In a dangerous world, you should sing this to your kids in the morning. I did with Son Four today. He grimaced.

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And anyone allied with Russia, a new fascist state, is an enemy of democracy. 

FYI: Trump's ally Putin has outlawed Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia, plans to shutter their churches & jail them. Because they are pacifists.

— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) April 21, 2017

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First came John Horgan leering at Christy Clark in the first B.C. Campaign 2017 debate: “I’ll watch you for a while. I know you like that.”

That leering, creepy, condescending remark is a Kim Campbell Week One Level disaster, folks. Horgan — sounding rather like Groper-in-Chief Donald Trump — is going to be hearing about that one for a long, long time.

And then came the B.C. NDP economic plan. Ouch.

A bit of history, first.

“The trouble with socialists,” Tommy Douglas once said, and he would know, “is that they let their bleeding hearts go to their bloody heads.”

Douglas, of course, was and is the patron saint of Canada’s New Democrats, and rightly so. He was widely admired. He wasn’t perfect, of course, and no politician ever is. But Tommy Douglas knew something about budgeting.

For example: did you know that, during his 17 years as Saskatchewan premier, Douglas never ran a deficit? It’s true. Not once. And, during all of that time, Douglas would also routinely dedicate 10 per cent of government revenues to paying down the debt. Douglas felt that too much debt — financial holes, in effect — put social programs and government services in peril.

Tommy Douglas isn’t still around to comment on the platform of B.C. NDP Leader John Horgan, of course. But if he was, one suspects that he wouldn’t be terribly impressed. Douglas might even be unhappy to hear about the $6.5-billion hole at the centre of the B.C. NDP’s plan for governing.

No exaggeration: $6.5 billion.

The yawning, gaping hole alleged to be at the centre of the B.C. NDP’s platform was detailed this week by the governing B.C. Liberals — who, love ’em or hate ’em, are the architects of five balanced budgets and oversee the strongest economy in Canada. The Dipper Hole is apparently the product of an analysis of more than four fiscal years. In sum, the B.C. Liberal number-crunchers calculated there were 14 serious errors in the NDP’s math — along with a failure to account for interest costs on increased spending levels.

The improperly costed promises relate to freezing a variety of interest rates, promises made to postsecondary students, and the provincial Medical Services Plan.

The $6.5-billion mistake, it should be noted, does not include assumptions the B.C. NDP made about revenue assumptions or another three dozen or so uncosted promises. The Liberals also left out of their analysis the province’s credit rating. But they still came up with that astonishing $6.5-billion figure.

That sort of thing happens a lot in B.C. We’ve all seen this movie before.

So what, one might say. An election is underway in British Columbia, and it’s a tight one. The B.C. Liberals aren’t ever going to say nice things about the B.C. NDP, and vice-versa.

What is noteworthy, then — what suggests the B.C. Liberals are highly confident about the $6.5-billion figure — is threefold. One, it is a simply gargantuan number. It is hard to imagine any sensible political party making such a claim without verifying it, re-verifying it, many times over. Two, the B.C. Liberals have retained two respected economists, Scott Clark and Peter Devries, to do a further review. They wouldn’t have done that if they didn’t have faith in their analysis.

Thirdly, there’s precedent. In focus groups conducted from sea to sea to sea, since time immemorial, voters will always express doubt about the ability of New Democrats to balance budgets and add up columns of figures.

And as political historians will note, that sort of thing happens a lot in B.C. We’ve all seen this movie before.

In 2013, for instance, the B.C. NDP actually investigated itself as it tried to understand why it had lost an election that had seen them as many as 20 points ahead of their main rivals. A big part of the problem, the B.C. NDP concluded in confidential report, was what the party had to say to British Columbians about the economy.

“[NDP] governments in Saskatchewan and Manitoba defeat populist right-wing opponents by being — and being seen to be — more competent than our opponent on core fiscal and economic issues, as well as more caring about them,” the report concluded. “That is what we tried to do in 2013 in B.C. We didn’t succeed. Our opponent was out every day on a single issue — jobs and the economy. We were attempting to reassure voters we could be trusted with a mandate by spelling out dozens of proposals. We could see within a few days that this wasn’t working.”

Before that, in 2009, with yet another leader, the B.C. NDP again misfired on the economy, speedily sprinting away from its main economic promise. And, as respected columnist Vaughn Palmer wrote in the Vancouver Sun: “When the party released its platform, the vow to get rid of the carbon tax topped the list of highlights. But the NDP downgraded the “axe the tax” drive after it provoked a backlash from some environmental leaders.”

And so on and so on. The B.C. NDP may have many strengths. But for more than a decade, projecting economic competence has not been one of them. In election after election, the B.C. NDP either get their projections wrong — or they abandon their economic promises, mid-writ. Either way, it does not engender confidence.

Tommy Douglas, among others, would not be impressed. Even a New Democrat, he believed, needs to able to say how he or she will pay the bills.

British Columbian hearts, bleeding or otherwise, would tend to agree.

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Right here.

BC NDP leader is a condescending, sexist creep to BC's Premier. Because she's a woman. from Warren Kinsella on Vimeo.

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Who’d ever say that to a woman?

[polldaddy poll=9728794]

If you guessed John Horgan, BC NDP leader, you’d guess right. He said it today to BC Premier Christy Clark. Link here.

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This is Kim Campbell Week One level self-immolation, folks. Holy shit.

BREAKING: #BCNDP leader reveals self to be sexist, insulting, condescending creep. Wow. #BCpoli #BCelxn2017 https://t.co/5YlVrlSVXJ

— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) April 20, 2017

"I'll watch you for a while, I know you like that…" Horgan to Clark. #bcelxn17

— Gregor Craigie (@GregorCraigie) April 20, 2017

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Here’s the dope on dope, from an old Straight Edge punk, in a handy bulleted, bolded list.

• It’s a drug.  When prescribed, it should be only available from pharmacists.
• It’s an intoxicant.  Unlike booze, it isn’t hardly linked to violence, which is good.  And, unlike booze, it’s still hard to figure out its intoxicating effects on someone behind the wheel.  Not good.
• It’s a weed.  I don’t drink or take drugs or have ever smoked.  The idea of setting fire to a weed and inhaling the resulting smoke doesn’t seem like a super good idea, whether the weed is tobacco or marijuana.
• It’s a trade barrier.  Or it will be.  Donald Trump is the most anti-trade occupant of the Oval Office, ever.  He’s already bashing Canada.  He will use dope as pretext to slow down/stop cross-border trade.  Just watch.
• It’s boring.  It is is, it is.  In a world buffeted by war and terrorism and misery, like ours is, it’s fair to posit that cannabis has occupied way, way too much bandwidth.  It’s a good thing for sick people, so make sure they can get it at their drug store, and stop yammering about it all the time.

What do you think, O Smart Readers? Got a 420 take on toke?  Comment away.

 

 

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…because it’s really paying off:

“We are also going to stand up for our dairy farmers in Wisconsin. And I’ve been reading about it, I’ve been talking about it for a long time, and that demands, really, immediately, fair trade, with all of our trading partners. And that includes Canada,” [Trump] said Tuesday, raising his voice to emphasize the country.

“Because in Canada, some very unfair things have happened to our dairy farmers and others.”

As I’ve been writing for months, a Neville Chamberlain strategy doesn’t work. All that strong men understand is strength.

Sucking up to the likes of Donald Trump strengthens his hand, and weakens ours. And it makes us look weak, too.

My radical advice: try acting like a strong, sovereign nation for a few days. And, if you don’t like it, you can go back to being a supplicant, who lets the bully steal your lunch, day after day.

 

 

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Check out this New York Times chart:

This special election was for a vacated seat in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District.  It was a solid, long-time Republican fortress, formerly held by Tom Rice and Newt Gingrich.  It hasn’t sent a Democrat to the House of Representatives since the Carter administration, forty years ago.

Had 30-year-old newcomer Jon Ossoff won just a few more votes, he would have been elected outright last night.  He now faces a run-off against his nearest GOP challenger – a Trump supporter who got 55,000 fewer votes.

Donald Trump, that combed-over, sphincter-mouthed, sausage-fingered groper-in-chief, is an albatross around the jowly necks of every Republican, now.  And he is hurting conservative causes everywhere, even in far-away Europe (see here and here).

The mid-terms, if Agent Orange makes it that far, will be a historic disaster for the Republicans.  And Donald Trump will be the reason.

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Now in HuffPo, here.  Per the old saw, it’s the cover-up, and seldom the break-in:

Such mistakes can have profound consequences, if you don’t deal with them quickly. Personally, I am always a big fan of Bible-thumping Republican/Conservative politicians who regularly denounce gays/abortion/infidelity — and then, subsequently and inevitably, get caught having gay sex/procuring abortions/working with sex workers. Without fail, they end up exposed as sweaty, creepy, debauched nut bars, not self-professed men of God. And regular folks — as United, Pepsi and the White House certainly discovered in recent days — punish them not for the sin, but for the hypocrisy.

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