The Black Rod

Today we expect to see Manitoba voters deliver a historic repudiation of almost 16 years of NDP government. But incoming premier Brian Pallister is dead wrong if he thinks that just giving the scoundrels the boot is enough. The wolves have had free rein on the farm too long. By the end they had convinced themselves, like all despots, that they could do no wrong.  *  Trying to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Jockey Club to patch the depleted provincial budget *  Publicly supporting a racist cabinet minister who admitted to prejudice against whites, *  Shrugging off a stomach-churning account of a woman spending her final hours of life screaming in pain on the floor of a hospital emergency ward  The NDP saw any opposition as downright evil and having to be stamped out. By controlling the levers of power, the NDP were able to slough off one major scandal after another. That doesn't mean the scandals didn't exist.  But yo...

Fresh off his 'Homos, Ho's, 'n Bitches' Apology Tour, ex-rapper Wab Kinew is about to break in a new act --- pulling his knife out of Greg Selinger's back, with a smile. Selinger is just over a month away from going down in history as the man who took Manitoba's New Democratic Party over the cliff with him to humiliating defeat because of his conceit and hubris.  The beginning of their mutual end is universally traced to Selinger's decision to raise the provincial sales tax one point to 8 percent from 7 percent in 2013. Among the masses throwing brickbats at Selinger back then was one Wab Kinew -- an employee of  the University of Winnipeg with a degree in economics -- who took to Twitter to express his  opposition to the NDP's surprise tax hike. How does raising the Pst help grow the economy? How is a tax which takes a proportionally bigger slice of poorer peoples' incomes fair? 2013-04-16 Oops. That was before Selinger han...

It isn't until paragraph 20 of the 23-paragraph story by Canadian Press writer Chinta Puxley that the bombshell drops. "In one song, Kinew raps about hitting women in the face with both a fist and his genitalia," wrote Puxley. (Manitoba Liberal candidate resigns over derogatory tweets about women, by The Canadian Press, March 3, 2016) The Manitoba Liberal is a nobody already forgotten. Kinew, as everyone in Manitoba knows by now, is Wab Kinew, the provincial NDP's star candidate in the coming provincial election.  For almost a week he's been  trying to deflect attention from rap songs that he wrote and performed as recently as a few years ago which were peppered with demeaning references to women (whore, bitch, cunt and slut). The heat went up when someone discovered a line in a song about casually killing a homosexual. "Probably smoke you while I'm taking a drag. That's the treatment for a blatant little fag like you."   ...

If you blinked you missed it. Starring Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett and screen veteran Robert Redford, the movie titled "Truth" came and went and nobody noticed. Despite opening in more than 1100 theatres, this certified stinkeroo, which cost $9.6 million to make, has grossed barely $2.5 million. So why mention it? Because its the celluloid apologia for Rathergate, the infamous scandal where CBS tried to influence the 2004 American presidential election by smearing George Bush with a phony story on 60 Minutes (Wednesday edition) hosted by Dan Rather.   When the documents used by Rather to attack George Bush proved to be fraudulent, show producer Mary Mapes was fired and Dan Rather's career was over.   The only thing left behind was the mantra adopted by bad reporters everywhere: the evidence is false, but the story is true. The real heroes of Rathergate were the bloggers and internet commenters who rose up together to take the false story apart, line b...

Manitoba political pundits feel hornswoggled, hookwinked and bamboozled. For five months they've been covering the ins and outs and ups and downs of an alleged revolt of a handful of NDP cabinet ministers against Premier Greg Selinger. It was supposed to culminate Sunday in the ouster of Selinger as leader of the party when delegates to a party convention chose one or the other of two challengers for his job. Except that he won. By a narrow margin, sure.  But he won. The pundits gave out a collective gasp. This wasn't supposed to happen. Selinger was supposed to quit or be defeated. This was the worst outcome possible for the NDP -- a permanently split party and an invigorated Opposition. "So what exactly was the point of all that again?... In one sense, the Manitoba NDP are back to square one, exactly where they were six months ago." said  Curtis Brown, vice-president of pollsters Probe Research Inc. Who saw that coming? Well, we ...