Now in HuffPo!

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Here:

• Warren Kinsella gives kids a glimpse into the heyday of punk with Recipe for Hate (Dundurn), which details how a group of punks took down a gang of neo-Nazis after the murder of two of their friends.

It’s actually for adults, too, so don’t get fussed about the YA tag.

You can pre-order here. Pre-order multiple copies, even!

 

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I have heard very, very troubling things. This, for example, is extraordinary and pretty damning.

The good folks at the Peterborough Examiner asked him, straight out:

Councillors didn’t debate the prospective sale in public – that happened in closed session. But they did vote unanimously on the plan in the open meeting. Mayor Daryl Bennett voted too.

Bennett is a director of a numbered company that owns the Liftlock Group of companies, which owns land nearby at 728 Rye St.

But in an interview following the meeting he said he doesn’t stand to benefit from the sale.

When asked by The Examiner why he did not declare a pecuniary interest, he said he was “a bit offended” by the question.

“What are you talking about? It has no benefit to me whatsoever,” Bennett said of the property sale.

It’s not national news, but I intend to make this a focus of this little web site for the next while.

Something stinks in Peterborough.

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Here.

Thank Christ, maaaan.

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Undersell and overperform.

Those of us who had the honour and privilege of working for Jean Chrétien knew that aphorism well. It was his mantra, and therefore ours, too.

It worked. Chrétien was never once defeated in his 40 years in the political game. He won three back-to-back majorities, and he was the most popular Prime Minister in the history of polling. He repatriated the Constitution, he defeated the separatists, he kept us out of Iraq. He did okay, you might say. A proof is a proof.

And the reason why he was so successful, politically? Along with being a regular guy, along with being likeable, along with having an innate understanding of what Canadians wanted? Because he undersold and overperformed.

He didn’t brag a lot. He didn’t take credit for the achievements of others. He didn’t make everything about him. He kept quiet when he should, and he stayed out of the papers.

Donald Trump, now under criminal investigation for obstruction of justice, could have benefitted from following Chrétien’s example. He could have survived if he’d kept his mouth shut, just once. But he didn’t. He couldn’t.

Trump’s presidency is now measured in months, not years. Because, as the Washington Post has reported, special counsel Robert Mueller is conducting a criminal investigation into Trump’s conduct on two fronts. One, whether he obstructed justice when he fired former FBI director James Comey. And, two, when he earlier told Comey to “let go” of a criminal probe into the connections between Russia and his campaign team.

When did the Washington Post discover that Trump was under criminal investigation by Mueller’s FBI team? Well, just a day or two after Trump surrogates darkly warned that the Unpresident was seriously contemplating firing Mueller, that’s when.

Cause and effect. Action, reaction. Trump just couldn’t keep his sphincter-like mouth shut – he just couldn’t keep his stubby little thumbs away from Twitter – and he made things markedly worse for himself by threatening Mueller. Now he couldn’t fire Mueller if he tried: it would be a stronger admission of guilt than a signed confession and videotape of the crimes being committed.

Same thing happened with Comey. Trump just could not keep keep quiet. He. Could. Not. Shut. Up.

So, not long he after he fired Comey – because Comey, he knew, was getting perilously close to finding out the truth about the Trump-Putin pact to subvert US democracy – Trump tweeted that Comey better hope “there are no tapes” of their conversations at the White House.

With that, Agent Orange bought himself a world of hurt, on two fronts. One, it prompted Comey to release a highly detailed account of a previously-secret meeting with Trump – a meeting in which the FBI director was directed to drop the Russia inquiries. And, two, it spurred Congress to demand the tapes. (And the disclosure of Oval Office tapes, historians will note, are what brought down Richard Nixon.)

But that is not all. Trump’s mouth and tweets have gotten him in plenty of other messes. To cite just one example: executive privilege. Comey was a federal employee when he met with Trump. Their discussions entirely dealt with sensitive matters, most relating to national security.

Trump, therefore, could have easily invoked executive privilege – a presidential prerogative that would have effectively silenced Comey, and prevented Congress from questioning him on Trump-Comey interactions.

So what did Trump do? He tweeted about his meetings with Comey. A lot. He himself disclosed what was not supposed to be disclosed – thereby giving Comey the pretext for doing so, too. And he eliminated any credible argument for the invocation of executive privilege. How, everyone wondered, could executive privilege happen when the most senior member of the executive has personally violated it?

It goes on and on. His Muslim ban, defeated in serial lawsuits in the Ninth Circuit courts because of Trump’s own words. Lawsuits by two states, in which they claim that Trump has violated the Constitution by benefitting financially from his position – all because he loudly refused to withdraw from his Trump business empire. And, of course, the millions of women (and men, like this one) who marched against Trump the day after his inauguration – because we objected to the foul, feral things that he says and tweets.

All of Donald Trump’s political wounds are the worst kind: they are self-inflicted. Those are always the ones that cut deepest, and are the ones that are usually fatal. He is unlikely to see the inside of a jail cell – his sycophantic Vice-President will pardon him for his crimes, naturally – but he is certain to be drummed out of office. How can it be otherwise? How can it be avoided, now?

It could have been different. It could have been avoided. If Donald Trump had kept his mouth shut – if he had stayed away from Twitter – he could have dramatically improved the odds.

Most of all, if he had simply undersold and overperformed – as Chrétien did – it would have all been so, so different.

He didn’t. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

He’s done.

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Robinson is a long-time white supremacist. He’s also a Rebel Media correspondent. The “English Defence League,” which he founded, has always been unashamedly neo-Nazi.

Why do Andrew Scheer’s senior people have anything to do with this insanity?

Here is Rebel Media's Tommy Robinson justifying the attack in London's #FinsburyPark. The mosque is now a hub for counterextremism, FYI. pic.twitter.com/yYENCrl3Mx

— Caroline O. (@RVAwonk) June 19, 2017

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Not merely because of what he has done since he became president. But also because of what he did during the election.

It has amazed me, for months, that millions of Americans agree that Russia hacked the 2016 US election – but those same Americans somehow believe that the hack was ineffective.  I think that is stupid, basically. If Trump won the presidency with less than 80,000 votes spread over three states, it is frankly idiotic to believe that Russian hacking did not affect the outcome. It did. 

Thus, this Esquire piece. Read it. Key excerpt:

In Illinois, investigators found evidence that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data. The hackers accessed software designed to be used by poll workers on Election Day, and in at least one state accessed a campaign finance database. Details of the wave of attacks, in the summer and fall of 2016, were provided by three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter. In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states, one of them said. The scope and sophistication so concerned Obama administration officials that they took an unprecedented step — complaining directly to Moscow over a modern-day “red phone.” In October, two of the people said, the White House contacted the Kremlin on the back channel to offer detailed documents of what it said was Russia’s role in election meddling and to warn that the attacks risked setting off a broader conflict.

The Obama people, for reasons known only to themselves, did not take any concrete action.  That would turn out to be a fatal error.

There was a massive, coordinated, highly-sophisticated hack. Everyone agrees with that. 

Soon enough, people will also come to believe that the hack worked. 

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Now available for public viewing and your punk rock edification.

Right here, maaaaan.

 

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