien was eating at Tim Horton’s long before focus groups persuaded Stephen Harper to do likewise. Bill Clinton, too, was always a HOAG. Watching him hoover a Big Mac, you wouldn’t have ever guessed he was once a Rhodes Scholar. But Bush – despite being the son of a New England multimillionaire, despite his pricey Yale education and his connections to American aristocracy – was a true-blue HOAG. He was the ultimate HOAG, in fact. He made his inability to string a few words together work for him. Moreover, when he talked about “values” – which, Google informs us, he did literally hundreds of times during his presidency – he could light up a conservative audience like a Christmas tree.
He was up-front about it, too. In one of his campaign ads in the summer of 2000, Bush said this: “This is a moment in history when we have a chance to focus on tough problems. It’s not always popular to say…we have a deficit in values. But those are the right things to say. And the right way to make America better for everyone is to be bold and decisive, to unite instead of divide. Now is the time to do the hard things.” On values and morality plays, Bush made his HOAGism work for him. And when Bush’s presidency came to its constitutionally mandated end, as he defiantly told a crowd at the inauguration of the George W. Bush Presidential Centre, “I came home to Texas with my values intact.”
And that, I think, is why we effete lefties couldn’t stop watching him as he peddled his book hither and yon: on values, he spoke to our suppressed inner HOAGs.
Now, here’s me and Charles:
Liberal Minister @TracyMacCharles and MPP @GrantCrack announce they will not seek re-election in June #onpoli
— Colin D’Mello CTV (@ColinDMello) April 5, 2018
11 Liberals who won seats in 2014 will not run in the June election, including 8 who've served in cabinet under Wynne #onpoli https://t.co/7e36LhJtS8
— Mike Crawley (@CBCQueensPark) April 5, 2018
Look, none of us are as young as we used to be.
We don’t hang out in noisy, seedy bars like we used to. We go to bed earlier than we used to. We worry about getting stabbed in a booze-fuelled argument.
SFH gets that. We’re old too. As Maximum Rock’n’Roll and others have noted, we’re Canada’s best-loved geriatric punk combo.
None of us hang out in seedy bars as much as we used to. All of us get tired a lot sooner than we’d like. None of us are into being stabbed, to be candid.
But come to this gig. It is going to be (a) early enough for you to get to bed at a reasonable hour (b) fun. Lots of fun.
And get this: the first twenty folks can get SFH’s critically-acclaimed Kinda Sucks LP and my Recipe for Hate book for just ten bucks. Ten bucks! And the band may even buy you a drink.
Come. Us, Mr. Pharmacist. You can’t lose.
And you won’t get stabbed.
HOUSTON — Senator Ted Cruz of Texas kicked off his re-election campaign this week with a new Texas-themed slogan and a new video, but something else that was entirely new went largely unspoken — a formidable and well-funded Democratic opponent.
For the first time in Mr. Cruz’s rise to political prominence in Texas, he is facing a serious Democratic challenger, Representative Beto O’Rourke from El Paso, who has stunned political observers by raising more money than any Democrat who has ever run for a Senate seat in Texas.
Mr. O’Rourke, a former punk-rock bassist and El Paso city councilman, has raised $13.2 million in the race so far, and outraised Mr. Cruz in three of four Federal Election Commission reporting periods. (Mr. Cruz has not yet reported his latest fund-raising.) In the first three months of 2018, Mr. O’Rourke raised $6.7 million, more than any other Democratic Senate candidate in the country in that period.