Warren Kinsella: CTRC ruling gave Sun News what it wanted

.... (Sun News Network) got what it wanted. Here’s three reasons why:

1. The CRTC decision will ultimately create a new category of licences for Canadian all-news channels, like the ones found on CTV and CBC as well as SNN.  It’s asking for public comment on all that, sure.  But the CRTC decision will force cable companies to offer all Canadian national news services, including SNN.  That’s parity.
2. The CRTC’s clever plan will put all these news services in close proximity on your TV dial.  It will also put all national news services – CTV and CBC included – in a package.  And it’ll force cable companies to offer it.  That’s placement.
3. The CRTC will put Canadian news channels – you know, Sun News, CTV News Channel and CBC News Network – on a higher priority footing than foreign-owned news channels, like CNN or Al Jazeera.  That’s the patriotism part: it’s dumb to give more to foreign-owned networks than all-Canadian ones.  So the CRTC’s changing that.

More HERE

h/t Michael Coren

Kathy Shaidle's Adventures in Radio

...the Montreal Massacre is held up as proof that all (white) men are wife-beating rapists-in-waiting, and all guns are penis substitutes that should be banned. 

The nation’s flags—I’m not joking—are flown at half-mast. It’s a liberal High Holy Day, commemorated most seriously at college campuses.   

Hence the University of Western Ontario’s student radio station’s decision to ban male voices on the air this December 6.

This left Ontario libertarians Robert Metz and Robert Vaughan with a dilemma. Their show Just Right airs on CHRW every Thursday and comprises the only hour of the week devoted to non-Marxist programming. 

Banned from their own program, the Bobs asked me and our mutual vagina-having friend Mary Lou Ambrogio of the International Free Press Society to sit in for them. We agreed. I announced my guest-hosting gig on my blog.

That’s when Warren Kinsella tried to prevent me from going on the air.

Read all of Kathy's piece at TAKI'S MAGAZINE

I actually agree with Warren Kinsella!

Warren's got the right idea about the Toronto City Council Race in Ward 32 in the Beaches.

Martin Gladstone would be a much better choice than the awful Sandra Bussin. So would my cat, but my cat's not running, so vote for Martin.

We need Martin in Council to counterbalance this piece of drek in Ward 27. Ken Chan is the only sane choice in the riding soon to be vacated by Kyle Rae.

The best thing about Rob Ford's polling surge - the city's elitist a-holes are tearing their hair out

Which doesn't account for Smitherman and Rossi being bald, they started out the campaign that way.

There is but one place for them to put their hope and it is my candidacy  George "I am the messiah" Smitherman

George Smitherman's hysteria at his free fall from what he thought was going to be a coronation to an almost universal rejection has sent him into crazed, messianic, self-delusional statements like, "This is a bit of an alarm for people over what's happening in their city and to line up behind one vision -- a destructive, reckless one or one that is about city building. There is but one place for them to put their hope and it is my candidacy ... We will fight for our city to the end."

As Blazing Cat Fur noted, the addition of famed Liberal party strategist Warren Kinsella hasn't helped Rocco Rossi's polling numbers, but it has made him look desperate and pathetic with his ill-advised and almost universally condemned proposal to revisit the Spadina Expressway as an underground tunnel.

What I find personally gratifying is the idiotic, sanctimonious, histrionic blathering by The Toronto Star's mouthpiece for the condo developers' lobby, Christopher Hume, who wrote "the rise of Rob Ford should come as no surprise. It is yet another manifestation of the wave of nasty right-wing populism sweeping North America. Its newly emboldened hordes may not know what they need, but they know what they want"

Speaking as one of the horde, Torontonians don't want is to be ignored by their politicians and be told how we should think by self-absorbed socialists. We don't need to be told how our "visionary leaders" know what's best for us, whether or not we agree.

Heather Mallick already accused Toronto of being "nuts" when it looked like the city was on the verge of electing Ford. Now that it seems a near-certainty, she must be having a complete mental breakdown (I wonder to what extent that will even be noticeable). I look forward to reading her next rant on the subject.

Welcome to democracy, comrades. I know you hate it. It must be frustrating for Hume, Mallick, Miller and their ilk to be so convinced of their own intellectual superiority yet remain unable to comprehend how they can't do as good a job of convincing the public as their supposed inferiors.

I could explain it to them in one sentence, but why bother; they'd never believe it.


UPDATE: This condescending email just went out from the Smitherman campaign. With little of his own virtue to offer, "I am the messiah" George is going in for all-out panicked fear-mongering with:

If an election were held tomorrow Rob Ford would be mayor.

That’s what two new public opinion polls out tonight show. They also show that George Smitherman is the only candidate who can stop Rob Ford.

While Joe Pantalone, Sarah Thompson and Rocco Rossi have all made important contributions to this election race, they cannot become Mayor.

George represents the best of Toronto’s values: tolerance and respect, hard work, caring, balance and honesty. Over the next five weeks we must redouble our efforts to present George to the people of Toronto and to give them a clear choice: Rob Ford’s city of division, recklessness and anger, and George’s city of bringing people together, balance and sensible choices.

We need your help to fight for our vision of Toronto. We need you to attend debates and events and to actively cheer George on; we need you to staff the telephones and to knock on doors; and most especially we need you to talk to your friends and co-workers. Now is the time to get active.

In yesterday’s New York Times Michael Bloomberg, New York’s Mayor, said "Anger, is not a government strategy," he added. "It’s not a way to govern." He was speaking about the tide in America, but he could just as easily have been talking about the anger being exploited by Rob Ford in Toronto.

What Happened to the Toronto Star? They've acknowledged their efforts to sink Rob Ford have been a complete failure

“They all underestimated the capacity of the Ford family team,” Doug Ford told the Star.

“We’re running circles around the Warren Kinsellas and John Laschingers,” he says, referring to political players: Kinsella, who recently volunteered for Rossi, and Laschinger, Joe Pantalone’s campaign manager.

“We’re laughing,” said Ford. “We figure there’s another one on board (Kinsella) and we’ve got to knock him off, too. It’s like knocking flies off . . . well, you know what.”

George Smitherman's campaign seem to be the only ones left in denial of the obvious.

"Davis maintains Smitherman will beat Ford. “I’m convinced people are tolerating Rob Ford — his antics, his misbehaviour, his hurtfulness — because they’re desperate to clean up the finances at city hall. But Rob Ford won’t be able to do that.”

And yet, while insisting the Smitherman camp “gets” the public’s anger about perceived waste and mismanagement at city hall — the crux of the Ford message — Davis said his candidate won’t roll out his fiscal plan until later this month.

Perhaps there’s a problem right there. Ford’s opponents still operate under old campaign rules — i.e., big announcements after Labour Day — while the whole universe is changing around them. It’s like the axiom, life is what happens to you while you’re busy making plans."

The unexpected column in The Star can be read in its entirety here.