The Black Rod

So Greg Selinger lied to the public, lied to the Legislature, and lied to the press. Since when is this news ? Why do you think we call him the dirtiest politician in Manitoba? Even the most recalcitrant taxpayers caught on to his lying ways when he broke his (useless) word, during the last provincial election campaign, not to raise the provincial sales tax. He also openly broke the law to do it. Then he lied about why he lied, coming up with a new excuse for why he had to raise the PST as quickly as an old one was disproved. Now he's admitted another lie, but only because he got caught dead to rights by CJOB. In 2012 when it was revealed that NDP MLA's were gorging themselves on free tickets from public utilities and a raft of private groups to see the Winnipeg Jets, Selinger pretended to care. He told the MLA's to pay back the cost of their freebies, to apologize to the people, and to promise not to do it again.  He failed to mention that ...

Reporters recently went gaga over the story of an activist who brought a live chicken to Winnipeg City Hall. A delegation showed up to pitch the joys of raising chickens in the city. One of them pulled a live chicken out of a bag. Security was called to get the fowl out. That's the kind of story that only comes along once in a lifetime. Of course, it was covered by every news outlet in the city. The story left everyone laughing. Everyone who isn't Brian Pallister, the newly minted leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba. In one minute, that chicken created more excitement than Pallister has managed in the six months since he announced his bid to be party leader. In the week before the current session of the Manitoba Legislature got underway, Pallister had two opportunities to create some buzz. He was the guest speaker at a Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce breakfast, surely a friendly audience. News coverage: zero. The nex...

WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!! What's wrong with all you people? Don't you know that this warm weather is a harbinger of doom? Haven't we been told over and over again for the past 10 years that global warming will bring the end of mankind? That Mother Earth herself is at risk? And here you are, celebrating the early spring, raking your lawns with gusto, taking your dear children for walks when you should be praying for another six weeks of harsh winter to preserve the world for those very offspring. Fie, we say. Fie. Oh well. There's nothing we can do but clear our desks of the clutter that's piled up this gorgeous month and write our annual March Madness issue. Spring Romance The Green Party knows the end is nigh. But its too busy plotting merger with the Liberal Party of Manitoba, or so we were told earlier this month. Talk about madness. Who in the world cares about what the Green Party and the Liberal Party are doing? Zero meet zero. ...

In politics, the only thing better than winning is winning so decisively you can rub your opponent's nose in it. Following the crash-and-burn campaign conducted by the Manitoba Conservatives in the last provincial election, Tory honkers are redder than Rudolph's from being rubbed in the dirt so much. One of the chief architects of the crushing defeat handed to the PC Party is the NDP's campaign director Michael Balagus. He was in Vancouver last month taking another victory lap at the expense of the hapless, helpless and hopeless Conservatives. The scene was the annual convention of the British Columbia NDP. Balagus was on a panel discussing tactics, strategies and innovation that he and two other campaign organizers across the country used to win elections. Balagus got to tell the story of how the NDP used their greatest asset---Conservative Party leader Hugh McFadyen---to turn almost sure defeat into their fourth victory in a row. We now know that for months b...

The Walking Dead is a popular television show about small groups of people trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world overrun with zombies. The Walking Dead is also the story of the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives, a zombie political party pretending it's alive in a world overrun by the NDP following an apocalyptic election. You know how this plays out. The people will be okay in the long run. The zombies? They're dead already, they just don't know it. The Tory walking dead had a ghoulish meeting this weekend to rehash the debacle known as the last provincial election. Everyone with anything to do with their disastrous campaign met to discuss what went wrong and what went -- well, wrong. Because nothing went right. But, wouldn't you know it, that's not how the people behind the campaign see it. They've slapped on Hugh McFadyen's crazy happy-face, the one he wore thoughout the march off the cliff, and they've proclaimed the election...

They say a chicken with its head cut off can run the length of a football field. Which brings us to the depressing news that former MP Brian Pallister is again musing about running to be leader of the Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party. Ugh. What a disturbing sight. And yet, how apropos. Reach into the political graveyard for a someone to lead a party headed directly there. Obviously some people haven't yet realized that the Tory Party is dead. We don't say that rhetorically. We mean dead. Devoid of life. With no future---even if it continues to lurch forward for months or even years. After all, the Liberal Party of Manitoba continued to exist as a zombie party for almost 20 years until all that was left in 2011 was a disembodied head which just keeps rolling along. The backroom geniuses who brought you Hugh McFadyen and the election debacle of '11 think the Party can be revived with a leadership convention. If you can graft a new head on the robust...

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/10/spilling-beans-on-selinger-where-he.html Nobody knows a man better than his best friend. So, for an understanding of the character of the man elected to be the Premier of Manitoba , we turn to a most reliable source, a person who calls Greg Selinger his mentor and his close friend for over 35 years. Tom Simms is executive director of the Community Education Development Association (CEDA), one of those made-up leftwing groups whose only purpose in the community is to promote the leftwing agenda of the regional leftwing political party. Oh, and it gets its funding from the government and any do-gooder organization, like the United Way, that it can tap into. Shortly after the NDP took office and Selinger was installed as Manitoba's Finance Minister, Simms gave an extremely unguarded interview to an American fellow traveller. (That's not a euphemism; he says in his preamble he was literally travelling across Canada doing interview...

It didn't take long for Manitobans to discover what a vile human being they elected as Premier of the province. Hugh McFadyen, the hapless leader of the soundly trounced Conservative Party, had just begun his concession speech. He was thanking his "team" for running a great campaign, when, to everyone's astonishment, Premier-elect Greg Selinger tromped into NDP election headquarters to deliver his victory speech. The television stations immediately cut away from McFadyen to focus on Selinger. But the act of deliberately disrespecting a Party leader on election night was so blatant it shocked the election night hosts on every channel. Sun TV's Krista Erickson and Charles Adler were visibly stunned at what they were seeing. Guest pundit Tom Brodbeck labelled it "classless." On CBC, host Janet Stewart was noticeably upset and at a loss for words to describe the unprecedented slight to McFadyen. Her co-host, poli-sci prof Paul Thomas laun...

Well? How was it? How was what? The election, of course. But, but, but....isn't election day, like, 10 days from now? Nope. Voting started yesterday (Sept. 24) and continues non-stop, except for one break of 48 hours, until Oct. 4. That means you can vote for 8 out of the next 10 days. The election is officially over, dude. Then, who's going to win? Have you noticed that this is the first election since the cavemen that there was no poll of voter preferences? So The Black Rod did its own polling and discovered that the election is neck-and-neck between Don't Vote and Spoil Your Ballot. It hardly matters, because the winner will be the NDP---either the NDP under Greg Selinger or the NDP 2.0 under Hugh McFadyen. The Conservative Party decided to sit this one out. Selinger is the dirtiest politician in Manitoba, linked to every scandal in the past 12 years from the NDP election fraud in 1999 to the Crocus ponzi scheme to the phony deficit figures released just before the ele...