Mid-week Break for National Dog Day!

Time for a mid-week break, to celebrate National Dog Day! 

Here are some good photos, videos, and posts I found:

First, some good cartoons

Today's News: Canada leaps over the boards

Tonight, I'm seeing Canadians across the country with their elbows up, their gloves off, and leaping over the boards.

In The Globe and Mail, Andrew Coyne writes

...When your back is against the wall, it tends to stiffen the spine. Perhaps Mr. Trump expected Canada to fold like the others, but the extravagance of the U.S. demands made that impossible. It is difficult to see how any government, of whatever party, could have accepted the terms presented to us, not least because there was no guarantee we would receive anything in return: as it has since been reported, the U.S. reserved the right to raise tariffs in future to whatever level they please, notwithstanding anything in the deal. So we are headed for heavy weather. It is highly unlikely that Canada will give in, no matter what punishment is meted out to us. And yet it is hard to see how the Trump administration could yield, either, precisely because of the admiring notice we have been getting elsewhere. It is true what they say: In defying Mr. Trump, we are setting an example for the rest of the world. Therefore it is likely he will try to make an example out of us. This is about much more than trade, in other words, more even than our existence as a sovereign state. Fate has assigned us the role, as it has other nations from time to time, of a kind of Horatius at the Gate, the one who “keeps the bridge” when all the rest have fled. Our fight, it is no exaggeration to say, is the civilized world’s fight. It is a fight for reason and comity in the affairs of nations, against an administration whose worldview, and behaviour, is increasingly that of an aggressive dictatorship, in all its crudeness and its thuggery...

Canada says No to Trump's Naked Man Doctrine

What happened on Friday night demonstrates that Canada is saying "NO!" to Trump's Naked Man Doctrine. 

This doctrine is described by The Grim Historian Carlyn Beccia  - I first talked about it two weeks ago - here's the summary:

...The “Naked Man” was first formally introduced on November 24, 2008, in Season Four, Episode Nine of How I Met Your Mother. But like many important developments in American foreign policy, nobody understood its significance at the time...
...if a date is going badly and [Mitch] suspects there is very little chance of sex, he waits until the woman leaves the room. Then he removes all his clothes.
Naturally, Ted asks the only reasonable question: Does that actually work?
According to Mitch, “two out of three times.”
To be clear, the Naked Man is not a pickup line. There is no seduction involved. Mitch simply eliminates several intermediate stages of human courtship and confronts his date with a radically altered set of facts. And nudity....
Mitch’s war/love strategy depends entirely upon scrambling the normal sequences of human interaction. Five minutes earlier, Robin was trying to decide whether she even liked Mitch. Now Robin must decide what to do about the naked man on her couch. Thus, Mitch’s brazenness collapses the normal sequence of female decision-making. Or so his theory goes.
And, stripped of the testicles, there is an actual theory of power buried in there. Mitch has created a new reality and left everyone else to respond to it...
Political scientists have a more respectable term for this: a fait accompli.
I prefer Naked Man.
Because once you recognize the maneuver, Donald Trump starts looking less like a deal maker and more like a man who has spent eighteen years taking foreign-policy advice from CBS reruns....
Action first.
Authority later.
Never ask permission.
This is an old philosophy wearing a very long red tie.
....But Naked Man Doctrine is not only a joke about impulsivity. It is power exercised through presumption.
The ballroom: I have already demolished it.
Venezuela: We have already bombed them.
Greenland: The equipment is already here.
The boundary has not technically disappeared. It has simply become everyone else’s responsibility to enforce it. And enforcement is tiring. It requires lawsuits, coalitions, votes, sanctions, diplomatic confrontations, and sometimes throwing a drink in a creepy naked man’s face...

Thus, in mid-July Trump suddenly threatens Canada with 50 per cent tariffs, and for the rest of the summer that's the only thing Canada is talking about. Other CUSMA issues fade into the background as Canada sends a team to Washington for negotiations and the media breathlessly report on every scrum.
In addition, I also believe that America's other last minute demands in the trade negotiations were aimed squarely at Carney, personally.
We all know Trump is a petty and vindictive man, and so are the people around him. 

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out someday soon that Nutlick's last-minute addendums to draft agreement were actually personal attacks on Carney, intended to jeopardize Carney's leadership - shutting down Carney's ability to make worldwide trade deals, undermining Carney's Buy Canadian policies, infuriating Quebec if Carney had bargained away dairy and language protections.
But Carney didn't take the bait. And now that Carney has taken his ball and gone home, the Naked Man isn't going to work for Trump anymore either.

Sunday Funday: Canada Strong, plus some cartoons, some good posts, TrumpWatch, Animal Crackers and Wildfire Update

Canada Strong

Carney's speech and press conference Saturday morning:

I saw no criticism anywhere about what Carney said or how he said it - clear, informative, straightforward, understandable.

View on Threads

For Canada, the best deal is no deal. Because we're not going to be America's Guam North

Canada reached its gag limit with these jerks. 

I know it might be terrible news for our industrial workers and manufacturers, but Canada now understands that Free Trade is dead, at least until Trump is.

Actually, I think what we just turned down wasn't a Free Trade deal at all - what the United States actually wanted is for Canada to turn itself into Guam North. That's where all their last-minute insertions about alliances and alignments and cooperation and partnerships would have pushed us. 

That deal would have crushed us. We might end up crushed anyway, but at least its on our own terms. Maître Chez Nous.

And considering everything happening in the US right now - they seem to be sliding into a pit of despair, chaos, fascism, and bankruptcy - this may actually turn out to be one of the bravest and best decisions Canada ever made.

View on Threads

Today's News: Negotiating Tariff Deal Straight and Tariff Deal Crazy

From what I am reading tonight, I suspect there are actually two Tariff Deals being negotiated now between Canada and the Trump administration.

TDStraight is the straightforward normal Tariff Deal where each side gets something. Tonight the Globe and Mail has an article with some details about the TDStraight deal, with some provisions that Canada won't like and a few it will, and generally, at least, it does reduce Trump's threatened steel and aluminum tariffs. 

TDCrazy is the nutty Tariff Deal that Trump wants. It will be the nonsensical deal that panders to Trump's ignorant prejudices, his mid-1970s world view and his knee-jerk complaints, plus a few goodies for Trump's oligarch friends so they will call him up to praise it as a big "win".

In TDCrazy, I'm thinking we will see things like allowing American booze back on our shelves, or letting American dairy producers sell us a little more cheese, or pandering to Zuckerberg by cancelling the Online News Act. 

Some of this stuff actually doesn't really matter much - who cares whether American bourbon is on our shelves again if nobody is buying it anyway?

But giving up the Online News Act would be a serious loss for Canada. 

Just waiting for the other shoe to drop

While everyone waiting and wondering what kind of deal Canada will be making with Trump, here's some speculation, some cartoons, and some other news.

Waiting for The Deal
Here are some comments about the deal when we don't know what it is yet

Dear PM Carney and M. Leblanc: Make whatever short-term concessions Canada requires to protect our workers and industries while we look to move to non-U.S. markets and solutions. We know any deal Trump makes with Canada this weekend isn’t worth the price of the Sharpie he signs it with. Sincerely, -Maritimer

- A Letter from a Maritimer

Read on Substack

Today in "Christ What an Asshole!"

Trump, of course

Yeah...it was Taco Tuesday

View on Threads

The war with Iran ended six months ago. Iran surrendered like a dog. The victory parade in Washington was the biggest ever, people are saying.

- Dan Gardner

Read on Substack

Sounds like the tariff negotiators will pretend to give Trump a "win" by boasting about how he will revive the Keystone XL Pipeline -a project that Harper and Trudeau both promoted and that many Canadians had supported before anyway.

Catching up with the news: "Maîtres Chez Nous", wildfire update, and some good news stories

I think we have a new slogan to add to "Elbows Up".

And this one comes with a fist - Maîtres Chez Nous.
It happened on Monday, during Prime Minister Carney's press conference at the Churchill Falls announcement

View on Threads

The Churchill Falls project is very very big news for Canada, and it came together at the right time.

Sunday Funday: Cartoon Cavalcade, Interesting posts, Funny posts, Getting Old(er), Carney Hat-Trick, TrumpWatch, Animal Crackers

This week's Cartoon Cavalcade

About the Canada-US tariff negotiations:

More comments: what Canadians are saying about the trade negotiations, Americans, Pete Hoekstra, and Poilievre. Plus a wildfire update

About the trade deal negotiations

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Wesley Wark writes Get a trade deal, get ready to give away our sovereignty? Or, what’s with the leaks?

...As always with high stakes talks, especially where few official details are provided, there will be leakers lurking. The media love them, but rarely question their motives...
The leaks may not be necessarily true or even very definitive, but leakers will hope, or perhaps have been authorized to hope, that they might push the negotiation in some favourable direction. Leakers are not white knights.
They are definitely not to be trusted, even if you are reading this stuff over breakfast (does any Canadian demographic still do that?). I have no idea where the leaks come from, or what authenticity they have, or what the leak story might be tomorrow.
But consider that there are certainly elements within the Canadian defence establishment who would love to see the Carney government forced to relinquish its Canada-first defence industrial strategy, its skepticism about the F-35 purchase, its reluctance to go all in on Trump’s fabulist Golden Dome missile system, or even its determination to buy radar planes with significant Canadian elements (the Saab Golden Eye, based on a Bombardier commercial jet), in favour of the latest U.S. product from Boeing. That’s leak as putsch pressure.
And there are certainly Americans who might well imagine that they can bully Canada into making grand concessions in defence and economic security—really concessions of national sovereignty-- in order to avoid more tariff pain and try to get the Canada-US trading relationship back on some steady plane.
And a further thought, in a different direction. Maybe there are even, among these three Canadian leakers, some motive to try to raise public resistance to any such defence and economic security give-away so that the Carney team can simply say—our public won’t go there, sorry Donald....

Today's Comments: about Carney, Americans, Trump's decoy plane, the coming crash(es), the Jays, and Blake Tierney. Plus wildfire update

I'm reading some interesting comments today:

Talking about Carney

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Tom Mulcair writes Stop the handwringing. PM Carney is outmanoeuvering Trump on trade

Prime Minister Mark Carney has been consistent since he arrived on the scene: no deal is better than a bad deal.
But with an approaching deadline, Canada is fast becoming the hand-wringing capital of the world.
What if Trump won’t sign? What if we do and it’s not perfect?

Tariff update, Catering Cart roundup, and some Eclipse posts. Plus thanks to the Penticton Sikh Temple

First, an update on those tariff negotiations 

I think Canada is getting angry.

You won't like us when we're angry...

View on Threads

Here is Ralph Goodale on the consequences of implementing Trump's new tariffs: "The Americans would make a very grave mistake if they underestimate the determination of the Canadian people."

Wednesday Updates: Wildcard dreams, some interesting reads, plus wildfire update

Wildcard Dreams

It has been done before, so maybe our Jays can do it again!
CBC's Geoff Nixon writes From last place to the post-season? Here's how the 2026 Blue Jays could pull it off

Prime Minister Mark Carney says "you've got to believe" the Toronto Blue Jays can still make the playoffs. But can they, really?
...According to Elias Sports Bureau, the official statistician of Major League Baseball (MLB), there are just two teams that have stood at 58-63 through 121 games — the same record the Jays have right now — that went on to make the playoffs in the wild-card era: The 2024 Detroit Tigers and the 2009 Minnesota Twins.
Randy Robles of Elias Sports Bureau believes "there's some hope" for the Jays, noting that if there ever was a year for a struggling team to still have a chance, it would be this one, when so many American League teams have been playing so poorly.
Toronto has begun to claw its way to a better record, claiming series wins against the Washington Nationals, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Houston Astros and the Philadelphia Phillies in the past couple of weeks.
That winning trend has to continue for the team to have a shot at the post-season: "They gotta get to .500," Robles told CBC News, referring to the point when a team has won as many games as it has lost.
The Texas Rangers, the team currently sitting in the third wild-card spot the Jays are vying for, was only one game above the .500 mark prior to Tuesday's matchups.
All the teams seeking to take the Rangers' spot — Toronto included — currently have losing records.
Summing up the challenge the Blue Jays face in climbing the standings, Toronto Star baseball columnist Mike Wilner saw a certain parity in the teams involved in the wild-card fight.
"Every team in front of the Blue Jays kind of stinks," Wilner told CBC News. "The problem is, the Blue Jays kind of stink, too."...

Yeah, well, not so much lately, buddy!

Look up! Look Waaaaay Up! Plus catching up with the news, and a wildfires update

Set your alarm clocks for Wednesday, August 12 and look up. 

Look waaaaaay up.

In the morning, a planet alignment:

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In the afternoon, a solar eclipse -- with totality in Greenland, Iceland and Spain, and a partial eclipse in eastern Canada: