Monday, October 21, 2024

Funnies and Long Threads: from King Charles to airplane seats; from hurricane stories to Bob Dylan


Let's start with some funnies:
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Sunday, October 20, 2024

Did anybody have "Big Dick Envy" on their Trump Bingo Card?


Trump just can't hold it back anymore:
Big dick envy:
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Friday, October 18, 2024

Comedy tonight: Poilievre lettuce-watch, plus some funny stuff about Trump, Harris, birds, art, dogs, dope, and being old


The Poilievre lettice watch begins: Hey, really folks, it was only a little light treason...
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Thursday, October 17, 2024

Having some fun now! Trudeau at the PIFI hearing, and Harris on Fox News


First, Trudeau testified at the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference hearings today. 
Trudeau was supposed to be embarassed, bumbling, and exposed by this inquiry - but instead, it was Poilievre who found himself stumbling -- unfit to lead because he won't, or can't, get a high-enough security clearance for CSIS briefings. 
Reminded me a lot of this old skiing cartoo - stunned Poilievre doesn't know what hit him, while competent Trudeau continues on his merry way:
Also an excellent summary tonight from Wesley Wark A National Security PM? One more word on the PM’s testimony before PIFI
...He was forthright in stating that he was astonished to learn, for the first time through CSIS evidence presented to the Inquiry, about a liberal Parliamentarian who had been targeted by FI. He said he should have been alerted but also claimed that the changes that have made to the dissemination of intelligence would guarantee that if these events had happened in the present he would have been informed.
But then the PM turned to how best to ensure that all political parties were aware of foreign interference. He expressed some reservations about a policy of briefing Parliamentarians using intelligence information. But he extolled the value of bringing all opposition party leaders into the secret tent so that they could be made aware of intelligence on foreign interference threats targeting Canadians and their parties. This requires opposition leaders to be security cleared to a high level so that they can receive classified briefings. Jagmeet Singh for the NDP and Elizabeth May for the Greens have taken this step. Yves-Francois Blanchet for the Bloc said he would, but appears not to have followed through. The PM said he regarded this approach as non-partisan in nature. Knowledge raises all boats.
But then the PM went on to unleash a fierce attack on the Conservative Party leader, Pierre Poilievre, for his refusal to obtain a security clearance. He called this decision by Poilievre “bewildering,” “lacking in common sense,” and “irresponsible.” He stated later in cross-examination that Poilievre lacked seriousness about national security and appeared unconcerned that his own leadership race may have been impacted by foreign interference. There was a to and fro with the counsel for the Conservative Party on this. It got juicy. I think Trudeau won that one on points.
This was both an electioneering moment and a legacy moment. The PM positioning himself as best placed to defend the country’s national security and deliver policies and actions in the national interest. ...

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Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Today's News: Quick Takes on Trudeau, Poilievre, the House of Commons, Harris, Trump, the US Election, and Brexit


Just a few Quick Takes - some stuff  worth reading tonight:

Trudeau
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Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Today's News: Extraordinary warning about threats from India


Well, I was going to put up a light-hearted post tonight about Thanksgiving - cartoons, nice stories, etc. 
But then this happened: The Toronto Star article gives us a blow-by-blow of how Canada tried to inform India about its findings: Inside Canada’s struggle to engage with the Modi government — and why it ended with the expulsion of six Indian diplomats RCMP alleges that Indian diplomats and consular officials in Canada are tied to murders, violence, intimidation and threats against Canadians.
...The two countries each expelled six diplomats as the Mounties disclosed their suspicions in a news conference after efforts by top Canadian officials, in Washington and Singapore, failed over the past week to resolve an impasse in their investigations.
RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme told reporters that the situation required immediate public disclosure in an effort to disrupt what is going on.
...So far, Duheme said, eight people have been charged in Canada with homicides — although he refused to specify the number of Canadian deaths or the time frame involved.
And 22 individuals stand charged with extortion, or acts of intimidation, coercion, threats and harassment that Canadian authorities now see as likely connected to agents acting at the Indian government’s direction. Police have given warnings to 13 Canadians since last September that they are potential targets of Indian agents. Some have received multiple threats, and they have been on the rise in recent weeks, police say.
More explosive is the allegation that Indian government officials posted in Canada are “directly” linked to the violence.
...things ramped up in earnest about six weeks ago.
The RCMP had by then determined a pattern in a series of investigations in a number of cities across Canada, the sources said: it appeared Indian diplomats and consular officials in Canada were conveying information about the movements and activities of certain Canadians back to Indian intelligence officials in India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, known as RAW.
According to the sources, speaking confidentially in order to discuss Canada’s findings, that information appeared to be then conveyed to a criminal gang in India, whose leader Lawrence Bishnoi is in Indian prison custody but uncharged, and in turn passed on to individuals in Canada who police allege are “agents of India” acting to intimidate, threaten and even kill Canadians.
The prime minister, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told reporters on Monday that the primary targets of the interference have been Sikh Canadians, but said the threats went beyond that community to include other South Asian Canadians. All three said they have shared the information with counterparts in the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance that includes the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand....
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Monday, October 14, 2024

Today's News: Freaking Out about the Presidential Polls

 
https://www.270towin.com/mp

Three weeks to go and the Presidential polls are freaking everyone out:
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Saturday, October 12, 2024

Today's News: Oh for f**ks sake, why would Trudeau step down NOW?


Lots of news today about how a group of unnamed Liberal back-benchers are supposedly organizing to get Trudeau to resign as party leader. 
Yeah, sure -- whose bright idea was that?
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will face mounting pressure from his caucus this week to step down from the leadership of the Liberal party.
A group of backbench MPs, primarily from Atlantic Canada and southwestern Ontario, are in discussions to formally release an ask for the prime minister to consider the future of the Liberal party in making a decision about whether to stay at the helm of it....
CTV News spoke to 24 Liberal MPs Friday, about half of whom said they were aware of a so-called letter circulating but had not put their name to it. Half a dozen of the MPs said they had heard "about 30 people are signing it" but had not seen the signatures themselves. Three MPs told us they could only speak for themselves but would support the prime minister re-considering his bid to lead the party into the next election and another three MPs said it was "news" to them the letter existed.
Each MP requested anonymity out of concern of reprisal for speaking out. Many told CTV News the Prime Minister's Office has taken a harder line on MPs leaking to the press as of late.
The media were just delighted as they rushed to "break" this story but really, come on folks -- there is no reason at all for Trudeau to "step down" right now, not just before the US election, 3 weeks away. But there is all the reason in the world for him to stay the course until he sees what will be happening to our largest trading partner.
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Friday, October 11, 2024

Imaginary News


We have all heard now about Fake News - see also Truthiness, Alternative Facts, and Mis-information. Now, we're hearing "imaginary news" --

We’ve all become desensitized, but it’s amazing how at this point the Trump campaign rests entirely on denouncing things that aren’t happening — a imaginary bad economy, imaginary runaway crime and now an imaginary failure of Biden and Harris to respond to natural disaster

— Paul Krugman (@pkrugman.bsky.social) September 30, 2024 at 3:37 PM
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And Trump just keeps on lying:
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Thursday, October 10, 2024

Interviews with Harris and Walz

Harris and Waltz are doing media all over this week (except tne New York Times and Politico, and boy are they pissed!) 

Anyway, here are some good clips: 

From Howard Stern:
From Colbert:

"They know how to pronounce my name!" -- rockstar reception tonight for Kamala Harris on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.bsky.social) October 8, 2024 at 11:00 PM
Even the band is excited!
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Wednesday, October 09, 2024

Now there's something you don't see every day!


Some odds and sods and bizarre news: 

Oh, yeah -- I forgot What people will remember from Bob Woodward's newest book:
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Tuesday, October 08, 2024

Evacuating Eden


...They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.
- John Milton, Paradise Lost
I was going to do a post tonight on the Harris and Walz interviews, but the situation with Hurricane Milton is just too dire. Those poor people -- how many thousands are having to leave the homes they love, their own Eden?

Here are some of the tweets I saw tonight about this disaster:
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Monday, October 07, 2024

Today's News: Truanons and Nuremberg 2.0 and understanding the damn question

So on Saturday this happened:
Of course, Reid had to withdraw his tweet -- he "didn't realize" he had been suckered by a doctored Trudeau video. 
I guess jumping to conclusions based on lies is the kind of thoughtful decision-making Canadians can expect from esteemed business leaders now?
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Sunday, October 06, 2024

Long Reads: The rise of stupidity; The analytic failures of the Russia-Ukraine War; and how presidential polls are always wrong


Last night I posted some long threads; tonight, I have several interesting "long reads" on topics I have frequently discussed on this blog:
   
The Stupid, It Burns!
Substack writer Black Cloud Six writes The New Normal: Living in the Age of Stupidity
Black Cloud describes this as "perhaps the most critical issue of our generation: the rise of stupidity."
He continues:
... Unfortunately, the entry of Donald Trump into the US political arena accelerated the tendency to accept all opinions—no matter how ridiculous or grounded in conspiracy—as being equal. Social media has magnified this tendency, as bizarre opinions and theories find validation among like-minded groups. How else can we explain the resurgence of Flat Earth conspiracies, chemtrails, "gang stalkers," and, most consequentially, anti-vaccine rhetoric?
...The last six months have shown just how fast this tendency is spreading. In what other reality could a major candidate’s claim that immigrants were eating pets not be disqualifying? Recently, the Premier of Alberta promised to "look into" chemtrails and raised questions with the US Department of Defense. That this is a fringe, lunatic conspiracy theory didn’t seem to matter. After all, aren’t all opinions valid? This trend has real-world consequences, which became evident when the province announced amendments to its Bill of Rights, which included overt anti-vaccine rhetoric. In virtually every sphere, conspiracies, falsehoods, and outright lies have entered mainstream discourse.
That traditional media gives a pass to such views and helps platform them isn’t helping. Conduct that would have been utterly disqualifying 20 years ago is now "normal," and views that would never have been discussed in public are now being mainstreamed. There may be eye-rolling when discussing flat earthers or the idea that migrants are eating pets, but it's not a lie if large numbers of people believe it, right? After all, it's the media's duty to entertain diverse voices and share both sides, even when one side is clearly ludicrous. The problem is that accepting such views has real-world consequences, as the folks in Springfield, Ohio, or those dealing with the latest whooping cough outbreak can tell you.
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Saturday, October 05, 2024

Long threads: best baseball announcers, North Carolina angels, hopeful happenings, boys will be boys, and some really big things


Here are some long threads that I liked. 
This is a lengthy post because I am including many of the tweets from these threads -- a reader told me once that people who aren't on X anymore aren't allowed to read their posts now. 

So first up, with the baseball post-season underway, here is a long thread about great baseball moments as described by great baseball commentators - such masters at creating verbal pictures. And at the best in my time was, of course, Vin Scully.
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Friday, October 04, 2024

Today's Comment: Boomers "are the most coddled political constituency"

In his column tonight, Bribes (Between The Lines Of Age) The LPC's Correct Tactical Choice, Evan Scrimshaw is writing about the Liberal decision to vote against the Bloc motion to raise Old Age Security and he gives us this gem of a paragraph. 
I have seldom read anything clearer or more direct about how we boomers are distorting politics:
The old and the soon to be old are the most coddled political constituency. God Forbid we tell the boomers that their McMansions might see a triplex down the street, but the young had to sacrifice years of their lives to stop a virus that mostly didn’t affect them. Our benefit is a government that refuses to say they want lower house prices, because once again God forbid we dare anger the old. It’s nice to see the Liberals get that the old should be the ones to swallow an imperfect set of options for once.
He is, of course, correct -- boomers bought our first houses 50 years ago, and we paid less for them than what most cars cost today.  Now houses cost 10 times more, which freezes millions of young people out of the housing market. 
Scrimshaw continues to discuss how these younger voters might be turned back into Liberal voters:
...What the government needs to do from here is clear, at least to me. They need to lean into the framework of generational equity, they need to accept that many childless young are fucked right now, and use the fall to set up a 2025 budget that addresses their concerns.
...And this is at least a wedge issue where the Tories are on the wrong side and the Liberals are on the right one, and where the public actually believes it’s a live issue. The problem with the abortion rhetoric is that Canadians don’t think Poilievre would actually roll back rights. Here, we have a unanimous CPC vote we can use as proof.
Summing it up: And on a side note:
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Thursday, October 03, 2024

Busy busy busy! Here's some stuff about Trudeau, the Jack Smith report, the US election, the Russia-Ukraine War

I have a feeling that things are going to just be crazy for the next five weeks. 

Tonight I am reading about a whole bunch of things -- the pressure on Trudeau to do something something, the Jack Smith bombshell report, the dark underside of the US election, sane-washing Trump, the Russia-Ukraine war -- and it is, I have to say, impossible to pick just one thing to talk about. 
So here are some posts, some links and some commentary. 

Pressure on Trudeau to do something something 
Trudeau did an interesting interview on the podcast of MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith  
Here are some excerpts:
...what drives Justin Trudeau? “Understanding that we are in a moment in this world where everything is changing. The way we work, the way AI works, the way geopolitics happens, the pressures on everything: The world is in a massive pivot moment right now. And we don’t know what the biggest issue is going to be.”
Here Trudeau is arguing that good instincts are better, in a storm, than easy remedies. ... “We don’t know what crises are going to hit the world. We only know there are going to be [crises]. And the question [is]: who has the capacity to respond?”
...“I do tend to get wrapped up in the long term,” he volunteers. This makes him brood about “the danger of squandering that lead we have, over so many of our competitors around the world — whether it’s on the environment and the green economy, whether it’s on child care and a responsible safety net, whether it’s on all sorts of different things.” If Canadians did something to blow that — “like electing a Conservative government that wants to bring us back to some past that never actually existed” — they would be jeopardizing “everything that we have been able to build that’s going to make the future so good for so many.”
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Wednesday, October 02, 2024

Today's News: "A damning non-answer"


WALZ: Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? VANCE: Tim, I'm focused on the future WALZ: That's a damning non-answer

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.bsky.social) October 1, 2024 at 8:41 PM
If anyone is wondering where J.D. Vance actually came from, check out Jamieson Foser's column tonight None of us should even know who JD Vance is How did this meritless husk of a man end up in a vice presidential debate?
...the guy is a deeply racist and sexist autocrat on the cusp of power — and he got here in large part because some of the most powerful and influential people in academia, news media, entertainment, and tech saw something in him they were desperate to promote. Merit didn’t have anything to do with it...
Lots of stuff here about where Vance came from and why the New York Times loved him. 

On a completely irrelevant side note:
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Monday, September 30, 2024

Today's News: Remembering for Orange Shirt Day

 
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Some music to enjoy

We saw Jelly Roll on SNL and this song is remarkable:
"Nobody walks through these doors on a winning streak"    

I loved this too!
 

My husband saw a presentation from Playing For Change one year at Million Dollar Round Table -- a fascinating story:

Finally, Kris Kristofferson died yesterday:
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Sunday, September 29, 2024

Today's News: Hurricane Helene


This is terrible. We're been following the Hurricane Helene stories - its hard to imagine what these people are going through:
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Saturday, September 28, 2024

Happy Saturday! Here's some fun stuff about politics, golf, librarian spies, getting older, and cool maps


First, just a glance at politics:

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Friday, September 27, 2024

Poilievre and the "sore winner syndrome"

I'm trying to think whether there was any time in modern history that Canadians elected a Prime Minister they didn't actually like. 
Conservatives seem to have a pattern of finding unlikeable leaders -- Diefenbaker, Stanfield, Scheer come to mind -- but in our recent history, only those Tory leaders who appeared personable on TV were ever elected to lead a government - like Clark, Mulroney, Harper the kitten whisperer. 
(Yes, I know Diefenbaker was PM in the early 1960s, but as soon as people started seeing him on TV, he lost to Pearson.)
And Poilievre definitely falls into the "unlikeable" category, even in spite of his makeover, to anyone who catches Question Period on TV.
Cult Mtl's Matthew Renfrew writes Poilievre’s poor favourability will cost the Conservatives come election time
A new study by the Angus Reid Institute has found that net favourability of Pierre Poilievre has reached its lowest point in over a year, at -16%. Just 36% of Canadians have a positive opinion of the Conservative Party of Canada leader.
A previous study by Léger also found that, while the Conservatives are leading in the polls, just 26% of Canadians believe Pierre Poilievre is the best choice for prime minister.
The fact remains that Pierre Poilievre is just not that likeable. He rubs most Canadians the wrong way and a large majority don’t want to see him become prime minister.
As a result, support for the Conservatives will decrease as the election approaches, and as more light is shed on right-wing foreign interference scandals.
Toronto Star's Susan Delacourt writes Pierre Poilievre acts as if there’s power in being unlikeable. It’s not a good look
...Conservatives appear to be trying everything this fall to turn their poll lead into eventual election victory, with the exception of one force in politics — likeability.
Nothing in Pierre Poilievre’s repertoire in the Commons the past two weeks has been aimed at making people like him, beyond those who already do. He insults, he taunts, he name-calls, he sneers — all the things that parents tell their children not to do if they want to make and keep friends.
It may be making his base happy, but it is doing nothing to present a positive picture of what he would be like in power.
...Poilievre seems pretty certain that the next election will give him a majority, and not require that he work with any other parties in the House. He’s burning his bridges with the Bloc and the NDP, if any such bridges ever existed.
... About a month or so ago, I started to notice increasing mention of Poilievre’s lack of likeability in the political commentary, even among those who are not fans of the Trudeau Liberals. ...
I’ve heard this privately from some Conservatives too, who roll their eyes at what they see as unnecessary vindictiveness from a party that continues to bounce along at the top of the polls. Is this sore-winner syndrome? And what will that look like if they really do end up winners after the next election? More enemies’ lists? More paranoia about the media and the bureaucracy?
...Poilievre didn’t have a good week when Parliament resumed this month, failing to win in a Manitoba byelection and falling short in a bid to rally opposition leaders to bring down the government. He tried to pull that off with taunts and name-calling. Amazing that didn’t work.
Perhaps Poilievre is operating on the principle that nice guys finish last.
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Thursday, September 26, 2024

Roundup: Trudeau wins today; Scrimshaw writes a Trudeau speech; Rothkopf on the stunning Harris campaign

Unsurprising that Trudeau won the non-confidence vote. Parliamentary reporter Dale Smith describes the House of Commons today: 
Overall, the day started out stupid, and got progressively worse as it went on.
I expect we'll see more of these days this fall!
I saw a couple of postscripts to the Colbert interview: And I thought this was pretty good, too:
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Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Remembering Ebony, our brown-eyed girl


Just six weeks ago, we lost our Molly, and today we lost our Ebony too. 
We got Ebony as a rescue when she was three or four, and we had shared our lives with her for almost 14 years. 
She was a Labrador, a little on the small side but such a happy warrior -- I picked this photo for this post because it shows her protecting her chewstick, with her tail blurred because it was wagging -- it so often was! 
Ebony has been gradually declining for a couple of years - deaf, mostly blind, her joints getting worse with arthritis. The only good thing about it was that, because of the deafness, she was no longer terrified of thunder and fireworks!  But going up and down the stairs, and going outside, was harder and harder, and she kept falling more often, and painkilling drugs weren't enough anymore. 
Finally, today, she just couldn't walk at all, and we realized we had to let her go.
 
She was our brown-eyed girl - it was the song I used to sing to her. 

...Standing in the sunlight laughing 
Hiding 'hind a rainbow's wall 
Slipping and sliding 
All along the waterfall with you 
My brown-eyed girl 
You, my brown-eyed girl 

Do you remember when we used to sing?
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Trudeau knocks it out of the park


Trudeau was on Stephen Colbert tonight and the Conservatives are furious -- how dare he demonstrate his popularity, his interview chops, and his international standing so easily, when he is supposed to be crawling into the Parliamentary press gallery and whining about the confidence vote and grovelling about how awful the Liberal situation is...
Here's the clip that Colbert has released already: Here's the whole interview bootleg copy:
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Monday, September 23, 2024

"Basket of deplorables" 2024 version: fearful, credulous, vicious, cheap, thoughtless and destructive


Remember in 2016, when Hillary said some Trump supporters were "a basket of deplorables" and the US media clutched their pearls and fainted all over their couches and gasped how unseemly for a Democrat to be so mean to Republicans.
Well, like with everything else, Hillary was right. 
Now other commentators are trying to describe exactly what is deplorable about Republicans who support Trump in 2024. It isn't a pretty picture.

Defector's David Roth What A Lie Is For:
...Donald Trump is one of the most thoroughly known quantities in American life; the country has been stuck in here with him for nearly a decade now. Everyone knows that there is nothing he would not say, simply because he believes that he can say whatever he wants; everyone knows that once he starts saying something, he will never stop saying it, and will in fact say it louder and make it bigger, because to do anything else would be not merely admitting error but, given how over-leveraged his whole being is on the issue of his own invincibility, something like death. Seeding the belief that undocumented immigrants will vote against him in the coming presidential election is very much something Trump would say, whether as an early excuse for losing, or as a sop to various longstanding reactionary fantasies, or as advance justification for some subsequent attempts to bring those fantasies to life. But also like most things he says, it is a sound he makes because he noticed that people responded to it. He is a boring, stupid man, a bigot and a liar, and so will only ever do the boring, stupid things he does for the most boring, stupid reasons.
Which leaves us with this: One of the two biggest political parties in the country, the one that controls the highest courts, has as a decent-sized and growing segment of its base people who like to make bomb threats. The party as a whole lives within a prolonged and deranging fantasy of political violence, and offers its base nothing but the license to further lavish over those fantasies, as well as the teasing possibility that they will someday be permitted to make them real. Last Friday, at a rally, Trump said that he would deport Springfield's Haitian community, which is living and working in this country legally, en masse, to Venezuela. All of these people are unserious and behave unseriously, but it would be foolish to assume they don't mean it.
That is it. The tide rushes out on everything else, every other idea that the conservative movement (never very convincingly) pretended to have, and leaves this behind. The actual beliefs are self-evident: that the suffering of others is a tool, or a toy; that everyone else in the world is a threat or an obstacle or something to wad up and throw away; that even the most abstracted inconveniencing of their own sainted comfort is tantamount to the end of the world. A cohort of the most fearful and most credulous and most idly vicious people this country has ever produced, who have lately awakened to some strange and terrible appetites and whose only real faith is in their own unshameable blamelessness, watches to see what will happen next. This is what the lie is for—to freeze this uneasy moment in place and hold it there forever, a threat unspooling endlessly over the horizon, not so much into the future as instead of it.
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