Raj, who I think is one of the best political reporters around, caught the contradiction (along with a colleague): here. That is, Justin Trudeau has said he will not go negative. In paid media, he has kept his promise.

But on social/non-traditional media, he sure hasn’t.

I would argue that Trudeau’s guys are more aggressive and critical on social media than any other political tribe. They are very, very tough.

Some might call that a contradiction, but I call it welcome news. As you all know, I thought Justin had made a huge mistake in pledging never to go negative.

So far, on paid, he has kept his promise. In the meantime, however, I’m glad to see that he and his team are being super-aggressive on social/other media. It’s needed.

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Great story by Mike Bell about Art Bergmann in the Calgary Herald, here.

I didn’t know Bergmann. He was a big wheel from Vancouver’s punk scene, all dark clothes and dark habits. Unlike a lot of the Vancouver bands, we in the Hot Nasties and the Sturgeons and the other suburban Calgary punk bands were basically pretty straight edge. We didn’t think heroin was cool.

Bergmann had a fierce talent, and he destroyed it with junk. It was wonderful, notwithstanding that, to read about my old friend James Muretich and some other stuff from so long ago.

A good read. Well-written. Even if it wasn’t a big part of your life, as it was with ours, it’ll take you back to a time that is now just written about in books.

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Dear U.S. Friends:

I know at least one of you is likely to read this, because I see evidence of your visits in my web site’s analytics all the time.

As you may have heard, there has been some speculation in Canada about whether the mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, will be permitted to cross the border into the United States.

As a lawyer, I am of the view that Ford has committed what you quaintly categorize as “Crimes of Moral Turpitude.”  Specifically, Ford is an “alien” who has admitted crimes of moral turpitude, per 9 FAM 40.21(a)N51.  His admissions relate to crimes in this jurisdiction: 9 FAM 40.21(a)N7.3.

Specifically, I draw to your attention that Rob Ford has admitted:

• Smoking “crack” cocaine.
• Purchasing illegal drugs within the past two years.
• Associating with organized crime.
• Drinking and driving.

I have linked to U.S. media sources in each case.  These examples provide you with clear and readily-available evidence that Ford has committed crimes of moral turpitude which require you to deny him entry.

Given the fact that your Service has made some really, really stupid (and possibly illegal, under your law) decisions about entry lately – check this one out – we Canadians now call on you to exercise some judgment in the Rob Ford case.  It likely means that we are stuck with him in perpetuity, of course, but just think of it as a Thanksgiving gift from us to you.

Oh, and I’ve added my band’s video at the bottom.  If quoting your own law doesn’t convince you to bar this creep, maybe some catchy punk rock will.

Yours truly,

J. Warren Kinsella, LL.B

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…if someone stops dithering, that is.

Man, am I ever glad I never throw out any of my old political stunt stuff.

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…his lips are moving.

Old joke, but – in his case – it fits.  Read, for example, this hot-off-the-presses evisceration of Ford’s Big Budget Bullshit.  It’s good:

There are many reasons to oppose Rob Ford. You may have seen some of them in the news recently. But there is an essential, inescapable truth that goes beyond his behaviour: Rob Ford’s arguments, and his math, do not add up. They do not add up when he falsely claims he has saved a billion dollars, and they certainly don’t add up on a back-of-the-napkin budget proposal that promises the impossible. Perhaps this is because of his liberal relationship with truth-telling, or maybe it is because he fundamentally does not understand how the institution he leads actually works.

Stripped of his powers, the mayor is reduced to his ability to shout—which is, to be fair, considerable. But his message does not merit real consideration. If anything, treating it seriously worsens our understanding of Toronto’s finances. The sooner we recognize that the mayor’s dishonesty and misdirection is not limited to his personal life but extends to his policies, the sooner we can move on to a meaningful discussion of what we’d like to see in the budget—and the sooner the budget can be about Toronto and not Rob Ford.

Full link here.

 

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As I recall, this Social Blemishes/Snot gig was in 1978. I don’t know who the Famous Brothers were. ‘Cause we all know who became super, er, famous, don’t we?

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Here!

Also: it’s available as a Kindle download, and makes for an excellent Christmas/Chanukah gift, folks!

The author, possibly looking the part.

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Asked how his firm got the Brandon-Souris by-election wrong by THIRTY PERCENTAGE POINTS, here’s the whopper offered up by Forum’s president:

“I know people are going to say ‘Oh, your polls wrong, you don’t know what you’re doing,’” said Bozinoff. “But in my mind, the Liberals kind of dropped the ball and the Tories just, you know, beat them at their ground game and got their supporters out.”

Really? Seriously? Actually, Lorne, that’s a pile of horseshit.  Your “poll” was ostensibly measuring voter intention – not Get Out The Vote strength.  There’s a difference.  Even my dog Roxy could figure that one out.

This steaming turd of a quote has sufficiently motivated me to write an entire column about how Forum got it so wrong (as they have many times before).  Here are some of the questions I intend to ask them:

• That poll would have the effect of suppressing Liberal vote in Brandon-Souris.  Did the Conservative Party, or any related entity, in any way subsidize that poll?
• Do you give your polls to the media because you are aware that no media organizations will pay for them? Are you giving them away because someone else, whose identity you do not disclose, has paid for them?
• The methodology you use, IVR (a.k.a. robo-polling), has been condemned by many reputable pollsters.  Why do you keep using it?
• In metropolitan centres, where huge numbers of citizens no longer have land lines, how do you ensure you are reaching people who will give you a representative sample, and the right results?
• You predicted a B.C. NDP majority, a Wildrose majority and a Parti Quebecois majority, among others.  Why will you not apologize for those errors?

There are lots of other questions, and I suspect my friends Wright and Bricker have a few.  Feel free to add yours in comments, so I can send them to Forum sometime today.

Thanks.

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…and aren’t we all.

“I beg the Lord to grant us more politicians who are genuinely disturbed by the state of society, the people, the lives of the poor.”

His views on the ordination of women and birth control are fully retrograde. But the rest of it? How can you not admire a Pope who writes like this:

“Just as the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills…

“How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?”

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Not sure what I mean? Take a look at this chart that I found over at Maclean’s:

That chart shows, rather dramatically, that Trudeau’s Liberals gained vote everywhere. Everyone else lost vote. And, in Brandon-Souris, of course, my friend Rolf Dinsdale wiped out the 55-point advantage the Cons had in 2011 – and came within less than 400 votes of making history.  Rolf should be proud of himself; I know I’m proud of him.

The Reformatories will say that by-elections don’t ever go well for governments, that the status quo (two Liberal seats, two Conservative seats) is fine by them, blah blah blah. But the reality is this: they came within a whisker of losing a seat they’ve held for most of the last Century. And their share of the vote has plummeted across the board.

Mulcair will also make the status quo argument, and will say that his candidate did very well in a Liberal stronghold (which is one of the reasons why I opposed Freeland, and the way in which she came to be the Liberal candidate). But the reality for is this: Jack Layton he is not. The Orange crush? It may be orange, but it ain’t crushing anyone.

Trudeau won big, last night. He won the gold and the silver. The Liberal Party of Canada, as some of us have been saying for a long time, is back.

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