While thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, were taking part in Pride events throughout Edmonton today, Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party held a private, conservatives-only “Pride Breakfast” a few blocks from the route of the parade along fashionable Whyte Avenue on the city’s south side. This reflects the unique problem Mr.
Continue readingTag: Ontario Progressive Conservatives
Alberta Politics: Andrea Horwath will be Ontario’s next premier – remember where you heard it first, Albertans
PHOTOS: Andrea Horwath, leader of the Ontario NDP. Below: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, sometime Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leader Patrick Brown, the late Jim Prentice when he was PC premier of Alberta, and former Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak. (All photos except those of Mr. Prentice and Ms. Notley are
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Happy Canada Day! Nice to welcome a new NDP government, though some caveats may apply here in Alberta
PHOTOS: British Columbia’s NDP Premier-Designate John Horgan with your blogger, not so very long ago. Below: Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley, a Vancouver take on a Canada Day flag, and B.C. premier W.A.C. Bennett in his heyday. Happy Canada Day, people, and after more than 50 days of waiting to
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Disingenuous At Best, Hypocritical At Worst
To listen to post-election Ontario Tories and to take them at their word would suggest that the lot of them were simply dupes of Machiavellian forces over which they had no control. Up to and including the day of the election, they all appeared to be solidly behind their leader
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Lisa MacLeod Revisited
The other day I wrote a commentary on recently re-elected Nepean-Carlton Ontario Progressive Conservative Lisa MacLeod. In a thinly-disguised job application/op-ed piece for the Star, Ms. MacLeod talked about what is needed for revitalized leadership of her party, brought to electoral ruin by the soon-to-be-departed leader Tim Hudak. Perhaps not
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: The Blame Game
The fact that I experienced physical and verbal abuse at the hands of my teachers during my Catholic education probably has a lot to do with my visceral response to arrogance. Having someone presume to sit in judgement on another is both a humiliating and ultimately enraging experience, one that
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Now That’s Scary
If you’re a Ontario Liberal Party supporter, you don’t want to hear that Christine Elliott, widow of Jim Flaherty, is going to run for Ontario PC leadership. But she is. On the other hand if you are a centrist who occasionally gets tired of reading about one damn screw-up after another
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Lisa MacLeod’s Ambition
I’ll say right off the top that I am no fan of recently re-elected Ontario Progressive Conservative Lisa MacLeod, and not just because she is a member of what has become an extremist party. Her embrace of the politics of division, her strident hyper-partisanship, and now, post-election, her hypocrisy, rankle.
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: A Timely Reminder Of Tim Hudak’s Magical Thinking
While we should be back from our trip tomorrow in time to catch the Ontario election news coverage, this seems an opportune time to remind readers of the kind of magical thinking so favoured by extreme right enthusiasts such as young Tim Hudak. Tim, as you may recall, has made
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The effect on strategic voting of Wynne ruling out a coalition
Unfortunately, for those of us who think that some form of Liberal-NDP election deal or coalition would be vastly superior to the PCs forming a government with the largest minority, Kathleen Wynne has said that she won’t form a coalition with the NDP. Unsurprisingly, as this move changes the possible
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: A Timely Reminder of Young Tim Hudak’s Faulty Math
While much of the media seem to give young Tim Hudak a free pass on his ludicrouse claim that he will create one million jobs in Ontario over eight years by slashing both jobs and corporate taxes, Paul Boothe at Maclean’s is offering a more critical perspective: A very surprising
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: 2014 Ontario Election: Much to lose, little to gain for the NDP
I once wrote about what I called the “n-party problem”, how movements of various parties on a political spectrum is much more complicated when n, the number of political parties, is greater than two, analogous to the complicated orbits of n-body solar systems for n greater than two. The positioning
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: And Speaking Of Tale Tales
Here’s a whopper from one of young Tim’s chief disciples, Lisa MacLeod: Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Political Rhetoric Pierced
Hyperbole is, of course, a mainstay of political campaigns, as those vying for public office offer a blunt message to potential voters. Keep it simple and repetitive seems the overarching strategy, never more apparent than in young Tim Hudak’s 1 million jobs plan. Will people be fooled by his claim
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: The Common Sense Revolution Redux ( A.K.A. Tiny Tim Roars)
H/t Theo Moudakis If you have resided in Ontario for some years, and were of a certain age when Ontario’s Common Sense Revolution was conducted by Mike ‘The Knife’ Harris, you will recall it was a time of great upheaval that, contrary to the mythologizing that the right-wing so much
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: While Wynne goes to the left, Hudak dives hard right
You might have thought that Tim Hudak would have learned his lesson after his disastrous and short lived attempt to push his party towards US style union busting: going hard right in Ontario isn’t a winning strategy. Well, he is at it again with the first two major campaign announcement
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Political Opportunism Or Epiphany?
Well, the more cynical among us might suggest that Andrea Horwath no longer has a monopoly on political expediency in Ontario. More trusting souls, in this breaking story, might suggest a different causative factor. Young Tim Hudak, leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party, to borrow a phrase from his good
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Too Good Not To Share
This one’s for you, young Tim. H/t Union Thugs Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Another Provincial Concern
Aware of my interest in politics, my friend Gary sent me an email this morning:I read a comment in the National Post and it made me think of the label you use, “Young Tim”. The fellow in his comment asked the question “Have you ever heard of a Provincial Leader
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: An Epidemic of Stupidity
Starting with Tim Hudak and then progressing stateside, this post will attempt to merely display the range of prodigious stupidity that North America seems to be cursed with. First, to young Tim. It seems that each time the beleaguered leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives opens his mouth, one of his
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