Lost in the Spin Cycle
A week in political life can be a funny thing. Some weeks seem to fly by and feel just free and easy, but others seem to be painfully long, never…
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US Budget Breakdown: The Spinal Tap Solution
There’s an easy solution to the budget crisis in the US: The Spinal Tap solution.
The Canadian Media Echo Chamber: How To Manufacture A Scandal (Just Add Water)
News Organization A prints story with an unnamed source and zero corroborating evidence claiming malfeasance by the Prime Minister’s Office. Journalist B writes column on the original report adding additional…
Another Case of Foot in Mouth Disease
This has been quite the week in Ottawa, between big snow storms and the political drama coming out of the PMO, and that just by the end of the day…
Shade Instead of Sunshine
Today Canada was watching closely at a bit of drama that unfolded in certain committee room in downtown Ottawa. Calling an emergency meeting of a House of Commons Committee is…
Deeper and Deeper
24 hours can feel like a lifetime in politics, and right now I bet that the Prime Ministers office would agree. Today’s big news of Jody Wilson-Raybould’s resignation from the…
Horror Vacui
When it comes to the world that we live in, it’s amazing how some principles from one field remain very true in others. In regards to politics the world over,…
Stuff Happens IV, The Reckoning, week 6. The Trouble with Trudeau
This was not a good week for Justin Trudeau. The coming weeks may not get any better. The Globe and Mail reported on Thursday that Justice Minister Judy Wilson-Raybould had…
Who Is Andrew Scheer? Lesson #2
In the first lesson, we learned that Andrew Scheer is a regular guy. Well, maybe in his own mythology he is a regular guy. Like everything surrounding the Conservative Party…
No Comment
Many days on Parliament Hill, issues or stories will pop up that look bad on a government. When it happens, some of the most hardcore partisans jump up and down,…
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#SaveSTC: Does Saskatchewan Have a Developed Economy Still?
In the days around the time @SKGov shut down STC, I was on the phone with Greyhound Canada (PR people in Texas), trying to get an answer for why they…
The Politician We Aspire To Be
Being involved in politics for over a decade, one gets to have many great experiences and gets to know many amazing people. I know that’s the case for me, and…
RIP Paul
Paul Dewar died on Gord Downie’s birthday. There is certain type of irony to that, as both men died from the same illness. Paul Dewar was an idealist, he was…
Phoenix, We Have A Problem
“The building and implementation of Phoenix was an incomprehensible failure of project management and oversight… Overall, we found that there was no oversight of the Phoenix project, which allowed Phoenix…
Stuff Happens IV, The Reckoning, week 5. Breaking news: Winter is cold
Millions of Americans and not a few Canadians made the shocking discovery this week that winter can be very cold. Baby, it’s cold outside. Or are we not allowed to…
Technology and Democracy (continued)
Post the Second World War, the US became dominant in the world economy and a shift from coal to oil was deliberately taken by the state to weaken the power…
The Stamp of Oil
The opening sentence of the 2011 book, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil by the historian Timothy Mitchell, reads “Fossil fuels helped create both the possibility of…
The Wrong Hill
Last night stories were making the rounds about NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, his by-election run and the pressures on him to with, along with the potential consequences of a loss.…