Fun read. (Even if he’s a gadfly of a columnist.)

Best line: the last one.

Also, I intend to mock Butts with the “svengali” appellation for the next decade or so.

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Surprise, surprise.

Breaking this thing up over two different weekends, in two different cities, was always a dumb, dumb idea.

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If I had an employee like that, I’d fire them. So would you.

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Mother, fetch me the smelling salts! I think I’m going to faint!

“But with the economy growing slowly, and even Alberta’s oil wealth underperforming, the Tories must now confront the possibility that their whole plan might not be achievable. A good place to start, and start immediately, would be softening the image. Bluntly, not coming across as such jerks.

That means no more omnibus bills rammed through Parliament. No more nickle and diming veterans. No more comparing the opposition to child pornographers (pretty much no more Vic Toews whatsoever, actually). No more helicopter rides back from fishing trips. No more pretty gazebos. No more shutting down your own MPs when they want to debate a contentious motion. If it’s at all possible to avoid the appearance of not caring about Africans dying of thirst, that’d be great, too. And let’s not even get started on Senator Brazeau.

None of the above issues are fatal in and of themselves. But they, and many more, add up.”

Yep. Meanwhile, Justin Trudeau today achieved the support of 120 per cent of Canadian voters. Film at eleven.

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Getting ready for tonight’s SFH session, and dug up this old Hot Nasties tune for us to try – Getawayfromme.

Boy, I was an angry young man.  (Who has become an angry old man.)

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As I have done for years – and as I have remembered since that day, when I was a boy in Dallas – today I remember the death of Martin Luther King.  As before, this segment from his most-remembered speech.

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Yaffe’s right – Trudeau has basically erased the Mulcair Dippers’ public profile.

But the process was underway well before Justin Trudeau became a leadership candidate. Bob Rae, and his caucus, have been punching above their weight for two years. The result – contrary to what I, and others, predicted – has been the Liberals soundly beating the NDP in media coverage.

And, now, the polls.

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I wrote a couple weeks ago that I was fed up, to the teeth, with the incessant nattering in Toronto about transit. “Two things that drive me nuts about Toronto, ” I wrote.  “One, the manic focus on transit issues, 24/7, to the total exclusion of all other issues, like poverty, health, crime, environment, etc.  Two, the fact that, despite the continual yammering about transit, nothing ever friggin’ gets done about transit.”

Some of you were surprised, however, when I suggested yesterday that the historically-huge Metrolinx/Big Move price tag was a career-ender for most politicians.  Some of you reacted with astonishment that Warren – A progressive! A liberal! – could have the gall to decline to swallow the Metrolinx stuff hook, line and sinker.  How dare he!  Such effrontery!

Well, too friggin’ bad.  My take on these things is pretty simple.  Here it is, in six digestible nuggets, none of which come with a multi-billion-dollar price tag, and on which no experts were consulted.

•  When a city – any city – gets bigger, it becomes harder to get around.  If you want a two-minute commute, move to Bancroft.  Duh.
• Polls show urban folks consider transportation issues to be numero uno, I know.  Polls also show they don’t want to pay for it.  Also, they favour unicorns.
• The so-called experts don’t have a single, understandable solution.  They fight about everything.  And they couldn’t organize a two-house paper route, let alone intelligently design an entire transportation system for a big city.
• Citizens might’ve gone along with paying more for a better commute – if they hadn’t seen successive governments, at all levels, for decades, promise transportation bliss and deliver yet more gridlock and empty treasuries.  Oh, and stuff like Ornge and the 407 sure don’t help, either.  Nope.
• The political pay-off is too removed from the pay-up: that is, those of us paying now won’t see a meaningful improvement in our lifetimes.  We’ll be residents of the dirt farm, by then.  In politics, that’s called the Get Defeated Quick Scheme.
• Again, I am SICK – as a progressive, as a liberal – of this goddamn issue eating up the entire political landscape, every single bloody day.  Can we not focus on some other issues, for once – say, a dramatically-aging population, and an increasingly-expensive health care system?  The fact that violent crimes are claiming the lives of too many young men? That our mayor is a certifiable lunatic?

Anyway, thus concludes my rant.  Any politician who wants to stake their political future on getting voters to pay yet more for what they feel their tax dollars should already be funding is hurtling towards ignominious defeat, full stop (cf. The Green Shift, RIP).  And I don’t care if they’re red, blue or orange.  They’re, ahem, roadkill if they think the Metrolinx price tag is comprehensible, let alone saleable.

So, after all that, I can see the transit Philistines angrily demanding that I, Warren, come up with a solution to our transit woes.

My answer?  There isn’t one.  And, again, if you don’t like how hard it is getting around where you live?

Move to the country.

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Yep.

Good thing.

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