Bruce Dowbiggin
Green On Outside/ Red On Inside: The Great EV Leap Forward

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“We just did something about climate change for the first time in decades. That’s why we have to win this as that hurricane bears down on Florida. We have to win in the midterms.”— Minnesota Senator Army Klobuchar
A few years ago here at Usual Suspects we began posting black-and-white pictures of the Red Guard waving Mao’s Little Red Book and show trials of capitalist roaders in the mid-60s. It was a jest at the Rob Reiner wing of the Left. The point being that, “Boy, won’t these people look dumb in a few years when sanity prevails?”
Take a Great EV Leap Forward to the present day, and the Red Guard photos look less like satire and more like Amy Klobuchar on climate change. Organizations and people once regarded as sane have jumped the tiburon of fashionable narcissism. All the while calling everyone to their right the daughter of Mussolini (Italy’s Meloni) follower of Hitler (Hungary’s Urban) or a Trump disciple (Canada’s Poilievre).
It’s been astonishing to watch these liberals and their further-left friends like Reiner and Sarah Silverman still have no idea what happened in 2016. They think Trump led America astray. But #OrangeManBad never had a political philosophy. He just borrowed the issues from his base that mainstream GOP grandees ignored. That gave him the presidency. He followed them, not vice versa.
This seems too much for the Klobuchars to unpack. And so they have gone in search of issues that can be used to punish the 75 million or so who voted for the New York hotelier in 2020. Covid-19 served as a tasty entrée, but now it’s a devolved into the disappointing dinner of boosters and bribery.
So the Klobuchar wing has revved up a Climate Change doctrine that promises no resolution for 50 years— but does offer a convenient cudgel with which to pound non-believers today. Proof of their conviction that we are entering a climate blast furnace always lies, in the words of Little Orphan Annie, only a day away.

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar listens as Democratic Leader Schumer speaks to the media on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 18, 2019. REUTERS/Leah Millis – RC168F897450
Witness CNN’s true believer Don Lemon’s closed-minded haranguing an official from NOAA about Hurricane Ian. It must be climate change!!
NOAA Guy: “I don’t think you can link to climate change to any one event …”
LEMON: “Listen, I grew up there. And these storms are intensifying…”
As Lemon shows, the chief media weapon to leveraging climate catastrophe “is surprise… surprise and fear… fear and surprise… Our two weapons are fear and surprise… and ruthless efficiency…. Our three weapons are fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency… and an almost fanatical devotion to Climate… .”
Or, as Komrade Klobuchar believes, if we can just drive electric cars the pending hurricane threatening Florida’s Gold Coast will turn into a gentle off-shore breeze. There’s not a moment to waste. Forget that Hurricane Ian is just South Florida’s sixth major storm in the last 57 years versus 16 in the previous 50 years before that. Klobuchar knows best.
So the greens in government have harnessed the population to aggressive agendas. “The European Union is set to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, and the Biden administration promises to “achieve a 50-52 percent reduction from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas pollution in 2030.”
In Canada, our plucky prime minister is not to be outdone. Canada’s target is to cut emissions by 2030 to no more than 60 per cent of what they were in 2005. No more fossil-fuelled cars by 2035.
Of course the whole thing is a boat that won’t float. Germany’s green revolution is in tatters courtesy of Vladimir Putin and renewables that don’t renew. Some have noticed. Louisiana congressman Clay Higgins summed up the fantasy fuel agenda when he quizzed Green zealot Raya Salter in a hearing.
“Everything you have, your clothes, your glasses, the car you got here on, your phone, the table you’re sitting at, the chair, the carpet under your feet — everything you’ve got is petrochemical products. What would you do with that? Tell the world.”
“If I had that power in the world — actually I don’t need that power,” Salter responded. “Because what I would do is ask you sir, from Louisiana, to search, to search… search your heart and ask your God what you are doing to the Black and poor people in Louisiana.”
Higgins was then pummelled by professional scold Alexandra Occasio Cortez for embarrassing Salter. “Men who treat women like that in public, I fear how they treat them in private.” How petro products might be replaced was never answered. That matters little to the Klobuchar Clan. If only we go faster then momentum will carry them over the threshold to a new age.
Which brings us back to why today’s zealots want to imitate the China of the Red Guard. When Mao grew impatient with China’s inability to become the world’s leader in steel production in the late 1950s he mobilized The Great Leap Forward. China’s resources would be totally diverted to making steel— even in the back yards of peasants.
The outcome? Writes Helen Raleigh in @WSJ: “The combination of lies, failed experiments, absence of labor and violent requisition practices led to famine. From 1959 through 1961, an estimated 30 million to 40 million Chinese people died from hunger.” Mao then purged the leadership that had failed his pipe dream. More millions died. China retreated from the world.
It’s worth noting that during those tragic times future Canadian PM Pierre Trudeau wandered China with his friend Jacques Hébert. He was given rare access in exchange for Potemkin approvals of Mao’s genius. “The experience of that superb strategist Mao Tse-Tung,” gushed Trudeau Sr. “might lead us to conclude that in a vast and heterogeneous country, the possibility of establishing socialist strongholds in certain regions is the very best thing.”
Needless to say, the Trudeau apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree on China or orchestrated disaster. Green power has no bigger booster than Justin. “One of the essential lessons from China’s Great Leap Forward is that catastrophic failures inevitably follow from politicians’ insistence on ignoring reason, logic, truth and economics,” writes Raleigh. “Europe’s current energy crisis, California’s continuing power outages and Sri Lanka’s food shortages are all warning signs.”
Signs that Justin and Klobuchar have dismissed as conspiracies of right-wing nut cases.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft YearsIn NHL History, , his new book with his son Evan, was voted the eighth best professional hockey book of by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted seventh best, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
2025 Federal Election
How Canada’s Mainstream Media Lost the Public Trust

Breaking: CBC News admits that host Rosemary Barton was wrong on April 16 when she said “remains of indigenous children” have been discovered.
Call it the Panic Election. From The Handmaid’s Tale to Quebec alienation to plastic straws, the dynamic is citizens being stampeded in a brief six weeks by Big Brother. (There’s no Big Sister. That would mess with the narrative.) Prompting Covid Part Deux from the Laurentian media scolds.
Nowhere is this panic more keen than among aging Boomers who’ve pronounced themselves willing to ignore a decade of Justin Trudeau’s clumsy, unethical and sometimes criminal behaviour in the wake of Big Bad Trump. Even the threat of losing the country’s AAA credit rating can’t sway them from full-throated panic about being the 51st state.
The 51st state gambit is the window dressing. The real Trump panic is over him exposing the inadequacies of a Canadian society penetrated by China, dominated by globalist fanatics and more indebted every day. Specifically, Trump labelled Canadians defence dead-beats and entitled snobs who’d be crazy not to join the U.S. The insulting Trump framing has been a lifeline to those most recently in office— Liberals— to point at the Big Bad Wolf outside the door rather than the Frozen Venezuela inside its walls.
Integral to this panic is the role of Canada’s legacy media, a self-serving caste saved from bankruptcy (for now) by generous wads of public money. The 416/613 bubble ponies operate as if it were still 1985, not 2025. They’ve managed to preserve their status while society changed around them. For instance, CBC’s flagship At Issue panel features three people from Toronto and a fourth from Montreal.
It has worked perfectly in Boomer Canada. Until this past week, when the media guardians finally lost the plot. The combination of TV panel hubris and the incompetence of the Elections Commission exposed an industry more interesting in protecting its own turf than protecting the truth.
The meltdown was the notion that conservative social media— with its intrusive reporters and tabloid tactics— had no place in their sandbox. This hissy fit came after Wednesday’s French debate. Members of Rebel News, True North and other outfits dominated the party leaders’ scrums with obtrusive questions about Mark Carney’s opinions on same-sex sports and what constitutes a woman— questions the French moderator had neglected to ask.

For legacy reporters and hosts who take it as given that they be allowed the front pew this was an affront to their status. As purveyors of the one true political religion the talking heads on CBC, CTV and Global began speaking of “so-called journalists” and “far-right” intruders elbowing into their territory. Their resentment was all-consuming.
This resentment spilled into Debate Night Two when a shouting match ensued in the press room. A CBC source claimed (incorrectly) that Rebel Media leader Ezra Levant had been barred from the press room. A writer from the Hill Times screamed at members of their raucous rivals. The carefully chose panelists suggested that these outfits were funded by dark right-wing sources.
Before the debate had ended Elections Commission organizers— reportedly goaded by the Liberals— called off the post-debate scrum citing “safety” issues that seemingly included a Rebel reporter conducting a hostile walking interview with a furious Liberal official. This unleashed another torrent of Media Party vitriol about its position as the keepers of Canadian journalism.

In a show of irony, these complaints about right-wing misinformation came from people whose livelihood is dependent on Liberal slush funds or whose organizations have accepted government funds to stave off bankruptcy or whose union is an active shill for non-Conservative parties. The conflicts are never mentioned in the unctuous festival of privilege.
What makes this rearguard action against new media risible was the 2024 U.S. election where Donald Trump acknowledged the new day and rode the support of non-traditional media back to the presidency. His shunning of the legacy networks and hallowed print brands heralded a new reality in American elections. Poilievre has struggled to find this community in Canada, but for those with eyes it remains the future of disseminating political thought.
A perfect example of alternative media scooping the tenured mob on Parliament Hill has been the sterling work on China by Sam Cooper, a former Global employee who has independently demonstrated the ties between Chinese criminal gangs and the Canadian political structure going back to the 1980s. Working with others outside the grid he’s shown the scandal of a Liberal candidate urging Chinese Canadian voters to reap a bounty for turning his Conservative opponent to the Chinese Communist Party. A disgrace that Carney has forgiven.
Predictably Cooper’s work and the independent story by two retired RCMP investigators who implicated nine Liberal cabinet members in compliance with the Chinese communists has gotten the ‘tish-tish” from the Laurentian elites. Like the Democrats who buried the Hunter Biden laptop story to save his father in the dying days of the 2020 U.S. election the poodle media hope to delay the truths about China long enough to get the compliant Carney over the finish line.
For contrast to how it was— and could be— one only had to witness the moderator performance of journalist Steve Paikin of TVO. Largely unknown outside Ontario, Paikin overcame the skepticism of Westerners by playing it straight down the middle. Such was his honest-broker performance that Poilievre was heard telling him after the debate that he had no idea how Paikin might vote. (Ed. note: Paikin is a former colleague and longtime friend.) In other words, it’s still possible.
It’s a cliché that this election is a hinge point for Canada. Will it face itself in the mirror or indulge in more denialism about its true self? No wonder unaffiliated journalists joke that their stories today will be the lead on mainstream media in three months. Carney has promised to continue bribing the mainstream media, but their day is done. It’s simply a matter of fixing a date for the next panic.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Bruce Dowbiggin
Is HNIC Ready For The Winnipeg Jets To Be Canada’s Heroes?

It’s fair to say everyone in hockey wanted the Winnipeg Jets back in the NHL. They became everyone’s darlings in 2011 when the Atlanta Thrashers, the league’s second stab at a franchise in Georgia, were sold to Canadian interests including businessman David Thomson. (Ed.: Gary Bettman’s try number three in Atlanta is upcoming.).
Yes, the market is tiny. Yes, the arena is too small. Yes, Thomson’s wealth is holding back a sea of inevitability. But sentimentalists remembering the Bobby Hull WHA Jets and the Dale Hawerchuk NHL Jets threw aside their skepticism to welcome back the Jets. The throwback uniforms with their hints at Canada’s air force past were an understated nod to their modest pretensions. It was a perfect story.

The question now, however, is will the same folks get dewey-eyed about the Jets if they become the first Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup since (checks his cards) Montreal and Patrick Roy did it in 1993. It would be helpful in this election year if something were to bind a nation torn apart by politics. The Gordie Howe Elbows Up analogy is more than shopworn, and Terry Fox can only be resurrected so often. So a Cup win might be a welcome salve.
But the approved script has long dictated that the Canadian team to break the schneid should be one of the glamour twins of the NHL’s Canadian content, the Edmonton Oilers or the (gulp) Toronto Maple Leafs. The Oilers and their superstar Connor McDavid barely lost out last spring to Florida while the Leafs, laden with superstars like Auston Matthews and William Nylander, are overdue for a long playoff run.
Hockey Night In Canada positively pants for the chance to gush over these two squads each week. When was the last time Toronto played an afternoon game so HNIC could showcase the Jets? Like, never. Same for the Oilers, who with their glittering stars like McDavid Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent Hopkins are the primary tenants of the doubleheader slot, followed by Calgary. Winnipeg? We’ll get to them.

But there’s going to be no ignoring them in the spring of 2025. The Jets in the northern outpost in Manitoba were the top team in the entire league in 2024-25. They’ll comfortably win the Presidents Cup as the No. 1 squad and have home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs. They have the league’s best goalie in Connor Hellebuyck (an American) and a stable of top scorers led by Kyle Connor and Mark Schiefele. Because Winnipeg is on a lot of No Trade lists, they have built themselves through the draft and thrifty budgeting.
But will the same people who swooned over the Jets in 2011 now find them as adorable if they ruin the Stanley Cup plot lines of the Oilers, Leafs and Ottawa Senators? Will the fans of Canadian teams in Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal not making the postseason take the Jets to their hearts or will they be as phoney as the Mike Myers commercials for the Liberals?
In addition, the Jets will be swamped by national media should they proceed through the playoffs. It’s one thing to carry the expectations of Winnipeg and Manitoba. It’s another to foot the bill for a hockey crazy county. We remember Vancouver’s GM Mike Gillis during the Canucks 2011 Cup run bemoaning the late arrivers of the press trying to critique his team as they made their way through the playoffs.
It will be no picnic for the Jets, however strong they’ve been in the regular season. No one was gunning for them as they might for the Oilers or Leafs. They will now get their opponents’ best game night after night. Hellebuyck has been a top three goalie in the NHL for a while, winning the Vezina Trophy, but his playoff performance hasn’t matched that of his regular-season version.
Already the injury bug that sidelines so many Cup dreams is biting at the Jets. Nikolaj Ehlers collided with a linesman in Saturday’s OT win in Chicago. Defenceman Dylan Samberg is also questionable after stopping a McDavid slap shot with his leg. A rash of injuries has ended the run of many a worthy Cup aspirant in the past. Can Winnipeg’s depth sustain the churn of seven weeks of all-out hockey?
As always for the small-market Jets time is of the essence. Keeping this core together is difficult with large markets lusting after your players. With the NHL salary cap going up it remains a chore to keep their top players. Schiefele and Hellebuyck are tied up longterm, but 40-goal man Connor is a UFA after next season while Ehlers is not signed after this season. Young Cole Perfetti will be an RFA in 2026. Etc.
So how much do Canadians love the Jets if they sneak in and steal the hero role by winning a Canadian Cup? Lets see Ron MacLean pun his way through that one.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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