It’s good to have hope for the holidays. What’s harder to define is what is meant by hope. There is the theological hope in the trinity of faith, hope and charity— associated with salvation resulting from the Christian grace of God. There is the very human hope of “Hope I get a puppy for Christmas.” Then there’s the more ambiguous hope employed by soon-to-be-former First Lady Michelle Obama when she shoots the breeze with Oprah Winfrey.

God bless Joy Behar. If it weren’t for the febrile panelist on The View, one might think we’d made significant strides in the treatment of clinical paranoia. Guess not. Trump “needs to resign” before inauguration day, she fumed on Monday’s show. “Do we have to wait until the hammer and sickle is on the American flag before we stand up to this guy?” (It’s escaped Joy that the Russian flag has had no hammer and sickle since 1991.)

These are heady days for the pushback in Western society. Brexit slammed the window on the fingers of the tenured globalists trying to cede British sovereignty to the technocrats in Brussels. Italian voters followed suit with their rejection of their current leadership under Matteo Renzi. The reactionaries’ grand slam, however, was the election of Donald Trump. 

The most telling indictment of the death of Fidel Castro this past week came not from a network TV savant but from an anonymous partier in Miami’s Little Havana. Asked how Castro’s brutal regime should be portrayed by the media, he said, “You didn’t see anyone trying to launch a Toyota Prius flotilla to go from here to Havana, did you?”

As you might expect from an industry that whiffed on Donald Trump, the media is burying the lede on prime minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to fade out coal from energy production by the year 2030. And it’s not coal.

Remember what this is really about: In an ideal scenario, assuming that the western democracies hitch themselves to the climate change plough, we’re promised maybe one degree of temperature relief… by the end of the century. Let me repeat that: one degree. Probably less, very unlikely more. In 85 years. 

In The Untouchables, Sean Connery’s G-man spelled out the rules of the game. “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way! Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that? I'm offering you a deal. Do you want this deal?"

The Vulgarian is at the door, America. But if you think we want Babs Streisand warbling her way toWinnipeg, guess again.

Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential drubbing was a stunning rebuke for a most American institution: the gated community. Not your gated community of white privilege. No, this property has no gatehouse, no pristine lawns and sprinkler systems. You won’t find it listed on MLS. There is no tennis court shimmering in the midday sun.

It’s not often a single story can sum up an entire political season, but we may have one. If you require a snapshot of the turbulent U.S. presidential election look no further than the news that CNN has fired political insider Donna Brazile. Apparently the CNN “contributor” and Democratic National Committee hack was slipping questions to Hillary Clinton before her epic Democratic debates with Bernie Sanders, the Washington Generals of candidates.

By the fervent interest it has displayed, you’d almost think Canada is voting in this U.S. election. With thousands of dead people and illegal immigrants casting votes, Canada’s contribution would likely go unnoticed if we did. But if words were ballots, we’d be a swing constituency.

Take Donald Trump. He has been bombarded by insults from every quarter during this U.S. election season. While many constituencies claim to have delivered the most Trump vitriol it would be hard to top the venom flowing south from Canada. From CBC to the arts community to the left-wing political faction (but I repeat myself), it’s been hard to find a person in Canada who understands, let alone empathizes with Trump’s voters.

West World is the latest offering from HBO as the cable channel looks for its first bonafide hit since Game Of Thrones. It’s a take-off on the 1973 Michael Crichton film of the same name about a park where people can live their fantasies amongst androids. The fantasies range from benign play acting to sexual and violent indulgences. The things that are done to the androids are forgotten. The bots wake up the next day— hello Groundhog Day— with no memory of events.

Eventually— who could see this coming?— the androids develop memories and feelings.

First things first. You need to be crazier than an outhouse rat to think you can take on the Clintons and the progressive left media choir in contemporary America. 

Just ask Mitt Romney. By all accounts the 2012 GOP presidential nominee is a decent family man, a capable administrator, a turnaround artist in business and a man of faith. When he was finally spit out by the Democratic thresher in November of 2012 he was the Mormon Scrooge McDuck, a robber baron who gave a woman cancer and drove with his dog in a carrier on the car roof. In the 1980s. Oh right… he had “binders” full of women’s name for nominations to government posts.

There will be a winner in the U.S. presidential election in November. At least, that’s the rumour. So far, the floor is littered with plenty of… um. Non winners. 

With a choice between Tracy Flick and some guy played by Alec Baldwin you could make the argument that the body politic itself is going to be Casualty No. 1 in this enterprise. And the third-party alternatives are no Jeffersons either. Still no one expects character from politicians who tell you that you can keep your doctor or “I did not have classified material my server”.

Hillary Clinton could barely wipe the well-rehearsed rictus smile off her face Monday night during her first public showdown with Donald Trump. The woman with more skeletons in her closet than Dr. Frankenstein could only marvel at how easily she was skating while Trump thrashed in a verbal melt of his own making. 

To paraphrase the late NFL coach Dennis Green, “He was who we thought he was.”

Another Sunday. Another set of sit-down, fist-raised protests against the American national anthem by NFL players inspired by San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

Kaepernick, influenced by the radical black activist/ radio host he’s been dating, has decided the police in the U.S. disproportionately target blacks. So he will kneel in protest until this abomination (in his mind) ends. As we saw Sunday, this has inspired copy cats who also want to be seen as cutting-edge. 

Conservative Party leadership candidate Kellie Leitch made news when she called for a values test on all newcomers to Canada. As opposed to Donald Trump, Leitch didn’t specify which immigrants she thought might not adhere to the fairly liberal value set that defines Canada at the present moment. But it wasn’t hard to unlock the riddle.

The precious former PBS bore Garrison Keillor has taken pen (no doubt a quill) to paper in the Washington Post to warn followers of Donald Trump of impending disappointment. (http://goo.gl/a9yN0J) They’re not going to get what they think they’ll get from him.

Like many progressives, Keillor thinks the road to virtue comes via demolishing Trump personally. The more condescending the prose, the greater the glow for his personal halo. By that standard, his WaPo rant— he says Trump is running to win affection from NYC elites— must be worth a thousand years of liberal indulgences. 

Everyone knew that the National Energy Board’s hearings in Montreal concerning a trans-Canada pipeline were going to be divisive. Montreal mayor Denis Coderre had already signalled that, on behalf of his constituents, he would protest the environmental impact of the Energy East pipeline though the region. He would be joined by green activists protesting that fossil fuels are the devil’s work.

There was a telling moment last spring when Barack Obama’s farewell tour brought him to the Canadian Parliament. Obama was there to bask in the rapture of Canadians who, stuck with the bland Stephen Harper the past decade, were thirsting for a little something-something in their coffee. 

Unsurprisingly, Obama received a fawning welcome from the left side of the political spectrum assembled that day in Ottawa. The first black American president is as much a talisman of the Canadian left as he is for the progressives in America who believe, as Obama does, that “the arc of moral history always bends toward justice.” 

The showbiz maxim says you want to be the person who follows the person who succeeds a big star. We had a few examples this week that putting on big shoes can be a perilous fate.

Jian Ghomeshi was a sensation at CBC Radio in every way. A musician, a culture junkie and—for CBC the most important element— a man of colour, Ghomeshi raised the Radio branch to its long-desired moment of Zen. No longer was it Michael Enright playing Stan Getz or Stuart McLean ripping off Garrison Keillor. Or the geeks of Quirks & Quarks.

Von Clausewitz might have observed that the Olympics are simply politics pursued by other means.

The value of the Olympics is that they can be made to mean pretty much whatever you want them to mean. Myth making. Policy affirmation. Program shattering. The Rio Summer Olympics— almost a week old by now— have ample political implications for when things go right— and when they go wrong.