Today's news: Standing athwart dictatorship, yelling "stop!"

Today's topic is finding leaders who will try to stop dictatorship - I think we are doing it now.

Carney, for one -- he is rocketing around Europe now, lining up allies for Canada and for Ukraine, and he appears to be very effective. 

Shankar Narayan / The Concis

Canada's Checkmate: Why Putin's Betting on Western Collapse Just Failed
Canada finally has a leader. So does the world.
... Carney was clear and precise. He told Ukraine exactly what they would get, and when. No need to read between the lines.
Carney and President Zelensky signed a deal on drone co-production worth $680 million, set to begin next month. Canada also joined the PURL scheme — a funding pool where allies contribute money, Ukraine prepares a weapons list, and the U.S. supplies them.
More importantly, Carney declared that Canada will not rule out sending troops to Ukraine after a peace agreement. He didn't hedge. His words carried the weight of intent:

"In Canada's judgement, it is not realistic that the only security guarantee could be the strength of the Ukrainian armed forces in the medium term. So that needs to be buttressed. It needs to be addressed."

This wasn't vague diplomatic language. It was a signal to every NATO strategist in Europe: Canada is ready to move....
By declaring Canada's readiness to join a peacekeeping force, Carney cut through the diplomatic fog. He wasn't making a suggestion—he was staking out a position. NATO strategists in Brussels now have a concrete framework to build around. Berlin, which has been cautious about postwar commitments, suddenly has political cover to move forward. Paris, which has talked about troops but wavered on details, now has an ally willing to share the burden. London, wobbling under domestic pressure, has been handed a lifeline.
The signal to Moscow was equally clear: there will be no victory through waiting. Putin's calculation has always been that Western resolve would crack, that domestic politics would eventually force Ukraine's allies to abandon ship. Carney's declaration shattered that hope. A peacekeeping force backed by Canada, Britain, and France—with German support—isn't a negotiating position Putin can simply outlast. It's a permanent commitment he'll have to live with.
This is how leadership works in wartime: not through grand speeches, but through irreversible commitments that force everyone else to choose sides.
...If Putin once dreamed that Western support would dry up, those dreams are over....

Carney's other stops are also showing how Carney intends to connect Canada with Europe:

RIGA – Prime Minister Mark Carney says Canada will keep troops in Latvia through to 2029, as part of a mission to deter Russian aggression in Europe.

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— Winnipeg Free Press (@winnipegfreepress.com) August 26, 2025 at 11:04 AM

Anand and Joly also travelled to northern Europe in August - this interesting summary article Canada Strengthens Ties with Nordic Countries--Ministers Anand and Joly by Sarah Bowman posted on the Canada and the New World Order substack is worth reading for its details on what they achieved.

With his push to strengthen energy and economic ties with Europe, Prime Minister Mark Carney revealed Tuesday that the federal government will imminently be unveiling major new investments in port infrastructure. The government is in the process of unleashing half a trillion dollars in LNG & AI. 👍

— Canada stands for ✌ (@waitingonamiricle.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 3:32 PM

Carney pivots to Europe for trade and defense. Carney again snubs Trump by making deals in Europe to get submarines and planes built along with military stationed in Europe to deter Putin. Trump looks more isolated and Canada looks increasingly stronger under Carney. Meanwhile Poilievre silent

— Chris C (@mushafta.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 11:28 AM

BREAKING: In the next two weeks, Canada will announce new or enhanced #ports as part of nation-building projects, including in Montreal, Churchill, and east coast, said Prime Minister Carney in Germany today. islandsocialtrends.ca/ports-as-key... | #cdnpoli #trade #shipping #Europe #Arctic

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— Island Social Trends (@islandsocialtrends.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 8:44 AM

As Carney travels to Europe starting with Ukraine then Poland, Germany and Latvia the trade, defense sovereignty short and long macro game is being shaped and played. It will then be for the civil servants to implement and institutionalize it. We are in the early days of a very different world.

— Dr Greg Argue: Deter and Fortify (@whatsthepointsk.bsky.social) August 25, 2025 at 10:42 AM

Against Trump, the Democratic governors are also stepping up -- not only Newsom in California, but Pritzker in Illinois, Walz in Minnesota, Moore in Maryland, Ferguson in Washington state, Shapiro in Pennsylvania. Even Republican Vermont governor Phil Scott refused to send his national guard to Washington DC.

I am sounding the alarm on the real crisis we face today. Donald Trump’s overreach is what our founders warned against – it is unprecedented, unwarranted, and un-American. There’s no emergency here that calls for military intervention.

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— Governor JB Pritzker (@govpritzker.illinois.gov) August 25, 2025 at 3:50 PM

Plain spoken Tim Walz. Love it.

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— Atticus Finch (of Georgia) (@atticus59914029.bsky.social) August 25, 2025 at 10:46 AM

Washington Governor Bob Ferguson: ...I can assure you, I am prepared to defend Washington from any litigation the Trump administration wishes to pursue. That's the governor we voted for, doing his job.

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— 🌹Weegie 🍀 (@onefussyone.bsky.social) August 25, 2025 at 6:36 PM

And maybe its working:

worth mentioning that he says this in the context of sort of hinting he’s not going to follow through

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— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) August 26, 2025 at 1:38 PM

The national guard troops in Washington are keeping busy by picking up trash. I cannot imagine that troops in Chicago would have anything better to do either. Chicago is more than three times larger than Washington DC -- a few thousand troops aren't going to have much impact, Chicago sees way more tourists downtown when the Sox or the Cubs are playing.

Imagine you joined the National Guard to help protect your community and now you're halfway across the country picking up trash in a park on a regular Monday. Embarrassing!

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— M. Nolan Gray 🥑 (@mnolangray.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 7:29 PM

You know, during his first administration, Trump couldn't implement his crazier ideas because most of the people he had picked for his staff and his Cabinet were sort of competent and they wouldn't let him do anything he wanted. 

This time, Trump is still full of crazy ideas and many of them are being announced every day. 

But most of his staff and his Cabinet are utterly incompetent and they can't manage their way out of a paper bag. So most of the time they aren't able to finish what Trump wants done. 

Even when they pretend to the White House press that they know what they're doing, they are actually just True Believers who can't figure out how to get the job done.

Stephen Miller has always been the dude who is unhinged by the fact that other people are allowed to disagree with him, even women and black people

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— Whale-Killing Windmill Hate (@kenwhite.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 9:32 AM

Three separate grand juries refused to indict woman for “assaulting” ICE. Ham sandwich 3, DOJ 0.

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— Slackerdammerüng (@cthomasesq.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 8:19 AM

David Kurtz / Talking Points Memo

It’s Not Enough But It’s Something: DC Tenuously Holds The Line Against Trump
Examples of capitulation and surrender to Trump’s authoritarianism continue to outpace those of defiance and resistance. But over the last few days in the District of Columbia, which Trump is pretending to occupy, we’ve seen a few instances of holding the line against the worst of his transgressions. They’re relatively small and by themselves, they’re not enough. But two examples in particular stand out:
Three different federal grand juries in D.C. refused to indict a woman on felony charges that she assaulted an FBI agent during an immigration protest in July. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office finally conceded Monday and knocked it down to a misdemeanor, which doesn’t require a grand jury to charge.
It is relatively unusual for a grand jury to return a no-true bill.
It is highly unusual for three grand juries to return no-true bills in the same case.
It is questionable, to say the least, for prosecutors to persist in pursuing a felony indictment with a third grand jury.
... In another case arising out of the Trumpian occupation of D.C., U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office moved to dismiss a firearms charge that was the product of an unlawful search — but not before U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui of Washington, D.C., savaged the government for its misconduct, HuffPost reports.
Torez Riley, a Black man on his way into a Trader Joe’s, was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm after he was searched by local law enforcement backed by federal agents.
Calling the case “absolutely maddening,” Faruqui said from the bench that there was no basis to search Riley other than the color of his skin.
“The Sixth Amendment doesn’t get thrown out the window because the government has decided to make a show of arresting people,” Faruqui said, in apparent reference to Trump’s federal operation in D.C.....

Incompetence, and over-reach, may well be what allows the American republic to survive what Trump is trying to do to it.
Robert Reich

Trump’s downfall
Fascist capitalism will do him in
...we have something no one has ever seen in America — a personal takeover of nearly all the institutions of government and, increasingly, the private sector, by a would-be dictator.
Trump is on the way to occupying Democratic-led cities with the Army, National Guard, and ICE — in what appears to be a dress rehearsal for the 2026 midterms.
He’s telling Republican states to super-gerrymander in order to squeeze out more Republican seats in Congress, to help retain Republican control of the House after the 2026 midterm elections.
He’s trying to silence criticism from universities, museums, law firms, and the media. And targeting critics for prosecution, such as Adam Schiff and John Bolton.
But that’s hardly all of it.
At the same time, Trump is taking personal control of the U.S. economy.
He’s trying to control the Federal Reserve Board, threatening Jerome Powell with unflattering stories about his expenditures on the Fed’s building. He has fired Fed governor Lisa Cook on dubious legal grounds.
He’s imposing his will on key industries, from semi-conductors to steel.
He’s given the chip giants Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices export licenses to sell their semiconductors to China on condition that they pay the U.S. government 15 percent of what they make on those sales. (Not incidentally, Trump has reported substantial personal holdings in Nvidia.)
He’s converting nearly $11 billion of grants that the government had given Intel (part of the Biden administration’s CHIPS and Science Act) into a 10 percent stake in the company, worth $8.9 billion, held by the government. Presumably, this would let Trump decide on its CEO.
His White House has even created a scorecard that rates American corporations on how loyal they are to Trump. Corporations with “strong” ratings (among them, Uber, DoorDash, United, Delta, ATT, and Cisco) are to be rewarded with tax and regulatory benefits, while “low” rated corporations could face retribution ranging from lawsuits to damaging executive orders, harsh regulations, and unbridled scorn from Trump.
Before they poured money into Trump’s initiatives and PACs, many Big Tech corporations were facing federal investigations and enforcement actions. Those investigations and lawsuits are now being dropped.
Trump’s import taxes (tariffs) are the results of individual deals between Trump and particular countries, as well as between Trump and big American corporations. So far, America’s trading partners have agreed to invest over $1 trillion in the American economy. Who will oversee such investments? Trump.
In sum, an increasing part of our economy is no longer being determined by supply and demand but by the deals Trump is striking.
. Authoritarian regimes rely on vast bureaucracies to control industry, as does China’s Xi Jinping.
But the new order being imposed on American industry doesn’t come from a vast authoritarian bureaucracy. It’s personal and arbitrary. A single so-called “strongman” is seeking to control everything.
I don’t know the proper term for this. State capitalism? Fascist capitalism?
Whatever we call it, it will be Trump’s downfall because his arbitrary and mercurial decisions are making the private sector nervous about investing in the U.S. economy, causing global lenders to demand a higher risk premium for lending to the U.S., and pushing the economy toward both inflation and recession — so-called “stagflation.”
If nothing else brings him down, his authoritarian control over the economy surely will.

David A. Graham / The Atlantic Daily 

The Natural Endpoint of Trump’s Falsehoods 

Someday, the president may need the American people to believe something he says—and they won’t.
...In an Atlantic cover story last summer, my colleague Anne Applebaum chronicled how modern-day authoritarians in countries such as China and Russia erode truth, not by convincing people to believe lies but by just wearing them down with so many.
This tactic—the so-called fire hose of falsehoods—ultimately produces not outrage but nihilism. Given so many explanations, how can you know what actually happened? What if you just can’t know? If you don’t know what happened, you’re not likely to join a great movement for democracy, or to listen when anyone speaks about positive political change. Instead, you are not going to participate in any politics at all....
...judges have heretofore assumed they can defer to representatives of the federal government on some matters. The Trump administration’s equivocations and evasions in arguments this year have led many judges to withdraw that benefit of the doubt, slowing cases down. A president who says he wants swift justice is instead gumming up the system.
This lack of credibility can manifest in ways both large and small. On a global stage, Trump will have a hard time brokering the peace deal in Ukraine that he so badly wants, because his vacillation gives neither side much incentive: Russia’s Vladimir Putin doesn’t fear him, and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and his European allies don’t trust him. But the effects can also be much more direct for American citizens. The government sometimes has to warn people about ill effects of foods, medicines, or products. But who, other than the MAHA faithful, will believe a Department of Health and Human Services that’s led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? If a dangerous storm is coming, the government needs to warn those in the path. But who will believe the Trump administration once they’ve seen a hurricane map that the president altered with a Sharpie?
This is the problem with entirely subjugating governance to immediate political concerns. ...

Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

Finally, what goes around comes around.

"Soldiers and Airmen conducted site surveys in coordination with federal and local partners to begin community restoration projects." man we really are re-running Iraq, aren't we. Petraeus on scene yet? www.fox5dc.com/news/nationa...

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— David Burbach (@dburbach.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 4:12 PM

Does anyone remember what a messy expensive disaster the American attempt to "re-build" Iraq was?