In a week and a bit, the trial of Mike Duffy will commence. Official Ottawa will be agog, apoplectic and absorbed—via Twitter, via Facebook, via regular breathless and live televised reports, issued from just outside the battlefield, i.e., the Ontario Court of Justice, at the Ottawa Courthouse on Elgin Street.

The Rest of Canada—that is, Joe and Jane Frontporch, who live and work South of the Queensway—will not give a rat’s ass. They will not pay the Duffy-related doings any heed. They will not care.

They shouldn’t.

Now, now, a caveat: it is, of course, important that our public officials, elected or otherwise, do not dip their snouts into the treasury, like domesticated hogs extracting truffles in temperate forests. That is what is alleged in l’affaire Duffy, more or less.

According to the Mounties and the Crown, who investigated the case for what seemed like centuries—dutifully leaking details of the efforts to media outlets who parked their critical faculties elsewhere—the Senator from Cavendish-cum-Kanata allegedly broke the law no less than 31 times, Your Honour.

Among the allegations: bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. The bribery one is my personal favourite because it’s going precisely nowhere. The RCMP has alleged a bribe took place, in a most bizarre fashion: that is, a bribe was sought (by one Mike Duffy) but not offered (by one Nigel Wright).

Every lawyer in the world has an eye trained on that one, because bribery takes two to tango, as it were. How can the erstwhile Senator be convicted of accepting a bribe, when one wasn’t ever offered? Watch for this charge to go down in proverbial flames—principally because (a) it can’t be proven beyond a reasonable doubt and (b) everyone knows that Nigel Wright is one of the most decent fellows to ever set foot on Parliament Hill.

At this point in our dissertation, naturally, Joe and Jane Frontporch are falling asleep. This column has become a textbook case of Ottawa talking about Ottawa and there is nothing more boring than that.

So, too, scandal. While myriad controversies—always nouns, always with “gate” appended as a suffix—always transfix the commentariat, they always leave Mr. and Mrs. Frontporch cold. The Duffy “scandal” is no exception.

That is because scandal-mongering, like the Senate itself, is a thankless task (and taskless thanks). With perhaps the notable historic exception of the Watergate break-in, it doesn’t really work anymore.

There are three reasons why:

1. The media/political punditocracy refer to everything, pretty much, as a scandal.

2. Regrettably, if you were to ask Joe and Jane Frontporch—and someone really should, one of these days—they would tell you: they already believe that everyone who wields power in Ottawa/Washington/wherever is an unindicted co-conspirator, i.e., a crook. Ipso facto, news reports to the effect that a politician has allegedly committed theft, fraud, and breach of trust aren’t news at all. They are, instead, like weather reports: they happen every day, they are rarely good news, and there is nothing Joe and Jane can do about them.

3. Joe and Jane Frontporch have heard the hysteria and histrionics about “scandals” way, way too many times. Way. And, consequently, they now don’t believe any of it until the good Senator is led away in handcuffs and a fetching orange pantsuit.

In the real world, the real scandals are things like not having a job, and being unable to pay the bills. The real scandals are seeing your ailing parent curled up on a bed in a hospital corridor, waiting days to get seen by a doctor. The real scandals are governments spending untold billions on security—only to thereafter shrug when some deranged, lone wolf fanatic slips through their labyrinth of scanners and spies, and commit terrible crimes.

Those things, to Joe and Jane Frontporch, are the real scandals.

Not, to put a fine point on it, Mike Duffy. That, they feel, is just another sad case of Ottawa talking about Ottawa—and not the real scandals, in the real world.

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I don’t want to make a big deal out of this, but I figured I’d let folks know that  we have gone our separate ways. Have agreed to be friends, etc. All of that. But, after nearly six great years, it’s time to move on. And that’s all I’m going to be saying about it.

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It is an election year and, accordingly, folks are already asking me about banner advertising on this here web site.

Last time, the Libs got to it first. This time, who knows? First come, first served.

Marijuana Party of Canada, this could be your lucky day!

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…you know you couldn’t pay for coverage this helpful. Wow.

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From that Ivison column Grits are passing around:

• The Liberal sense of manifest destiny has taken a hit with a new poll that suggests the party has less than 30% support — a drop of nearly 10 points in six months.
• …the trend in all public surveys is the same — a gradual down-tick in support since the terror attacks in Ottawa and Quebec last October.
• There are more than a few nervous Nellies in the Liberal Party now, who are wondering whether the message needs to be tweaked, or whether a freshening up on the staffing front is required.
• “Justin talks about ‘doing politics differently’ but what we have is the same old hypocrisy. Every nomination is being managed and it’s brewing negativity,” said one Liberal. “The Eve and Dimitri [Soudas] thing reinforced a lot of grumbling on the ground.”
• Even some die-hard Liberals concede that Mr. Mulcair is a more convincing purveyor of principled politics than Mr. Trudeau.
• …the slip in the polls is a real test of nerve – the first time the divine destiny of the younger Trudeau is being widely, if not openly, questioned by his fellow Liberals.

Those are all direct quotes.

Now, blinders-wearing Grits will attack John’s opinion column, natch. But having been an aspiring columnist for some time, I can say that John is merely doing what a columnist is supposed to do – being skeptical, being tough on all sides, being anything but predictable.  That’s the job.

And, by the by, he’s right about quite a few things.  The verbal missteps; the vicious expulsion of Liberal Senators; the diktats about how candidates and MPs should think; the confusing and calamitous decisions on ISIS and C-51; the farce that is the “open nominations” promise: it goes on and on, unfortunately.

Does Trudeau need to make some staff changes before the election? I’ve thought that for some time.  Does he need to get some policy in the window, given the suspicion that voters have about his intellect? For sure.  Does he need to stop trying to tell jokes, and look and sound more Prime Ministerial? Yes, yes and yes.  All that.

I still believe he can become Prime Minister, short or long term.  I still believe he has done extraordinary things for the Liberal Party’s organizational and fundraising strength.  I still believe that most Canadians self-identify as Liberal or liberal.

But Justin Trudeau is now slipping downward towards the twenties, and that’s Ignatieff and Dion territory.  And we all know how that turned out.

Smarten up, Justin.  You only get one chance to make a first impression.

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Driving in with Son Two, Arcade Fire’s ‘Ready to Start’ comes on.  I personally think Arcade Fire are insufferably pretentious/precious, and Win Butler makes Billy Corgan seem shy and retiring.  But this remains a great pop song, and that line in the middle corresponds to my view of quite a bit of politics, these days.

All the kids have always known
That the emperor wears no clothes
But they bow down to him anyway

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Just as the Cons make use of their leader’s artistic expression to fundraise, so too do the Libs, now.

Stick to your day jobs, fellas. If this keeps up, Tom Mulcair will start belting out show tunes in Question Period.

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Ladurantaye, this blue-check legit?

  

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Hard for Libs (principally those in Ontario) to kvetch about this when they have benefitted from this.  Conversely, it will make it difficult for Cons (principally those in Ontario) to kvetch about this when they have this.

Don’t you love it when the universe balances out?

 

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Quote:

Investigators are focusing on whether a “personal life crisis” led a Germanwings pilot to intentionally crash a plane into the French Alps on Tuesday, Bild Zeitung reported, citing unidentified security officials.

Authorities are trying to determine whether Andreas Lubitz’s relationship difficulties with his girlfriend played a role in his apparent decision to initiate the descent into the mountainside, taking 149 passengers and crew to their deaths on Germanwings Flight 9525, the newspaper reported.

The first officer, who had a history of mental illness, had to repeat some stages of flight school because of depression and was occasionally listed as “unfit to fly” during his training in Arizona, Bild said.

Over the years, I’ve had too many friends whose depression spiralled downward into suicide and self-harm. At Bishop Carroll, two artistic, sensitive members of our 531 Club killed themselves in 1977. Periodically, I Google their names, hoping to find some evidence that the world remembers them in some way.

And, in the intervening years, I’ve had other friends and colleagues who did self-harm. In the punk scene, in fact, it was pretty common to see evidence of people burning cigarettes into their arms, or slashing themselves with razor blades. I figured most of that was for shock value – the Germs elevated it to a trend with Circle One – but maybe I was wrong about that.

I’m no expert in depression, but I had always assumed that people suffering from it mostly harmed themselves, not others. If the early reports about Andreas Lubitz are true, however, that assumption is plainly wrong. Lubitz’s apparent act of suicide was also an act of homicide, on a massive scale.

Can anyone refer the rest of us to writings on this issue? It’s important, I think, because it may help answer the “why” that lingers over then tragedy of Flight 9525. It’s also important because I suspect we are going to now see measures to exclude people with depression from certain roles in society – like airline pilots.

And, comments are open, as always. Tread lightly, please.

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