Pragmatism in action. We’re so fortunate to have such a qualified person leading us. Imagine slimeball Poilievre bunging everything up, stumbling out of Diagalon trailers dishevelled and making decisions based on dated right wing populist ideology and punitive grievance.
— Stephano Barberis 🍁 (@hellostephano.bsky.social) August 22, 2025 at 2:47 PM
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Tariffs are like shooting yourself and hoping the other country bleeds. Go ahead, drop them, we don't have to buy their shit Their liquor industry found out there's worse things than tariffs: exclusion. Keep up the #BoycottUSA hurt them hard. Hurt them often. #Elbowsup www.cbc.ca/news/politic...
— L Bennett 🇨🇦 🇪🇺🇺🇦✌🏻#TeamCanada #ElbowsUp (@thatgenxwidower.bsky.social) August 22, 2025 at 12:26 PM
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Mark Carney is asked what he says to critics who says the tariff news is "elbows down". Says there are times in a game when you go hard in the corners elbows up, drop the gloves in the first period to send a message, and there's a time when you want to put the puck into the next
— Courtney Theriault (@ctheriault.bsky.social) August 22, 2025 at 10:32 AM
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Tariffs For The Rescinding
On Carney’s Concession
It’s worth remembering that tariffs are bad.
The point of Canada’s tariff response was to get Donald Trump to back down on his tariff threats to Canada. It was not to enact a new and lasting tariff regime in Canada. The point was for the tariffs to be short term pain to force a longer term better outcome than never responding at all and allowing asymmetrical tariffs. But it’s worth repeating that tariffs are bad for Canadians.
As fun as it is to joke about Elbows Down, the question this government, and frankly whatever government would have faced, is at what point have we gotten what we wanted out of the tariffs? Or, perhaps more accurately, at what point does keeping the tariffs in place serve more of a political disservice than an economic incentive to get a deal? Carney clearly judged that what you might call the new status quo - sectoral tariffs but 85% of our trade goes through tariff free - is the best he’s going to do, and our remaining tariffs on CUSMA goods are serving as bigger blockages to a deal than incentive to get a better one.
Is that a correct judgement? We can’t know - we’re not in these rooms, we’re not having these talks, and we would truly be guessing, but it seems plausible enough that it’s not obviously a mistake. It’s also a move that makes a lot of sense in the context of the US’ economy, which is growing shakier and shakier seemingly by the day. If tariffs are no longer buying us the leverage we want them to, buying us time by trading them for the new status quo would be a good outcome.
...The honest truth that’s worth reiterating is we are a small country dealing with a hegemon. There’s very little chance of “winning” such a fight if the American administration in Washington decides they view us as the enemy. Keeping the status quo or as close to it is our goal in all of these negotiations, and making up concessions to seem like we’re flexible while sticking to our core dividing lines is a success. Putting whether supply management should be a red line or not aside, we’ve managed to protect the red line for essentially free. If we decide supply management shouldn’t be one in the future, that’s for Canadians to decide for domestic reasons, not staring down the barrel of a US President.
The real problem with the Elbows Down folks is simple - they don’t trust Canadians to understand. They think they can blame Carney for failing to deliver a miracle against a guy who very clearly is not reasonable. They think Canadians are so stupid that they will buy nonsense from hacks so long as it’s anti-Carney, not understanding that even Canadian Conservatives mostly view Trump as a bad thing and understand that he’s a deeply unreliable, and let’s be real odious, person. Of course Carney will not be able to make wine out of water - there’s nobody who can get Donald Trump to randomly become a different person, and if you’re mad that Mark Carney can’t you’re being obviously unreasonable.
August 22, 2025
...The administration’s crusade against the U.S. intelligence agencies that uncovered the relationship between Russian operatives and Trump’s 2016 campaign is continuing as part of the administration’s power grab....Today Hegseth fired the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, U.S. Air Force Lt. General Jeffrey Kruse. The Defense Intelligence Agency provides intelligence to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to U.S. military personnel in the field.
The crackdown in Washington, D.C., seems to have far less to do with combating crime in a city where crime rates are at a 30-year low than it does with demonstrating that the administration controls the capital, the seat of the U.S. government. As conservative lawyer George Conway, who helpfully videoed the FBI raid on John Bolton’s house this morning, put it: “If you want to have a coup against the constitutional order, you want to control the capital city. And if he has control of the policing in the city of Washington,... how do you stop him? Who's gonna tell him to leave the White House?"
Trump has rewarded those who fought to steal the 2020 election for him, pardoning or commuting the sentences of more than 1,500 people convicted or charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 riot...
Now Trump and his allies appear to be cementing control of the capital. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in a statement today from the Pentagon that the 2,000 National Guard members stationed in Washington, D.C., will begin to carry weapons. More National Guard personnel are on the way. At the same time, FBI Director Patel and deputy director Dan Bongino appear to be turning the FBI into a national police force: dropping the requirement for a college degree, reducing training hours, and focusing on street crime rather than the bureau’s traditional expertise in white collar crime, corruption, and so on.
Trump said yesterday he wants to extend the deployment for more than the 30-day limit the law allows, and today he warned that he would take over the city “with the federal government.” ...
On August 18, Democracy Docket’s Marc Elias warned that Trump is “stationing the military and other federal law enforcement in blue areas so—when the time comes—he can pivot their mission to suppressing voting rights and undermining free and fair elections.” On Tuesday, Trump ally Steve Bannon said on his webcast War Room: “They're petrified over at MSNBC and CNN that, hey, since we’re taking control of the cities, there's going to be ICE officers near polling places. You damn right.”
Last March, scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder wrote that those who fantasize about a strongman make the terrible mistake of thinking “that a strongman will be your strongman. He won't,” Snyder wrote. “In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents. We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something.” But he doesn’t, Snyder explains: your support makes you irrelevant.
Those who supported Trump from a belief that he would protect American business from state interference received yet another example of Snyder’s point today when Trump boasted that the government has taken a 10% stake in Intel, which builds semiconductors and chips. Trump says he intends to take similar stakes in other companies....
Finally, I found this amazing thread about the German Military Cemetery in Normandy -- I won't post every tweet, but enough to tell you the story:
My family and I live in a particularly lovely bit of France, and as you can imagine, we get lots of friends and relatives visiting from the U.S., and they often request to visit the D-Day Beaches and WW2 Memorials. So we've been to the D-Day sites many times—over 20 at least.
— Gabrielle Blair (@designmom) August 21, 2025
2/x pic.twitter.com/ftcERmJLnM
Looking at the dates on the graves in the German Cemetery, you'll see that many of these soldiers were just teens, just kids. It's possible some of these kids wanted to be soldiers, but we don't really know, because they didn't have a choice either way.
— Gabrielle Blair (@designmom) August 21, 2025
8/x pic.twitter.com/YKJNbrVThj
Were these Black or brown people? No. They were sent to the camps. Were these Jewish or Muslim people? No. They were sent to the camps.
— Gabrielle Blair (@designmom) August 21, 2025
So who is buried in this German Military Cemetery?
The children of white, Christian, loyalists.
10/x
When Putin intimidates him into starting WW3, it's you, and your kids, who will be the people who die in his army, just like the millions of German soldiers who died in WW2. You won't have a choice.
— Gabrielle Blair (@designmom) August 21, 2025
12/x pic.twitter.com/pkaipU8g72
You voted to fuck up everyone who is different than you. You're laughing and clapping because you think you're getting your wish. You don't know it, but you also voted to fuck up yourself and everyone like you.
— Gabrielle Blair (@designmom) August 21, 2025
Nobody wins under this regime. Nobody wins. Everybody suffers.
14/x
Looking at the dates on the graves in the German Cemetery, you'll see that many of these soldiers were just teens, just kids. It's possible some of these kids wanted to be soldiers, but we don't really know, because they didn't have a choice either way.
— Gabrielle Blair (@designmom) August 21, 2025
8/x pic.twitter.com/YKJNbrVThj
Were these Black or brown people? No. They were sent to the camps. Were these Jewish or Muslim people? No. They were sent to the camps.
— Gabrielle Blair (@designmom) August 21, 2025
So who is buried in this German Military Cemetery?
The children of white, Christian, loyalists.
10/x
When Putin intimidates him into starting WW3, it's you, and your kids, who will be the people who die in his army, just like the millions of German soldiers who died in WW2. You won't have a choice.
— Gabrielle Blair (@designmom) August 21, 2025
12/x pic.twitter.com/pkaipU8g72
1 comment:
Actually, during the battle of Normandy, large numbers of the Wehrmacht were neither white, Christian or loyalists. The Germans employed large numbers of immigrants and foreign volunteers in their armed forces. By 1944 the Germans were very short of soldiers. For example, there were large numbers of Poles who were put in uniform (and who usually deserted at the first opportunity) The Poles fought alongside the Canadians at Falaise, and it was documented that these deserters were issued Allied uniforms and then fought alongside their Polish brethren. None of this information is hard to access; just a google search will provide it.
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