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Tuesday November 6, 2018

November 13, 2018 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday November 6, 2018

‘Full Trumpism’: President’s apocalyptic attacks reach new level of falsehood

President Donald Trump is painting an astonishingly apocalyptic vision of America under Democratic control in the campaign’s final days, unleashing a torrent of falsehoods and portraying his political opponents as desiring crime, squalor and poverty.

August 18 2017

As voters prepare to render their first verdict on his presidency in Tuesday’s midterm elections, Trump is claiming that Democrats want to erase the nation’s borders and provide sanctuary to drug dealers, human traffickers and MS-13 killers. He is warning that they would destroy the economy, obliterate Medicare and unleash a wave of violent crime that endangers families everywhere. And he is alleging that they would transform the United States into Venezuela with socialism run amok.

April 13, 2018

Trump has never been hemmed in by fact, fairness or even logic. The 45th president proudly refuses to apologize and routinely violates the norms of decorum that guided his predecessors. But at one mega-rally after another in the run-up to Tuesday’s midterm elections, Trump has taken his no-boundaries political ethos to a new level — demagoguing the Democrats in a whirl of distortion and using the power of the federal government to amplify his fantastical arguments.

In Columbia, Missouri, the president suggested that Democrats “run around like antifa” demonstrators in black uniforms and black helmets, but underneath, they have “this weak little face” and “go back home into Mommy’s basement.”

February 25, 2017

In Huntington, West Virginia, Trump called predatory immigrants “the worst scum in the world” but alleged that Democrats welcome them by saying, “Fly right in, folks. Come on in. We don’t care who the hell you are, come on in!”

And in Macon, Georgia, he charged that if Democrat Stacey Abrams is elected governor, she would take away the Second Amendment right to bear arms — though as a state official, she would not have the power to change the Constitution.

Unmoored from reality, Trump has at times become a false prophet, too. He has been promising a 10 per cent tax cut for the middle class, though no such legislation exists. And he has sounded alarms over an imminent “invasion” of dangerous “illegal aliens,” referring to a caravan of Central American migrants that includes many women and children, is travelling by foot and is not expected to reach the U.S.-Mexico border for several weeks, if at all.

With his breathtaking cascade of orations, tweets, media appearances and presidential actions, Trump has dictated the terms of the political debate in the final week of the campaign even though he is not up for reelection for two years. (Continued: Hamilton Spectator)

Friday May 20, 2016

May 19, 2016 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday May 20, 2016

Justin Trudeau apologizes for ‘failing to live up to a higher standard’

A repentant Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized Thursday morning for the third time in two days for a physical encounter with two opposition MPs that resulted in a melee on the floor of the House of Commons the day before.

June 20, 2015 – Magna Harper

“I apologize to my colleagues, to the House as a whole and to you, Mr. Speaker, for failing to live up to a higher standard of behaviour. Members, rightfully, expect better behaviour from anyone in this House. I expect better behaviour of myself,” the prime minister said in the Commons after he apologized directly to two opposition Mps.

Trudeau’s apology came as members of Parliament debated a privilege motion by Conservative MP Peter Van Loan on “the physical molestation” of a female MP in the House of Commons.

MPs agreed as debate resumed after question period to send the matter to a committee — a decision supported by Trudeau hours earlier.

Wednesday November 25, 2015Wednesday November 25, 2015

November 25, 2015 – Hereditary monarchs

On Wednesday, Trudeau walked across the aisle and into a clutch of NDP MPs where he took Conservative Party whip Gord Brown by the arm, elbowing NDP MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau in the process. The prime minister “unreservedly” apologized for the physical contact which he said was “unacceptable.”

The incident took place just as some MPs were trying to stall a contentious vote to limit debate on Bill C-14, the government’s assistance in dying bill.

“No amount of escalation or mood in this House justifies my behaviour last night. I made a mistake, I regret it. I am looking to make amends,” Trudeau said on Thursday.

“I fully hear the desire… of a number of members across the House including the leader of the Official Opposition that we take concrete measures to improve the way the tone functions in this House and the way this government engages with opposition parties as well.”

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator - Tuesday August 25, 2015 The Growing Power of the PMO In 2006, Stephen Harper rode into Ottawa with a mandate to clean up the ethical wreckage of the Liberal sponsorship scandal. The Conservative Party leader moved quickly as the prime minister of a minority government. He banned corporate and union donations, and lowered the individual donation limit to $1,000. He toughened federal lobbying rules, created the Parliamentary Budget Office and gave additional powers to the Ethics Commissioner. His goal, he said over and over, was to return accountability to Ottawa. And he did that, to a degree. His reforms have helped bring the federal government up to date on important issues of political financing and budget oversight. Not surprisingly, though, Mr. Harper failed to target the real source of OttawaÕs accountability crisis. As the trial of Mike Duffy has reminded us, the greatest threat to responsible government in Canada is none other than the Prime MinisterÕs Office. Over the past 40 years, the PMO has morphed into a parasite on the body of Parliament that prospers by sucking the democracy out of its host. The court-documented efforts by Nigel Wright, the former chief of staff to Mr. Harper, to control the Senate from inside the PMO are outrageous only because they have been exposed by Mr. DuffyÕs lawyer. The real scandal lies below the surface, where the PMO uses its toxic tentacles to neutralize every part of government that might compete with it for power, so that today we are ruled by an imperial prime minister, unaccountable to anyone or anything. Do not blame Mr. Harper alone for this. The expansion of the PMO began under Pierre Trudeau, and every prime minister since then has been responsible for increasing its malignant grip on Parliament. Brian Mulroney was the first to name a Òchief of staffÓ and elevate that person above the principal secretary who was, up till then, the highest unelect

August 25, 2015 – Otto Von Harper

“I am apologizing and asking members to understand how contrite and regretful I am over my behaviour,” Trudeau said again later.

“I wield full responsibility for my poor choices last night, and I ask for Canadians’ understanding and forgiveness.”

The prime minister spoke Thursday after Interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose said in a scathing statement in the Commons that Trudeau’s behaviour was “out of line” and “unbecoming of a leader.”

“He had no business on this side of the House, he had no business anywhere but on his own seat. Everything he did from the moment he rose from his seat was unnecessary and unsettling,” Ambrose said on Thursday. (Source: CBC News)

Saturday August 24, 2015

August 21, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday August 24, 2015

“I am very sorry:” They smoked, he sprayed Glade

Ed Steel says, quite simply, that he couldn’t take it anymore.

After what he says was weeks of having to wheel his common-law spouse through a constant crowd of smokers every time he went in or out of Dundurn Place, and after complaining to everyone he could think of — the long-term care home’s administration, the police, the health department, even a city councillor — nothing had changed.

“It’s illegal — there are signs right there. But it all just goes into a dead ear. Nothing happened.”

His frustration arises, he says, not just from the disregard for the law, or the health of those who have to pass through the smoke, but because of his first wife, who he says died from a smoking-related illness.

So on Monday, Steel brought a can of aerosol air freshener with him from home and as he passed through the smokers gathered by the front door in their wheelchairs and scooters, he let off blasts from his air freshener “to show them that I deserved some fresh air.”

On his way out, one of the smokers challenged him, he says, told him “he’d better not spray that again.”

So out came the Glade.

“I sprayed it at the ground, not at anybody’s face … if the wind blew it her way, I am very sorry.”

Police tell a different story and unfortunately for him their witness Ingrid Boiago, the centre’s director of clinical nursing, was until very recently a Hamilton police officer.

Steel was charged the next day with two counts of assault with a weapon; in their press release police allege Steel sprayed the women in the face. In an interview Boiago declined to go into specifics of what she saw.

Kevin McDonald, a manager at Hamilton’s Public Health Services, says Dundurn Place “is a challenging location” for the department partly because some of the long-term care residents have a diminished capacity “and it’s a challenge for them to understand the requirements.”

Enforcement staff have issued 11 tickets (minimum fines start at $365) and these have yielded some convictions, but also some charges have been withdrawn because of diminished capacity. McDonald said staff have met with Dundurn Place staff this week in light of the incident.

Ironically, the Mary Street facility is the only long-term care home in the whole city to have a legal, indoor smoking area, a specially ventilated room that meets provincial requirements and is inspected annually. It also has a rear patio that can be used for smoking.

But many residents, McDonald says, prefer the front entrance because that’s where all the action is.

Leslie Watson, Dundurn Place’s administrator, acknowledges smoking at the entrance “is an ongoing issue. We continue to go out and ask the residents to go down the ramps (away from the front door). I take it extremely seriously and we work very hard to get the residents to understand the requirements.”

For his part Steel, 67, hopes the attention this incident has generated will lead to a more permanent solution and in the meantime he’s looking to move his spouse to a different facility to finish her rehabilitation so she can come home.

“If this is all for nothing, then I’m going to be really upset.” (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Wednesday November 7, 2012

November 7, 2012 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday November 7, 2012

‘The beginning of a new era in America’

Pharmacy’s poll finds split between headache and anger relief

President Barack Obama’s re-election — in a ferocious campaign dotted by charges of racial anger and minority-voter suppression — has provided what many blacks say will surely deepen his legacy: irrefutable evidence that his presidency is hardly a historical fluke as he has now won two national campaigns with overwhelming white support.

Obama, the nation’s first black president, was already soaked in history, a figure seen in the aftermath of his 2008 victory as the culmination of a decades-long civil rights crusade that suffered the assassination of beloved figures who fought and marched for the right to vote and freely pursue the American dream.

But Obama’s first term as president also saw him pelted with racially charged denunciations — some from politicians — that reopened festering wounds and even fears in the African American community for his safety. At times it felt as if the W.E.B. Du Bois prophecy — the problem of the 20th century would be the color line, he famously opined — had leapt right into the 21st century.

“In many ways,” said Lonnie G. Bunch III, founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, “Obama’s reelection can be seen as resilience on the part of the African American community.”

But Bunch admitted that he felt, as did many blacks in the waning weeks of the campaign, that Obama — despite accomplishments in the war on terrorism, a strengthening economy and passage of a universal-health-care law — had been mercilessly castigated.

There was jubilation on the streets of Washington with Obama’s re-election. Janice Brown, 30, a staffing consultant who lives in Suitland, Md., stood in a corner of Busboys and Poets restaurant, excited and relieved. “It’s awesome for America. Not only is he a great leader, but he is inspiring.” (Source: The Independent)

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

May 2, 2007 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Gas prices shoot higher across Canada

Gas prices shot up right across the country overnight, with some stations in Vancouver reaching $1.28 a litre while pumps hit $1.13 in Halifax.

Montreal motorists saw prices reach $1.18 on Tuesday, while Calgary residents saw prices increase by nine cents overnight to around $1.08.

Across the Greater Toronto Area, the cost of gasoline climbed to $1.08 a litre, up from about $1.05 on Monday.

In Ottawa, prices at the pumps also rose three cents a litre to just under $1.10.

Liberal MP Dan McTeague, the consumer affairs critic and longtime critic of the oil industry, says prices have soared to the highest levels since Hurricane Katrina.

McTeague says the increase can be blamed on a jump in the wholesale price for gasoline. He adds refineries increased the wholesale price and the gas companies have now passed along the price hike to motorists. (Source: CTV News)