Updates: Our Teflon prime minister, some Epstein updates, Elon's despair, and admiring American courage

Just a random bunch of updates tonight.

I think we can call him Teflon Carney
As Canadians get to know Prime Minister Carney, we're seeing that he is becoming one of those Teflon politicians - negative news just doesn't stick to him, he just shrugs it off. 

The most recent example is that ballyhooed trip of Conservative MP Jamil Jivani to visit his BFF Vance and Washington, purportedly about the CUSMA negotiations. The initial media reaction was to make this a big problem for Carney. But Carney just pushed it right back at them:

I like that he calls out Jivani’s action for the publicity stunt it is.

- Joanne Pettis 🇨🇦

Read on Substack

Epstein files reveal the scum who think they can do whatever they like

In a comment on my post yesterday, Cap writes:

Three Canadian billionaires have been accused of serial rapes of young women/girls in the last couple of years: Robert Miller, Peter Nygard and Frank Stronach. How many more are revealed in the latest tranche of Epstein files?
What we know so far is that large numbers of political and business elites in the US, the UK and Israel were taking advantage of Epstein's services, raping girls, and being recorded and manipulated. We have no reason to assume Canada was immune. Why aren't Canadian media outlets doing the grunt work of finding out? Why aren't they even reporting the most vile documents uncovered so far? They're planning to let this blow over, just like the Panama Papers blew over without Canadians being prosecuted for tax fraud. It's hard to imagine a resilient economy controlled by these kind of depraved monsters.

The only recent Canadian stories I can find about Epstein concern denial of permission for Epstein to visit Canada in 2018 though apparently he did get to Vancouver in 2014 and 2016 by masking his identity; an Epstein invite to a seminar in Austria in 2014, which was supported by the foreign ministries of Canada and Norway though they weren't involved in the guest lists; and a friendly relationship in 2008-9 between Epstein and someone who worked for CBC Edmonton.
MAGA was just delighted to find Mark Carney name in the Epstein files released last Friday. 

But it was a bust....

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Today's News: Building Capacity and Resilience

1942 map

I'm reading so much lately about how Canada and other countries are building military and economic capacity and resilience to withstand hegemon pressure, so I thought I would share a few of these tonight. And then I also found this map from eight decades ago - isn't it fascinating to see what has changed and what hasn't?

Last week, Carney and the Premiers met about what is next:

TLDW: This is the press conference where Kinew and Ford joked about their Heated Rivalry. Anyway, Carney also announced a "Team Canada" trade and investment office plus monthly progress meetings about the CUSMA review and the Port of Churchill plan.. 

In other Canadian economic news:

Score one for the red and white. www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/art...

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— Charlie Angus (@charlieangus104.bsky.social) January 28, 2026 at 1:50 PM

Looks like Japanese automakers are stepping quite easily into the breach. Looking forward to other car makers signing up to do business in a stable country Report suggests Ottawa reward companies that have shown commitment to making cars in Canada #cdn www.cbc.ca/news/busines...

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— TopKat_GlassDragon (@topkatglassdragon.bsky.social) February 2, 2026 at 8:37 PM

Sunday Funday: Poilievre's win, Epstein's pals, Melania's movie, Trump's blather; random funny stuff; Carney hat-trick; Trump Watch; and Animal Crackers

I can't resist sharing these funny posts about Poilievre's big win this weekend:

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Today's News: Poilievre wins, Albexit disastrous, Canada needs to toughen up, plus some short takes

So we will still have Poilievre to kick around some more
Poilievre's big speech was tonight. And he won the leadership vote by 87.5 per cent.
Sigh.
I guess Canada won't be finished with him until after he loses the next election.

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Poilievre just told #CP26 "There's never been a referendum crisis or a national unity crisis when Conservatives have been in power It's an interesting coincidence isn't it" False. BQ was the product of Mulroney's time in office. Borden - WWI conscription crisis. Sir John - Louis Riel. C'mon man.

— davidakin (@davidakin.bsky.social) January 30, 2026 at 8:42 PM

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Today's News: "Albexit" sucks up to Trump, Poilievre flies to Calgary, the Premiers have a laugh, and Carney dials Heated Rivalry up to 11

Today's At Issue panel talks about Albexit and about Poilievre's leadership convention:


TLDW: They talked about how the Alberta separatists compare to Quebec separatists, and this week's revelations that some Albertans have talked to the Trump administration about 51st state. 

Hebert believes Albertans who would like to send a message to Ottawa by voting yes will shy away from this because of the possibility they would become a US state. And Coyne noted that once again Everything Trump Touches Dies.
On the CPC leadership, the panel expects Poilievre will survive as leader on Friday, but he won't win the next election because he still can't find more voters from outside his base. And once again, they express an unfounded hope that Poilievre will become more statesmanlike any day now...
Finally, the panel agrees it may be pointless to worry anymore about renegotiating CUSMA, because America isn't going to be a reliable negotiating partner anyway.

Songs of Minnesota: 'Singing through the bloody mist, We'll take our stand for this land, And the stranger in our midst"

One of the great things I remember about the 60s was the music of revolution, that opposed the Vietnam War and celebrated rebellion. 

Right now, we are again hearing music that pays tribute to the courage of the people opposing the ICE Gestapo in Minneapolis and Minnesota:

Bruce Springsteen - Streets of Minneapolis

Billy Bragg - City of Heros


Minnesota, by Chad Elliot

"Minnesota" - Marsh Family adaptation of "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)"

Green Day - Holiday (Support for Minnesota)

We the North: Carney walks it forward, not back

So the Power and Politics discussion panel was complaining today that Carney hadn't 

produced a read-out about the conversation with Trump.

And they mostly agreed that US treasury secretary Bessent got the jump on us when he ran to Fox News after the call to talk about how Carney had walked back on his Davos speech.

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Hmmm.
Three things -- first, Trump called Carney, not the other way around.
Second, isn't it insulting that the Conservatives always take whatever Trump says as gospel while disrespecting everything Carney says.
Third, I would think Carney would not want to get into a "he said-he said" pissing contest with Trump or with any of his people about supposedly apologizing for what he said in Davos. 

But Carney told reporters "To be absolutely clear, and I said this to the president. I meant what I said in Davos".

Today's News: Carney shows courage, Poilievre attempts survival, Trump knuckles under, Toronto digs out

Carney's courage 

In the week after PM Carney's Davos speech, I think the world is responding to Carney's challenge to show courage and deal with reality.

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This weekend in the New York Times, Ezra Klein wrote about Carney's courage (gift link)

....Trumpism does not hide behind the facade of something high. Part of Trump’s appeal is that he offers his venality as a thuggish honesty: This is what everyone is doing. I’m the only guy willing to admit it. Voters believe that politicians are corrupt. Trump proves them right by flaunting his own corruption; his success confirms their disgust with the system and the need for a champion who has mastered its rules.
This is both a lie and a weakness. It is a lie because Trump’s worldview is not universally shared. Relatively few people are as nakedly transactional or thoroughly corrupt as Trump. And it is a weakness because it creates a hunger for its opposite.
There is a reason Carney’s speech lit such a fire: Carney was, himself, taking a risk. He was, himself, acting against self-interest. He was, himself, showing that he intended to do something more with his power than profit off it. It was a bracing speech, but more than that, it was a brave act. It was the kind of act that Trumpism suggests does not exist, the kind of act that rebuts Trumpism by simply existing.
I am not saying this will go well or easily for Carney — or for other world leaders who choose to take down their signs. Trump is vengeful, and he is right that America can inflict terrible harm on any country it chooses.
But Carney is right that America’s power is, in part, dependent on the willingness of other countries to be entwined with our might. “Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships,” Carney warned, “Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. They’ll buy insurance, increase options in order to rebuild sovereignty — sovereignty that was once grounded in rules, but will be increasingly anchored in the ability to withstand pressure.” This is the path Canada is already following, in part through seeking closer ties with China and Qatar.
The world is built on relationships, not leverage, and relationships are built on reciprocity and respect. It is not Trump’s genius to recognize America’s unused strength; it is his blindness to see that our strength was a function of our restraint.

“This is not just strange and hard to understand. It borders on the unthinkable, and that’s why you’re seeing a different response from Europe than before Greenland was center stage.” Trump has radically weakened the U.S. and we won't recover anytime soon, if ever. www.politico.com/news/2026/01...

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— William Snyder (@profsnyder.bsky.social) January 22, 2026 at 12:34 AM

Some dark news, plus some Sunday Funday to bring the light in

*by Australian cartoonist David Pope.

Oh, things are getting dark now.
Trump posting crazy stuff today about Carney and tariffs, plus an ICU nurse shot by the ICE Gestapo in Minneapolis, and Governor Walz calling out the National Guard to protect his people.

 
First, about that new tariff threat from President TACO:

We cannot back down after getting threats like these. “Governor Carney”. Go to hell. (and Ford and the CPC better get on board - now)

- Black Cloud Six

Read on Substack

Following up on the week - Poilievre, Canada, America

I have run out of time to do much of a blog tonight, so here are just a few follow-ups on this week's many stories.

First, some good columns to ponder:

Scrimshaw Unscripted - Evan Scrimshaw
Carney’s Speeches A Political Dagger To Poilievre
On Davos, Quebec City, And Poilievre

Routine Proceedings - Dale Smith Roundup: The domestic speech and the response
The Line -Matt Gurney
We should probably stop disarming our future armed resistance
We cannot confiscate civilian firearms and plan a guerilla campaign at the same time. Pick a lane.

Wesley Wark’s National Security and Intelligence Newsletter
Trump’s lowest depths
Or, have you no sense of decency

Doomsday Scenario - Garrett Graff
Watching A Superpower Die By Suicide
This is one of the wildest moments in all of the modern 400-year history of nation-states and geopolitics.

Need to Know by David Rothkopf
Davos Was the Beginning of the End for Trump
It's all downhill for here for the America's aging mad king

Two from The Concis - Shankar Narayan:
The Mother of All Trump U-Turns
The Davos snub, Starmer’s defiance, Operation Arctic Endurance — and a few more.
and
Why the West Walked Away from Trump’s Board of Peace
Because This Was Never a Board of Peace

Today's News: Suffer the little children in Minneapolis, updating that Board of Peace, and the Poilievre response to Carney's Davos speech

As we watch the ICE Gestapo losing their minds in the US, I thought of these three photos that changed politics:

Alan Kurdi from Syria drowned on a Greek beach in 2015, along with his brother, when his family tried to escape Syria by boat. It turned out that the Harper government had refused to let his aunt in Canada take them in as refugees.  Harper lost the Canadian election to Trudeau two months later.

Yanela Sanchez from Honduras arrived at the US border in 2018 with her mother after a month on the road and a trip by raft across the Rio Grande. They were immediately taken into custody. This photo of that poor crying exhausted baby became the face of Trump's cruel zero tolerance family separation policy. Trump lost the US election two years later.

Finally, this one: arriving home from pre-school on Tuesday, 5-year-old Liam Ramos from Ecuador was used as bait by the ICE Gestapo in Minnesota, so that his family would open their doors. Liam and his father were admitted to the US in 2024 as refugees but both were arrested on Tuesday, nobody knows why, and are now in ICE detention in Texas, nobody knows why. 

OMG, and it looks to me like Liam is wearing a Spiderman bullet-proof backpack that parents in the US now buy their children to keep them safe from school shooters. 

But against America's ICE Gestapo, they don't work.

Today's News: Thinking about the Unthinkable - could Trump invade Canada?

Everybody is talking about the Globe and Mail articles about planning for an American invasion.

A headline like this has not appeared in a Canadian newspaper for 100 years.

- Dan Gardner

Read on Substack

Carney at Davos "The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy. But from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, and more just. "

Carney at Davos gave a brilliant speech.
 

Paul Wells reprints the whole speech here: The Carney doctrine

As I was listening to Carney, I was reminded again of Leonard Cohen's lines - which Carney used in speaking to the UN last fall:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

Once again, I think, that is what Carney is telling the world - our old order is cracked and its not coming back, but the light will get in for a new world order that is stronger and more just. 

Today's News: The Northern Lights are shining bright above Greenland tonight!

So this hit the news on Sunday night:

Trump. Is. Insane.

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— Jon Cooper (@joncooper-us.bsky.social) January 19, 2026 at 7:53 AM

Americans - the whole western world, really - just couldn't believe it. And what does Norway have to do with Greenland anyway? 
But of course Trump actually did say all this.