Feminist voters in Winnipeg prefer a metrosexual to a real, strong, woman for mayor.

Jenny Motkaluk landed a couple of haymakers on incumbent Brian Bowman the day she announced she was running for his job as mayor.

No more rapid transit, she said, and even the unfinished line to south Winnipeg was on the chopping block if possible. Rapid transit was  Bowman's legacy project.

And as for his pledge to open Portage and Main to pedestrians? History. Not gonna happen, declared Motkaluk.

The battle lines appeared drawn.  

Instead of spending hundreds of millions on Bowman's vanity transit plan, she believed in "putting more buses more frequently onto the roads that we already have so that we can serve Winnipeggers right now."

She would be a meat-and-potatoes mayor.  Spend tax money on the priorities of the taxpayers and not the politicians. What a concept!

Bowman was momentarily stunned. Interestingly he didn't rush to the defence of his vaunted rapid transit dream.  But he countered Motkaluk's Portage and Main stand---he would hold a referendum and abide by the result. Point, Bowman.

Since then neither mayoral candidate has said much about Portage and Main, leaving the referendum fight to others. Neither of them wants to die on that hill.

Motkaluk, the challenger, made a scattered series of weak announcements in the weeks following. More police in schools. (Huh?) Police on buses. A task force to tackle meth dealers. (Wow, why hadn't anyone thought of that before?) Replacing a bridge that everyone agreed needed to be replaced. More traffic signs around schools. And saddling homeowners with a new bill to remove organize waste. (What happened to the priorities of taxpayers?)

Bowman bided his time, and then, it paid off.  Jenny jumped the shark.

She would spend more than half a billion dollars to replace Winnipeg's diesel buses with electric buses.  Yep, all the savings from ending rapid transit would be spent.  

From bold to bananas in one easy step.

If you have $500 million to play with, you could cut property taxes to zero and still have $50 million left over.  That's got our vote. (The city's rule of thumb is that every one percent rise in property tax raises $4.5 million.)

The polls, as bogus as they might be (see the previous Black Rod), showed that her trip to airy-fairy wonderland had put the brakes on any momentum she might have had.

Bowman was back in the game. But because of  some momentus brain fart, Bowman decided that property taxes were his strong point.  He promised to raise taxes yet again as he had for his entire first term, but this time only by 2.33 percent a year.

And he dared Motkaluk to reveal her tax plans.

So she did.  A maximum hike of 1.16 percent a year.  

And she had a detailed explanation to show how she would do it.

Bowman, again, was stunned.  WHATTTT?

The Winnipeg Free Press found someone to challenge Motkaluk's plan---an 85-year-old retired lawyer who fought an assessment case in the Supreme Court a generation ago.  "I'm really confused and don't understand what she's talking about," he said.

Winnipeg Free Press opinion writer Dan Lett jumped in to clarify the situation.

"However, there is a more important concern in Motkaluk's tax proposal. No matter how you spin it, it will provide less revenue to the City of Winnipeg than Bowman's proposal," he wrote.

Duh. Thanks for pointing that out Dan. Raising taxes one percent will bring less money than raising taxes two percent.  We see why you get paid the big bucks.

Bowman  found his voice.  "I don't believe the plan is credible and it's risky," he said.

And at that moment he must have realized the truth: the best man in the race for mayor was a woman.

"It's risky," he said, the words turning to ashes in his mouth.

Four years ago Brian Bowman embraced risk. He told everyone he wanted to be bold.  Bold. Bold. Bold. He wanted to take bold decisions about bold plans to put into action his bold initiatives.  The other word for bold is risky.

His online bio even brags: 

Brian Bowman has the ability to turn vision into action, and that has created many positive changes for Winnipeg!
Prior to entering the race for mayor, Brian was instrumental, as the Chair of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, in launching the Winnipeg BOLD Initiative. This community driven think tank brought about the creation of YES!Winnipeg, The World Trade Centre, and the Centralia Conference (that showcased Winnipeg to 600 companies from 30 countries). 

Do you know who else can put Yes!Winnipeg on her resume?  
Yep, Jenny Motkaluk.  Her bio reads:

Worked at YES! Winnipeg. Helped attract Canadian Tire’s Cloud Computing Centre, expansion of Market Force and Momentum Health Care in Winnipeg and the creation of the MTS DataCentre.

Bowman can lay claim to having "launched" Yes!Winnipeg, but Motkaluk did a lot of the heavy lifting to make it successful.

And her tax announcement showed she was still thinking bold. (Okay, boldly.)

Where was this bold candidate during the campaign?

Bold Jenny started strong, but got lost and wandered into lalaland. Then she came back.

Motkaluk should have used the time to introduce herself to voters.  

She has a Bachelor of Science degree in molecular biology.

We don't know what that is, but she's smart.

Bowman was a privacy lawyer. What the hell's that?

He held positions with the Chamber of Commerce and the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Glorified P.R. positions.

Motkaluk has years of business experience.  Real jobs. Including six years on the board of revision where she learned more about property assessments and the rules governing them than Bowman can imagine knowing, if he even cared.

A smart, experienced, ballsy woman running against a  disillusioned Gen X metrosexual.  

The last election poll showed that Bowman’s strongest level of support is among those who say they are Liberals (72 per cent) and New Democrats (69 per cent). Men favoured him 59 percent to 27 percent, and women 63 percent to 28 percent.

Not even Brian Bowman believes the fake polls that have him winning re-election. With reason.

Brian Bowman is running scared.

Six weeks away from an election for mayor of Winnipeg, a poll showed that eight out of ten voters were looking for someone other than the incumbent to fill the post. After four years in office, Bowman had the support of barely 22 percent of decided electors.

But with the undecided measuring at 57 percent, the poll was meaningless. The polling company, Probe Research, should be ashamed to have even released such a perverted measure of opinion.

Three weeks later, a (heavily manipulated) poll (more about that in a minute) showed that Bowman's support had grown to 34 percent, or roughly three voters in ten. This time the pollsters claimed they could peer deep into  the undecideds ( 39 percent of those polled) and detect that Bowman's support was actually 61 percent. 

Given that his main opponent's support had barely climbed from 11 percent to 15 percent among decided voters, Bowman should have been taking a victory lap. But a poll with 39 percent undecided is as bogus as one with 57 percent undecided.  Nobody knows that better than Bowman.

When first running for mayor in 2014 against Judy Wasylycia-Leis, the polls had the election a toss-up, too close to call, even-stephen right up to election day.  Bowman won taking 45 percent of the vote to JustJudy's 25.

So, had all that insane grinning. All those selfies. All that posing and pandering and Pride parade marches been for naught?

Perhaps if Bowman wasn't such a failure as mayor, his standing would be higher.

He certainly can't run on his record.  And he's shown by his campaign for re-election that he has nothing left to offer.

After four years of Brian Bowman at the helm, Winnipeg is a shithole.  Not figuratively. Literally.  There's a team of up to 16 people that hits the streets of downtown Winnipeg every day to wash away the shit and piss left in storefronts, yards, and bus shelters by the army of so-called homeless.

We practically fell out of our chairs when we heard this. Bowman was a chairman of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, for crying out loud, and he let this happen?

Crime is at the top of every elector's list of concerns again. Did you ever think you would live in a city where thieves just walk into liquor stores, help themselves to as many bottles as they can carry, and waltz out of the store unmolested and totally unafraid of being arrested?

River Heights started an on-line Broken Windows Club where residents exchange accounts of auto break-ins, garage break-ins, and rampant bicycle thefts. 

One bus driver has been murdered and a transit supervisor was actually dragged off a bus in downtown Winnipeg and savagely beaten by one of the roving gangs of homicidal thugs that roam the city.  Police have actually warned people to avoid certain no-go zones in the city because of the danger of these gangs. 

Bowman's approach?  His hand-picked choice as finance chairman on the city's Executive Policy Committee, I'M-MARTY-MORANTZ-AND-I'M-A-LAWYER,  declared that Winnipeg had too many police.  He's not running for reelection.

We're told there's a meth epidemic ravaging the city.  Bowman dropped the word meth into his State of the City 2018 address exactly once--- to say police would work to solve  the problem.  

 It's almost as if current Mayor Brian Bowman just doesn't care about the city. And, the more we thought about it, the clearer it got. 

He doesn't.

He doesn't care about Winnipeg 2018 or 2019 or 2020.

This certainly isn't the city he promised when he first ran for mayor.  Then, he talked about building a city for the future, a city for one million citizens, a city stitched together by six rapid transit corridors from one end to the other carrying happy commuters to work and play. In other words---he had a vision.

Unfortunately, a little something called reality derailed him.

He's got nothing this time around.  His lackluster campaign demonstrates the well is empty.

After hiking taxes steadily for four years, along with frontage levys and water-and-sewer rates, he's---wait for it---promising to raise taxes higher if elected.

He promises a new recreation facility in Waverly West,  to spend a whopping $100,000 on crime prevention, and to create a list---yes, an actual list---of bylaws to update or scrap.

He's throwing out promises on the fly.  When his closest opponent makes a transit announcement, he does too.  Scrap a needed new roof for a bus garage and promise heated bus shelters. And a new bus pass for low-income riders. The cost to the city? Don't know. The cost of the pass? Don't know.  When would it roll out? Don't know.

Bowman is counting on the name-recognition and momentum of an incumbent to carry him back into the mayor's chair. That and the shambolic campaign of Jenny Motkaluk,  his strongest  challenger.  (more about that next time)

Before leaving, we must discuss the 'Bowman 61' poll which falls under the heading Fake News.

Why don't we start with the story  as it appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press, one of the originators of the poll.

Incumbent mayoral candidate Brian Bowman has reason to smile based on recent poll numbers.
by  Aldo Santin
Incumbent Brian Bowman has built a huge lead over his closest mayoral competitor — with just three weeks left in the election.
Bowman has the support of 61 per cent of decided respondents, compared with 28 per cent for his closest rival, Jenny Motkaluk, a new Probe poll commissioned by the Winnipeg Free Press and CTV Winnipeg has found.
Or we can look at the headline on the CTV story:

https://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/over-60-of-decided-winnipeggers-planning-to-vote-for-bowman-survey-1.4120432
Over 60% of decided Winnipeggers planning to vote for Bowman: survey

The poll did NOT find that Bowman had "the support of 61 percent of decided respondents."

Bowman had the support of 34 percent of decided voters. 

Another 39 percent were undecided; Probe asked them which candidate for mayor were they leaning toward and 44 percent of them said Bowman.  

Now, 44 percent of 39 percent equals 17.16.  That means that when you add the leaning undecideds to the decided voters, Bowman's support stands at 51 percent---NOT 61 percent.

Professional reporters at work.

WFP publisher suppresses stories while lobbying for government subsidies

It was a year ago this month that Winnipeg Free Press publisher Bob Cox began his campaign for federal government subsidies to newspapers whose advertisers have abandoned them.

Since then we've learned all about fake news---that's when reporters make up facts then write stories based on their invented truths. But what about fffake news---news the papers want to conceal from the public and do it by not publishing them?

The Winnipeg Free Press is currently sitting on two doozies, both about lawsuits --- against the Winnipeg Free Press.

In one, the newspaper is accused of stealing the research of a prominent Winnipeg scholar and cheating him out of royalties from a book they told him they would never publish, then did. To add insult, they submitted the book for journalism awards.

In the other, the (former) editor of the Free Press used libel chill to silence a radio talkshow host whose critical reporting on the Winnipeg Free Press she didn't like. Her backroom campaign enmeshed the president of Red River College, the college lawyer, a faculty dean and college staff in a conspiracy to kill the host's show and hide the reason from angry listeners. 

Copyright infringement. Censorship of a citizen journalist.  Topical issues you would think the local daily would love to publicize and explore.  Not.

Dr. Frank Albo teaches History classes at the University of Winnipeg. But back when he was working on his master's thesis, he uncovered a true-to-life Da Vinci Code-style secret in the heart of the city.  The architect of the Manitoba Legislature had incorporated clear Masonic symbols into his building!  

The Winnipeg Free Press partnered with Dr. Albo on a book (The Hermetic Code) based on his discovery. It became a best-seller and earned Albo $200,000 in royalties.

That's the undisputed part of the story.

In 2011, Albo came across a "second startling discovery", as the lawsuit puts it. It was "a hidden master plan for the City of Winnipeg". Apparently "city elites sought to transform Winnipeg into an urban utopia based on an international philosophy called The City Beautiful Movement."

The Movement called for the use of architecture to be used as a control device "to correct social order and instil moral and civic virtue amongt citizens."

In September, 2013, Albo delivered the keynote lecture at the Heritage Winnipeg Ball, where Winnipeg Free Press publisher Bob Cox was in the audience.  He proposed a partnership with Albo. Step one was a two-hour presentation in the WFP newsroom the following month about his findings re: the hidden master plan for Winnipeg.
Albo began working with newspaper editor Paul Samyn and reporter Randy Turner, says the lawsuit.  

But very soon afterward, Samyn informed Albo there would be no book and no royalties flowing from their collaboration.  Albo would be paid an hourly rate for his work.

Imagine his surprise when, less than a year later, he spotted the announcement of the launch of a book published by the Winnipeg Free Press with the Manitoba Association of Architects, titled "City Beautiful. How Architects Shaped Winnipeg's DNA".

The Albo lawsuit is just the sort of story that would have been reported on The Great Canadian Talk Show on KICK-FM, if it was still around. But both TGCTS and Kick-FM, the community radio station hosted by Red River College, are long gone, thanks to former Winnipeg Free Press editor Margo Goodhand.

In October, 2010 a weeping Melissa Martin sat in editor Margo Goodhand's office to explain why she didn't do a story. (Sounds like a theme, here, doesn't it.) Ross Eadie was running for a seat on city council and at a public forum he declared (according to multiple witnesses) that he was getting financial support from the NDP in order to afford to run.  Problem.  Funding of campaigns by political parties is illegal. 

Martin didn't write a word about Eadie's confession.  But it was well covered on the internet, including by The Black Rod.  The tearful Melissa didn't like what people were saying about her.  Don't worry, Margo Goodhand told her.
Goodhand blamed Marty Gold, the host of TGCTS for saying not nice things about Melissa Martin's decision not to report a major political story.  

First, she gave Red River College president Stephanie Forsyth an earful about it. Then she sent a follow-up email to Forsyth, and her message was unmistakeable.

Gold was setting journalism students a bad example by defaming her reporters, she said. She had, she said, run his blog posts by a lawyer who told her so. (She admitted at trial for the lawsuit that she never listened to his radio show.)

Something had to be done -- hint, hint. The implication was clear. If nothing was done -- hint, hint --- the Winnipeg Free Press could sue Red River College and, boy, would that cause embarassment. And the newspaper could refuse to hire graduates, which would damage the reputation of Red River's journalism program. And she could badmouth the college to colleagues across the country and, well, you know. Hint, hint.

Forsyth got the hint.  She immediately called a meeting.  The attendees left the meeting knowing what they had to do.  Dig up dirt on Marty Gold, then cancel his show.

Two weeks later, just before a scheduled nomination committee meeting of the radio station board of directors, a few of Forsyth's underlings met informally and agreed, formally, to cancel TGCTS.  

A couple of days later, they informed the station manager of their decision.  He was unhappy. Programming was his job. He saw no defamation. And he could address Margo Goodhand's concerns in other ways. But his bosses said no.

The station manager sent Gold a heads-up message: the president wants you fired. 

The next day the FP's on-line editor got wind of the station manager's recalcitrance. He told Margo Goodhand.  
She immediately sent a furious email to Stephanie Forsyth, the gist of which was "What the Hell?"

On her next day at work, Forsyth convened another meeting in her office. Her message: "What the Hell?"  

Within hours, Marty Gold was informed his show was cancelled and he was out of a job.

But Red River College wasn't prepared for the blowback from dedicated listeners of the show. RRC offered various explanations as to why the show was cancelled, none of which mentioned Margo Goodhand.

They eventually told the court that it was a policy change, to give students more time on air.  They overlooked the obvious: the alleged policy change only affected one show and one host, and coincidentally it was the exact show and exact host that Margo Goodhand had complained about.  Go figure.

When listeners asked who made the decision to kill TGCTS, college officials winced, swallowed hard and said it was "the executive committee" of the radio station.  Except that there was no "executive committee."  

The radio station bylaws said the board may create committees, but there was no record of any creation of an "executive committee" that year, or any year prior.  Or any minutes of any meeting of said committee ever.

The college officials were claiming a committee that didn't exist, with no designated members and no outlined powers, could usurp the power of the official board of directors whenever it wanted about whatever it wanted. Oh, what a tangled web they weaved.

But it was reciprocated.  When the National Post contacted Goodhand for her side of the story, she emailed her boss, publisher Bob Cox (remember him?). 

She asked his advice for what to say because "I don't want to throw Stephanie under the bus."

So, Goodhand lied to the Post and said she knew nothing about the cancellation of TGCTS.

Just as readers of the Winnipeg Free Press know nothing about these lawsuits. Until now.

Both of them have already gone to trial and are awaiting decisions.

Frank Ostrowski. From Sinner to Saint. Or, What they're not telling you.

Here we go again.
- Another convicted murderer to be lionized.
- A dedicated Crown attorney to be demonized.
- And a mainstream media mob to be titillized by a juicy miscarriage of justice. Alleged.

'I wuz framed,' says new saint Frank Ostrowski, blaming veteran Crown attorney George Dangerfield for the 23 years he spent in prison.

This week Ostrowski asked the Manitoba Court of Appeal to vacate his 1987 conviction for the murder of an acquaintance. He wants the court to issue a declaration of innocence, (so that he can sue the province for millions?).  

The province wants a simple declaration of a stay of proceedings which would eradicate the conviction and leave Ostrowski free (he's been out of prison on bail since 2009), but otherwise end the proceedings. After all, 23 years in the slam is almost the 25-year minimum before parole that the worst murderer would have to serve.

The local news media have become the Greek chorus to the 69-year-old Ostrowski's ham acting. So once again it's up to us to step in and save the show.

Ladies and gentlemen, we present our production of "What they aren't telling you."

********

The Winnipeg Free Press described Ostrowski as "a former hairstylist and drug dealer."  What they aren't telling you is that when he was arrested, Ostrowski was the biggest cocaine dealer in Winnipeg. At a time when $50,000 a year was a good salary, he was raking in $500,000 a year tax-free and all the blow he could snort. 

His reign as Mr.Big ended when an associate named Matthew Lovelace got arrested and agreed to cooperate with police. The FP described Lovelace as "another experienced criminal."  

What they aren't telling you is that Lovelace was Ostrowski's right-hand man in the cocaine business. He was the trusted cohort who brought the stuff in from Montreal. He was a close friend and confidante who knew all of Ostrowski's secrets because he lived them with Big O.

His defenders knew that the only way to get Ostrowski out of prison was to  discredit his biggest accuser, Matthew Lovelace. 

They learned that authorities agreed to drop the drug charges against Lovelace in return for his testimony against Ostrowski, a deal he denied existed when he gave his evidence.  

Gotcha.  

But you know what they say? The devil is in the details. What they're not telling you loudly enough is tha the drug charges were to be prosecuted in federal court and the murder charge in Manitoba provincial court. Catching a killer was more important than sending a drug dealer to jail, and the feds no doubt realized that Lovelace would have enough trouble avoiding retribution from his Montreal contacts  who might have a problem with the snitch who cost them business.

The federal authorities making the deal didn't tell their provincial counterparts, especially Crown prosecutor Dangerfield.  Lovelace's lawyer also didn't tell him until after the murder trial so there could be no question that his evidence was tainted. Or so he thought.

Nevertheless, when Lovelace denied any deal, he was telling the truth as he knew it. And when Dangerfield vouched for Lovelace before the jury, he was telling the truth as he knew it. 

The lesson here---hire a good lawyer. You'll note that nobody, even today, has a bad word to say about Lovelace's lawyer Hymie Weinstein for negotiating the deal.

Maybe it’s because unlike George Dangerfield, Weinstein isn't an 84-year-old man suffering stroke-related brain damage and can still defend himself in a courtroom.

The FP, for all its deficiences, did admit---deep, deep, deep in its Tuesday story---that Weinstein's machination was "par for the course back in the day."  In other words, what they're not telling you is that they want a convicted murdered set free because nobody did anything wrong at his trial!

 But, sings the Greek chorus, it should have been wrong. Sort of like murder?

If the "deal" gambit failed, the defenders had Plan B, the Jacobson report.

What? Even we had no idea what that was.

It turns out the Jacobson report was a memo written by a police officer named Sgt. N. Jacobson to describe a phone call he received from Lovelace warning police that Ostrowski planned to have someone killed. (Could that be Nels Jacobson, the No. 34 pick in the 1969 NHL draft?)

You know you're reaching for straws when your defence is your client didn't arrange to kill the man he's accused of having killed because he actually intended to kill a different  man. Uh huh. That will prove he's innocent, if nothing will.

Jacobson wrote that Lovelace said "Frank has a contract out on my friend."

The FP said the memo supposedly "goes on to describe that friend as 'the carpenter'."

Here's where Free Press columnist Dan Lett goes completely off the rails.

"The Innocence Canada investigation confirmed the friend in question was Dominic Diubaldo, a carpenter who had built the secret safe for Ostrowski that contained drugs and money."

"The theory Diubaldo may have been the 'friend' referred to by Nieman makes sense given an informant did, in fact, provide police with information about the secret safe, and that only Diubaldo and Lovelace knew of the safe's existence."

Okay, the reference to Nieman when it should be Lovelace is just sloppy writing.

But Lett's attempt at analysis is just pathetic. What he's not telling you, probably because he doesn't know, is that the informant WAS LOVELACE.

That's why he was so upset. Ostrowski, in his paranoia, spoke of killing Nieman, and now Diubaldo, two men who Lovelace knew were innocent.

Lovelace phoned police because he was equally frantic to save their lives.

As for the identification of Dominic Diubaldo, Lovelace told the Ostrowski jury about him 32 years ago.  Innocence Canada just had to read the trial transcript.

And what they're not telling you is that Jacobson was a peripheral character in the story.  Lovelace didn't phone him.

Lovelace was trying to reach his Winnipeg police contact with the tip about Ostrowski's murder plans, but his contact was never in the office when he phoned. He finally left a cryptic message with Jacobson.

A detective testifying at the trial said he had seen a note on a police message board, presumably written by Jacobson, which read "Sonny called. He'll be at this farm. Frankie wants to do a hit on his friend." No mention of "the carpenter".

Sgt. Jacobson didn't know who he was talking to. He didn't know what the caller was calling about. He didn't know who the caller was talking about. 
He did know enough to cover his ass, though. Lovelace tried to reach his police contact Sept.24 (1986). Nieman was shot Sept. 25. 

You might think there would be some questions asked about how thoroughly police tried to warn Nieman that he was a target of a planned assassination. A memo saying they were never warned about Nieman would be very handy.

And what they're not telling you is that regardless of Lovelace's phone call, police already knew that a hit had been placed on Nieman. How did they know that? 

Frank Ostrowski told them.

You see, what they're also not telling you, is that Ostrowski had been talking with police regularly after he got out on bail. On Sept. 24 it just so happened he was trying to make a deal, to rat out his Montreal contacts if they dropped his charges. 

He was told he was too hot for anyone to trust. He changed the subject to…Robert Nieman. "Nieman," he said," is a dead man. He's a rat and he's dead. In a couple of days he'll be dead."

"I'm not the one doing it," he assured the detectives. "I told them that's not the way to do it."

"Bill Andrews. I hear he's next," Ostrowski said. "Well, that may be one of my bargaining things for my charges."

Those police immediately tried to find Robert Nieman and warn him. They did a terrible job. They visited his known haunts, talked to his acquaintances and then, you know, their shift was over and the next shift was short-handed, and nobody told Nieman he was on somebody's hit list. 

When they came back to work the next day, they found out Nieman was in hospital with a couple of bullets in the head, which would kill him eventually. The bullets, not the hospital.

For the complete take on Ostrowski, see the story we wrote in 2009. Yeah, almost nine years ago:

The Black Rod: Ostrowski has always held the key to unlocking his jail cell

Alleged wife-beater Wab Kinew calls for an end to serial tickling.

Has the world gone crazy?

A political party that elected an accused wife beater as its leader is roiled by anonymous accusations that a member who is no longer in the Legislature tickled women years ago?

He not only tickled women, but threatened to tickle others.  And even asked one if she liked to be tickled.  What a beast!

One ex-MLA--- one of the fearless, strong, independent NDP women---has come forward to say that she, whoever she is, was tickled, too.  And not once. Twice. TWICE, we say.  Within four, or maybe eight, or possibly even 17 years.  And nobody stopped this animal?

An army of aggrieved females has declared they will put an end to tickling in politics.  Never again, they say.

But where were they when a woman came forward last year to say that her former common-law husband, Wab Kinew, dragged her along the ground by her hair to show her how a real man treats his woman. 

Another time, she said, Kinew threw her across the room of their home so viciously that she suffered rug burns on her legs when she landed. Still not finished that night, he allegedly hauled her onto the balcony where, she said, she feared she was going to be thrown off to the concrete below.

Where were they? We'll tell you. They were voting to make Wab Kinew their leader.

Leader Wab now wants to be in the forefront of the battle against tickling in politics.  He demanded that his predecessor quit as MLA for St. Boniface for failing to stop the monster tickler when women complained about his behaviour. He declared he would set up a two-woman commission to hear stories about tickling and other such unacceptable behaviour.

As for the allegations against him?  Well...the bitch is lying. That's his message.

Except that the woman, who didn't hide behind anonymous posts on social media, went to the police with her story about her husband.  They charged Kinew with domestic assault. "Minister Tickles" Stan Struthers has never been charged with anything.

Kinew denies everything. And points to the fact that the charges against him--there were two---were stayed by the Crown.  That proves he didn't do it, says Kinew.

But his former common-law wife says she was fully prepared to go to court to testify to what Kinew did to her, and she had no idea why the Crown chose to stay the charges. That proves she stands behind her story.

The professional journalists in the city,  who can't stop chasing the Struthers tickle stories, at first ignored the allegations of assault involving Wab Kinew. 

Then they covered the woman's story, but have never demanded to hear Kinew's side of the story.

You would think that an alleged wife-beater running to lead the official Opposition would be a big story. Not in Manitoba.

"All too often, women are subjected to unacceptable behaviour. I stand with these women who've come forward..." said Bernadette Smith (NDP-Point Douglas) who issued a statement on behalf of the party.

Where was Bernadette Smith when a woman accused Wab Kinew of being a wife beater? Supporting Wab Kinew's candidacy for leader.  So much for standing with the women who have come forward.

Nahanni Fontaine, another NDP MLA, said at the time of the accusations against Kinew that "I absolutely have always taken the stand that women are telling the truth."  But---well---uh---she still backed Wab Kinew as leader of the NDP.

People change, she said, in defending the alleged wife-beater.

Unless, obviously, there's tickling involved.