Some good reads: Charlie Angus, Black Cloud Six, Dale Smith, Garrett Graff, Paul Krugman, plus a few good posts

Canadians are being asked to consider and discuss some very important, significant issues right now:

Charlie Angus / The Resistance

Trump's Tariffs Are Just the Beginning
...Did anyone really think we could negotiate in good faith with a gangster?
From the beginning of his reign, Trump has been steadfast in his determination to break our nation. To force us to become a vassal state. He brags that we should become “the 51st.” He’s thrown tariffs on more than 150 countries (Russia is the exception) but Trump has never wavered in his view that Canada is his objective.
And the political rhetoric against our nation continues to increase.
We have FBI director Kash Patel claiming Canada is a hotbed of terrorist threats. Homeland Security director Kristi Noem claims that there is a northern border crisis and says El Salvadoran gangs are flooding over the border into Michigan. Ben Shapiro, the right-wing hack who recently appeared with Alberta MAGA premier Danielle Smith, says the United States should take us over and turn us into a new Puerto Rico.
Let’s remember: the people of Puerto Rico aren't allowed to vote in American elections. They have no elected representation in Congress. The best they get is a non-voting Resident Commissioner.
That's what Trump sees for us — an occupied territory.
And it’s already getting real. We are dealing with over 50 Canadian citizens who have been kidnapped by ICE, with one dying in U.S. custody.
...In response to this tariff threat, Prime Minister Carney needs to shift from his “elbows-down nice guy” approach. It isn't working. It won't work.
He needs to reinstate the Digital Services Tax. You can't unilaterally disarm in the face of a threat. He should imitate Prime Minister Trudeau, who vowed to go dollar for dollar, pound for pound, the last time Trump tried to steamroll us.
That was the first time Trump TACO'd.
Is it risky? Of course. Would it have a potentially devastating impact? Yes. But it would put enormous pressure on the American economy in a substantial way. The American people need to feel the impacts. Trump TACOs when the economy dives.
Our only other option is to watch our economy slowly bleed away from Trump's gangster threats.
Canadians are ready for tough choices. We are looking for strong and direct language from our leaders. Canadians have been steadfast in holding the line on the boycott and are the front line in the fight for our nation and our democracy.
Our nation's political class needs to see the threat very clearly for what it is.
The United States, a country once governed by the rule law, is disintegrating before our eyes. In its place is a heavily armed gangster regime driven by disinformation and rage politics.
Canadians get this. Our leaders must as well.

Black Cloud Six: Unscripted

Canada Doesn’t Need Warriors—It Needs Soldiers
Why Soldiering Demands Ethics, Discipline, and Canadian Values
...while I wasn’t a warrior, I was a soldier and there is a major difference. Issues like the Airborne aside, Canadians in uniform have long described themselves as soldiers rather than warriors.
...Unfortunately, this entire issue has, as I mention above, become politicized, given fuel by MAGA “warrior” propaganda from the United States, by an obvious emphasis on cultural issues by the Trudeau government, by an opposition looking to score political points, and by a tiny minority of far-right CAF veterans looking to stoke division and controversy....
The right-wing critics and trolls pollute social media, criticizing the CAF as being unable to fight, as being hijacked by “wokeness,” and led by incompetent officers chosen for their woke credentials rather than operational competency. Groups like “Veterans For Freedom Canada,” Diagolon, and others deliberately target serving members, using their credentials as veterans to poison the discourse in Canada and to push disinformation. They litter the CAF’s social media with abuse and accusations, usually without foundation.
...Young men—and it is men we’re discussing—still form the bulk of the potential recruiting base for the Canadian Armed Forces. This is precisely the group that is under constant bombardment by people like Andrew Tate, MAGA (and Maple MAGA) politicians, and by far-right groups like Veterans for Freedom Canada. The situation becomes worse when the small positive aspects of warrior culture come under scrutiny from a government that appeared to care little about the basis of military culture in general. This leads to situations where some CAF members may find themselves in sympathy with Trumpism and the anti-wokeness crowd and may become radicalised. Others may have joined the military with preconceived notions, created by American media, of what serving actually looks like.
The result are discipline problems like the ones we saw in Ottawa and, in a more serious situation, in Quebec earlier this month.
...Soldiering is an honourable and worthy profession, and Canadians are extremely good at it. It reflects the values of the society it serves with the added awesome responsibility of being the only profession that may deliberately employ violence to attain objectives. Warriors, on the other hand, serve a myth. It is critical that Canadians understand the difference, especially as we begin to disentangle from the United States.
We have our own culture and our own way of soldiering, one that is worth preserving. Canada’s military culture must reflect our own values—not imported myths. It’s time to reclaim the profession of arms from the caricatures of warrior fantasy and reassert the ethics of the soldier.

But Poilievre isn't exactly rising to the occasion - instead, he's still just trying to smear Carney again.
Yeah, right, let's ask some more questions about Carney's stock portfolio, that's what Canada is worried about right now.

Always educate yourself so you know when our leaders and media lies. Carney told media and Canadians multiple times during the campaign that he sold everything and put it in a blind trust 120 days before he was legislated to. Poilievre keeps talking about this like it's an issue, when it's not.

[image or embed]

— Shannon Peel 🇨🇦 (@shannonpeel.bsky.social) July 15, 2025 at 5:57 PM

Dale Smith / Routine Proceedings

Roundup: The rules Poilievre defended are no longer good enough
Pierre Poilievre decided he needed some more media attention yesterday, so he called a press conference in Ottawa, and declared that following the public disclosure of prime minister Mark Carney’s ethics filings, that none of this was good enough, that Carney needed to cash out all of his investments instead of putting them into a blind trust, and that nothing was good enough because he’ll be constantly managing conflicts (even though the point of the ethics screen is that he isn’t managing conflicts, his chief of staff and the Clerk of the Privy Council manage the conflict so that he’s not involved). Perish the thought that this special set of rules for Carney will only serve to keep other accomplished individuals away from political life.
Of course, the whole episode is rife with hypocrisy. These are the conflict-of-interest laws that the Harper government put into place, of which Poilievre was not only a part of, but defended them, particularly when questions arose around Nigel Wright and his assets when he was Harper’s chief of staff, and Poilievre personally swore up and down at committee that these rules were amazing and that the blind trust was blind, and so on. Of course, now that it’s convenient, his tune has changed, but that didn’t stop the CBC from pulling out the footage from the archives.
Meanwhile, Poilievre also told reporters that the country needs “more people leaving than coming,” which is not even a dog-whistle at this point but a bullhorn. If this is pandering to the far-right elements of the riding he’s trying to win, well, it is likely to backfire on his attempts to continue wooing other newcomer communities, particularly the Sikh and Punjabi communities he spent so much time wooing in the leadup to the last election. Immigration numbers have already flatlined, and it’s going to cause problems down the road, sooner than later. For Poilievre to say this as the mass deportations south of the border pick up speed shows he’s not only incapable of thinking through the implications of the things he says, but he’s fine with mouthing the words of fascists, and that’s a real problem.
(Incidentally, Poilievre once again said he opposes Alberta separation but says that they have “legitimate grievances,” and repeated his same bullshit line about the Ottawa telling Alberta to “pay up and shut up.” They pay the same income tax as the rest of us, and have the same representation in Parliament).

And I notice tonight that all the right-wing media types and bloggers are following right along with the Smear Carney party line too. Its pathetic, isn't it.

PM Carney as governor of the Bank of Canada successfully navigated Canada through the financial crisis professionally & impeccably. With the highest ethical standards. Meanwhile this unemployed ex-paperboy is trying insinuations, because Poilievre is a useless troll. Go away Skippy #NeverPoilievre

[image or embed]

— 🇨🇦🇨🇦 Proud Canadian 🇨🇦🇨🇦 (@beppil007.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 9:31 PM

Moving on, here are a couple of good posts:
"Normal"? That friendship has sailed...

There is no going back to "normal." That's the problem.

[image or embed]

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 8:39 AM

Normal? Trump's ship has sailed too...

This is amazing. Yesterday Trump claimed he talked to his uncle about how brilliant the Unabomber was when the Unabomber was a student of his at MIT. The Unabomber never went to MIT, he was identified in 1996, and his uncle died in 1985.

[image or embed]

— Tim Onion (@bencollins.bsky.social) July 15, 2025 at 8:24 PM

And Americans are starting to notice that nobody is really running the asylum (IE, their government) anymore:
Garrett Graff / Doomsday Scenario

Who actually is the President of the United States right now?
What Stephen Miller and Bridge Colby tell us about the "epochs" and "ages" of Trump 2.0
...There isn’t actually anyone in charge in this administration....
This second time around — presumably due to his obviously diminished mental capacity, energy level, and attention span, a topic the press doesn’t talk nearly enough about — it’s clear he’s not even pretending to care about the details of his administration’s policy. He only engages on the details when he’s asked about something specifically in a press conference.
... Policy agendas, administration actions, and national politics are in for a continuous period of instability where different figures seize power as an “acting president” or “head of government” to drive their own pet agendas for a brief period of time until their political capital is expended and they’re reined in after negative news headlines. Trump, after all, doesn’t like anyone taking the attention away from him.
... For the period from roughly inauguration in late January through mid-March, Elon Musk was the primary “acting president” as DOGE ran rampant. Then, beginning in April as Musk’s attention and energy waned and tensions grew with him inside government, Peter Navarro seized the controls and we were treated to the rollercoaster ride of the April “Liberation Day” tariffs and an intense globally destabilizing period of focus on trade.
Then, in late May, with the world roiled by trade tariffs, Stephen Miller visited ICE headquarters to demand ICE supercharge its detentions and removals. Now we’re clearly in a third epoch where ICE and mass deportations are the main focus and the driver of the country’s headlines.
....it appears that the run-time of each “acting presidency” is about 60 to 90 days before a star begins to fade, Trump tires of the issue, and a new power vacuum is filled.
Who’s next?
I predict by late summer or September we’ll see some new administration figure emerge to hijack the agenda anew and drive attention in a new arena. There are two possibilities worth considering: First, I’d put money on the country having a “Vought Age” this fall at some point, as OMB Director Russell Vought, a key architect of Project 2025, takes a spin in the president’s chair and leads remaking the government that Elon Musk wrecked earlier in the year. ...
The second possibility is ...that power in this administration might fracture even more than it already has and that you’re going to see fewer “acting presidents” like Musk and more “acting princelings” like Colby — sub-Cabinet and sub-sub-Cabinet officials who realize no one is paying attention and there’s no policy process and who just start acting independently within ever-smaller fiefdoms and kingdoms across government.
What’s almost as interesting is looking around and realizing who isn’t driving the agenda nor appears eligible to be “acting president”: Trump’s security team is so weak, incompetent, fractured, and undermined that none of his top Cabinet officials, the roles you’d most expect to be able to develop independent power centers, appear to have any power at all — both Defense’s Pete Hegseth nor Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard were effectively sidelined from the conversation of going to war with Iran, and there’s no real sign that Marco Rubio is trying to turn (or capable of turning) his dual roles of Secretary of State and National Security Advisor into any kind of force for his own agenda, despite the fact that the last time the roles existed together Henry Kissinger did turn it into something akin to a “co-presidency” in the 1970s. No historian will pen a future “Donald and Marco: Partners in Power” book, as there was for Nixon and Kissinger.
Meanwhile Homeland Security LARP-er Kristi Noem is clearly fine letting Stephen Miller run her department from his White House desk, and Attorney General Pam Bondi — a position, again, that actually is supposed to have important independent power — seems so out of her depth that she’s rubber-stamping anything that comes her way. (It seems entirely possible, in fact, that the clock might already be ticking on Bondi as the MAGA movement turns on her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein revelations.)
One of my friends has lived the last decade with the mantra “It’s only going to get crazier.” I think that’s good advice — and looking at these first three “epochs” of the Trump presidency it seems likely especially operative in this administration.

I also saw some comments about immigration:

Per Gallup, backlash to Trump has significantly increased support for liberal immigration policies — with Republicans and independents now the most friendly to immigrants than at any point since 2021! I pointed out this was happening way back in April! https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/the-thermostat-comes-for-trumpism?utm_source=publication-search

- G. Elliott Morris

Read on Substack

Paul Krugman

Making Immigration Great Again
Trump has reminded America that immigrants are people
...ICE keeps bringing heavily armed men along while rounding up people they think look like illegal immigrants. ...
But it’s beginning to look as if there’s more basic decency in the American body politic than is dreamed of in many pundits’ political philosophy.
Gallup made a splash, at least among us wonks, with new polling on immigration showing that approval of immigration in general is now at a record high....the detailed polling suggests overwhelming disapproval of Trump’s immigration policies. Notably, voters are twice as likely to support giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship than they are to support deporting them.
...it’s important to understand that the call for mass deportations and/or imprisonment was based on a lie — the claim that America is facing a huge immigrant crime wave. ...the lie is beginning to unravel as it becomes clear that ICE is having a really hard time finding violent immigrants to arrest.
According to the Miami Herald, only around a third of the people being held in “Alligator Alcatraz” — a cute name, but it’s a concentration camp, pure and simple — have any kind of criminal conviction.
Why aren’t they rounding up more undocumented criminals? Because that would be hard work, and anyway there aren’t that many of them. Morris did a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggesting that there may in total be only around 78,000 undocumented immigrants with criminal records, and 14,000 convicted of violent crimes. Meanwhile, Stephen Miller is demanding that ICE arrest 3,000 people a day. Do the math, and you see why they’re grabbing farm workers and chasing day laborers in Home Depot parking lots.
So Americans may be turning on Trump’s immigration policies in part because they’re starting to realize that they’ve been lied to. But an even more important factor may be that more native-born Americans are beginning to see what our immigrants are really like, rather than thinking of them as scary figures lurking in the shadows.
It’s a familiar point that views of immigration tend to be most negative in places with very few immigrants and most positive in places where there are already many foreign-born residents. You can get fancy about why that’s true, but I would simply say that if you live in a place like New York, where you’re constantly interacting with immigrants, they start to seem like … people.
And the Trumpies — for whom, as Adam Serwer famously observed, the cruelty is the point — are inadvertently humanizing immigrants for Americans who don’t have that kind of daily experience. The nightmarish ordeal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia has probably done more to highlight the humanity of immigrants, documented or not, than any number of charts and tables. And while some Americans are instinctively cruel, most are, I believe, instinctively decent.
Will the public backlash against Trump’s immigration policies force ICE to stand down? Probably not, although the courts may at least slow the mass arrests. Business may also have a say, as labor shortages disrupt agriculture, construction and more.
In any case, however, harsh anti-immigrant policies are looking like a political loser, not a winner.

The more Canada sees of how awful and cruel the ICE Gestapo are, the more we will be sympathetic to our own immigrants - which makes Poilievre's recent anti-immigrant policy idea even more out=of=touch with how Canadians are feeling these days:

Poilievre calls for 'very hard caps' on immigration to better integrate newcomers Translation : Unpopular private citizen without even a security clearance pisses in the wind in the hope of in some weird way being relevant to somebody, anybody #Cdnpoli #Irrelevant www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

[image or embed]

— Pat (@pat112.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 6:41 PM

globalnews.ca/news/1128836... “In order to fix the problem we’ve got to put very hard caps on immigration levels. We need more people leaving than coming for the next couple of years,” said Poilievre. We are so lucky this d**k isn’t PM. We would have ICE at Canadian Tire. #NeverPoilievre #MapleMAGA

[image or embed]

— 🇨🇦🇨🇦 Proud Canadian 🇨🇦🇨🇦 (@beppil007.bsky.social) July 15, 2025 at 8:40 PM