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Published on: January 23, 2017 | Last Updated: January 23, 2017 7:34 AM EST

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, left, shakes hand with Coalition Avenir Quebec Leader Francois Legault as Parti Quebecois Leader Jean-Francois Lisee, centre looks on, after they gave their season's greetings to Quebecers from the National Assembly, in Quebec City on Friday, December 9, 2016. A Lger Marketing poll for January suggests the Liberals remain slightly ahead of the PQ in popularity. Jacques Boissinot / THE CANADIAN PRESS

One month after publishing a survey suggesting the Couillard Liberals and the Parti Qubcois were in a dead heat in public support, a Lger Marketing survey suggests the Liberals lead the PQ by three percentage points.

And while the PQ can take solace from the fact that lead remains within the polls margin of error, the survey contains little good news when it comes to the partyspolitical raison detre Quebec sovereignty.

The survey, conducted for Le Devoir and the Journal de Montral between Jan. 17-19, found the Quebec Liberals polling 32 per cent of public support compared with 29 for the PQ and 23 per cent for the Coalition Avenir du Qubec. Qubec Solidaire polled nine per cent.

Dissatisfaction with the Couillard government stood at 62 per cent, a drop of four percentage points compared with December, with 30 per cent respondents saying they were very dissatisfied.

The Liberal lead remains within the survey 3.1 per cent margin of error and could mirror the findings of a Lger survey in December that found the Liberals and PQ tied in public support at 30 per cent. Meanwhile,none of Quebecsthree main political leaders are more popular than their parties, Premier Philippe Couillard, PQ leader Jean-Franois Lise and CAQ leader Franois Legault each polling 18 per cent.

But two monthsafter Lises pledge not to hold a sovereignty referendum during the first term of a PQ government, support for separation remains stalled at 65 per cent, with 57 per cent of francophones saying they would vote to stay in Canada and voters age 18-24 most opposed to the independence option (77 per cent), followed by respondents 65 and up(74 per cent).

But if most Quebecersseem content to remain in Confederation, they remain concerned over the survival of French, with 54 per cent of respondents saying the language was threatened, a proportion that increased to 66 per cent when only francophone respondents were considered.

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Liberals take back slight lead over Parti Qubcois: Lger poll - Montreal Gazette

CALGARY Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his federal Liberal government will confront the reality of Donald Trump in the White House as his cabinet members begin gathering Sunday in Calgary for a three-day retreat that will include discussions with an adviser to the new president.

Up to now, Trudeau has had a relatively smooth ride guiding Canada's relations with the United States thanks to being so simpatico with Barack Obama natural allies on climate change, with a close personal relationship that oozed brotherly affection.

Now the Liberals are girding for a major reset with Washington, which is expected to be the preoccupying pastime for Liberal ministers during their upcoming meetings.

Discussions will be held over the next few days including with Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of the Blackstone Group investment firm appointed in December to lead the president's Strategic and Policy Forum, the Prime Minister's Office confirmed Sunday.

Dominic Barton, the head of the Trudeau government's influential council of economic advisers, is also set to attend. Earlier this month, he cautioned that Trump's pledges on trade and taxation must be taken seriously in Canada.

The Liberal government hopes to send a message to the Trump administration that Canada and the U.S. have a shared agenda, Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr said Sunday in Calgary.

"We will have to see what the administration actually does," he said. "Many words have been spoken and there's been tons of speculation, but we enter the relationship knowing that there is common ground in the energy sphere and we'll look for it."

Earlier Sunday in Washington, Trump said he had scheduled meetings with Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and signalled negotiations will have to begin on NAFTA.

"I ran a campaign somewhat based on NAFTA," Trump said. "But we're going to start renegotiating on NAFTA, on immigration, on security at the border."

The date of the meeting between Trudeau and Trudeau has yet to be announced.

So far, the Liberals have taken reached out to the Trump's transition team, "in order to begin conveying the importance of our economic partnership and the American interest in maintaining it," said Roland Paris, Trudeau's former foreign policy adviser.

But now the real work starts with Trump taking over the White House.

"This is a big shift. It's not just true for Canada, but for every country in the world. We have a U.S. administration which is pursuing an approach which looks like it will be different from any U.S. administration in our lifetime," said Paris.

Trudeau has already shuffled his cabinet to adapt to Trump appointing trade specialist Chrystia Freeland to Foreign Affairs, and retired general Andrew Leslie as her parliamentary secretary, thanks to his connection to a number of fellow former military commanders who got top jobs under Trump.

The Liberal government says it is seeking common ground with the Trump administration on promoting middle-class growth.

Prior to her promotion, Freeland was already making the rounds in Washington, talking to members of Congress and Trump's transition team in her capacity as trade minister. Freeland met with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, now a Trump adviser, as well as Schwarzman.

Trump wants the 16 CEOs and business leaders in his advisory group to provide him a private-sector perspective on finding ways to create jobs and drive growth.

Georganne Burke, an American-born Trump supporter who is a vice-president of a Toronto public relations firm, said it would be a good idea for the Liberals to keep talking to Schwarzman and his group.

"Trump wants to bring back jobs and that's what this group is about. There might be some areas where they can complement each other."

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Liberals retreat to confront Trump reality - Hamilton Spectator

Updated January 23, 2017 10:14:53

Gladys Berejiklian is expected to become the 45th Premier of New South Wales after a Liberal partyroom meeting this morning.

The Liberal partyroom will meet at 10:00am (AEDT) to formally vote in its new leader.

Ms Berejiklian left her Northbridge home earlier this morning and caught a bus to her parliamentary office, with media crews on her tail.

She is the deputy leader and Treasurer and is the only person to put up her hand to take over from Mike Baird who resigned unexpectedly last Thursday.

She is a moderate and hails from the left of the party.

She secured support by striking a deal with the right of the party to install Finance Minister Dominic Perrottet as her deputy.

He is also expected to be voted in today during the meeting.

Ms Berejiklian will become the first Liberal female Premier of New South Wales and the second woman to hold the office.

She comes to the job with 13 years' experience in Parliament, holding the positions of Transport Minister and then Treasurer since the last election.

There are two years left of the Government's current term before voters return to the polls.

Mr Baird announced his retirement last Thursday, after a year defined by angry protests and backlashes against a number of controversial policies.

Once the country's most popular politician, these policies on issues such as greyhound racing and council amalgamations, ultimately led to a steep drop in his popularity.

Mr Baird also fell out of favour with young people and businesses who vigorously opposed laws that forced licensed venues in the Sydney CBD and Kings Cross to close their doors earlier.

The State Opposition Leader Luke Foley said the incoming premier needed to turn the focus away from transport and onto health and education.

Mr Foley said Ms Berejiklian's record as treasurer had seen the state invest heavily in transport infrastructure, at the expense of other sectors.

"We have a problem with ever-lengthening hospital and waiting times, overcrowding of our schools, declining literacy and numeracy results and the destruction of the TAFE sector," he said.

"The new premier must bring a focus on service delivery, particularly in the areas of health and education."

Topics: government-and-politics, liberals, state-parliament, sydney-2000, nsw

First posted January 23, 2017 07:16:41

Continue reading here:
Gladys Berejiklian expected to become NSW Premier as Liberals meet to decide Mike Baird's successor - ABC Online

Nia (center) and Lonia Brown traveled from California to join the Women's March on Washington. Meg Kelly/NPR hide caption

Nia (center) and Lonia Brown traveled from California to join the Women's March on Washington.

Donald Trump took the oath of office on Friday before a crowd speckled with red, many of them wearing the campaign's famous "Make America Great Again" hats.

Saturday's Women's March on Washington in downtown D.C. drew a crowd with vastly different political beliefs, but there was one similarity, as the sea of people was peppered with pink, cat-eared "pussyhats." The (mostly) homemade hats were a sly reference to lewd comments Trump made in a 2005 Access Hollywood tape leaked a month before the election. And they also echoed some of the traits that experts said made the Trump hat so effective for the winning candidate.

Marchers on Saturday said they liked the hat because it unified them around one general message.

"I think this woman who put this together is frickin' brilliant and a genius because it's such a political, simple statement: a pink hat, and all you have is the pussycat ears," said Mellicent Dyane, 50, a casting director from New York City, wearing a neon pink hat as she watched the rally. "It speaks volumes."

Ayla, 6, Jeff and Kaari Lynch gather on Boston Common during the Boston Women's March for America on Saturday. Maddie Meyer/Getty Images hide caption

Ayla, 6, Jeff and Kaari Lynch gather on Boston Common during the Boston Women's March for America on Saturday.

In that sense, the pussyhat has some of the same traits that made the "Make America Great Again" hat work: it sends a very particular political message, one that is simultaneously unifying and antagonistic.

The Trump "Make America Great Again" implies that somehow, someone (perhaps the political establishment, especially from the party in power for the last eight years) allowed America to no longer be great, and that the wearers are banding together to get that greatness back.

Despite not bearing a slogan, the "pussyhats" have their own clear target of criticism, explains one expert.

"It doesn't have the words on the hat like the 'Make America Great Hat' does, but the name of the hat evokes memories of this [Access Hollywood] tape that has a message that the people who made this want to convey," said Todd Davies, associate director of Stanford's Symbolic Systems program.

A protester holds a Donald Trump bobble-head donned with a tiny pink "pussy hat" during Saturday's march in D.C. Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

A protester holds a Donald Trump bobble-head donned with a tiny pink "pussy hat" during Saturday's march in D.C.

But the hats were intended also to be unifying for women (and the men who came to support the march). Following an election where Donald Trump effectively used masculinity as a campaign strategy, the pussyhats are unabashedly feminine, in that they are pink and homemade (not to mention that they reference a derogatory term for the female anatomy). That's by design: the "Pussyhat Project" website explains that "knitting and crochet are traditionally women's crafts," adding, "[knitting] circles are powerful gatherings of women."

The similarities don't end there. Both hats represent a kind of backlash: one by a group of people who believed they were ignored political outsiders, and the other by people who recently suffered a stinging election defeat.

Maryland Avenue was awash with pink between the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum and the U.S. Department of Education at the Women's March on Washington. Meg Kelly/NPR hide caption

In addition, simplicity is arguably a central goal of both hats, albeit to different ends. The Trump hat's plain red background with white Times New Roman lettering "represented [an] everyman sensibility," as FastCo Design's Dianna Budds explained this year. Likewise, most pussyhat patterns are simple one article promised viewers they could learn how to sew a hat "in the time it actually takes to ironically watch The Bachelor" allowing some crafters to crank out and distribute many.

While the red caps and pink knit hats invite comparison, they aren't perfect analogues of each other; the homemade pussyhats, in shades ranging from fuchsia to powder pink to mauve (and a few that weren't pink at all) were naturally not as uniform as the mass-produced Trump hats.

Again, the Pussyhat Project characterizes that as a feature rather than a bug, allowing people to be unique and diverse in their designs. (Likewise, the homemade hats helped people connect with one another marchers on Saturday reported getting hats from their grandmothers, wives, state legislators, and even strangers on the street.)

Importantly, though, the pussyhat has a long way to go to reach the power that the Trump hat has. Extolling the red trucker hat as the "symbol of the year 2016," Davies wrote about what made it stick.

(Left to right) Melissa Breen, Laura Jamison, Sandy Cuza and Kathryn Wehrmann chat while sporting matching pink hats in support of the march. Becky Harlan/NPR hide caption

"Lots of things can be symbols," he said. "but relatively few things actually are. Being a symbol is an acquired status that gets established through use."

The pussyhats could simply become a memento for marchers, as opposed to something they continually wear. After all, Trump rallies gave supporters regular reasons to get together and don their hats, eventually making the caps familiar to many Americans. The pink hats very easily might never reach that point.

At least for now, the pussyhats and trucker hats fulfill the basic role of identifying tribes. Saturday afternoon, red-hatted families ate in restaurants alongside pink-hatted marchers. Without even talking, they knew exactly which team they were on.

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With 'Pussyhats,' Liberals Get Their Own Version Of The Red Trucker Hat - NPR

I doubt that they have hit bottom yet, but liberals cant get much lower than smearing Donald Trumps ten-year-old son, Barron.

Katie Rich apparently is a writer for Saturday Night Live. I havent seen that show since the 1970s, but people say its no longer funny. If Ms. Rich is any indication, I can believe that is true. This is what she had to say on Twitter about ten-year-old Barron:

She wasnt the only one. Here are a few more, courtesy of Independent Journal Review:

Note the 289 retweets and 1,414 likes.

This guy is a senior writer at Fox Sports:

A professional writer who flunks both spelling and grammar. Why is it, by the way, that so many sports writers are crazed leftists? Seems odd, but its true.

This woman writes for National Post:

Not all liberals are crazed haters, of course, but an amazing number of them are. For all the insults they hurl at Donald Trump, they never pause to look in the mirror.

This, however, will cheer you up. A liberal who attended the inaugurationas a protester, I assumeemits a howl of anguish as Trump is sworn in. You can watch it over and over, it never gets old:

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How Low Can Liberals Go? - Power Line (blog)