John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE THE TORONTO STAR

Sorry, but your calling Putin a bully is mighty shabby stuff, Justin Trudeau.

It truly makes you sound like Stephen Harper, likely the most dishonest and disliked politician in Canadian history, a true bully, if you will.

I do not see how there’s really anything you must tell Putin, unless you count repeating some boilerplate phrases borrowed from America’s sprawling junkyard of needless attacks and propaganda.

If there is a legitimate bully on the world’s stage today, it is, without question, America, responsible as it is for the deaths, destruction, and refugees of Syria.

It is America also that is responsible for the mess in Ukraine, putting an illegitimate government in place by coup and then supporting its awful policies of intolerance and war.

And even in the case of Flight MH-17, it is America who has kept things hidden. It never released data from its radars and spy satellite – which was overhead at the time – and that is mighty suspicious. Likely it was afraid of seeing its coup-induced government in Ukraine embarrassed. So we’ve had long delays and much evidence never used and a useless report.

Putin is the most able leader on the international scene today, a totally reasonable man, and a far more honest one than Obama or Harper or Cameron, all of whom lie regularly about matters like Syria. Putin’s country, too, is certainly destined to be a great one in future, given its endowments of natural resources and human ingenuity. It is extremely short-sighted to use American trash-talk about a leader Russians embrace as strongly as they do Putin.

We should welcome working with a reasonable man like Putin for many reasons, but if some chose not to do so, they can at least avoid bellowing undiplomatic nonsense for a few cheap votes, as you did with your campaign statement.

That’s not how your much-respected father would have acted in these circumstances – witness his independent-minded judgment and policies about Castro’s Cuba – and in the case of Russia today, Pierre Trudeau’s way would be far more productive than bellowing.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO A COLUMN IN THE NATIONAL POST

Christie Blatchford seems to have become The Conservatives’ chief apologist.

Her apology here though seems totally unneeded.

I believe in these two cases of dropped candidates, the bone-headed people involved would have made perfect Conservative candidates.

Pranks? Isn’t this the party of robo-calls and frat-boy negative advertising?

Isn’t this the party of never telling the truth to people?

Of never giving a straight answer?

The party of not complying with officials attempting to investigate misdeeds?

The party of hiding the many stupid things it has done?

The party of Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin, Nigel Wright, and other charmers?

The party of slavishly catering to special interests?

The party of giving the finger to many of the world’s serious concerns?

The party of John Baird who resembles nothing so much as a mad dog when he argues with people?

The party of Peter MacKay, a man who had an affair with a subordinate, later harassed her and called her a dog in public, and then lied about it as well as a man who has demonstrated incompetence in almost every portfolio in the cabinet?

The party of the absolute thug, Patrick Brazeau?

The party of Maxime Bernier, who left top secret NATO papers at his biker girlfriend’s house for weeks?

The party of Pierre Poilievre, perhaps the most seriously twisted sister ever in Parliament?

I just cannot believe what an opportunity the party has missed with these two new fellows, each surely potential minister material.

It’s a shame, I guess that’s the price you pay for political correctness.