I've been trying to write something about what the year 2017 felt like to me, but it isn't easy.
So many things happened, I can't decide whether it was a good year or a bad one.
Or whether we're making progress, or going back to the Stone Age.
And to make matters worse every time I start, I keep getting distracted.
Either by some of the many university students in my neighbourhood shouting PAAAAARTY!!!
Or as I was last night, by some very loud grunting and honking.
Donald Trump has been acting strangely for quite a while. Some moments he's there, some moments he isn't.
But his sudden decision to grant New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt an interview two days ago, after spotting him having lunch at his Mar-A-Lago club, was bizarre even by his standards.
And when his advisers or controllers or daycare workers heard about that, they were very unhappy.
When President Trump sat down with a reporter for a wide-ranging, 30-minute interview at his private golf club here Thursday, not a single aide or adviser was present at the table — and not a single aide or adviser knew about it in advance.
Because they know that when The Beast is off the leash he's capable of saying or doing ANYTHING.
And sure enough they were right.
It was Rosemary Con Barton's last At Issue panel of the year, and as usual it was a horror show.
The ghastly Con conclave declared Pierre Poilievre to be the politician of the year for smearing Bill Morneau as only he could.
Yes, that Pierre Poilievre.
Then to make matters even more obscene, Con Barton did solemnly declare that the Liberals and Justin Trudeau were the year's biggest LOSERS!!!
I was doing some research for a year-end post, when I came across this cartoon, and I almost fell out of my chair laughing.
To think that so many people ran or stumbled desperately towards 2017 thinking that they might find refuge there. Or sanity.
And how did that work out?
As I'm sure you know, many Cons are not very smart, they tend to be extremely paranoid, and they're definitely not very brave.
Not because their brains are necessarily smaller, but because their fear glands are humungous.
Peering inside the brain with MRI scans, researchers at University College London found that self-described conservative students had a larger amygdala than liberals.
Which can affect the way Cons see the world.
The conservative party is big on national defense and magnifies our perception of threat, whether of foreign aggressors, immigrants, terrorists, or invading ideologies like Communism. To a conservative, the world really is a frightening place.
Or the way they react to threats, as we know only too well...
As I wrote the other day, the Con media is finding it harder and harder to attack Justin Trudeau, because they've been doing it for so long nobody is paying them much attention.
And they're withering on the vine, or just withering.
So now they're trying something different. They're trying to make the creepy religious fanatic Andrew Scheer look good.
Only to find that even harder.
For obvious reasons...
I hope you enjoyed your Christmas as much as I did, or at least had a better time than the turkey Donald Trump.
For he spent the holiday making an absolute fool out of himself.
First claiming that thanks to him Christmas was saved.
No doubt to pleasure his hairy Christianist bigots, or boost sales of this tacky ornament.
Or try to make people forget this stinging humiliation...
It's Christmas Day in Canada. Where I live and where I'm going everything is covered with a blanket of fresh snow, as it should be in the Great White North.
And for me it's a day to give thanks for living in a country so peaceful and so beautiful.
A day to try to forget all the ugly Cons of the world, like Andrew Scheer or this depraved maniac.
And a day when I rerun a post I wrote years ago to try to explain what Christmas means to me.
I was going to write something different this year, but then I realized I had said all I wanted to say.
So with a few little changes here we go again.
I think by now you probably know what I think about our grubby Con media, and how much they disgust me.
You know what I thought about them during Stephen Harper's monstrous decade in power, when they fell over themselves trying to polish his behind, or blow his tiny trumpet.
And I'm sure you also know what I think about them now that they are attempting to bring down the Liberal government after only two years, by trying to turn a minor mistake by Justin Trudeau into a huge scandal.
But this is the absolute limit.
OK I have to admit it, Jason Kenney would NOT be my first choice to play Santa Claus.
And I did think he was just a little too chubby, and not quite green enough to play the Grinch.
But surprise surprise, that is who he is playing.
Ever since she ruled that Justin Trudeau had violated ethical guidelines, Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson has become the darling of the Con media.
After attacking her for months they now swoon at her feet, and accept her ruling without question.
But I believe that ruling is hideously flawed, especially on the key question of whether the Aga Khan is a close friend of Justin Trudeau.
Dawson ruled he is not, but it seems to me that this video proves her wrong.
It's the last thing I needed to do at this time of the year. Stare at a picture of a lovely Caribbean island with all that light blue water and all those warm sandy beaches.
While freezing my butt off in Canada.
But unfortunately that's the Aga Khan's private island, Justin Trudeau and his family had a short holiday there last winter.
And our grubby Con media is trying to turn a slap on the wrist by the Ethics Commissioner into a huge scandal.
As I'm sure you have noticed, Andrew Scheer is looking a little ragged these days.
For six months he has been attacking Justin Trudeau like a bat out of hell, or a maniac.
Or an alt-right religious fanatic.
But sadly for him it's just not working.
In fact, it's an absolute disaster.
In my last post I told you how Andrew Scheer had been caught lying like a thief or a Trump.
Claiming that Justin Trudeau had called some Canadians "tax cheats."
When in fact Trudeau never used those words.
But while Scheer has yet to admit he lied, it seems that what little credibility he had left, has been dealt a mortal blow.
By one of his own.
The ghastly Con House leader Candice Bergen.
For a man who claims to be a religious fanatic, Andrew Scheer seems to have a very casual relationship with the Ten Commandments.
Especially the one about not bearing false witness.
Because he breaks that one all the time.
And this is just the latest example.
Whenever I'm in Scotland, I like to ride out to this ruined castle near my family home, lie on its grassy slopes in the dark highland night, stare up at all those stars in the sky.
And wonder on occasion whether there are aliens out there zipping around in their UFOs. And if so could they please come quickly and save us from ourselves?
So I'm glad to see that I'm not alone, or going crazy.
And that the Pentagon has finally admitted that they had, and may still have, a top-secret UFO program.
Which has recently released some videos like this one.
There is something very disturbing about this picture of Andrew Scheer, taken on the last day before Parliament adjourned for the holidays.
As he stares at Justin Trudeau with his creepy smile missing, and a strange almost crazed look in his eyes.
But then who can blame him?
He attacked Trudeau like a rabid beast for months. He blew hot air out of every orifice until they were all glowing red.
Only to get absolutely nowhere.
We know that Donald Trump likes to imagine himself as a Great Leader, commanding his Alt-Right forces to victory, over the decent and the different.
We know he wants to torch the planet, and anything Barack Obama ever built...
We know that he is almost certainly mentally ill, and could set the world on fire as early as tomorrow.
But now he's playing Big Brother, and it may be his scariest role EVER.
It's easy to forget the past, in the age of Trump, when the truth is so easily buried under a daily avalanche of excrement and insanity.
But two years ago, at this same dark time of the year, a desperate Stephen Harper was about to launch his Great War on Terror.
It had just been a few months since a gunman had stormed Parliament Hill, Harper thought he could use the fear card to scare Canadians into giving him another Glorious Majority.
And he wasn't about to let facts get in the way, or take no for an answer.
So when Justin Trudeau suggested we should examine the root causes of terrorism, Harper ridiculed him and accused Trudeau of "committing sociology."
While his yapping minion Pierre Poilievre continued to proudly proclaim that the root cause of terrorism is TERRORISTS!!!!
As you may know, the religious fanatic, and homophobic pervert Roy Moore rode a horse to the polls on the day of his Waterloo.
And the horse was not amused.
And who can blame the poor Sassy?
For anyone who rides like that deserves to be thrown to the ground, or arrested by the SPCA.
But while Moore did end up badly, and looking like a horse's ass.
As you know, I didn't think that Doug Jones, the Democratic candidate for Senator, had much of a chance of defeating the homophobic Bible thumping pervert Roy Moore.
Not in backward Alabama, where ignorance is a virtue, religion is a weapon, and inbreeding is a major problem.
In fact, I had already started working on my campaign to boycott that state.
As you know Andrew Scheer has been looking a little desperate recently.
And who can blame him?
Ever since he became leader of the Harper Party he has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at Justin Trudeau.
He has all but called Trudeau a crook, and a traitor. He has accused him of being soft on ISIS. He has tried to smear or Schmear him in every possible way, aided and abetted by our shabby Con media.
But it's just not working. His polls are stuck in neutral, the more Canadians know him the less they like or trust him.
And after last night he must be a LOT desperate.
Tomorrow, people in Alabama will vote to decide whether they want to make the religious fanatic, homophobic maniac, and alleged pedophile pervert Roy Moore, their newest Senator.
Polls show that Moore has a five point lead over his Democratic opponent Doug Jones. And it being Alabama, a backward state if ever there was one, I fully expect him to win.
But I have to admit that I wouldn't be THAT disappointed.
I always knew that a close look at Donald Trump's White House, and the court of the Orange Emperor, would be a deeply disturbing experience.
I just didn't know how bad or how crazy it could get.
But now a team of writers from the New York Times has done that, and it's a real horror show.
Even worse than I had imagined...
Well I'm glad to see that the U.S. and South Korea have ended a massive military exercise without the North Koreans declaring war on them.
The US doubled down on provocative bomber flights near the border with North Korea this week, at the same time as Pyongyang asked when, not if, war would break out.
But there can be no doubt that the situation on the Korean peninsula is getting more more and more dangerous.
Andrew Scheer isn't smiling as much as he used to these days, as he tries one thing after the other to make himself more popular.
And destroy Justin Trudeau.
But even with the help of his Mini-Me, Hamish Marshall from The Rebel, it's all going horribly wrong.
It couldn't have been a more sordid, or scary spectacle. Donald Trump addressing a Make America Great Again rally in Pensacola, Florida.
Weaponizing Christmas, and urging his deplorables across the border in Alabama to vote for Roy Moore.
Because in Trump's rapidly degenerating mind, an old perv who sexually harassed teenage girls is still better than a Democrat.
And the scary part is that Trump is now in full blown demagogue mode, or out of his mind, so you know what's coming next.
It was like the happy part of a nightmare, if you know what I mean. Brief but welcome.
As I watched Donald Trump set fire to the Middle East.
Just to pleasure his rabid religious base, and Daddy Big Bucks Sheldon Adelson.
And of course, to try to distract Americans from all his legal problems.
Trump started slurring his words, and for a moment I thought he was having a stroke.
For months I've been warning that Andrew Scheer aka Schmear or Schmeagol, is a religious fanatic and a right-wing extremist.
And that along with his mini-me Hamish Marshall, is trying to turn the Cons into the Rebel Party.
And now there is more evidence of that.
In Montreal this evening, fourteen rays of light will rise into the sky, one after the other, from the summit of Mount Royal.
So all Montrealers can see them, and remember the fourteen young women who were murdered twenty eight years ago today at the École Polytechnique.
Murdered by a man who hated women.
Lisa Raitt likes to portray herself as a different kind of Con, a cut above the rest of her lowlife colleagues. But don't believe a word she says.
She's as rotten as all the others.
When she was a minister in the Harper government she told one of her flunkies that cancer was "sexy" only to end up blubbering I'm sorreeeeeee!!!
And now I wouldn't be surprised if she's blubbering again.
After having inadvertently revealed the six degrees or less of separation between Andrew Scheer's Cons and Ezra Levant's filthy Rebel.
You don't have to be a psychiatrist to know that Donald Trump is slowly cracking up.
Or a political scientist to know that he has never been so dangerous.
Mike Flynn's decision to squeal to Robert Mueller, has clearly sent Trump spiralling into the Twilight Zone.
He's been tweeting crazy stuff for days, promoting snuff videos made by some deranged Muslim hating group in Britain. He's been attacking the "fake news."
Dredging up weird conspiracy theories.
And now he's going after those who would dare to investigate him.
If you're a progressive in Canada, this is the kind of CBC News panel that can really ruin your day.
Old, grim, predictable, boring, and as Con as they come.
And like all the other CBC News panels and opinion pages, so totally biased the people's network might as well be a branch of the Con propaganda machine.
As a strong CBC supporter I really didn't think it could get worse.
But sadly I was wrong.
Even though Donald Trump must be feeling terribly betrayed by Mike Flynn's decision to cooperate with Bob Mueller, and sing like a canary.
As he should, because as I said earlier today, Flynn's testimony could end up sending Trump to the Big House.
The Orange Oaf was able to stay off Twitter for almost a day, no doubt on the advice of his lawyers.
Only to return a few hours ago, and all but convict HIMSELF.
Two days after Donald Trump was elected president, Barack Obama warned him not to hire Michael Flynn for any national security job.
But Trump didn't listen to him, he made Flynn his national security adviser.
And of course now he's sorry. Very sorry.
President Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the F.B.I. about conversations with the Russian ambassador last December, becoming the first senior White House official to cut a cooperation deal in the special counsel’s wide-ranging inquiry into election interference.
Flynn is squealing.
The more Canadians get to know Andrew Scheer, the more they realize that he wasn't kidding when he said he was Stephen Harper with a smile.
For although that smile is really creepy, and that religious fanatic has the potential to be even more dangerous than Harper.
Not only does Schmear or Schmeagol lie like a thief.
He also loves to play the politics of fear.
In the age of Trump, in the darkness of November, it turned out to be an epic confrontation.
Roy Diddler Moore, the religious fanatic and anti-gay maniac, taking on Jimmy Kimmel in a showdown at the Twitter Corral.
It all began when a comedian who works on the Himmel show disrupted one of Moore's speeches, hilariously.
By posing as one of Moore's supporters.
And pretending to defend him from a heckler.
We've always known that Donald Trump is a virulent racist, and that strange and dirty things swirl around in his head.
And in the last few days he has been teetering on the edge of the abyss, with his tweets becoming more and bizarre.
Or more and more deranged,
But now he has finally exceeded the last bounds of sanity and decency.
And is being accused of going stark raving mad.
When I heard that Justin Trudeau was going to deliver an apology to LGBT Canadians I arranged to get the day off.
I wanted to watch all the speeches, and hear what the survivors had to say about those dark times when gay people had no rights, and were treated like criminals.
But I wasn't sure how I might react.
Would I be moved like Justin? Or would I explode with anger at those stories of injustice?
So when I finally watched the speeches yesterday I was surprised by my reaction...
Andrew Scheer's call for freedom of speech on all university campuses, or else, is still up on all Con websites.
But it's looking a little tattered, and so is Scheer.
After his clumsy attempt to use the case of that teaching assistant at Sir Wilfrid Laurier university, as yet another wedge issue with which to attack Justin Trudeau.
Only to have that absurd controversy first fizzle.
And then blow up in his face....
For years I have tried to avoid watching the CBC National on Thursdays so as to avoid the At Issue panel.
For it was always a Con clown show under Big Daddy Mansbridge, and judging from what I've seen so far, will remain that way under the very Con-friendly Rosemary Barton.
A horror show of dead pundits walking, the Rue Morgue of journalism. Hopelessly out of touch with the new generation. And still as Con as they come.
But at least there's one thing apparently gone from the National, that I won't miss at all.
Something small, but also big, and loud, and definitely very annoying.
Ever since my days at McGill, I've been interested in studying the brains of Cons, to try to determine what makes them so dumb and so bestial.
And for years I've known that what sets those brains apart from those of normal people is the size of the amygdala, or fear gland.
Peering inside the brain with MRI scans, researchers at University College London found that self-described conservative students had a larger amygdala than liberals. The amygdala is an almond-shaped structure deep in the brain that is active during states of fear and anxiety.
Which in a stressful moment can turn them into fearful creatures, or quivering cowards.
