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At Ottawa airport. Just got this lapel pin from a union friend. This is my candidate!

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Ontario Liberals didn’t like the outcome of the Kitchener-Waterloo by-election – and it’s spelled Kitchener, Tim Hudak, not “Kichener” – but Ontario’s PC leader probably liked it a lot less. His party got beaten, badly, in a riding it had comfortably held for a generation.

He’s the most unpopular leader in the province. He is regularly pilloried by the media. His chief advisors are enmeshed in scandal, in Ottawa and Toronto. And, under his watch, his once-great political party has been reduced to a rural rump.

Above is a sad-looking sign for his “star” candidate in the Vaughan by-election. It’s across the road from the rink where Son Two is goal tending this morning. Two weeks later, the PCs signs are still up all over riding, where the Ontario Liberal candidate pulverized his PC opponent.

How did it all come to this? How did the former golden boy of the Ontario Conservatives fall so far?

A variety of reasons, I think. He’s allowed his party to be taken over by rural extremists like the OLA. He’s alienated “foreigners,” when we’re a nation of foreigners. He’s been hurt by his close ties to the likes of Rob Ford and Stephen Harper – and particularly by the fact that voters don’t want the same gang of right-wingers running all three levels of government.

Most of all, however, I think it’s him. As I write in my new book, he comes across as a smirking frat boy, and he seems as deep as a puddle. He’s that guy in high school who nobody liked.

Do we Ontario Liberals want to keep him around?

You’re damn right we do.

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…and, as far as I know, it still isn’t on sale until the first week of October.

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Julie, Canada’s best make-up person, attends to Roxy, prior to her segment about, er, The State Dog-Catcher.

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Any guesses where I am?

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All my life, I have been looking for this item.

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Near Son Three’s lacrosse practice. Yes, I am a child.

 

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After THIRTY-TWO YEARS – the Hot Nasties’ EP has been re-issued by Ugly Pop records!

We recorded it in a garage in Calgary in 1980, overseen by a couple of hippies who were absolutely mystified by these angst-riden teenagers who couldn’t sing or play. That’s me on the left, Sane Wayne Ahern to the right, then Ras Pierre Schenk, and (fittingly, under a burst of light, because he later became a monk) Just Plain Tom Edwards.  The pic was taken by Barrie Wright, R.I.P., outside the Calgarian Hotel one night.  None of us was ever stabbed to death there, but God knows many tried.

You can buy the EP, which has been amazingly re-created by the Ugly Pop guys, here.  The sound quality frankly blows me away.  Nice job on the line-by-line recreation of the sleeve and insert, too.

2012 is a year for punk! Hot Nasties re-issued, and SFH releases its concept album, Why Do You Hate Me?  Pick ’em up now, pick ’em up often!

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The crowd, and the venue – and now the band – are as far from punk rock as you can possibly get. Daughter is happy, however. Sigh.

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Okay, I didn’t. But I’d give a kidney to get it.

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