John McCallum is no diplomat.
Canada’s ambassador to China never was a diplomat. He is a politician. Maybe he has always been too much of a neoliberal to my taste but he finally did what…
donald trump
The Wonderful Humbling of Donald Trump
The U.S. government shutdown has now being going on for more than a month, with no end in sight.Almost a million government workers are struggling to make ends meet, with…
Wishy-washy on the Wall.
It is beginning to look like there is some daylight between president Donald Trump and a faction of his Republican followers. It happened last Saturday during Trump’s speech to save…
Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Penney Kome writes about the importance of treating poverty as a social disease rather than a purely individual circumstance. And Jackie Esmonde…
Trump can: You can’t.
Social media are a trap just waiting for the unwary politician. While I have tested some of the major social media apps, I try to stay away from them like…
Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Damian Carrington reports on new research showing that it’s possible to stop climate change in its tracks – but only by beginning to…
Blown off by Jason Kenney’s UCP last fall, former Wildrose MLA Rick Strankman heads for the Independent benches
When this blog’s entirely fictional Vegas oddsmaker Jimmy “The Geek” Porcospino celebrated the first birthday of the United Conservative Party last summer by setting the next year’s resignation odds for…
Everything you always wanted to know about Rand Paul and the Shouldice Hernia Hospital * but were afraid to ask
I’m sorry to report, Canada, that Rand Paul, the nutty libertarian son of the crazy uncle of the American Right, isn’t the only politician to stumble into a controversy for…
Mr. Trump as a savant?
The other day, reading something from a forgettable writer, I started out laughing at the presentation of U.S. president Donald Trump as a savant. Please understand that a savant is…
Don’t send a boy…
Maybe if they draw pictures for us, we might understand why prime minister Justin Trudeau would ask U.S. president Donald Trump to help with Canada’s current problems in China. Talk…
Just as well, no province-wide gender-reveal party to be required for Baby Jean, a girl
There will be no province-wide social media gender reveal party for Brian Jean’s and Kimberly Michelutti’s expected baby. True, this would have given all Albertans the opportunity to continue to…
Why Donald Trump Is So Confidently Incompetent
As you may know, I have struggled for years to try to determine what makes Donald Trump tick.And so far my diagnosis includes extreme narcissism with a touch of paranoia,…
The world’s worst walls.
There are walls to keep people in. There are walls to keep people out. They all ultimately fail. Walls to keep people in are just a challenge to human ingenuity.…
How Trump Turned The White House Into a Madhouse
Donald Trump has been holed up in the White House for days, in cold grey Washington, when he'd much rather be in sunny Florida playing golf.He's still clinging feverishly to…
Would a gold piano sound tinny?
Most commentators write a recap about the preceding year on New Year’s Eve but I only thought back a week to an ‘oops.’ I realized that this Canadian missed the…
Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Joe Vipond and Noel Keough highlight the gap between the global impetus to avoid climate breakdown and the narrow self-interest of the Alberta…
Mr. and Mrs. Trump go to war.
In the last half of the 20th Century, Hollywood star Bob Hope was famous for his Christmas shows for American military. These shows took place in areas of conflict where…
Thursday Evening Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Howard Mann discusses the World Bank’s new model for public-private partnerships which deliberately avoids placing any real risk with the profiteers who…