Thursday, September 11, 2025

Today's News: Demonizing "the Left", making a budget funny, and failing upward


Demonizing "the Left"
I am almost afraid to post this picture tonight, considering how "The Left" is going to be demonized now for the awful Charlie Kirk shooting. 
Almost. 
But it is going to be dreadful.

Bullets don't care if you are a Republican or Democrat. Reality is over 400,000,000 guns and too much hate. Political violence is happening to both parties. We need leaders to step up. Truly sorry for Charlie Kirk and his family. He was wrong. It is not worth it.

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— Fred Guttenberg (@fredguttenberg.bsky.social) September 10, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Here is a great article that confronts the "blame the Left" crowd head-on:
Richard Hanania's Newsletter
"The Left" Did Not Kill Charlie Kirk
...I don’t think individual political assassinations have anything to tell us about our politics. These are stochastic events. This is a country of 350 million people, and widely available firearms. Some of our fellow citizens are insane, like in any country, and if you’re a public figure, one of the risks you face is that an unstable individual might come after you.
But that’s not how right-wing Twitter is reacting. Charlie Kirk was apparently not killed by an individual gunman, but something called “the left.”
...The argument that “the left” is somehow responsible goes along the lines that Democrats and liberals say bad things about Donald Trump and conservatives. Once in a while, then, it’s unsurprising that some unstable person comes along and takes these rantings seriously.
This argument makes sense on its own terms. The problem is that it is made by people who have chosen Donald Trump as the leader of their movement.
If you were going to place every national politician on a scale from 1 to 10 regarding how hyperbolic, mean-spirited, and cruel they are towards their enemies, you would have to put everyone else somewhere between 1-5 just to create enough room to put Trump at 10. There is simply no comparison between him and any other major politician. And his movement has taken after him. This is an administration that regularly refers to judges who rule in ways they don’t like as “Marxists.” We’ve become immune to this stuff. Imagine Biden or Obama calling a judge a “fascist” for overturning one of their policies. Name calling, lies, and ad hominem attacks that would have been unthinkable for every other administration in American history are daily occurrences in life under the Trump administration.
... one thing a movement can never do after choosing Trump as its leader is argue that civility and decency towards one’s opponents are important qualities for politicians to have. You’ve forever lost the moral high ground in this area.
What many Trump supporters would like to do is use this as an excuse to shut down political opponents. If not legally, then by creating a social stigma around speaking out about Trump’s authoritarian policies and methods of control. Nobody should be encouraging assassinations, but if a president is behaving in an authoritarian way, those who see what is happening cannot remain silent because someone out there might hear what they are saying and commit a violent act.
Trump claims the right to ship people off to prisons in foreign countries without any due process rights, personally bullies corporations to do his bidding, and accepts practically no restraints on his power as the head of the executive branch. All of this remains true, regardless of whether or not we live in a country with a lot of crazy people with access to guns...

Dear GOP, Now is not the time to politicize gun violence. We need to wait. Disrespectfully, All of the previous victims you spit on.

- The Opinionated Ogre

Read on Substack

Time for some common sense gun laws. Democrats should introduce a bill named the Charlie Kirk common sense gun reform bill and make every Republican vote for it.

- Adam Parkhomenko

Read on Substack

Let's see how that works out. 

Making a budget funny
The federal Liberal caucus is meeting in Edmonton and here's a great clip from Carney's press conference:
View on Threads

Carney's entire speech is here:

PM Mark Carney addressing the Liberal Caucus earlier today. I knew from the minute I read his bio that we 🍁 had found our new leader. youtu.be/zowFGf-n10g

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— Not Looking for a Date (@oldenuf2knowbetter.bsky.social) September 10, 2025 at 12:21 PM
Such inspiring words: "Politics doesn't build character, it reveals character." "The change is only just beginning...We have to look out for ourselves, and we have to care for each other." "What this moment has revealed is that this nation is united, ambitious, innovative, hardworking and ready to fight...this crisis is revealing the character of our nation. This is Canada Strong."
 
Failing upward
Journalists across the country are shocked tonight that Global News is hiring non-journalist failson Ben Mulroney to replace Mercedes Stephenson on The West Block during her parental leave.
They could have promoted their own Ottawa reporter David Akin to helm the show - you know, the guy who has actually worked in Ottawa covering politics for more than a decade. But Akin also famously clashed with Poilievre back in 2022: at his first press conference as leader, Poilievre didn't want to take any questions so Akin told PP's press secretary “We’re not his fucking stenographers. And you can tell him that.”
No chance Mulroney would ever be rude to Poilievre.

But they hired Ben Mulroney instead of a qualified journalist to host their premier political show.

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— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) September 10, 2025 at 7:13 PM

🀦🏻‍♂️Ben Mulroney🀦🏻‍♂️ Entire video: vt.tiktok.com/ZSDdwAUX5/

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— Jeff's Fact Checker (@thunderbayed.bsky.social) September 10, 2025 at 11:26 AM

Hey @globalnews.ca (which just started following me btw, why I do not know), what management idiot or senior producer ok'd hiring a maga-adjacent moron like Ben fricking Mulroney? Automatically disqualifying for your journalistic reputation. Pull the plug on this clown.

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— Mike Hanafin (@mhanafin.bsky.social) September 9, 2025 at 9:34 PM

No one has failed upwards harder than Ben Mulroney, Worst of the Nepo Babies 🀒

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— scott dagostino (@scottdagostino.ca) September 9, 2025 at 1:59 PM
And what does David Akin think? Well, of course he says nothing but here's a post from earlier Wednesday:
View on Threads
Good clip!

2 comments:

Cap said...

Seems premature to be demonizing "the left" when we have no idea who Kirk's killer is or what his motives are. As I recall, the guy who took a shot at Trump in Pennsylvania was a registered Republican who allegedly made antisemitic and anti-immigrant posts on social media.

Cathie from Canada said...

Yes but Trump is seizing on this to arrest Democrats, which I believe he will start doing soon but really ramp up in November 2026 - as soon as the midterm elections are done but before the house and Senate can change. It is going to be awful