I know that some Ottawa-based members of the commentariat like to take shots at QMI and Sun media, and that’s fine. A bit of competitive jousting is a good thing, even if some of it sounds bitchy sometimes.

But I wanted to draw your attention – and your CV, if relevant – to the fact that QMI and the Sun are engaged in the biggest hiring effort since Conrad Black created the Post, more than a decade ago.

Here’s a sampling of the stuff I’ve received in my inbox just this morning. There’s been even more help wanted notices in recent weeks and months, too. If you have the credentials, apply away. You can send your CV to Robert.frizzell@suntv.canoe.ca and/or resumes@suntv.canoe.ca. Good luck!

News Anchor
Location: Toronto
Reporting directly to the National News Director, the successful candidate will deliver the latest headlines, lead topical discussions and provide experienced and thoughtful analysis on the day’s most newsworthy issues.

Reporter
Position Locations: Toronto Sun, Ottawa Bureau, Vancouver 24 Hours, Calgary Sun, Montreal
The successful candidates will work in a competitive environment with a motivated team to deliver content for broadcast as well as print and other Quebecor media platforms.

Resource Coordinator
Location: Toronto
Reporting to the National Assignment Editor and ultimately to the Managing Editor of news programming the successful candidate will help direct the news gathering flow of a continuous and national news operation. Using existing and emerging video delivery systems the Resource Coordinator will ensure the prompt and efficient flow of information and content from multiple external sources to the central production centre in Toronto.

Senior Graphics Artist
Location: Toronto
The Senior Graphics Artist will conceptualize and create graphics for on-air use. Reporting to the Director of Technical Operations and working alongside the production staff and the rest of the graphics team, the Senior Graphics Artist will work to provide original and informative graphics to enhance the on-screen presentation.

Senior News Anchor
Location: Toronto
Reporting directly to the National News Director, the Sr. News Anchor will deliver the latest headlines, lead topical discussions and provide experienced and thoughtful analysis on the day’s most newsworthy issues.

Senior Weather Anchor
Location: Toronto
Reporting directly to the National News Director the Senior Weather Anchor will oversee all aspects of weather reporting including severe weather coverage, and will provide background on supplementary aspects such as environmental issues. This position will form part of the overall anchoring team and as such requires strong on-air presentation skills with an emphasis on live remote abilities and unscripted material.

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This is very hard to read, and a total shock.

Good God, what a world this is.

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Everyone who has worked in politics knows what it is.

It’s hard to define, as is the joy that you get from a winning campaign. It’s a feeling, and one that you really can’t put into words.  You walk into a winning campaign, or attend a jubilant rally, or whatever, and you can feel it. It’s a winning feeling.  It’s the best feeling there is, pretty much.

It’s not a scientific measurement, by any means.  When I had the privilege to run for Jean Chretien in North Vancouver in 1997, for example, a member of my family – one who had lots of political experience – observed my campaign office and amazing team, and said that it truly “feels like a winning campaign.”  Except that I lost, decisively, to a guy the Canadian Press called “elfin,” and whom his own leader despised.  So it’s not always an accurate measurement.

But this week, at least, quite a few political noses are starting to twitch.  They are wondering if the smell of defeat is starting to settle in around the Liberal Party of Canada.

First, there was the respected Nik Nanos, suggesting in his big end-of-year survey that the Reformatories are on track for a majority.  Said Nik: “The current configuration of national support for the Conservatives suggests that numerically a Tory majority government can be formed without significant breakthrough in the province of Quebec.”

Then, there was that Abacus poll everyone was wondering about, showing there Harper party more than ten points ahead of the Ignatieff team.  Said Abacus, which is not yet well-known: “The Conservatives dominate the opposition parties among Canadians aged 45 and over, and have large leads in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and in British Columbia.  In battleground Ontario, the Conservatives have an 8-point lead over the Liberals, with the NDP trailing at 21%.”

Then, yesterday afternoon, the Angus Reid poll that really had Grit phones and Blackberries buzzing: the poll that had the Grits a big 12 points behind the Reformatories – and half of the identified Liberal vote wanting a change in leadership.  Unlike all of the other leaders, Angus Reid said in a release, “the situation is unquestionably different for Michael Ignatieff, with a majority of Canadians (56%) and almost half of Liberal voters in 2008 (46%) claiming that the Grits should change their leader before the next federal election.”

And, finally, last night – not a poll, but a performance.  Stephen Harper tinkling the ivories, and singing up a storm, at the Conservative staff Christmas party.  Even the paper that historically favours the Liberal Party, the Toronto Star, was gushing: “Stephen Harper as Mick Jagger? Hard to imagine, but there was the Prime Minister belting out “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” in front of a packed crowd of Conservative MPs and staff Wednesday night…[it was] a foot-stomping, hand-clapping show that had cabinet ministers dancing.”

(The OLO response? They deplored the fact Harper didn’t sing anything in French. Seriously. Perhaps the unilingual anglophone OLO Director of Communications came up with that one.)

What’s it all mean?  Well, some will say it’s a lot of rock’n’roll sound and fury signifying nothing, of course.  The polls are outliers, Harper’s performance won’t change voters’ views about him, no one cares about politics right now and they don’t want an election anytime soon, and so on.

Those are all fair comments.  They may even be true.

But on this bitterly-cold December morning, I can tell you that quite a few Liberals are starting to get highly, highly uncomfortable.  They are unhappy. They are asking questions.  They are wondering if this week is a blip, or a trend.

And their noses are starting to twitch, and not just because of the cold.

UPDATE: And Frank Graves clears the air, returning it to its previous pleasant odour!

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While John Baird attempts to convince us that his government cares about climate change at the U.N. Enviro Framework summit (they don’t, and we won’t be convinced), Greenpeace – who are, in my view, the undisputed masters of image PR – has done it again.  You can like or dislike Greenpeace, but my Lord they are brilliant communicators.

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What must M.C. Mike do at next week’s Grit Xmas party to win?

Vote here, vote often.

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On Facebook, Susannah Sears challenged me to ’15 Songs,’ which seemed fitting, today.

She explains:

“(1) Turn on your MP3 player or music player on your computer.

(2) Go to SHUFFLE songs mode.

(3) List the first 15 songs that come up (song title and artist) NO editing/cheating, please. Even if you might skip the song when it comes up or be embarrassed for people to know that it’s in your collection, you still must list it.

(4) Choose people to be tagged. It is generally considered to be in good taste to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I’m betting that your musical selection is entertaining.

To do this, go to “NOTES” under tabs on your profile page (or click on “+ write a note” button at the top of the page), paste these instructions in the body of the note, enter your 15 Shuffle Songs, Tag 25 people (under the post) then click Publish.”

Here’s what I’ve come up with (or, rather, iTunes did). For fun, do likewise – tell the rest of us your fifteen. Lennon would approve; it avoids musical snobbery and dishonesty.

And, yes, you do see ‘La Traviata’ there.

1.  Loved Ones – Spy Diddley

2.  NOFX – Leaving Jesusland

3. Lillingtons – Robots in my Dreams

4. Patsy Cline – Got A Lotta Rhythm In My Soul

5. Ramones – What’s Your Game

6. Richard Hayes and the Eddie Sauter Orchestra – Junco Partner

7. The Jam – Down In The Tube Station At Midnight

8. Psychedelic Furs – Pretty In Pink

9. The Ruts – Something That I Said

10. Booker T and the MGs – Green Onions

11. Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers – Here Come the Martian Martians

12. The National – Bloodbuzz Ohio

13. Nirvana – Lounge Act

14. Royal Philharmonic Orchestra – La Traviata

15. The Undertones – Casbah Rock

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Thirty years ago tonight, I was a student at Carleton, and Lee G. Hill and I were sharing a room at Russell House in the university’s residence complex.  The phone rang.  It was my girlfriend, Paula.

“Turn on the radio,” she said, breathless.  “I think someone has shot John Lennon.”

I don’t remember much else, to tell you the truth, but I recall getting calls from friends and family back home, long into that awful night.  I was a punk, but – like many punks – I admired John Lennon.  He believed music could be a force for political change, like we did; he was unafraid to challenge the establishment (however much he was part of it), like we wanted to; he wrote about reality, and he was fiercely honest.  That was pretty punk, too.

In my circle, it was known that I was the guy with the biggest Lennon fixation: I not only had all of his albums, I had all of Yoko’s albums, too.  In the Nasties, I convinced the rest of the guys to play Gimme Some Truth – but I didn’t have to try hard.  I had his books, I collected clippings about him.  I knew a lot about him. As I got deeper into the punk scene, I listened to his records less, but I never let go of him.

He’d be seventy years old, now, but I still listen to his Plastic Ono Band, which is one of the two greatest rock’n’roll albums ever committed to vinyl.  (Ramones by the Ramones is the other.)

His assassination, on December 8, 1980, was a terrible tragedy – and so, in a small way, was the fact that his last album (before the inevitable avalanche of ham-fisted compilations and retrospectives) was a piece of unremarkable, glossy pop like Double Fantasy. Generally, he always needed Paul as an editor, and vice-versa. But Plastic Ono Band was the exception: it was stark, and raw, and different, and deeply, deeply personal. Some say the LP was the product of John’s dalliance with Dr. Walter Janov’s primal scream therapy, or his response to the (necessary, and overdue) collapse of the Beatles. To me, it was instead an actual piece of art and great rock’n’roll, improbably found under the same piece of shrink wrap. It was like listening to someone’s soul, without having received an invite to do so.

Thirty years later, I still listen to that record, and most of his other records, too.  The rest of us have grown older, but John Lennon remains forever frozen in time, hovering over that final autograph.  I miss him.

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“And then, speaking of laughable, there was the performance by the Ombudsman himself.

Marin’s report contains some useful information. Not a ton, really, when it comes to the government’s role, because most of it had already been reported. But it’s a helpful documentation of everything that went wrong, with a little new information on police conduct thrown in, and it passes judgment on some things that need to be judged.

But it would be a much better report, and easier to take seriously, if Marin wasn’t busy establishing himself as the Pat Martin of ombudsmen. His thirst for attention appears to be insatiable, and like the federal NDP MP he delivers a sort of dialed-up outrage via an endless string of sound bytes – his every sentence a Hail-Mary aimed at getting quoted.

This was most pronounced at the end of his press conference, when Marin spontaneously pronounced that the G20 weekend will “live in infamy” as “the most massive compromise of civil liberties in Canadian history.” But pretty much the whole thing was like that, and so (to a lesser extent) is his report.

I can’t really do either justice, but you’ll get a sense if you read the thing. Enjoy the subheads. And if you like the line about the government waking a “sleeping giant,” you’ll be pleased to know that at his presser he also accused it of poking a “hibernating bear.”

If you’re not familiar with Marin, you might think he just got really worked up over flagrant civil liberties violations. But this is how he responds to pretty much everything, so it becomes impossible to tell when he’s actually outraged, and when he’s just putting on a show – and the whole thing turns into a circus, in which any hint of nuance goes out the window.”

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Don Cherry should stick to promoting thuggery in kid’s hockey.  He knows dick about anything else.

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Personally, I look at the next four years as all punks looked at the Reagan/Bush years: as a disaster, but also great source of material.

Click to open.

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