The beat goes on. And it gets louder. Mitt Romney claims that President Obama is a weakling: “If Barack Obama is re-elected,” Romney robotically swaggered in Georgia, “Iran will have a nuclear weapon and the world will change if that’s the case.” Maureen Dowd doubts that Romney understands international affairs
Continue readingAuthor: Owen Gray
Northern Reflections: Jackasses Out Of Control?
The jackasses at Elections Canada are out of control,” Stephen Harper wrote when he was president of the National Citizens Coalition. Harper has hated Elections Canada for a long time. In 2001, when he was president of the National Citizens Coalition, he took the electoral watchdog to court over what
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: The Rise Of The Uninterested
Susan Delacourt puts the robocall scandal into wider perspective. It has everything to do with “undecided” voters. The trouble is, Delacourt writes, “undecided” has become a synonym –an inaccurate synonym — for “uninterested:” In a 1971 interview with the Canadian Press, pollster Martin Goldfarb said that his art — still
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: The Man Behind The Curtain
It didn’t have to come to this. Riding out what is becoming known as the “Robocon Scandal” was not the only option open to Stephen Harper. He could have vowed to get to the bottom of it. He could have decided that discretion was the better part of valor. But,
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Listen For The Rhymes
“History doesn’t repeat itself,” Mark Twain wrote, “but it does rhyme.” Stephen Harper’s complaint that opposition charges of voter suppression are merely a “smear campaign” by sore losers, sounds remarkably like Spiro Agnew’s claim that critics of the Nixon administration were “nattering nabobs of negativism.” People forget that Agnew resigned
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Time To Get Angry
Both Tim Harper and Dan Gardiner have called for a public inquiry into the robocall scandal. Yesterday Gardiner wrote: The Conservatives insist they want the truth to be exposed. If that’s true, they must appoint a fully independent, fully empowered judicial inquiry. And why shouldn’t they? To paraphrase what many
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: A Telling Difference
Bob Rae stood up in the House yesterday to announce that one of the members of the Liberal research staff — Adam Carroll — was responsible for the Twitter account which savaged Public Safety Minister Vic Toews: “I want to offer to the minister my personal apology to him,” Rae
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: No Need To Investigate?
Peter MacKay argues that there is no need for further investigation of the Robocall affair. These were isolated incidents, he says. And, anyway, “It’s certainly not something our party condones, it’s inappropriate behaviour to say the least.” But Lawrence Martin provides a catalogue of Tory subversion, starting with their first
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Things Are Beginning To Stick
For five years, political pundits marvelled at how Stephen Harper managed to avoid being held accountable for actions and policies which most Canadians find abhorrent. He was the Teflon prime minister. Two weeks ago, the government’s Internet surveillance bill blew up in its face. Last week, the Robcall scandal
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: What Does Romney Believe?
Things have not been going well for Mitt Romney. His speech in Detroit fell flat. And, this week, he made yet another gaffe. On the subject of the economy, he diverged radically from Republican doctrine. Cutting spending, he said, was a simplistic solution to America’s problems: If you just cut,
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: This Is "Freedom"
Modern conservatives like to say that they stand for individual liberty. But, Lawrence Martin writes, in both Canada and the United States, the conservative parties are now controlled by virulent wings that are prepared to go to aggressive lengths to achieve their ambitions. The danger is that, in the name
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Grace Under Pressure
Paul Martin may have earned his reputation as Mr. Dithers. But, as Geoffrey Stevens points out, he possesses something that Stephen Harper and Vic Toews lack — grace under pressure. Toew’s wild diatribe about “standing with child pornographers” was not the first such Conservative outburst on that subject. Back in
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Fool’s Game
On the subject of Ontario’s finances, Tom Walkom — who holds a PhD.in economics — echoes the argument Paul Krugman has been making for three years: This is no time to imitate Europe. Now is not the time to make draconian spending cuts: Government workers are laid off to save
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Rule By The Limited
Today is High Noon for Gary Webster. Christopher Hume writes in the Toronto Star that: Already, [Mayor Rob] Ford has inflicted serious damage on the city, painful, but none of it fatal. However, if a group of his designated cronies actually does fire Toronto Transit Commission chief general manager Gary
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: The Road to Austerity
Before Stephen Harper and Dalton McGunity introduce their austerity budgets next month, they would do well to read Paul Krugman’s column in this morning’s New York Times. The advocates of austerity are everywhere these days. Unfortunately, Krugman writes, they have “substituted moralizing for analysis, fantasizing for the lessons of history.”
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Ford And Facts
Word on the street is that Gary Webster is about to lose his job. His mistake was to cross mayor Rob Ford. Ford is smarting, after city council scuttled his plan to expand Toronto’s subway. Royson James writes in the Toronto Star: Denzil Minnan-Wong. Cesar Palacio. Norm Kelly. Frank Di
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: A Tale Of Two Economies
Both Jeffrey Simpson and Chantal Hebert wrote this week about what is happening in Alberta and Ontario. Simpson captured the Dickensian contrast quite accurately: Alberta’s government will get bigger in spending and personnel; Mr. Drummond said Ontario’s must shrink. Alberta is heading for big surpluses, Ontario for large deficits –
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Sharing Sacrifice
I wrote yesterday that Premier Dalton McGuinty now faces the difficult task of getting Ontarians to accept the notice of shared sacrifice. This morning, Susan Riley reminds her readers of how the system is tilted in exactly the opposite direction. On the subject of the Harper government’s plan to “save”
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Now For The Hard Part
Don Drummond has thrown the fat in the fire. If you lived through the Harris years, Martin Regg Cohen writes, you’re going to remember what is about to happen again. But this time, he predicts, it will be different: Rather than across-the-board cuts from the late ’90s, look for out-of-the-box
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Paranoid Delusions
When Vic Toews proclaimed this week that those who didn’t stand with the government “stand with the child pornographers,” Ann Cavoukian — Ontario’s Privacy Commissioner — responded, “What it showed to me was the weakness of their case.” It was a telling comment. Whether it’s the Harper Party’s defence of
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