I swear I didn’t want to write another word about Donald Trump. But some weeks – almost any week, in fact – he’s inescapable. So, with apologies, here we go again… When the history of the Donald Trump presidency is written (my guess is sometime around mid-2018), Dec. 1, 2017
Continue readingTag: u.s. politics
Accidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the spin behind the Trump administration’s push for a massive tax giveaway to the rich has no basis in economic reality – and how Canada shouldn’t be suckered into following suit. For further reading…– Michael Linden examines the overall effects of the Senate’s version of tax reform
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Lack of information and weak enforcement let private health care clinics fudge public-private health-care line
PHOTO: Parkland Institute researcher Dr. Rebecca Graff-McRae. Below: The cover of the Parkland Institute Report, Blurred Lines, Private Membership Clinics and Public Health Care. It doesn’t exactly come as a surprise that so-called “private membership health care clinics” in Alberta have been fudging the line between public and private health
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Karl Nerenberg writes about Bill Morneau’s conflicts of interest – with particular attention to the NDP’s justified criticism of legislation aimed at privatizing pension management to benefit forms like Morneau’s. And Brent Patterson discusses a push back against the Manitoba PCs’ plan
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Which way will the wedge slice? Alberta NDP and UCP adopt opposite strategies on gay-straight alliances
PHOTOS: Jason Kenney may be the UCP’s leader now, but he’s still doing his best to appeal to his red-meat social conservative base. (Photo: Dave Cournoyer, Daveberta.ca.) Below: NDP Education Minister David Eggen, NDP Premier Rachel Notley, and UCP House Leader Jason Nixon. The impassioned, at times bitter, tone of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: One year has passed since Donald Trump’s election and, here we all are, still in Crazytown!
PHOTOS: Donald J. Trump. (Photo: Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons.) He’s President of the United States, you know! Below: Hillary Clinton (Wikimedia Commons), who won the vote but lost the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who promised to fix Canada’s electoral system, and didn’t. Today is
Continue readingAlberta Politics: This is not just what terrorism looks like; it’s what a failed state looks like
PHOTOS: Is Old Glory, as the American flag was once known, now the banner of a failed state? Below: Donald Trump, president of the United States, divider, deceiver and denier in chief, incompetent and seemingly powerless to change anything (Photo: Flickr, Gage Skidmore.) “AT LEAST 58 DEAD AND 500 HURT
Continue readingIn This Corner: The Return of Stuff Happens, week 37: Terrorism in my backyard
You know that it could happen in your town. You just don’t expect that it will. I went to the Edmonton Eskimo game last night, and as I entered the stadium I was struck by how much security there is today. Bags are searched, and for some reason wands were
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Book Review: Politics Without Stories
David Ricci’s Politics Without Stories was released in the midst of an election campaign which upended many assumptions about U.S. politics. But it nonetheless offers a plausible explanation for much of the U.S.’ political environment as it’s continued to evolve – while leaving open what strike me as interesting questions
Continue readingIn This Corner: The Return of Stuff Happens, week 30: Bad boy gets caught with hands in cookie jar
The political career of Derek Fildebrandt is coming to an end. We hope. Fildebrandt, the United Conservative Party (and fanantical former Wildrose) MLA for Strathmore-Brooks, was revealed last week to be cashing in on his taxpayer-supported rental apartment in downtown Edmonton. Out-of-town MLAs get $23,160 a year to own or
Continue readingIn This Corner: The Return of Stuff Happens, week 20: RIP, USA
Donald Trump, the Leader of the Free World crown, officially relinquished the title on Thursday when he announced that the U.S. – the second-biggest polluter in the world –would withdraw from the Paris Climate Change Accord. In stepping aside from the Leadership of the Free World position, the U.S. has
Continue readingIn This Corner: The Return of Stuff Happens, week 19: Will there be ‘Scheer madness’?
At long last, the federal Conservatives have a new leader … and it’s NOT Maxime ‘Mad Max’ Bernier, who would have been the first deeply libertarian leader of a major Canadian political party. After a vote counting process that was only slightly less difficult to understand than watching Game of Thrones
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Madmen in the White House … this time it’s a thing, not just a ‘strategy’
PHOTOS: U.S. President Richard Nixon pointing the way to the exit for Donald Trump’s benefit. Below: Mr. Nixon about to board the helicopter that would take him away from Washington for the last time in an official capacity; a recent photo of President Trump; the sinister Dr. Henry Kissinger, then
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Rachel Notley’s tough talk on pipelines evokes the Peter Lougheed Era of energy policy confrontation
PHOTOS: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley at yesterday’s news conference in Edmonton. (Photo: Chris Schwarz, Government of Alberta) Below: Earth scientist David Hughes (Post Carbon Institute photo), B.C. Premier Christy Clark (B.C. Government photo), and B.C. NDP Leader John Horgan. Using language that, intentionally or not, evoked the Peter Lougheed Era
Continue readingIn This Corner: The Return of Stuff Happens, week 16: I’m done with the NHL.
When the Oilers are eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs — maybe tonight, maybe Wednesday, maybe in the next series — I can officially quit watching hockey. I can’t do it right now. That would be like watching 90 minutes of a two-hour movie and turning it off, or reading
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Donald Trump helps build the case for Rachel Notley’s social license policy on energy exports
PHOTOS: U.S. President Donald Trump – he’s lookin’ at you, Canada. (Photo by Gage Skidmore, Flickr.) Below: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. If Alberta’s conservatives imagined U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision immediately after his election last November to push the Keystone XL Pipeline project forward would provide an opening for them
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Make American Dairy Farms Great Again! Adopt supply management
PHOTOS: Dairy cows in a mass milking machine at a U.S. farm, a pretty well run one from the look of this photo from the Wikipedia. Below: Not what dairy farming looks like any more; U.S. President Donald Trump, hero to the Globe and Mail editorial board, giving Canada, or
Continue readingIn This Corner: The Return of Stuff Happens, week 13: Dumb, dumber, dumbest
Remember last week, when Pepsi was eviscerated for its incredibly tone-deaf ‘Pepsi brings world peace’ ad? Ah, such innocent times. This week, United Airlines made the Pepsi debacle look no worse than a misplaced apostrophe. By now, you’ve seen or almost certainly heard about the violent removal of passenger from
Continue readingIn This Corner: The Return of Stuff Happens, week 10: The beginning of the end for The Donald?
So, what’s the over/under on the Trump presidency? I would have thought two years before he was impeached, but now I’m leaning towards one year. Eighteen months, max. Trump has now lost his first big promise, to repeal and replace Obamacare. His plan alienated his own party to such a
Continue readingIn This Corner: The Return of Stuff Happens, week 9: Jason does Alberta
As expected, Jason Kenney easily won the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta at a convention in Calgary on Saturday, with about 75% of the vote. Kenney was a steamroller who flattened his two remaining challengers, an inconspicuous MLA named Richard Starke, and an even less conspicuous guy
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