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Michael Harris.Former United States president John F. Kennedy once famously said that if we don’t get rid of war, war will get rid of us. His dire prediction is coming true. As the world turns and burns, war is everywhere.
After three agonizing years of conflict in Ukraine, there is no end in sight, despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s idle boast...In Carney’s world, two plus two always equals four. In banking and finance, facts matter. In the navel-gazing nightmare of intuitive Trumpism, two plus two equals whatever the president says it does.Liberals like their leaders coming out of caucus, not left field. Carney bucked that preference. He not only captured the top job, he raised the Liberals Lazarus-like from the dead. But he has made the task tougher because he has created such great expectations in Canadians. And there won’t be much time to prepare for the biggest item on his...With a brand new leader at the Liberal Party helm and with the distinct chance of new leadership in all the main federal parties, the old order of national politics could change faster than Newfoundland and Labrador weather.‘This is a national election inside a local riding,’ says Fanjoy in his bid to oust Poilievre in Carleton Liberal candidate Bruce Fanjoy is running against Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre who has a national profile as both party leader and a potential prime minister. Fanjoy’s answer has been old-fashioned hard work, based on the notion that all politics is local.The dramatic collapse in the once insurmountable lead Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre held over the Liberals is the most astonishing reversal of political fortunes I have ever seen. For one thing, it happened in a matter of a few weeks. For the two years before that, the Liberals could barely see Poilievre’s tail lights. He was on cruise control to...Even if Trump is using tariffs to negotiate better deals with trading partners, that process could take up the rest of his presidency. After all, he has levied punitive tariffs against scores of countries. If these countries want to negotiate an exemption or a carveout, they will have to stand in a very long line to get to the president.Historian and journalist Mark Bourrie writes, “This book is about how Canada made its own version of Donald Trump, albeit with fewer guns and less rioting, but with lots of trucks and lies.” Around the world extreme right-wing leaders are coming to power, authoritarians who offer “easy and simple answers to complicated questions.” Aggressive people see an opportunity, and COVID...A few months ago, only people who were smoking the drapes would have thought a Liberal majority possible. Now, who knows? Driving into my hometown, there is a sign at the Four Corners in a farmer’s field. It reads “Mr. Trump. Don’t poke the Goose.” It’s the Canada Goose, of course. The words are directed at U.S. President Donald Trump...Fading Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre should read a little T.S. Eliot. April could indeed be the cruelest month for the man who so badly wants to be prime minister. Canadians will be going to the polls soon. Should newly minted Liberal Leader Mark Carney win that election, as some polls say he could, Poilievre would have presided over the biggest...Both leaders of the mainstream parties need to demonstrate their credentials for the top job, and their plan to rebuff Donald Trump. An election is the best way for that to happen. Despite the economic crisis triggered by U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war, Canada needs to hold a federal election as soon as possible. It may be inconvenient, but...I have just two words for U.S. President Donald Trump: Tariff off. How bad is his crazed trade war? Just a day after imposing illegal and punishing tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Captain Chaos has had to revisit the issue. In just one day. That’s because his belligerent and unscrupulous policy aimed at America’s biggest trading partners and most faithful...King Donald and his band of enabling Banana Republicans have hit a new low. With the ceasefire in Gaza hanging by a thread, U.S. President Donald Trump posted a glitzy video on “Truth” Social complete with a catchy song. The AI-generated video depicted the war-torn region after a makeover—a kind of Las Vegas on the Mediterranean. There was even a...It is usually the other way around, given that America styles itself as the leader of the Free World. Instead, we have a convicted felon and an accused war criminal joining forces against a democracy.Mark Carney has helped two countries navigate through some serious white water. While Pierre Poilievre’s monetary experience is a babble about Bitcoin, Carney has been on the font line of how economies really work in real crises.Henry Kissinger once reportedly quipped that, “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy; but to be America’s friend is fatal.” South Vietnam was a friend, and now it no longer exists. The previous government of Afghanistan was a friend, but has been replaced by the Taliban. The Shah of Iran was a friend, until he was overthrown in the...It has been 14 years since Justin Trudeau called then-Conservative MP Peter Kent “a piece of shit” in the House of Commons. Since then, politics has steadily become a potty-mouthed street-fight between rival gangs.With Donald Trump’s accession to power, a fact-free zone paralyzed by ego and propaganda, the U.S. has entered liar’s heaven and democracy’s hell.So, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has decided not to play for Team Canada. It doesn’t get tackier than that. U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s 10-thumbed meddling in Canadian affairs has led to exactly what he wants: a house divided. America First meets Alberta First is the perfect Trumpian tango.When U.S. president-elect Donald Trump threatened a 25 per cent tariff on all goods coming into the United States from Canada, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said it was “like a family member stabbing you right in the heart.” At the time, more than a few commentators thought that Ontario’s premier was over-reacting. It was just Trump being Trump.So America’s felon-in-chief thinks Canada would be a dandy addition to the United States? Donald Trump even referred to Justin Trudeau as the governor of the great state of Canada. I know. Puerile at one level, disgusting at another, and totally predictable. Veteran Liberal Allan Rock had it right: The guy who may well deconstruct his own country in his...Joe Biden pardoned two turkeys in advance of Thanksgiving: good for “Peach” and “Blossom.” The president went from pardoning turkeys to pardoning his son, ahead of his sentencing on gun and tax convictions. This is bad for Hunter Biden, toxic to the rule of law in the United States, and catastrophic for the president in the dying days of his...Justin Trudeau hasn’t been getting much praise lately, but he deserves more than a little for doing something few politicians have the guts to do these days: stand up for the rule of law, no matter who is involved.As Canada’s parliamentary system sputters into dysfunction, Justin Trudeau’s ability to hit the reset button for his unpopular government has suffered another major setback. Just when the prime minister would like to focus the public’s attention on the government’s upcoming fall economic statement—which is likely to show that both inflation and the cost of living are coming down—the Liberals lose...And so, two months before the White House officially changes hands, the nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue begins. If anyone thought that Donald Trump’s iconoclastic and outrageous promises on the campaign trail were mere rhetoric to give woodies to his frothing base, his staffing appointments reveal the worst case.It didn’t take long for the unsettling reality of a second term for Donald Trump to show up. As everyone knows, special counsel Jack Smith has pursued criminal charges against Trump on two fronts: unlawfully taking classified documents when he left the White House, and obstructing justice to keep them; and for triggering a coup attempt on Jan. 6, 2021...Tomorrow’s American presidential election may reveal if the clock strikes 13, the way it does in the opening line of George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, 1984. Things have moved well beyond bizarre in the lunatic villa of U.S. politics. Americans may well elect a convicted felon who wants to suspend the Constitution, round up millions of people for deportation, and unleash...The cardinal rule of politics and governance is presenting a united front to the public. Rubbing their noses in the party’s dirty laundry is the death march of being out of touch. Bottom line here? From the Liberal Party's point of view, the only thing worse than Trudeau remaining as prime minister is his leaving.No sense mincing words. For the last year, and with each passing day, it is getting clearer that Donald Trump is off his rocker, and GOP politics is off the rails. You can’t make up the stuff that is coming out of Trump’s mouth with zero pushback from the gaggle of sycophants trying to ride his crazy coattails to power...Justin Trudeau is a coach in danger of losing control of the locker room. After losing one Liberal stronghold in Toronto in June, the party has just lost another on the island of Montreal. Toronto St. Paul’s, Ont., and LaSalle-Émard-Verdun, Que., are bookends of a brutal battering. The Grits once seemed to hold the deeds to these political properties. So...For a party trailing by a country kilometre in the polls for over a year, the recent Liberal cabinet retreat was a pretty self-satisfied affair. True, there was a laundry list of announcements: tariffs on EVs from China, a tweak of the temporary foreign workers program, a task force here, and more studies there. Not unimportant, to be sure.Watching the Democratic convention in Chicago, some numbers came to mind that are telling. The United States has been a Republic for 248 years. During that time, 45 people have been president—all male. Of those, 44 were white, and one Black. What is strange about that is that there are roughly 170 million women in the U.S. That represents approximately...It is easy to see why Volodymyr Zelenskyy has become an international political superstar. When Russia invaded his country, observers in the West gave the embattled president of Ukraine virtually no chance of stopping the aggressors. The conventional wisdom at the time was that Russia would overrun the country in a matter of weeks.No matter what happens three months from now, Americans will make electoral history. Either the country will elect a Black, female president, which would be a first, or it will choose a convicted felon, which would also be unprecedented.Once again, the world is holding its breath over events unfolding in the Middle East. With the assassination of the political leader of Hamas in Tehran, Iran is vowing revenge against Israel. No one knows what that will look like. Another missile and drone attack on Israel itself like the one last April, an assault on Israeli shipping, or an...Buckle up, U.S. politics is on one wild ride before Americans choose their next president There was a ride at the Canadian National Exhibition that made the roller coaster feel like an outing in a stroller: the Wild Mouse. It featured small seats, breakneck speed, hairpin turns, zippy ups and downs that played hell on the stomach, and of course, screaming patrons holding on for dear life. U.S. politics has boarded the Wild Mouse for...Politics has always had its share of self-interested fakers masquerading as public servants. But never before has a band of criminals, miscreants, and industrial-strength hypocrites captured a mainstream party, let alone one in the self-styled greatest democracy on earth. This is how the Republican Party—the so-called party of law-and-order—now looks. For starters, it has selected a convicted felon awaiting sentencing...If the Liberal Party and the Prime Minister’s Office aren’t watching the political train-wreck playing out south of the border, they should be. In both countries, the progressive parties are in a crisis of leadership. For very different reasons, the parties themselves are deeply conflicted about their incumbents: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau here, and President Joe Biden in the United...Former U.S. president Richard Nixon once said, 'Well, if the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.' Two weeks ago, in a decision split along ideological lines, six of the nine U.S. justices ruled that a president does have immunity when he is acting in his official capacity. In other words, he is indeed above the law...Federal politics has entered a “none-of-the-above” phase. And that means that predicting how people will vote a year from now is not as simple as voting intention polls suggest. The same polls that show Justin Trudeau taking his party over the electoral cliff if he remains leader also show something else of importance. Canadians are deeply unimpressed with the current...The more secretive a society gets, the less democratic it becomes. As The Washington Post’s motto puts it, “Democracy dies in darkness.” Canadian democracy has been weakened this past week by a signal failure of transparency, a dire error of priorities. On an issue of monumental importance, the public was informationally dealt out.How did gross incivility take over so much of the public square in both Canada and the United States? There is probably a good PhD thesis in the answer to that question. But the disintegration of the political middle begins and perhaps ends with something we all share: the language. Language is the basis of how societies mediate differences of...Can an adult-film actress save the republic from King Donald? Given what is happening in the U.S. justice system these days, Stormy Daniels and her hush-money case may be the country’s best chance to deal out a dictator. When former U.S. president Donald Trump was slapped with multiple indictments and scores of felony charges, a lot of commentators crowed. They...It wasn’t the biggest story coming out of Ottawa last week, but make no mistake about it, Pam Damoff’s decision to leave politics is a canary in the mine. The call to public service is losing its lustre.There is a limit to how far Conservative politicians can carry the demonization of Justin Trudeau. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has reached it. Moe’s stand on the “carbon tax,” a fawning imitation of his party’s national leader, is indefensible. He says not collecting or remitting federal carbon pricing for natural gas and electricity is about “fairness.”The staggering death toll of Israel’s war of rage and vengeance demands an answer before the region is knee-deep in innocent blood. Netanyahu’s six months of slaughter in Gaza has been his response to the atrocity of Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas butchered 1,200 innocent Israelis.Even the most pumped-for-Trump MAGA-fool must have had a queasy moment when they saw the king of grifters on TV hawking his latest product. It wasn’t cologne. It wasn’t those $399 Never Surrender gold high-top running shoes. It wasn’t a T-shirt featuring Teflon Don’s mugshot.On the face of it, altering a photograph—even if you are a princess—is small potatoes. With two major wars raging, Donald Trump offering Americans a fascist buffet in the U.S. presidential election, and the planet running a deadly fever while world leaders dither on climate change; manipulating a family photograph does not seem to be the stuff of a viral...Political leaders who can no longer hear the people are usually on their way to defeat. That is one of the takeaways from the recently cancelled event featuring Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and visiting Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni in Toronto.If anyone in Canada needs to fasten ice cleats to his boots, it’s Bruce Fanjoy. No matter how cold the winter weather, Fanjoy spends every afternoon knocking on doors in pursuit of the Liberal nomination in the federal riding of Carleton. So far, he has shown up at 5,000 homes to meet voters face to face. ANNOUNCEMENTS, EVENTS & MORE...Living next to Russia requires watching very closely what happens in that country. As Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has found out, it can be a life-and-death proposition to misread Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions. It is no accident that both Sweden and Finland have joined NATO in the wake of Russia’s unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine.Ask not for whom the polls toll, they toll for thee. That is the message Canadians are giving these days whenever they are surveyed about their views of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government.Apart from the Canadian public, the obvious loser in the ArriveCan scandal is the Trudeau government. After all, it takes a special kind of incompetence to turn an $80,000 project into a $60-million boondoggle of epic proportions. Thanking the Auditor General for writing what could be your political epitaph isn’t fooling anyone. Neither is the promise to accept her recommendations...U.S. Republicans, Canadian federal Conservatives give Zelenskyy the shaft, and that’s a crying shame To the utter disgrace of what is left of the United States’ international reputation, another “ally” is getting the shaft. This time it’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The politicians whom the Ukrainian president trusted to have his back in his country’s existential struggle against Russian invaders have betrayed him.Could a good dictionary help Justin Trudeau refurbish his tarnished image? I think it could. Allow me to explain. Since 2003, the Merriam-Webster dictionary has been putting out a list of words that were of particular interest to people in that year. It then chooses the “Word of the Year” based on the public’s searches of its various websites. The...I am the first to admit that the transformation of American politics into a lost episode of The Three Stooges can at times be screamingly funny. Where else can you see a man running for the most powerful office in the world warning voters that his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, might lead the country into World War Three? Where else...Trudeau should proactively release all details he submitted to ethics commissioner prior to Jamaica trip’s approval Politics used to be a contest of ideas between parties with different visions of the country. At election time, that produced a winner and a good loser. Now it is a Texas death-match of ideologies. The other side is no longer just an opponent, but an enemy, a traitor, or worse. No victor is legitimate, and there are no good...“All things are subject to decay and when fate summons, monarchs must obey.”—John Dryden, 17th century Augustan poet. Is it time for Justin Trudeau to start reading John Dryden? With the PM’s popularity fading like a flower left unwatered on a post-holiday table, has the moment arrived for him to accept his fate? Is it true that he is no...Every Saturday, Peter Mansbridge provides thoughtful takes on this week's news stories. Subscribe for FREE! You can unsubscribe any time.
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