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Tuesday November 10, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday November 10, 2020

Trump’s narcissism has become the GOP’s Achilles’ heel

October 10, 2020

President Trump, days after losing the presidency by millions of votes and by a significant margin in the electoral college, still cannot admit he lost. There are a number of possible explanations for this. He may be such a raging narcissist that he simply cannot recognize failure and rejection. He may see the legal attacks as a money-raising venture (solicitations for the lawsuits in fine print reveal he can use the money to pay off campaign debt). He may see this as a financial strategy as he returns to the business world (no one wants to stay at Loser Trump’s hotels, but Martyr Trump has some brand appeal). As a political strategy, rejecting the election results keeps deluded supporters in a frenzy over a “stolen” election that was not stolen at all. (Have we found any shred of evidence of fraud or error that would change thousands of votes? Of course not.)

January 8, 2020

In any case, a range of conservatives — from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to talk-radio hosts to evangelical Christian patsies for Trump to potential 2024 Republican candidates — evidently think there is value in keeping up the pretense, which they know to be insane and anti-democratic. McConnell probably thinks it will juice up Georgia voters for the Senate runoff elections and stoke fundraising. The talk-radio jockeys and the rest of the unhinged right-wing media need new outrages to feed viewership. Trump-friendly evangelical Christian leaders have been selling white grievance for decades and likely see this as the latest reason to instill in their followers a sense of injustice, loss and anger. (It will also be fodder for arguments to intensify voter suppression based on the myth of rampant voter fraud.) And the 2024 contenders want to be seen as the heirs to the MAGA crowd, so they imitate Trump’s delusional refusal to accept the results.

June 4, 2019

The interesting question is not whether these people are behaving undemocratically, dishonestly and immorally; we know that to be the case. What we should be asking is why they are playing along with Trump. After losing a presidential election based almost entirely on conspiracies and white grievance, they seem determined to do it all over again.

January 11, 2016

The interesting question is not whether these people are behaving undemocratically, dishonestly and immorally; we know that to be the case. What we should be asking is why they are playing along with Trump. After losing a presidential election based almost entirely on conspiracies and white grievance, they seem determined to do it all over again. (Continued: Washington Post) 

Depicting Trump as an animal was going too far – Tuesday, Nov. 10, editorial cartoon

Letter to the Editor, The Hamilton Spectator, November 17, 2020

This editorial cartoon went too far and was unbecoming of a Canadian newspaper. I agree that American President Donald Trump has lost the respect of other world leaders, and that the entire world is watching his childish and unethical behaviour with disgust. He is racist, sexist and xenophobic. He fans the flames of unrest and inequity in his country. He is attempting to dismantle the very democracy that is the basis of American citizenship. However, he is not an animal; he is a very flawed and dangerous human with too much power. It is beneath The Hamilton Spectator or any respected Canadian newspaper to engage in the same kind of dehumanizing humour that has marred Trump’s presidency.

Laura Wolfson, Dundas

Saturday June 20, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday June 20, 2020

The end of the buffet as we know it?

December 4, 2013

The COVID-19 pandemic may be the end of the restaurant buffet as we know it. 

With concerns over the spread of the virus heightening concerns around food safety, the fill-your-plate dining concept is facing serious challenges.

Some Alberta restaurant operators believe that long after anxiety around the spread of the virus subsides, customers won’t have an appetite for self-serve eats. 

Some buffets shuttered by the pandemic may be gone forever, said Oscar Lopez, the founder of Pampa Brazilian Steakhouse, a chain of five Alberta restaurants. 

“That’s the $2-million question,” Lopez said. “This is part of a huge industry.

December 13, 2013

“We’ve been thinking about it a lot.” 

After months of public health messaging about virus prevention, customers may have become permanently put off by sneeze guards and shared spoons, Lopez said. 

He wonders how long the world-famous buffets of the Las Vegas strip will remain closed, or if now-docked cruise ships will ever serve their food in the same way again. 

Even when Alberta health restrictions prohibiting buffets are lifted, his chain of restaurants may never operate them again. 

June 11, 2014

“An emotional scar has been left on people,” he said. “I’m skeptical. I don’t know. 

“When Alberta Health Services allows us to reopen our salad bar operation, I’m not quite sure that we will. I think that will have to do a lot with what the public’s reaction is, what their memory of this whole situation is.

“We may just keep doing what we’re doing.”

Pampa is known for its rodizio-style service. Customers sample from shared plates and meat skewers served by waiters circulating from table to table. The salad bar is also a huge draw, Lopez said.

Coronavirus cartoons

Since reopening, the restaurant is now plating its food individually in the kitchen. Tables are carefully spaced two metres apart. The salad bar is closed indefinitely. 

Lopez considered having an attendant for the buffets but said he was advised by health inspectors that it would be too difficult to keep customers a safe distance apart from each other. 

“Almost overnight we had to reinvent ourselves and sort of reteach our team on our new style of service, so we’re kind of learning as we go.” 

Most customers have been accommodating, he said, but some reservations have been cancelled.

“It looks empty. It looks sad. We have lost a lot of the ambience in the restaurant.” (CBC)

Letter to the Editor, Wednesday June 24, 2020

June 20 cartoon missing racialized customers

I want to thank The Spectator for giving us a great example of systemic racism: A cartoon with seven people at the buffet table and not one racialized person. I guess only white people in Hamilton go to buffet restaurants. Despite the fact that systemic barriers exist everywhere, people continue to be blind to them.

Jorge Lasso, Hamilton

Tuesday June 2, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday June 2, 2020

God Bless, and please help, our friend America

It was Justin Trudeau’s late father who, in 1969, coined the best description ever of what it’s like living next door to the United States. “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt,” he said in a speech.

April 29, 2020

Pierre Trudeau probably couldn’t have envisioned what is happening in America right now. Already weak and dazed thanks to poor stewardship, the elephant has become very sick over the past week. It is, in fact, convulsing. Its future is far from certain. 

It’s hard to watch. Even those of us who don’t care for many aspects of America — particularly Donald Trump’s America — feel sorrow and some trepidation.

The immediate crisis is the result of yet another unarmed black man being killed by white police. This time it started in Minneapolis. This time the black man, whose name was George Floyd, died after a cop knelt on his neck for just under nine minutes, while other officers stood by and watched. Floyd’s crime, apparently, was resisting arrest and acting belligerent, quite possibly under the influence. The cop who knelt on Floyd’s neck was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. And he was fired. Three other officers have been dismissed but have not yet been charged. 

May 5, 2020

The charged former officer has previously been involved in the fatal shooting of another suspect, and was the subject of 17 complaints during his two-decade police career.

The killing, caught on multiple videos, quickly went monstrously viral. And then all hell broke loose, and continues to do so, as recently as last night. Some demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails at police in Philadelphia, Pa., others set fires near the White House and faced tear gas and rubber bullets in Austin, Texas, Atlanta, Ga., and other cities. So far, deaths have been recorded in Kentucky, Detroit, Mich., and Minneapolis. Concerns have been raised about looters and vandals taking advantage of the protests.

It has been bad before when police kill unarmed black people. Tamir Rice was playing in a park. Eric Garner had just broken up a fight. Ezell Ford was walking in his neighbourhood. Philando Castile was driving home from dinner with his girlfriend. Dominique Clayton and Breonna Taylor were sleeping in their beds. But this is the worst in a very long time. Black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers.

November 9, 2016

At times like this, you look to your elected leaders as a stabilizing force. The mayor of Minneapolis and the state governor have been trying. Not Donald Trump though. Rather than try to instill calm and call for unity, Trump went off on state governors during a video conference about the widespread violence. He told them to aggressively target violent protesters. He said “You have to dominate or you’ll look like a bunch of jerks…” He ordered them to seek “retribution”. He counselled aggression, telling the governors “You don’t have to be too careful.” He said of the violence: “It’s a movement, if you don’t put it down it will get worse and worse … The only time its successful is when you’re weak and most of you are weak.”

Presumably, Trump was referring to Antifa, the violence left-wing protest group. It has certainly been active and no doubt is responsible for some of the violence, but the wave is much bigger than that. 


Barack Obama, by contrast, condemned the violence and called for the protesters to come together for peaceful protest and change. Of course, Obama is not in the White House. Trump is. God bless, and help, America. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)

USA, White House, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, quote, BlackLivesMatter, racism, Donald Trump, white nationalism, bigotry

Letter to the Editor, Hamilton Spectator, Friday June 5, 2020

June 2 editorial cartoon said it all

Thank you Graeme MacKay for this cartoon (Kennedy’s ghost visiting Donald Trump)! It says it all. As someone who was a teenager when Martin Luther King, President Kennedy and then his brother Bobby were assassinated, I was in shock and devastated. The closest the U.S. ever came again to being in that position was when Barack Obama became president. Now we watch and listen to the rhetoric of the most disgusting president ever. Everything presidents Lincoln, Kennedy and Obama, as well as Sen. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, stood for are ignored by today’s “leader.” The election cannot come fast enough.

Gwen Vance, Hamilton

Saturday May 30, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday May 30, 2020

SoBi decision a symptom of a deeper problem

If the SoBi bike share debate that has polarized Hamilton city council, and many citizens as well, was just about money, it would be a one-sided affair.

May 23, 2020

Uber violates its contract and pulls out. Annual operating cost is about $700,000. City Hall is staring down a pandemic-driven deficit of about $60 million. It’s clear city council won’t support that. A compromise plan worth about $400,000 would have bought some time while the city looks for a new partner. Council delivers a tied vote, which technically amounts to a defeat for the compromise motion. 

City council has killed the bikeshare program, at least for this season. Instead, it will pay $140,000 to store the 900 bikes. If that holds true, the gross savings for this season will be about $260,000.

This relatively trivial savings — the total annual operating costs amount to 0.02 of the city’s annual budget — is at least defensible, if this was all about money. That is, if this goes hand in hand with an ironclad decision to kill all discretionary spending until the municipal deficit is dealt with. But is it that?

Is council saying, for example, that under these circumstances not one red cent will go to supporting the 2026 Commonwealth Games bid? If so, they might want to make that public declaration so the organizing committee knows where it stands. The compromise proposal would have been financed from area rating budgets from downtown wards, so would not have impacted the general levy. Does this decision mean other projects that have area rating fund commitments — say the new Ancaster Arts Centre, for example — can expect their area rating funding to be withdrawn?

The answer to these and other related questions, is no, not necessarily. That’s because this decision isn’t just about money. It’s also about the suburban/rural-urban divide that has rendered this city council, on all too many occasions, dysfunctional and incompetent. 

July 25, 2007

Among city councillors from suburban and rural wards, projects that directly benefit urban wards and citizens don’t get the same support as those that benefit suburban and rural ridings. And, to be fair, the reverse is probably also true. It’s a form of parochialism all too familiar to Hamilton political observers. And it doesn’t serve the city overall well. 

In truth, especially at times like these, these people shouldn’t be called city councillors at all. They should be called ward councillors, because their own wards are really all they care about.

Don’t believe that? Consider this. City council agreed not that long ago to declare a climate emergency in Hamilton, in recognition of the climate crisis and its growing local impact. That’s a good, strong and progressive message.

But the very same councillors just voted to kill the bikeshare program, which by any measure was successful. Those 900-odd bikes served 26,000 active members, who took 350,000 trips last year. Those are trips that don’t pollute like cars and diesel buses do. They are trips that improved physical and mental health of the users. They are a feature of a pedestrian-friendly, environmentally conscious city, the kind that is more likely to attract young families and professionals.

This is what eight members of council — Merulla, Collins, Jackson, Pauls, Johnson, Ferguson, Partridge and Whitehead — killed for the sake of gross savings of around $260,000.

All may not be lost. Perhaps a new viable partner can be found to revive public bikeshare infrastructure. But that won’t solve what’s wrong with Hamilton city council. For that, we will have to wait until the next election in 2022. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)

Letter to the Editor, The Hamilton Spectator, June 10, 2020

I’m very impressed with the sensitive, sensible, and informative political cartoons created by The Spec’s Graeme MacKay. His cartoons are one of the reasons why I continue to subscribe to the print edition. MacKay’s cartoons of the death of SoBi (May 30) and CAF’s report on Ontario’s nursing homes (May 28) were heart wrenching. We are fortunate to have him.

Catherine Marks, Dundas

Wednesday January 15, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday January 15, 2020

Harper says change needed in Iran to bring peace to region

July 15, 2015

Former prime minister Stephen Harper says peace in the Middle East will only come after change comes to Iran.

Speaking at an international conference on global challenges in New Delhi Tuesday, Harper said he does not believe Iran would have shot down a civilian aircraft deliberately — but the fact that Tehran knew it could happen and still allowed normal civilian air traffic “tells you something about the nature of that regime and its priorities.”

“I do believe we need to see a change in Iran if we are going to see peace in the Middle East,” he told the international audience at the Raisina Dialogue conference.

January 6, 2016

“I see an increasing number of states in the region — Israel, that I’m close to, certainly the Sunni Arab monarchies, others who are increasingly trying to work together and see a common future and common interests — and you have this one actor that quite frankly is … based on religious fanaticism and regional imperialism and, as I say as a friend of the Jewish people, frankly an anti-Semitic state.”

Iranian leaders confirmed Saturday that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard shot down the Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737-800 using surface-to-air missiles, killing all 176 passengers and crew on board. Of those passengers, 138 were destined for Canada, but it’s not known how many were permanent residents or were travelling on visitor or student visas.

Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne has said that 57 of the victims were Canadian citizens.

PM Merch

The aircraft was shot down just hours after Iran launched missiles against two military bases in Iraq where U.S. and Canadian soldiers were stationed. Those strikes were ordered in retaliation for a targeted drone strike on Jan. 3 by the U.S. that killed Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani.

This week, Canadian Jewish and Iranian organizations called on the government to list the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist entity in response to the attack on the Ukrainian aircraft. (CBC News) 

Letters to the Editor, The Hamilton Spectator, Saturday January 18, 2020

Ignore Trump lovers

It’s good that you recognized the PM’s leadership since you condemned him the day before in your editorial cartoon for not being tough enough. Sounds like the writer and the cartoonist are not on the same page.

Yes, there are people who think Trudeau should be more like Trump in his dealing with Iran. But if he followed that advice, the families of the victims would pay the price. It’s easy for Trumpians to whine. Good thing Trudeau is acting for the rest of us.

Helen Bonham, Burlington

Be thankful for Trudeau’s leadership

I usually find Mr. MacKay’s works amusing and/or thought provoking. This one I did not.

Justin Trudeau is not perfect, and everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but he is certainly not begging for anything from Iran. I have been very impressed with his calm but clear expectations about this horrific tragedy. Unfortunately society has normalized blustering, bullying, lying, name-calling and threatening behaviour from elected leaders.

I am thankful that our Prime Minister is acting responsibly and not reacting impulsively. Let’s continue to support the families who are dealing with this terrible situation and our elected leaders who are trying to sort it out.

Sharon McKibbon, Hamilton