Jake Tapper: I know that Liberals are up in arms about his piece on CNN the other night, claiming he is in bed with Conservatives but that is probably just BS. In actual fact that piece was just a case of lazy journalism and an example of why modern journalism and the organizations that peddle it are slowly dying. All he had to do was take a little extra time to educate himself on how our Federal system works and his story would have been much more meaningful. Instead he did not, further demonstrating that modern news organizations do not really care about reporting facts anymore and demonstrating why the consumption of news by the traditional methods is being steadily reduced. Everywhere, news organizations have been losing money hand over fist, except for the four year gift of the Trump presidency, but the reactions of these organizations is to double down on what is not working instead of coming up with another business model.
By the way, Mr. Tapper's comments will probably not have any impact on the Canadian political scene but if it does it will probably be to see a slight uptick in the popularity of Mr. Trudeau and his government. You see, although partisans from each party will point to that piece to reinforce their preconceived notions, non-partisan Canadians will either ignore it or they will get pissed at the United States media for interfering with our politics and react by supporting the Trudeau government for a time. We saw that during the first term of the Harper government. An American publication published a negative piece about them. The Liberals went "See, even Americans realize that the Harper government is bad for Canada.". Then, perversely, when the next set of polls came out Mr. Harper's personal popularity and the popularity of his government saw a bit of an uptick.
Vaccine Rollout: It is upsetting that the vaccine rollout has become such a political football. What should have happened, from the very beginning, was the governments of this country and the various oppositions should have worked together towards putting this pandemic behind us. However, that has not happened and it has been politics as usual and that could have a very negative impact on those who are playing politics the most. I have stated in this space before that the pandemic has changed how people see politics in this country. The threat of the virus has made Canadians less receptive to petty partisan bickering. If we are to believe the public polls they seem to be showing us evidence of that. The political parties engaged in politics as usual are plummeting in those polls, with the O'Toole Conservatives averaging less than 30% and the personal approval ratings of Mr. Ford, Mr. Kenney and Mr. O'Toole heading towards the basement. Meanwhile, the personal and government approval for the Trudeau government is rising. If an election were held today the Liberals would probably win a comfortable majority government.
As an aside, just as the Trudeau Liberals could not be blamed for the slow acquisition of vaccines during the Winter the various provincial government cannot be completely blamed for the slow administration of them. The transport and storage requirements of the two main vaccines make it a logistical nightmare to get them where they need to be, in a timely fashion, so it is somewhat understandable that they are having some difficulties. Hopefully, they will be able to iron out the bugs in the coming weeks so that the administration of the vaccines becomes more robust.
The Third Wave: The second wave provided data on what worked and did not work in preventing it from getting out of hand. The fact that many of the Provincial governments did not learn those lessons, or just plain ignored them, is on them.
The United States is a failing state: I often wonder if the average Roman knew that Rome was declining and heading for a fall during those final decades before that Fall. Now I wonder if the average American realizes that the United States is rapidly declining and headed for a fall. Their society, their culture and their politics are sick and quite frankly I do not see a way for them to make the changes necessary to prevent the fall. The election of Joe Biden has slowed down the decline to a small extent but it has not reversed it and I believe that slowing of the decline will probably only last a few months before we see it accelerate again. It took decades for the Roman Empire to decline to the point where it could not prevent its fall. For the US I believe it will only take years. I am in my mid-50s and assuming I live a normal life-span (say to my late 70s to early 80s) I believe I will be around to witness the fall.
Political conventions: All three of the main Federal parties had political conventions this spring. For the Conservatives it was a disaster. My God, all they had to do was say they believed in climate change and things would be so much easier for them. Now Mr. O'Toole could present a stellar climate change plan (He won't) but no one would find it credible because he would never get the approval of his own party to implement it. Climate change is the issue of our time and saying you do not believe in it is just plain stupid, scientifically and for the Conservatives, politically.
The Liberals convention went off as they wanted. They came up with a bunch of new policies that may or may not make it into an election campaign platform but at least they can point to a bunch of issues that are generally popular among Canadians.
The NDP did their usual thing. They claimed that the Liberals have, yet again, stolen their ideas. The NDP has been saying that for as long as I have been observing Canadian politics (approaching 40 years) and I know that they were saying it long before I began observing it. So far all it has done was allow them to become the Official Opposition facing a majority government. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results then the NDP has been bonkers since it became a national party. Here is a little piece of advice for the NDP. Develop new material.
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