Quotulatiousness

February 16, 2017

The handshake

Filed under: Cancon, Humour, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Victor sent me this. I had to share:

Justin Trudeau is prepared for this. He has spent hours of watching videos of foreign dignitaries having their knucks busted by Diamond Donnie. He and a crack team of advisors have been studying them and analyzing every move. He has been overclocking it at the gym to get his forearms swole. Anytime he is off camera he is clenching and unclenching a gripmaster. He is endlessly clenching and unclenching his anus to build focus. Shaking hands with Donald Trump is really a contest of wills and Justin Trudeau will not fail. He is an aristocrat and he was bred by his father in all the fine arts of modern statecraft like clasping claws with thugs. Donald Trump is a trumped up peasant and Justin Trudeau is the heir and defender of the North American dream. This was the only thing discussed in that motorcade to the White House. Forget softwood lumber and dairy supply management and the attempt to leverage Ivanka for a roundtable on women in the workplace that sounds like a summit they would have held back in the silent era of film.

The whole trip was all handshake game plan. Every possible move, every possible contingency, from proper foot stance to recognizing Trump’s sloppy attempts at any one of 32 possible Masonic hand ciphers.

The car door opens. This is it. It’s go time. Trudeau steps out of the car and glides into Trump’s outstretched hand. He quickly braces himself on the president’s shoulder, establishing an indomitable centre of gravity. He is going fucking Super Saiyan on this handshake. But Trump will not be deterred. He ratchets up the pressure and tries to pull this punk kid in. There is a tug of war. Trudeau is not moving. His hand is too strong. Their forearms are jerking around with electrical power and neither of them were ready for this to happen.

He can barely believe it himself and he has to look down at his own hands to make sure that this is really happening that, yes, he is not broken. He raises his head again to meet Trump’s gaze with blazing eyes that scream SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS but also AINSI TOUJOURS AUX TYRANS because bilingualism. Utterly destroyed but wanting to be cool about it, Trump gestures at the cameras before leading Justin into his den of lies. He cannot hide the look of absolute mystification on his face.

February 8, 2017

Seeing the elephant (economic edition)

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Stephen Gordon says it’s a dangerous fantasy to think that the Canadian economy could cope with a Prime Minister who tries to “get tough” over Il Donalduce‘s trade concerns:

Pierre Trudeau once described the Canadian relationship with the United States as “like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast … one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” It is now Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s bad luck – and ours – to be bunking down with a surly and irascible elephant.

It’s worth dwelling on just how asymmetric the economic relationship is between Canada and the United States. It’s sometimes pointed out that Canada is the largest market for U.S. exports, and that’s true as far as it goes. But U.S. dependence on the Canadian export market is an order of magnitude smaller than Canadian dependence on exports to the U.S. Exports of goods and services to the U.S. accounted for 22.8 per cent of Canadian GDP in 2015; U.S. exports to Canada were only 1.9 per cent of U.S. GDP.

There’s not much that could or should have been done to reduce this dependence on the U.S. market. All the factors that determine the volume of trade flows — physical proximity, market size, linguistic and cultural ties, similar legal systems and so forth — all point to the U.S. It’s always been a good idea to promote trade links with other countries, but the U.S. would still be our dominant export market even in a world in which the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership were already in place.

So it really doesn’t make sense to think that a Canadian Prime Minister can “stand up” and “fight back” against U.S. sanctions, or that Canada’s bargaining position would be somehow strengthened if another person were running the government. The trade numbers would still be the same.

February 4, 2017

Trudeau’s promise to reform the election system: “It had ‘face-melting political blowback’ written all over it”

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

My headline distorts Chris Selley‘s message a bit, but he does correctly point out that Justin Trudeau’s promise was a cynical ploy to attact NDP votes to Liberal candidates, not a genuine commitment to move away from FPTP in our federal election system:

So far as I can tell, the publicly stated evidence that senior members of the Liberal party had any interest in changing the electoral system amounted to Justin Trudeau’s single expression of interest in ranked ballots. There was no evidence at all to suggest any senior party members thought FPTP was the worst electoral system imaginable for Canada — the only interpretation of the platform promise. That being the case, the promise was far too conveniently enticing to New Democrat voters to take at face value.

As to referendums: ample Canadian precedent holds that electoral reform is contingent upon them. And a cursory glance at public opinion made plain that nothing justified breaking that precedent. An Abacus Data poll for the Broadbent Institute, published shortly after the 2015 election, asked respondents to rank their preferences among the current system, mixed-member PR (MMP), pure PR and ranked ballots. The most popular first choice by far, at 43 per cent, was the current system; it was also the second-most popular second choice. The most popular alternative, MMP, was the first choice of only 27 per cent.

No consultative process could fashion a referendum-free consensus from that. It had “face-melting political blowback” written all over it.

December 19, 2016

Justin Trudeau’s actual role in the Trudeau Foundation

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ted Campbell finds an oddly charitable way to describe the Prime Minister’s efforts on behalf of the Trudeau Foundation, and a contrast with Hillary Clinton’s role in the Clinton Foundation’s work:

Let me be very, very clear: I do not doubt Prime Minister Trudeau’s personal honesty; nor so I actually think he is smart enough, devious enough to manage a “cash for access” scheme. The “cash for access” scandal is, as Professor Tom Flanagan says, something that all parties, Conservatives, too, both nationally and provincially, have always done. Prime Minister Trudeau is, rightfully, being hammered not for schmoozing with the wealthy, but, rather, for his own person hypocrisy about the issue. But the Trudeau foundation is a bit different and a bit more dangerous. I think the Trudeau Foundation was set up, using $125 Million of Canadian public (taxpayers’) money “donated” by then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, as a mechanism to perpetuate a Liberal icon and to provide a sinecure for Justin Trudeau and, thereby, to help him shelter some of his substantial family wealth from zealous tax collectors; and he is rather like an employee … something akin to a Disneyland Princess who gets trotted out to pose with the paying customers. But the warnings from Candice Malcolm and Tony Keller are valid and Prime Minister Trudeau should pay heed. Americans forgave Donald Trump for his great wealth and tax evasion and a hundred other faults because he spoke to them about their own fears. They did not forgive Mrs Clinton because, I think, she talked at them, not with them, and she talked about people and issues that working class Americans thought had already received enough attention and even special treatment.

Justin Trudeau is perceived, already, as a pampered, privileged “trust fund kid” who, despite the rhetoric, doesn’t really understand middle class, much less working class Canadians. Prime Minister Trudeau won, in 2015, in large measure because Canadian were tired of Prime Minister Harper, and because he is genuinely “nice,” but not because Canadians think he is, in any way, “one of them.” He could lose, as Hillary Clinton lost, if Canadians decide that he is using his high office to feather his own already substantial nest with “dirty” foreign money while he sells out Canadians’ interests. It may be unfair but the media have this bit between their teeth and they are not likely to just let it go away.

December 9, 2016

The Trudeau government’s bad times

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Chris Selley on the (largely self-inflicted) hard times of Justin Trudeau’s government recently:

It has been one hell of a couple of weeks for the Liberal Party of Canada: first Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s bizarre encomium to dearly departed Fidel; then the approval of two pipelines projects, dashing the oil-free dreams of people who hadn’t been paying attention and producing thousands of barrels of fake outrage; and then, the inevitable collapse of the government’s electoral reform agenda.

It was always going to look bad. The Liberals were always going to break their promise to make 2015 the last first-past-the-post election. Perhaps they had even contemplated their members on the electoral reform committee recommending they break it, by adopting a go-slower approach. But no one, surely, anticipated Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef accusing the committee as a whole of not doing the job she had set out for them, which they had; mocking the Gallagher Index, an easily explicable formula for measuring proportionality in election results; and justifying herself with shameless bafflegab that would make Paul Calandra blush.

[…]

Monsef later apologized for accusing committee members of slacking, Manon Cornellier notes in Le Devoir, but not for misrepresenting their mandate, mocking mathematics — as an emissary of the party of “evidence-based policy,” no less — and generally behaving like a buffoon.

“(Monsef’s) beef with the Gallagher Index isn’t that it only measures proportionality. Her beef with the Gallagher Index is that it’s math, with its sums of squares and square roots and symbols that are literally Greek,” Fine fumes. It’s a worrying outburst of idiocy, she argues. Monsef and her ilk talk constantly of “engagement,” but that’s a very difficult thing to measure. “At the intersection of ‘affinity for engagement’ and ‘contempt for metrics’ is fertile breeding ground for leaders who wish to make up their own rules,” Fine trenchantly observes.

December 3, 2016

Trudeau government to approach legalizing marijuana as an explicitly crony capitalist exercise

Filed under: Cancon, Health, Law — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:34

Jay Currie was woken up at an ungodly early hour to talk on a radio show about the leaked portions of the Canada Marijuana Task Force Report. It’s apparently not good news for consumers but really great news for the existing favoured “legal” producers:

The leak itself is interesting and more than a little outrageous. The Report clearly favours Health Canada Licenced Medical Marijuana growers and many of those corporate grow shows are publically traded companies. Allowing the report to come out in dribs and drabs (because “translation”) could cause deep uncertainty in the public markets. The government should release the report, in toto, immediately.

Substantively, the Report apparently recommends that legalization efforts be directed at “getting rid of the $7-billion-a year black market. Sources familiar with the report, which is expected to be made public Dec. 21, say all the other recommendations flow from that guiding principle.”

It is not clear whether that “black market” includes the grey market of dispensaries and pot shops which has grown up in Canada and which continues to expand.

Using “legalization” as a weapon against the “black market” is pretty much the level of restrictive thinking I expected from the Task Force. Rather than seeing legalization as an opportunity to regularize the marijuana market, the language suggests a resumption of the war on drugs by other means.

The Task Force is apparently suggesting that the 40 Health Canada approved licencees remain the only legal source of marijuana and proposes that recreational pot, like medicinal pot, continue to be delivered by Canada Post. A nostalgic bow to the mail and a suggestion pretty certain to keep dispensaries and “Bob on the corner” in business for the foreseeable future. Here is a free clue for the Liberal government: recreational pot users are impulse buyers. As I say in my book, “The most common triggers for the decision is that, by their lights, a customer is running low on pot, has run out of pot or has been out of pot for some time but only now has the money to buy more pot.” In short, not likely to wait a week for Canada Post to deliver.

December 1, 2016

RCAF to get “the barest minimum the government can get away with providing”

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

[Updated, see below] The Canadian government has not been in any way serious about providing sufficient resources to the Canadian Forces since the end of the Louis St. Laurent era, and that state of affairs is not about to change under Justin Trudeau’s leadership. The Royal Canadian Air Force either is (if you believe the Minister of National Defence) or is not (if you believe the Chief of the Defence Staff) in the grip of a “capability gap” that requires the immediate sole-source purchase of 18 new Boeing Super Hornets. Canada’s current fleet of CF-18 Hornets are, despite the minor nomenclature change, very different aircraft than the F-18 Super Hornets (here’s an overview of the differences).

CF-18 at the National Air Force Museum of Canada in Trenton, Ontario, 2015.

CF-18 at the National Air Force Museum of Canada in Trenton, Ontario, 2015.

The RCAF is a small air force and does not realistically have the capacity to support too many different types of aircraft at current staffing levels. The CF-18 and the Super Hornets count as different aircraft, so there will need to be duplication of maintenance and training facilities to ensure that the RCAF is able to keep both types operational at all times. Adding in the complication of yet another type of aircraft — the F-35 (most likely) or one of the European offerings (Eurofighter Typhoon, Saab Gripen, or Dassault Rafale) would require a third set of maintenance and training facilities to support the latest addition to the fleet. The government will not be willing to provide the RCAF with enough funding to do this, based on historical patterns and general apathy toward military spending among the voters.

Michael Den Tandt says that no matter what happens, the government will almost certainly leave “the ‘brave men and women in uniform’ where they’ve always been — last on the list of priorities”:

It’s truly remarkable, given how Liberal and Conservative MPs speak so often and sincerely of their sacred covenant with the “brave men and women in uniform,” that this country’s air force is obsolete and decrepit, and has been so for as long as anyone now living can remember.

You’d think, given the volume of talk in the House of Commons over the past decade on their behalf, that RCAF pilots – one of whom died Monday, tragically, in a training accident in Cold Lake, Alta. – would be flying X-wing fighters out of Star Wars by now, and not a ragtag fleet of 1980s-vintage refurbs that were new when many members of the current parliament were children.

[…]

Had the Conservatives dared to quietly grow the RCAF fighter fleet by 23 per cent, at a cost of $65-$70-milion per plane, the Liberals would have called them warmongers and spendthrifts. To be sure, the Liberals may be embarrassed by the very mention of the CF-18 – having made such a to-do about withdrawing them last spring from the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Having beaten swords into ploughshares, they’re now buying more swords. How awkward.

More disingenuous still is the claim that a proper, open fighter competition is impossible in short order. The five possible selections are the F-35, Boeing’s Super Hornet, the Eurofighter Typhoon, Saab’s Gripen, and Dassault’s Rafale. The specs, per-unit and operating costs of all these aircraft are known. Given an abridged new statement of requirements, a competition could have been run and a new fighter selected in 2017, industry sources tell me.

Follow the Liberal strategy to its conclusion and you end up with this: A mixed fleet, comprising some CF-18s, 18 newish Super Hornets, and years hence, long after the punters have forgotten Campaign 2015, the F-35 – by which time it, too, will likely be obsolete.

It boils down to this: The “brave men and women in uniform” will get the barest minimum the government can get away with providing, until another military crisis on the scale of the Afghan war forces its hand, after which it will buy whatever equipment it can find, in a panic. It’s how we roll, here in Canada.

Update, 2 December: Ted Campbell explains why there are differing opinions on whether there’s a “capability gap”.

Team Trudeau may have found a way to (at least) appear to square the fighter “capability gap” circle. The report quotes RCAF top dog, Lieutenant General Michael Hood as saying that “The government has announced a policy whereby the Royal Canadian Air Force is required to simultaneously meet both our NORAD and NATO commitments,” Hood told senators … [and] … “I am at present unable to do that with the present CF-18 fleet. There aren’t enough aircraft to deliver those commitments simultaneously.”

But, the article goes on to say, quoting General Hood’s testimony, again: “Before the change, while the air force had standing commitments to NORAD and NATO, Hood suggested there was more flexibility to manage the fleet” [but] “That commitment is now a firm commitment with respect to this policy change so we will meet it,” he said [and] “I’ve been told I will be given all the resources I need to increase the numbers available. I’m happy the government is investing in the Royal Canadian Air Force,” he said.” That does solve the problem of General Hood’s previous statement that there was no “capability gap;” the government just changed the rules and created one.

[…]

The previous government did not pull that number of 65 completely out of thin air (or some other place where the sun doesn’t shine). You can see some logic to it: 2 squadrons, each of 12 aircraft (24) dedicated to NORAD (only 24 because the F-35 Lightening is very, very much more capable in the NORAD/interceptor role than the CF-18) and 2 more squadrons (24 aircraft for a total, thus far, of 48) in “general” roles ~ available for NORAD or NATO or other tasks, and one squadron (12 aircraft) as an “operational training unit” and 5 aircraft for logistical and maintenance stock. At $9 Billion for that fleet it was seen to be pretty much the top end of the fiscal load that the Canadian taxpayer might be asked to bear.

November 29, 2016

Justin Trudeau’s 15 minutes of internet fame

Filed under: Americas, Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In his statement on the death of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went unexpectedly viral and his phrasing was turned into a hilarious Twitter hashtag: #TrudeauEuologies. In the National Post, Colby Cosh sums up the responses:

The Prime Minister has received a thousand-bomber raid’s worth of invective for his formal statement on the death of Fidel Castro, the communist dictator of Cuba who was an old friend of the Trudeau family. You probably need no reminding of the first sentence of the press release, already lampooned worldwide as a triumph of putrid euphemism: “While a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro’s supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for ‘el Comandante’.”

Habitual readers will know that when I see a thousand people gathering stones to throw at one, I try to see things from the side of the one. So my first impulse was to search for even a half-satisfactory justification of the PM’s statement. Alas, nothing came to hand. Just more rocks.

There is the “diplomacy is the art of lying about terrible things” defence: the idea that the interests of Canada might demand that Justin Trudeau use the opportunity presented by Fidel’s demise to suck up to his family and inner circle. This seems to me like an upside-down understanding of diplomacy. The Canadian government may sometimes be obliged to take, and even defend, morally ambiguous actions in the name of state interests. Merely telling sweet-sounding falsehoods about individuals is rarely involved. Like Trudeau’s acknowledgment that Castro was a “Comandante” — a pompous sadist who turned a beautiful country into a giant barracks — the diplomacy defence tacitly confesses the truth: Cuban government is lawless personal rule — as of now, the rule of a restless ghost who must be placated.

The statement might even be taken as a cryptic critique of the Castro regime, but there is no evidence the Prime Minister’s friendship with Castro was anything but genuine. When Trudeau writes “I know my father was very proud to call (Castro) a friend” he is stating fact. If the younger Trudeau does not believe that Castro was just a superhuman social reformer, and he really sees Cuba’s generations of exiles and political prisoners as more than hazy abstractions, then his family’s sucking up to Castro is fully conscious, fairy-tale evil, rather than the aftertaste of Fidel’s long-standing glamour cult among halfwit intellectuals.

Update: In Maclean’s, Terry Glavin twists the knife:

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

Ever since his election as Canada’s Prime Minister last October, Justin Trudeau has revelled in global tributes, raves and swoons. He’s the Disney prince with the trippy dance moves, the groovy Haida tattoo and the gender-balanced cabinet. He’s the last best hope for globalization, the star attraction at the Pride parades, the hero of the Paris Climate Summit, the guy everyone wants a selfie with.

Trudeau made himself synonymous with Canada. He made Canada cool again. It was fun while it lasted.

By the early hours of Saturday morning, Havana time, Trudeau was an international laughingstock. Canada’s “brand,” so carefully constructed in Vogue photo essays and Economist magazine cover features, seemed to suddenly implode into a bonspiel of the vanities, with humiliating headlines streaming from the Washington Post to the Guardian, and from Huffington Post to USA Today.

It was Trudeau’s maudlin panegyric on the death of Fidel Castro that kicked it off, and there is a strangely operatic quality to the sequence of events that brings us to this juncture. When Trudeau made his public debut in fashionable society 16 years ago, with his “Je t’aime, papa!” encomium at the gala funeral of his father in Montreal, Fidel Castro himself was there among the celebrities, as an honorary pallbearer, lending a kind of radical frisson to the event. Now it’s all come full circle.

November 14, 2016

Trudeau’s corner

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:00

Ted Campbell rounds up much of the recent media wisdom on the state of relations between Canada and the US in the wake of Il Donalduce‘s victory in the presidential election, and summarizes what Justin Trudeau may be forced to do:

It would appear that there is an emerging consensus in the mainstream Canadian media, from left, centre and right, that the election of Donal Trump means that Justin Trudeau, and, indeed, Canada, is backed into an unhappy, uncomfortable, even dangerous corner; dangerous, that is, to our national interests.

[…]

In short, in so far as Prime Minister Trudeau’s agenda is concerned, most media commentators seem to agree that it, and by extension Canada, in so far as Canada shares the prime minister’s vision, is:

big-bang-theory-screwed-humor

What should must Prime Minister Trudeau do?

    First: secure the CAN~USA free trade agreement. Everything on his agenda depends upon revenue and revenue depends upon Canadians having jobs and many, many of those Canadian jobs depend upon access to the gigantic US market. If he wants to do anything except bow out, three years from now, as a miserable failure of a prime minister, then he must secure our free trade deal with the USA. And it’s a deal, which means that in order for us to get what we want and need the Americans have to get what they want and need, too.

    Second, and likely consequential to the first priority: increase defence spending ~ double it if that’s what it takes, buy the F-35, strengthen the Canadian contribution to NORAD and NATO, and then make UN peacekeeping support US and Western strategic objectives.

    Third: cancel the carbon tax; it will only make Canadians companies less competitive.

    Fourth: force pipelines through to tidewater on both coasts. Keystone XL is OK for getting Alberta’s oil to Texas, but we really need to get it, readily, to the whole world. That means pipelines to Canadian ports … no matter what the greenies and first nations might say or do.

    Fifth: negotiate free(er) trade deals with others. Start by ratifying the TPP, no matter what. Negotiate deals with the UK, with China, with India and with the Philippines, all as matters of urgency.

Finally, Prime Minister, please do not get into this position …

justin-trudeau-cornered

If Trudeau did all or most of this, he might well be able to appease Trump and retain Canada’s advantageous relationship with the US otherwise intact. The problem is that, as Campbell notes, it will offend and outrage so many parts of the Liberal coalition that it would take such a “Nixon goes to China” level of political audaciousness combined with a Jean Chrétien degree of fiscal austerity that I doubt Trudeau could even get his caucus unified enough to pass the legislation, never mind withstand the inevitable protests in Liberal ridings across the country (and in the domestic media).

Cornered indeed.

June 9, 2016

QotD: Teaching Canada a lesson

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Speaking of Canada and plans, and looking north at the egregious hereditary idiot running the place, the one with the penchant for physical assault of legislators, and his over-privileged and -entitled wife, plus the lunatics who put him in office, it is not impossible that Canada would someday permit easy access to Latins and then ease their way to crossing our northern border. We need to make it absolutely clear that if they ever start doing this their existence as a sovereign nation will end and they will become just another province of a not especially friendly empire, us. We’ve long been Canada’s last line of defense, but they’re our first. They’d better goddamned realize what that means before letting Prince Justin engage his more humanitarian delusions.

Tom Kratman, “El Imperio Contraataque Part 5: Or Maybe More Than A Single Ounce of Prevention…”, EveryJoe, 2016-05-30.

May 25, 2016

Kathy Shaidle on Justin’s “two minutes for elbowing” penalty

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In her latest column for Taki’s Magazine, Kathy Shaidle looks at the #elbowgate scandal in parliament:

No, Trudeau’s hissy fit was profoundly unparliamentary, even for him. He’s previously stuck out his tongue at opposition members. This isn’t even the first time he’s cursed in the House. Again: Like father, like son…

And — in any workplace beyond the Hill, perpetrated by any man with a poles-apart pedigree — it would be a fireable (and possibly criminal) offense.

Most readers likely share my dismay that human resources has siphoned so much power from other corporate departments like accounting or sales, as our society’s slow-motion sex change continues. But that’s the world liberals have created, so one might reasonably suspect that — ha! Had you going, didn’t I?

You see, Trudeau calls himself a feminist. All. The. Time. And for those few who haven’t sussed this out by now, that doesn’t mean he treats women equally and respectfully. That would be cwazy tawk! No, it means that, when he elbows one in the boobs, it’s no big deal. Because his feminism “shots” are up to date. He’s immune. See: “Clinton, Bill” and “Kennedy, Ted” for homegrown examples.

Oh, and “Ghomeshi, Jian” for one northern varietal.

I’ve written about Ghomeshi before: the women’s-studies major–turned–minor musician–turned–major Canadian broadcasting “star” and progressive pinup — until he was accused of slapping around his girlfriends. That case went very badly for the girlfriends, but accusations nevertheless persist that Ghomeshi and his fart catchers created a “toxic work environment” at the CBC. One I was forced to subsidize via government extortion, and where his “inappropriate” “sexist” behavior was tolerated and “enabled” zzzzzzz so sleepy…

Alas for, well, this column, “three’s a trend,” not two. But having no such professional scruples, amateur journalists from Victoria to St. John’s gleefully reposted this photo of Ghomeshi and Trudeau looking chummy as shit, along with an #Elbowgate hashtag and cheeky “We’re feminists!” captions.

May 17, 2016

“There is no job called ‘First Lady of Canada'”

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Richard Anderson responds to the uproar that the PM’s lovely wife somehow has to put up with the indignity of too small a staff to handle her “official duties”:

There is no job called “First Lady of Canada.” Until somewhat recently — Margaret Trudeau incidentally — the wife of the serving Prime Minister was hardly ever mentioned in public. Laureen Harper spent nearly a decade in the role without bothering anyone and with minimal support. The office of British Prime Minister has been in existence for nearly three centuries and even specialist historians would be hard pressed to name more than a handful of Prime Ministerial wives. There is nothing in the laws, customs or traditions of our system of government that regards the spouse of the PM as anything more than a bystander to the functions of the state.

But that was then. As we are continually reminded: It’s 2016!

Justin’s father dispensed with the hum-drum limitations of his role as First Minister, creating the modern Imperial Prime Minister who rules with a rod of iron. It was under the elder Trudeau that ministers became clerks and back-benchers so much parliamentary cannon-fodder. The thing about absolute monarchs — or sandal-clad philosopher kings — is that there is no limit to their purview. All things fall under their sway. Consequently those who serve under the New Sun King’s remit must wield great power as well. To suggest otherwise is the gravest example of lèse majesté.

[…]

Mrs Trudeau is not a trained psychiatrist, counsellor, medical expert or technical advisor of any sort. She has a degree in communications and once worked as a personal shopper for Holt Renfrew. Her resume is so thin it makes her husband look like George C Marshall. Like her husband she is the child of upper class Montreal privilege. What actual help such a being could provide to the “people” of Canada is hard to define. Perhaps a pep talk on the importance of being born rich and beautiful and marrying well.

The voters demanded change last October. We replaced a flawed man of substance with a man-child as Prime Minister. Not surprisingly Canada’s new “First Lady” is as useless and vain as her predecessor was accomplished and professional.

April 1, 2016

How to defeat ISIS

Filed under: Military, Politics, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Daniel Greenfield rounds up the key issues with all of the traditional ways to “fight” ISIS:

If you’re keeping score, freeing Islamic terrorists from Gitmo does not play into the hands of ISIS. Neither does bringing Syrians, many of whom sympathize with Islamic terrorists, into our country. And aiding the Muslim Brotherhood parent organization of ISIS does not play into the Islamic group’s hands.

However if you use the words “Islamic terrorism” or even milder derivatives such as “radical Islamic terrorism”, you are playing into the hands of ISIS. If you call for closer law enforcement scrutiny of Muslim areas before they turn into Molenbeek style no-go zones or suggest ending the stream of new immigrant recruits to ISIS in San Bernardino, Paris or Brussels, you are also playing into the hands of ISIS.

And if you carpet bomb ISIS, destroy its headquarters and training camps, you’re just playing into its hands. According to Obama and his experts, who have wrecked the Middle East, what ISIS fears most is that we’ll ignore it and let it go about its business. And what it wants most is for us to utterly destroy it. Or as Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said, “If you kill your enemies, they win.”

But maybe if you surrender to them, then you win.

Tens of thousands of Muslim refugees make us safer. But using the words “Muslim terrorism” endangers us. The more Muslims we bring to America, the faster we’ll beat ISIS. As long as we don’t call it the Islamic State or ISIS or ISIL, but follow Secretary of State John Kerry’s lead in calling it Daesh.

Because terrorism has no religion. Even when it’s shouting, “Allahu Akbar”.

February 10, 2016

Andrew Coyne re-phrases Justin Trudeau on our Iraq commitments

Filed under: Cancon, Middle East, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

It’s all a bit confusing, so Mr. Coyne has thoughtfully straightened out and recast the Prime Minister’s statement:

Still, in any mission, you need to make choices, even false ones. We can’t do everything. Rather, in the fight against ISIL we have chosen to do everything except the one thing our allies have asked us to do: fight ISIL. While Canadians have always been prepared to fight, we believe that in this campaign there are better ways we can contribute that build upon our uniquely Canadian expertise. Thus, rather than actually fly the planes ourselves, we will rely on our uniquely Canadian expertise in refuelling planes for others to fly.

Let me be clear. There is a role for bombing — just not by Canadian pilots. After all, combat is not what Canada is all about. Rather, what Canada is all about is standing by while others engage in combat on our behalf. Think of the consequences, if in the course of an airstrike aimed at ISIL one of our brave and talented Canadian pilots were to inadvertently kill a great number of innocent civilians. Whereas merely providing the fuel for the plane that does — along with aerial surveillance, and of course the essential work of identifying targets by our special forces, er, training advisers working on the ground — leaves us wholly uninvolved.

A word about those trainers. It is true that we are tripling their number, while increasing the total number of our military personnel in the region by a fifth. Here again I would caution people not to think this meant we were somehow engaged in combat. Yes, it is true that they will be installed near the front line, and yes, training will often involve taking Iraqi and Kurdish troops out on patrol, and yes, this will sometimes mean that our troops are fired upon, and yes, they will sometimes be obliged to fire back. But merely because our troops will be firing upon the enemy in a war zone or calling in airstrikes from above does not mean they will be in combat. I mean, it says right there in the platform: “We will end Canada’s combat mission in Iraq.”

February 1, 2016

QotD: The usefulness of political polling

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Ten months before an election we have conjecture and nothing more. Pierre Trudeau was a political corpse 10 months before the 1980 election. Remember who won? The electorate has to be whipped, beaten and prodded to give a damn about politics even during the writ period. Had the pollster asked if Daffy Duck or Justin Trudeau should be the next Prime Minister, there’s a fair chance the media would be talking about whether a cartoon with a speech impediment can lead Canada. Oh wait.

Richard Anderson, “I Dream of Coalition Governments”, The Gods of the Copybook Headings, 2014-12-19.

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