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By The Ranting Canadian, on March 24, 2013, at 12:18 am
Jim Flaherty, the most incompetent finance minister in Canadian history, released his pathetic 2013 budget on March 21 and almost immediately snuck off to Hong Kong, en route to Thailand. He only stopped in Vancouver along the way – to give a scripted speech to an exclusive audience of Conservative-friendly corporate insiders. He won’t be back in parliament until at least the middle of April.
Very suspicious.
Flaherty understood that his piece-of-crap budget of cooked-up dollar figures and phony economic projections was indefensible, so he did what any coward would do: run away. That was no surprise. What is
. . . → Read More: The Ranting Canadian: Jim Flaherty, the most incompetent finance minister in Canadian…
By The Ranting Canadian, on March 13, 2013, at 10:56 pm Doug Christie: The Unauthorized Obituary (article in The Tyee):
Tom Hawthorn of TheTyee reiterates what I wrote in my post about the recently croaked lawyer Doug Christie. Despite his pompous self-declarations, Christie was not a true advocate for free speech; he was merely an advocate for racism, anti-Semitism and other far right views. Christie, in fact, used the court system to try to silence critics, which is the exact opposite of promoting unfettered speech. What a hypocritical, lying piece of shit.
Excerpts:
In the late 1990s, Christie represented clients who sued newspaper cartoonist Josh Beutel, the New Brunswick Teachers’
. . . → Read More: The Ranting Canadian: Doug Christie: The Unauthorized Obituary (article in The Tyee)
By The Ranting Canadian, on February 18, 2013, at 11:09 am Canadian Progressive Voices:
I am now also an affiliate of Canadian Progressive Voices.
Check it out at http://canadianprogressives.ca/
By Obert Madondo, on February 18, 2013, at 10:26 am “Canadians may be growing weary of — even hostile to — all those Economic Action Plan ads the Harper government has been pumping out for the last four years.” By Obert Madondo | The Canadian Progressive, Feb. 18, 2013: Canadians are growing increasingly weary of — even hostile to — Stephen Harper’s ”Economic Action Plan” “1984″-style propaganda, with which they’ve been READ MORE
By The Ranting Canadian, on February 10, 2013, at 1:12 pm Say NO to mandatory Sun TV in Canada!:
Say NO to mandatory Sun TV!
Canada’s Sun News Network (aka the Scum “News” Network, aka Fox News North, aka the Conservative Broadcasting Corporation) has applied to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) for mandatory carriage on cable and satellite TV.
That means if you are a cable or satellite TV subscriber in Canada, you will be forced to pay for that fake news channel even if you don’t want it. The politically biased Sun TV (owned by Quebecor) has applied for this favoured status because they aren’t getting enough
. . . → Read More: The Ranting Canadian: Say NO to mandatory Sun TV in Canada!
By The Ranting Canadian, on February 8, 2013, at 1:41 pm CBC’s Peter Mansbridge coulda bin a contender: Salutin:
As a follow-up to my post about former fluff broadcaster and current fraud artist Mike Duffy, here is a link to a Rick Salutin column about the fluffy news reader Peter Mansbridge, and about the decline of CBC news in general. As a bonus, here is my own take on Mansbridge.
Peter Mansbridge: big voice, big disappointment
Over the past decade or so, TV news anchor Peter Mansbridge, of the tax-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), has become a shell of his former self. He may have been a serious reporter
. . . → Read More: The Ranting Canadian: CBC’s Peter Mansbridge coulda bin a contender: Salutin
By The Ranting Canadian, on February 7, 2013, at 12:12 am
Mike Duffy: pig in the city
Canadian senator Mike Duffy, the porcine Conservative from Ottawa, has been caught in yet another scandal, this time for falsely claiming Prince Edward Island as his primary residence and subsequently billing the Canadian taxpayers for related living expenses (more than $30,000 since 2010!). The truth is that Duffy hasn’t lived in PEI since about 1971 (a fact that is well documented by a long trail of official paperwork). His PEI residence is merely a cottage that he occasionally visits on holiday.
After this discrepancy started to bubble to the surface, Duffy ordered
. . . → Read More: The Ranting Canadian: Mike Duffy: pig in the city
Canadian senator Mike Duffy, the…
By The Ranting Canadian, on January 12, 2013, at 6:58 pm
Ignorant scapegoating: a feel-good pastime for the thick-headed and big-mouthed
Anyone who doubts that racism and religious bigotry are alive and well in Canada in 2013 simply needs to read the online comments for articles about natives or Muslims, or listen to the callers (and sometimes the hosts and guests) on AM radio talk shows. The same applies to a certain Canadian opinion-based TV station that falsely calls itself a news network.
The popular scapegoats have varied in different times and locations, but in the past few years, Muslims – specifically Arab Muslims – have taken the brunt of the
. . . → Read More: The Ranting Canadian: Ignorant scapegoating: a feel-good pastime for the thick-headed…
By AppalledBC, on January 11, 2013, at 10:50 am
It’s difficult not to think that the timing of the release of the Deloitte financial audit of Atawapiskat was calculated in its anticipation of a potential backlash against Spence and, by association, #idlenomore. The audit prompted Spence to shut down media relations, a closed door thus leading to the media’s usual the-people-deserve-to-know resentment and dog-with-a-bone mentality about being squashed. That in turn led to bad press, especially from the Coyne, Blatchford, and Wente types, and bad press led to an apparent shift in public opinion. The squabbling over today’s meeting doesn’t help. Mission accomplished for whoever it was who . . . → Read More: Politics and Entertainment: Mission Accomplished for the shrewd person who decided on the Deloitte Audit Release
By Guest Blog, on December 28, 2012, at 2:18 pm Dana Wensley | Troy Media: The issue is one of of fairness As First Nation groups continue their protests against Bill C-45, what comes as a surprise to me is that it took so long to happen in Canada. In the lead up to Canada Day I noted that while other post-colonial countries like Australia and READ MORE
By The Ranting Canadian, on December 9, 2012, at 11:41 am
Rex Murphy is a high-paid troll with an extensive vocabulary.
Murphy’s latest predictable, propagandizing public love letter to perpetual politician Stephen Harper is simply sickening to anyone who has been paying attention to what the HarperCons have been doing to their country. The snobby, elitist, preachy pundit must genuinely believe that regular Canadians are uninformed idiots who need to be patted on their heads, shushed and dismissed.
The sly sycophant has been openly and obviously fishing for a Conservative senate seat for years. Now he doesn’t even try to hide it. Murphy clearly wants to join his fellow retired Conservative
. . . → Read More: The Ranting Canadian: Rex Murphy is a high-paid troll with an extensive…
By Bill Longstaff, on November 24, 2012, at 3:25 pm As the NDP rapidly and somewhat surprisingly closed in on the Conservatives during the last federal election campaign, Sun Media dug deep into Jack Layton’s past to find something to smear him with and then flaunted it just days before the election. The rest of the media instinctively jumped on the bone and escalated the story to great heights.
Now as the Liberals, again somewhat surprisingly,
By AppalledBC, on November 15, 2012, at 8:00 pm Canadian Media reporting on the current conflict seems less than balanced – not that there really is such an animal – favouring an Israeli perspective on the matter and the damage being inflicted on Israeli civilians by Hamas’ or Gaza militants’ rocke… . . . → Read More: Politics and Entertainment: Reporting on Israeli Assault on Gaza
By david, on November 7, 2012, at 2:26 am Romney Defeats Obama! U.S. President Barack Obama – perhaps not exactly as illustrated – holds up a copy of the Toronto Globe and Mail after his election victory last night. Or something like that. Maybe they just missed it that we don’t get a vote. Most Canadians don’t get to vote, that is, in the … . . . → Read More: Alberta Diary: Message to Canada’s media: OK guys, you can stop campaigning for that Romney guy now …
By Nancy Leblanc, on August 11, 2012, at 7:54 am From Gérald Fillion earlier this week in response to Quebecor’s public campaign against the Bell acquisition of Astral: En fait, il faut poser beaucoup de questions sur la transaction BCE-Astral qui donnera un avantage concurrentiel exceptionnel à BCE. Mais on doit aussi poser des questions à Quebecor aujourd’hui, qui lance publiquement une charge contre ses concurrents.
Pourquoi Quebecor peut-elle dominer le marché québécois avec 35 % des parts de marché dans l’écoute télévisuelle et que BCE ne pourrait pas en faire autant avec 37,6 % du marché canadien (et 32 % au Québec)? Pourquoi est-ce deux poids deux mesures
. . . → Read More: Impolitical: Questions for Quebecor
By Nancy Leblanc, on June 22, 2012, at 7:02 pm I tweeted the other day about Michael Harris at iPolitics.ca being one of the gutsiest columnists going in the Canadian political media scene. That was prompted by this column.
There’s another columnist who really brings it at times in asking tough questions about this government and it’s Lawrence Martin. Today’s was a reminder of that: “Lessons of Watergate: why our media should heed them.” In some instances the media have become jaded. They are so used to sleazy behaviour by politicians that they tend to under-react. Some buy into the Tories’ morally and intellectually infantile rationale that other
. . . → Read More: Impolitical: On a positive note
By Nancy Leblanc, on June 18, 2012, at 5:30 am “Liberal leadership: Justin Trudeau could lead Liberals to first place, new poll shows.”
Um, what? I read this report twice. But nowhere do I see in that Star report anything to support the sensational headline. He’s first in one online poll on possible Liberal candidate names, yes. Vaunting the party in the polls to first place, however, is not substantiated. Does not compute.
Elsewhere, this seems a little bizarre too.
Fun fact: There’ve already been more stories about the not-yet-started Liberal leadership race as there were about the entire NDP race.
— aaronwherry (@aaronwherry) June 18, 2012
I find
. . . → Read More: Impolitical: Fun with headlines, etc.
By Nancy Leblanc, on June 11, 2012, at 5:27 pm Are you enjoying the headlines of the past few days? An Ipsos-Reid online poll of 1,000 respondents taken from June 5-7 seems to be generating a fair bit of content for Postmedia. A casual reader would likely have the impression that multiple polls had been taken given the multiple platforms and varying headlines we’re seeing.
Headline example 1: “Liberals a ‘party of the past’: poll.” Appears on the Global news site.
Headline example 2: “Most Liberal, NDP supporters back party merger: poll.” Appears on a Saskatchewan Postmedia newspaper outlet.
Merger, party of the past, nothing too suggestive
. . . → Read More: Impolitical: Liberal pollapalooza
By Nancy Leblanc, on June 6, 2012, at 7:06 am A few thoughts on the big interview last night between Harper and Peter Mansbridge on the National…
This interview seemed to have two parts to it. The primary focus was Europe, as it rightly should be. This took up more than half the interview. The European situation is a reflection of the years we’re living in. We’re in post-2008/2009 recession times that, as Harper notes, are turning toward recession once more. What happens in Europe in the near future could shock the world economies again. There’s a good analysis in the New York Times today on what could happen in
. . . → Read More: Impolitical: The Harper interview
By Nancy Leblanc, on May 31, 2012, at 7:52 pm This is a brilliant piece of writing by Mark Brister: “National media coverage of the 2011 federal election was a failure.” Not sure if it’s getting much coverage but there’s a lot of good stuff there. If this is the runner-up for the 2012 Dalton Camp Award on links between democracy and the media, I’d like to read the winner!
Here’s one excerpt, on polling during the election, which the author titles, “the carnival mirror”: Funnelling the bewildering cacophony into a rubric of empirical order, 76 national polls ranking the relative standing of political parties and leaders were published
. . . → Read More: Impolitical: A winning essay on national media coverage of the 2011 federal election
By Nancy Leblanc, on May 28, 2012, at 6:41 pm Today, the Globe gets a copy of this: “Paul Godfrey memo to staff.” Long story short, Postmedia newspapers are having great difficulty financially. Precious advertising dollars are going to online competition and print media is feeling the effects. This is not a new development for print media, we’ve been hearing about it for years.. We also recently heard about the Globe itself going through some difficulties this summer and their contemplation of a paywall.
What is new in Godfrey’s publicity push is something he said last week that should grab the attention of Canadians: But now, at a time
. . . → Read More: Impolitical: Paul Godfrey’s big public push on newspaper ownership
By Obert Madondo, on May 6, 2012, at 8:30 pm MEDIA RELEASE OTTAWA, May 6, 2012 – Today marks the 53rd day of my indefinite hunger strike against Canada’s new draconian crime law, the deceptively christened “Safe Streets and Communities Act”, formerly omnibus crime Bill C10. My name is Obert … Continue reading →
By Obert Madondo, on May 2, 2012, at 4:24 pm I feel as though I’ve been wrenched from the light of the world and exiled to the heart of darkness. My friends, I just want to let you all know that we’ll not be able to stay as connected as … Continue reading →
By Nancy Leblanc, on April 24, 2012, at 8:28 pm Noted in the Globe, this headline is, shall we say, a little misleading in the Canadian context: “Why don’t political bloggers want us to know who’s funding them?”The vast majority of Canadian political bloggers receive bupkus for blogging. It is simply not the case that there are bloggers actively denying information on who is funding them for that reason. At least in Canada and as far as I know.
This report seems to bounce from group to group though and conflate it all under the header’s misleading pointing of the finger at political bloggers. The author mentions charities
. . . → Read More: Impolitical: Financial disclosure for bloggers and others
By JimBobby, on April 23, 2012, at 11:59 am Whooee! Well, friends an’ foes, the whole robocalls election fraud scandal’s been getting pushed to the back burner. The F-35 fiasco and Lifestyles of the Rich and Bev Oda are taking priority. Thing is… the election fraud issue is probably our most troubling problem. It goes straight to the heart of our democracy — or lack thereof.
I’m doin’ my bit to keep the voter suppression scandal in focus. Here’s a song I made over the weekend:
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