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Civitatensis
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Eclectic political commentary, primarily on federal and provincial politics in Canada
Recent Posts Tagged With media analysis
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Lawrence Martin’s Fortunes
The Oracle at Delphi didn’t always get it right. It understood that some of man’s fate is in his own hands, as Machiavelli acknowledged in Chapter 25 of The Prince two millennia later. Fortune only governs half our actions when we exerc...
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An English-Speaking Stephane Dion?
Chantale Hebert has seized on what’s going on chez Iggy In what increasingly looks like a case of Dion redux, Michael Ignatieff was poised to head down the same slippery election slope as his predecessor had the 40th Parliament died a swift dea...
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Jeffrey Simpson Un-Bloc-ked
What’s next? Will Jeffrey Simpson now join Stockwell Day’s Church, whose beliefs he so vehemently smeared with the same petulant conviction that he once smeared Preston Manning?...
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Paul Martin to the Rescue III
The economic troubles in the US and economic worries about a similar meltdown hapenning in Canada is highlighting Stephen Harper’s record on the economy and in Economics. In plain English, as economic issues become prominent, the prime minister...
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Mallick on Palin
Heather Mallick is far too quick with the gratuitous insult. Those who find Palin appealing are white trash, and those who do not are nice Dems or enlightened Canadians. Supposedly, Mallick has received tons of hate mail for the column. I bit self-im...
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Dippers Have All the Fun
What an interesting election campaign we’ve had so far. A leader in an opposition party is imploding, but the bulk of the press is dancing around it largely pretending that it is not happening. This is a story that mixes mice running, a cat hid...
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Jack Nader
For years Quebeckers have so ignored Jack Layton that he now looks new and fresh to them. That’s just a little bit funny. Good for them, I guess. Jack’s fortunes seem to be on the rise in the province the more they see of him. Stephane Di...
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Planet in Peril
I just finished watching a short report with Anderson Cooper on CNN (Certainly Not News) about the shrinking northern polar ice cap. They are sounding the bell about the end of the ice cap as we know it, and predicted that the northern ice cap will b...
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The Politics of Gaffes
As we head into week three of this federal election campaign, the media are convinced that goofy gaffes disguised as scandals are what the voters want to hear most about. If this election turns out to be as boring as the media are claiming, it will b...
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‘Enlightened’ Scoundrels
Michael Coren has chosen to be charitable in his interpretation of how Quebec journalists, politicians and members of the intelligentsia in general are reacting to the news that some of the candidates in the present election campaign have Christian b...
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Elizabeth May Should Have Been Kept Out
Lysiane Gagnon’s commentary on the inclusion of Green Party’s Elizabeth May to the televised leaders’ debate is well worth reading. Participation in a leaders debate should not be decided by emotions. It should rest on objective f...
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Green Muzzle?
The story began as to whether Elizabeth May, the Green Party leader, called Canadians “stupid” during an interview. It has now migrated to Green political muzzling. Kevin Libin has the story here. SDA also has the scoop here....
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Evidence and more Evidence
Ed Stelmach and Rona Ambrose address the Alberta bashing coming from central Canadian politicians like Taliban Jack and Citoyen Dion. Stephen Harper’s lady in northern Alberta, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Rona Ambrose, picked up where S...
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Let us rejoice and be (half) glad
Anyone who watched MSNBC’s coverage of the Republican Convention last week knows that Keith Olberman appointed himself the counter spinner of whatever he decided needed to be counter spinned. Any appearance of balance went out the window. While...
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Le Centre de l’Univers
When I got a new computer a while back, I messed up my iTunes and lost some of the settings for podcasts that I would usually load on my Ipod. Today is the day to clean that mess up. I went to the CBC podcast site to restore my podcasts by region. I ...
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Tunnel Vision
Writing for the Glob, Lysianne Gagnon makes several arguments pointing to the sham of the official Canadian multicultural policy. Her arguments are incidental to her point against the Bloc’s phony desire to see Quebec exempted from the official...
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Fluff and Ignorance, National Post Style
That there are really dumb things in newspapers everyday should not be a surprise. We all know that papers are out to entertain –and to cater to their readers tastes. So when I see a piece about the Pope in the fashion file, I laugh right away....
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Hubroggery?
I am wondering about something of a trend. Surfing around blogs yesterday, I found a few “live blogging” entries for the Alberta leaders debate the night before. Joel Krom, Daveberta (the intrepid young cybersquatter who took on the prem...
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Lake-Polluting Ontario: Envious, Reductive, Short-sighted
The Globe and Mail’s envy of Alberta’s wealth on behalf of (Lake-polluting) Ontario does not seem to stop. For all the great things that Alberta has, they are unable to stop themselves from referring to us as “oil-rich.” ...
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He Haunts Us Still?
Clear memory may well seem like obsession to our historically amnesiac friends at Canadian Press....
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Is that what they mean by “insider”?
Rod Love offers his commentary after the Alberta Leaders Debate last night. It was posted more than two hours after the debate ended. After reading the entry I am hoping that there is no huge sums of money changing hands between Rod and the Herald. B...
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On est là, niaiseux!
Premier Ed Stelmach represents Alberta and Albertans at the “Council of the Federation,” but he is not Alberta. While Stelmach will not be at the discussions held today in Vancouver, Alberta’s Environment Minister will be. Alberta i...
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Speech and Rights II
Much of Canada's press and many broadcasters are already noted for politically correct blandness....
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Of political mosquitoes and hammers
In a world where snooty youngsters in cyber space try daily to gain notoriety by nipping at the ankles of the powerful, Alberta premier Ed Stelmach has just painted a sign on his forehead. It reads: "pick on me!"...
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Speech and Rights
Mark Steyn comments on the silliness of Human Rights complaint against him. That there are people offended by some of what he writes should not be a surprise, but Steyn is livid about the Human Rights Commission accepting and thereby legitimising pol...
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Canuck Navel Gazing
Are there no bounds to the ways in which Canadian media feed this country's self importance?...
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Valpy: Which end is Up?!
The Bolsheviks are on their way out of Christian churches; they voluntarily wrote themselves out of the gene pool....
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More thinking, More money: Klein
An Edmonton Journal report by Jason Fekete makes Ralph Klein, the former premier of Alberta, sound as though he did no thinking while he ruled the province for 14 years. Another assignment has him [Klein] in Washington, D.C. until mid-December as a p...
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Lord Durham Gets the Shaft
The National Capital Commission has substituted an early image of Ottawa for the portrait of Lord Durham on a Sparks Street Mall interpretive panel about the 150th anniversary of the selection of Ottawa as Canada’s capital. ...
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King Juan Carlos’ Mistake in Santiago
Quite a big deal is being made of a single phrase expressed by His Majesty King Juan Carlos I of Spain to President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela at the Iberoamerican Summit in Santiago, Chile, this weekend. The media are quoting the King as saying “...

