Sunday, August 30, 2020

End of August Doldrums

What a strange week! 
I've been trying to decide what to post here for this week, and haven't really got anything organized.
Down South, the Republican Convention came in like a lamb and left like a lamb too, and nobody seems to really remember anything about it. 
Hurricane Laura came and went too, leaving death and destruction in its wake. Two more hurricanes are on their way. Oh, great!
More Black people were shot needlessly, and more protests are underway, and now Trump is talking about going to Wisconsin and nobody wants to see him there. I wonder if he ever gets embarrassed by how useless he is at any kind of leadership? 
Following the example of the Kenosha shooter - who was just "helping the police" by killing two people and wounding a third - we are seeing more MAGA people driving their pickup trucks and waving their flags at the protests, and so more people are getting shot. This isn't going to end well. 
 As Twitter keeps mentioning, it's bizarre for Trump to be talking about how the protest violence is Biden's fault, when it is happening under Trump's watch. Of course, Trump never takes responsibility for anything so why would he ever take responsibility for the violence of his own supporters? 
And here in Canada we have a new Conservative leader -- Erin (AKA Eric) is not making a good first impression as he refuses to confront the haters in his own party. You know, I seem to remember that it was Trudeau, who is supposedly just a whimpy drama teacher according to the Cons, who didn't hesitate to boot people out of the Liberal caucus for any accusation of misconduct, and who refused to let anyone run under the Liberal banner if they were not pro-choice, and who refused to give federal money for student employment to any organizations that preached against abortion. 
O'Toole doesn't seem to realize that a leader who goes along with jerks and assholes because he doesn't want to offend anyone is not a leader that Canadians will respect or support. 
And now school is getting underway, and it will be a disaster. Give it a week or two, for COVID to start passing between children and teachers and the families, infecting and killing across Canada. 
COVID is the honey badger - it don't care. 
Everybody basically KNOWS this is going to happen. But we all seem to be in some sort of mass-hypnosis fugue Tinker Bell state where we think if we just BELIEVE hard enough and WISH hard enough and HOPE hard enough then everything will be JUST FINE. 
Yesterday the Saskatchewan's chief medical health officer said we have to change our "summer bubbles" when school starts -- basically, what he was saying in an incredibly convoluted and indirect way, is that Grandma and Grandpa have will have to stop seeing the grandkids once they go back to school.
Oh, what a week!
But then I watch this: and this Now I feel better.
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Saturday, August 22, 2020

We've got a goddamn plan!




  • Chrystia Freeland is going to be a great Finance minister. 
    The first thing she will have to do it get a grip on the pro-Morneau leaks from her department. 
    Like the one this week about Trudeau Chief of Staff Katie Telford's husband Ron Silver phoning up to see if the Finance Department would change some part of the pandemic benefit programs to benefit his employer: At Routine Proceedings, Dale Smith writes: 
    For the past two weeks, as the leaks about Bill Morneau started coming out in advance of his departure, we also saw a number of warnings over social media about Liberals being their own worst enemies and that now was really not a good time for a civil war within the party. The fact that there were anonymous leaks to both VICE and the National Post about this incident shows that someone is suddenly awfully keen to talk, hoping to possibly embarrass PMO in some way, and considering that the leakers are showing how virtuous they were in standing up to Silver might make one assume that those leakers are loyalists of Morneau who are trying to, if not burnish his reputation, then certainly tarnish his detractors. I do wonder if this is a limited screw-you to Trudeau, because I haven’t yet seen camps loyal to Chrystia Freeland and François-Philippe Champagne forming and trying to oust Trudeau so that one of them can take over just yet. That said, this year has proven to be full of surprises, so we’ll see.
    I don't expect Freeland will have any difficulty with the Finance bureaucrats. Listen to her putting down David Akin for being annoyed on behalf of the opposition parties who are being forced to put up or shut up: The next thing Freeland will do is get to work on Trudeau's grand plan for Canada. I do believe there is an untold and unnoticed (by the WE-obsessed Canadian media) story of the Moreau resignation: Trudeau intends to use the COVID crisis to greatly improve Canada's social welfare system. Moreau wouldn't do it, but Freeland will. 
    I think the Morneau resignation, whether forced or not, provided an opportunity for Trudeau to make changes to Canada that he has long wanted to make -- I wondered if Morneau was resisting these changes, and THAT, as much as the WE issue, was why he had to leave. 
     Here's Trudeau using a reporter's question about government pandemic support to talk about his plans:
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    Friday, August 14, 2020

    More funny stuff

    One of the things I love about Twitter is the funny people on it:
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    Saturday, August 08, 2020

    School Daze

    I don't have any children or grandchildren in school these days, and thank heavens for small mercies. I think this mom has it right: The School Safe "plan" in Saskatchewan is based on wishful thinking: Parents aren't happy: Neither are doctors: I am concerned that the Sask Party seems to be reducing the whole School debate to a discussion of whether or not to make masks mandatory, while the Sask Medical Association is asking for a much broader look at school problems:  
    [SMA says]“Closed spaces with poor ventilation, crowded spaces with many people, and close-contact settings with close-range conversations are not uncommon in schools and these realities need to be front and centre in back to school plans.” Education Minister Gord Wyant said Friday that, in response to the association’s concerns and recommendations from the Public Health Agency of Canada, the province is looking at making masks mandatory. 
     And it is, of course, not just the schools themselves that are problematic. Its also the impact that COVID increases in schools would have on the rest of us.
    I spent four months staying away from people, stores, restaurants, everything. So will I have to go back to that kind of life if there is community COVID spread here again? Yes, I'm afraid so.
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    Saturday, August 01, 2020

    August funny

    OK, its been one of those weeks, so here's some funny stuff:
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