PONDERABLES
Landlords are required by law to provide heat, why aren’t they also required to provide air-conditioning?
Why do millions of Republicans, lawmakers and voters alike, kowtow to a man who is clearly insane?
Why do 60 Minutes producers insist on guests taking walks with their hosts?
Is the world really in the worst shape ever, or is it just that today’s 24/7 news coverage allows us to know more about it?
Why doesn’t Evan Solomon realize viewers want to hear more from his guests and less from him?
Is Kevin O’Leary’s endorsement of Jean Charest for the Conservative leadership the kiss of death?
THINGS I FIRMLY BELIEVE
Important hockey tournaments should never be played during the summer.
Any leader of an organization who has to apologize as often as RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki does should resign.
There’s as much misinformation emanating from the “left” as there is from the “right.”
It’s past time for all levels of government to stop letting activists set the agenda.
Toronto mayor John Tory has more energy than the Energizer Bunny.
Transgender athletes should not be allowed to compete in sanctioned events.
A NEW PAT TABLER ANNOYANCE
Blue Jays baseball broadcaster, Pat Tabler, who has many annoying habits, has added a new one: he’s begun rhythmically emphasizing words in a sing-song voice.
JEAN CHAREST’S POLITICAL CHEAP SHOT
Jean Charest’s criticism of Pierre Pollievre for shaking hands with a person in a meet-and-greet line who turned out to be Jeremy Mackenzie, a far right military-style extremist, is just cheap politics. There’s no way Pollievre would have known everybody in the line. It reminds me of the time in 1978 that US First Lady, Rosalynn Carter, was photographed shaking hands with the notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy in a meet-and-greet.
ANOTHER LIBERAL CABINET SNAFU
TheTrudeau government recently hired Laith Marouf, a known racist, and paid him $133,000 to advise them on a government program called Building an Anti-Racism Strategy for Canadian Broadcasting: Conversation & Convergence. That Heritage Minister, Ahmed Hussen, allowed such a hiring is beyond belief; talk about putting the fox in charge of the henhouse! Not only that, but it took Hussen a number of days after his colleague, Anthony Housefather, warned him of the misstep before he rectified it.
LISA LAFLAMME FOLLOW-UP
The firing of long-time CTV news anchor Lisa LaFlamme has provided enormous media fodder, none of which has cast Bell Media or its parent company BCE in a good light. As a person who made over 3,000 radio broadcasts during my career, the aspect of Bell’s behaviour that offends me most was the edict that Bell-owned radio stations not cover the story.
TRUDEAU’S INEXPLICABLE ADMIRATION OF THE CHINESE RESURFACES
In November, 2013, Trudeau expressed his admiration for the Chinese dictatorship, and he obviously still admires it. Last Friday he warned a group of parliamentarians who are planning a trade mission to Taiwan to “reflect on the consequences of their visit,” a clear warning that he doesn’t want to upset the Chinese.
AND HIS EQUALLY INEXPLICABLE HATRED OF ALBERTA
Although during his visit to Canada, German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, practically begged Prime Minister Trudeau to build a liquified natural gas pipeline to the east coast so that LNG could be shipped to his country, our Alberta-hating prime minister shrugged it off on the basis that there “has never been a strong business case for doing so.” Like his father, Justin seems to despise anything that would help the province of Alberta.
As I’ve written here before, if Justin’s name was anything other than Trudeau he’d still be flitting from part-time job to part-time job and living off his family trust fund, which, ironically, originated from the fortune his grandfather amassed operating a string of gas stations. What a flaming hypocrite!