Sunday, April 17, 2022

Today's News: A mind is a terrible thing to lose

Does anyone remember the time Vice President Dan Quayle mangled the United Negro College Fund line "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" when he said " What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is." But really, at least every decade or so, the United States actually does seem to lose its collective mind. 
As Republicans turn over every rock searching for something they can use to pummell the Democrats in the midterms, they're losing their minds again: And now it's happening in Canada too: Scrimshaw writes: 
...the Tories have decided it is better politically for them to lie than to fight honestly – and part of the reason is the spinelessness of the media. 
 What is the penalty accrued to the Conservative Party for lying? They’re still booked on every edition of Power and Politics, every edition of Power Play, their leader’s response still gets in the video package for every Trudeau announcement on The National, they bend over backwards to book Conservative strategists for two segments of debate, and they bump important stories to cover a political party who are 50/50 to be lying in every public statement. What penalty does the Conservative Party pay, what consequence accrues, for lying to the public? Nothing, because the media lets them get away with it. 
Canadian media are busy right now tying to turn Polliver into a "he's -too- sexy- for- his- cat" version of Trump -- "the rallies! look at the rallies!" -- but they're in Alberta for heaven's sake. 
Polliver just isn't going to be as popular in suburban Toronto. 
Meanwhile, from Ukraine, here are the stories I am reading today: 
First, Markos asks, how will Russia put together a massive new military campaign in the Donbas when the campaigns they tried so far in the rest of Ukraine have been inept and scattershot? 
 The Pentagon, Ukrainian military, and every Very Serious Military Analyst is convinced Russia is massing troops to execute that pincer maneuver in the Mother of all offensives. Just you wait for the hellish shock-and-awe Russia has in store! The Pentagon even thinks Russia has eyes on Dnipro further west, which is so implausible and stupid, Russia just might give it a shot 
 Yet every day that goes by, any such massive offensive seems less and less likely. 
And not just because of the rain that has made a slurry of all ground off the major roads, and will keep it that way for at least the next several weeks. (Mark Sumner hilariously talks about “General Mud.”) Russia’s fundamental problem is that it keeps executing the exact same tactics that failed around Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy....
 ...I am excited to see who is right—those of us who still can’t believe Russia is doing nothing to learn and change its failed tactics, or the Very Serious Military punditry who continues to assume a basic level of competence that Russia has never met this entire war. 
More stories about Ukraine:
The response of European governments to Russian fist-shaking is actually quite incredible. Going on to COVID news now, isn't this just the saddest thing you have ever read? I don't know how long it is going to take our society to recover from COVID physically, but the emotional scars are going to last a lifetime for hundreds of thousands of people. It will be its own PTSD category in a decade. 
Ed Yong has a major article now in The Atlantic about how the politics of COVID have betrayed the millions of Americans who lost loved ones during the pandemic -- its well worth reading. 
Canada, by the way, has lost close to 40,000, all of whom left behind spouses and children, relatives and friends, and co-workers who loved them.
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2 comments:

Lorne said...

Very interesting material here, Cathy. It would seem that many Conservatives never overestimate the intelligence of large swaths of the electorate, who will not respond to reasoned discourse but are quite happy to salivate at dog whistles.

People like Poilievre remind me of some lines from Hamlet, when Claudius, in reference to the titular character, says,

"He's loved of the distracted multitude/ Who like not in their judgement, but their eyes."

10:09 am
Cathie from Canada said...

Thanks for the comment, Lorne. That quote from Hamlet is very apt, isn't it. I just hope Pollivere doesn't get voted in by the "distracted multitude"!

12:08 pm

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