This and that for your Sunday reading. – James Galbraith compares the mindless drones carrying an increasing share of the U.S.’ military load, and those serving to try to attack social programs in the name of illusory deficit reduction. But sadly, Galbraith misses one of the most important similarities: in
Continue readingTag: Andrew Coyne
Montreal Simon: The Media Assault on Idle No More
There was an incredibly revealing moment today. A moment that summed up the way many in the MSM have been going after Chief Spence and the Idle No More movement.And like it has been all along, it was both banal and brutal.Read more »
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Saturday reading. – Kate Heartfield worries that the NRA knows exactly what it’s doing with its jaw-dropping response to the Newtown shootings – and that it should be all too familiar based on the tactics of the Harper Cons: It’s ridiculous, but ridiculous works, time and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Friday reading. – Paul Dechene interviews Marc Spooner about Saskatchewan residents left behind in the province’s boom: One way that our growing income gap can be hand-waved away is by pointing to the fact that every other province that goes through an economic boom faces this.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Frances Russell discusses how the Harper Cons have capitalized on the general public’s lack of familiarity with how our parliamentary system is supposed to work – and the conventional checks and balances which have been overridden at every turn by a governing party
Continue readingCuriosityCat: The Joyce Murray Cooperate First, Reform Later Plan’s advantages
The Undemocratic Democracy Recent byelections have once more proved that The Power Trap has the leaders of two of the opposition parties firmly in its grip. The State of Play post Calgary Centre Byelection Some recent reflections on the divided opposition parties: Yet most Liberals here still see other parties
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week.- Susan Delacourt comments on what’s often lacking from Canadian political coverage – and the challenge facing journalists looking to stop relying excessively on horse-race numbers which may miss what ultimately moti…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Joyce Murray is right: Our electoral sytem is broken and needs fixing
Joyce Murray: Targeting our democratic deficitAndrew Coyne has supported Murray’s idea of removing the Harper Tories from power and reforming the electoral system.This is a brief report of what Joyce Murray said, by Joan Bryden:But her proposal for co-…
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Andrew Coyne Calls The Next Election
Unless something astonishing happens, the Wildrose Party will form the next government of Alberta. All that remain is to discover whether it will be a minority or majority.Oh wait! That’s him calling the last election. This is him calling t…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Bill Curry reports on the Cons’ latest public-sector slashing. But there hasn’t yet been much discussion of the most alarming number: upwards of 30% of the Cons’ cuts are coming from the Canada Revenue Agency…
Continue readingCanadian ProgressiveCanadian Progressive: Don’t be fooled by the spin on the Canada-China FIPA treaty
by Gus Van Harten| Troy Media There is a lot of spin about the Canada-China investment treaty (or FIPA). Canadians should not be fooled into the deal. They should insist on an independent review of the government’s claims, before the treaty is …
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: The citizen as consumer, as a mere "marketing target."
http://tinyurl.com/9nu7j9c Under a neoliberal regime such as ours, anything – including your very soul – can be commodified. (Ask those members of the evangelical church to which OGL apparently belongs.) The very concept of consumer assumes a market. Yet we’ve naturalized the concept so unconsciously no one questions the term
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Friday reading. – Timothy Noah writes that since Republicans haven’t been able to convince the American public that inequality is desirable or acceptable, they’re taking another angle: engaging in inequality denialism to try to pretend a growing problem doesn’t exist. – Tim Harper discusses the importance
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Tim Harper slams the Cons for yet another omnibus abuse of parliamentary democracy: Stephen Harper didn’t invent prorogation and omnibus legislation, but he has made two arcane polysyllabic political terms part of our everyday lexicon, improving our vocabulary but diminishing our democracy. His
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Friday reading. – In writing recently about employer efforts to intimidate workers into backing corporate-friendly candidates, I figured that the best examples we’d see would come from individual corporate magnates – as the candidates themselves would surely be smart enough not to state publicly that they
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Michael Harris follows up on the previous activism to save the Experimental Lakes Area by noting that efforts to work with the Harper Cons are providing both divisive and disastrous: (J)ust a few months after the Death of Evidence rally, another event is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Don Lenihan responds to Allan Gregg’s recent critique of Canadian politics, featuring this on the connection that ought to exist between ideology and policy: First, the fact that a policy is based on ideological conviction does not mean it is opposed to
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: I’m Waiting For Andrew Coyne
…’s next lecture on only Conservatives really “get” Capitalism.
Continue readingThe Equivocator: Justin Trudeau is a Serious Candidate for a Serious Party
I agree with Andrew Coyne that the Liberal Party of Canada needs to be the party of bold policy ideas and that on some issues we need to be to the left of the NDP/to the right of the Conservatives. However, I strongly disagree with Mr. Coyne’s assertion that “a party
Continue readingCANADIAN PROGRESSIVE WORLD: Right-leaning British magazine rips Stephen Harper
Since coming to power in 2006, the Canadian prime minister “has acquired a reputation for playing fast and loose with the rules.” Harper plays to his social conservative base. He and his Conservative majority government tolerate neither criticism nor dissent. But these “bullying” ways are set to boost the opposition’s
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