"Do not go gentle into that good night. Blog, blog against the dying of the light"
Wednesday, December 21, 2022
How ya gonna keep 'em in Paree after they've been down on the farm?
Tuesday, December 20, 2022
Today's News: The Beginning of the End?
Saturday, December 17, 2022
Today's News: Twitter, We Hardly Knew Ye
...it’s not just large-scale social upheaval that has been driven by Twitter. The app has, at this point, disrupted most industries. Newsrooms, Starbucks, and Amazon warehouses have unionized on the app. Studios have ousted predatory executives with a hashtag. Politicians, both left and right, have used the site to sweep elections in a flurry of shitposts and dunk-based populism. And stock markets have rallied, and crashed, thanks to ridiculous Twitter memes turned viral pump-and-dump schemes.Twitter’s core experience has been, and still is, disruption. And we have spent over a decade trying to determine if it’s good disruption or bad, left-wing or right, progressive or conservative, but the truth is, it’s just disruption. It’s a random social chaos machine. Over the summer, as Elon Musk finalized the purchase of the site, that chaos machine was turned in on itself. The company was overrun with leaks and drama, which all became trending topics. And after Musk bought it, the company literally began livetweeting its own dismantling. Now that it has toppled itself, and all that’s left is Musk’s various whims, the manic energy of the app appears to be localized entirely inside of Musk’s brain. The man is jacked directly into the feed and it turns out the feed is screaming back at him, “you fucking suck.”And so we all have to sit around and watch the richest man in the world process in real-time how cringe, how embarrassing, how hated he is. The joke has always been that Twitter causes “psychic damage,” but that joke is real now. Twitter is currently doing to one man’s psyche what it has done to countless societies around the world. He paid $44 billion for a website he believed was a “biological neural net,” a digital collective unconscious that he could use to take us to Mars, and it turns out that frothing Id hates him. Can you imagine how painful the cognitive dissonance must be? If people boo you and think you’re a shameless loser then what’s all the money for? Why are you sleeping in your office? If money can’t make people like you then what was any of it for?
At Defector, David Roth writes about The Eternal Mystery of a Rich Man's Politics when he delves into Musk's recent posts denigrating Fauci and his supposedly-"woke" fans:You got no love for Elon bro? pic.twitter.com/JubavbPn24
— Jimmy Kimmel Live (@JimmyKimmelLive) December 13, 2022
Over at The Atlantic, Tom Nichols writes about Musk's "calvinball" games in The Childish Drama of Elon Musk:There are many such posts out there, because this sort of thing—signals of distress that toggle between thundering proclamations of Total War and a sort of sweaty gloating—is more or less the sound that older conservatives and the people who make their living pandering to older conservatives make. There isn’t a political program to speak of, beyond some dire retributive fantasies—prosecutions, tribunals, prison camps, political murder, normal shit—buffered with ROFL emojis and opaque in-group jargon. It is not important, or anyway not very interesting, how serious these people are about this. Given how heatedly they fantasize about it in public, they surely wouldn’t have any problem with mass violence against their enemies, although they’d prefer someone do it for them. But also there is not a great deal of thought evident in it. When you hear a bunch of dogs barking, you wouldn’t assume that they’re having a conversation. They’re just doing what their buddies are doing.Online reactionary politics is a fan community before it is anything else; as with Donald Trump, the way to tell that Musk is an active participant is how obviously starstruck he is by the corny dingbats that make up its firmament. Where Trump lived for the approval of Fox News’s glitching poreless on-air goblins, Musk has been queasily quick with an “exactly” in the mentions of various reactionary influencers: the anti-trans activist that solicits bomb threats to children’s hospitals, or the one fellow from the Koch-backed Turning Point USA organization whose face seems to be shrinking, or Cat Turd 2. If it is embarrassing to know who these people are—and it is extremely embarrassing to know who those people are—it is more embarrassing still to have mistaken these relentlessly self-serving grifters for friends.What all of that decidedly is not, however, is mysterious. Musk’s politics, however heterodox he himself might secretly be, appear very much to be those of an extremely wealthy 51-year-old man with an entirely commonplace conservative media diet. There are only so many interesting ways and even fewer interesting reasons to adopt these politics; the most common one, which again is the one that Musk seems to have chosen, is to simply let the combined inertia of your circumstances and incuriosity back you into them. That he is now someplace so strange—winking at QAnon shit, already—seems mostly to reflect how conservative politics have moved in that direction; Musk, typically, seems not to have given any of it much thought. The extremities of his wealth and strange upbringing, and his personal peculiarities and the limits of his capacities for empathy or insight all probably played some role, but this is true of every other butthead that ever aged into reactionary politics. In time, these people realize what they actually believed all along and embrace what has always mattered most to them. In this sense, too, Musk’s little blurts of umbrage and upset are just like those of all the other reactionary pilgrims on their own lonely journeys. Separately but in unison, they slough off everything and everyone that is not them, either out of principle or pique or just because they find themselves losing interest; instead of talking to the people they used to talk to, they just shout at everyone. Twitter has always been a good place for that.
...Musk’s weird rampage does have an impact on the way the world around you exchanges information. Twitter has many levels; for some people, it’s a place to talk about oddball hobbies and exchange pet pictures. (Have you met my cat?) But it’s also an extremely valuable conduit for news, information, culture, and argument. Twitter doesn’t control the news, but it helps to shape public debate about many issues. Indeed, Musk’s entire public rationale for taking over Twitter was to preserve an important venue for free speech.Musk’s defense of free speech is nonsense. One of the world’s richest men—who is not shy about his politics or his contempt for the free press—has reinstated Donald Trump, white supremacists, and any number of dangerous malefactors to Twitter, but he has made it clear that Donie O’Sullivan is beyond the pale. He has purchased an important and influential piece of the public square not to enhance public debate, but to punish people who annoy him....I think he lost his cool because for more than a month, he’s been in way over his head with an impulsive purchase, his fortunes are plunging, and he got booed by a crowd of thousands of people at a Dave Chappelle performance—which, for a guy like Musk, is probably an unforgivable injury from what should be an adoring public.But we can at least shelve all of Musk’s blather about free speech. Twitter is an important part of how we disseminate and process news, and it’s now in the hands of an irritable and unpredictable child. This is one more step in the infantilization of American life, in which we must accommodate and work around the behavior of grown men and women who not so long ago would have been pushed out of public life either by our collective political disgust or by responsible shareholders who would insist that their corporate leaders get back to work instead of making a spectacle of themselves.
Do you know what @Twitter is if it bans journalists and left-wingers? Truth Social. @elonmusk is putting on a clinic on how to lose $44 billion.
— Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) December 16, 2022
Wednesday, December 14, 2022
From the Substacks - Ukraine, Carol of the Bells, Emergencies Act, Musk, & Academia
Snyder ends his piece with a very interesting history of the Carol of the Bells, the performance of the Ukraine children's choir at Carnagie Hall, and the deep meaning of this song for Ukraine, particularly this Christmas.... Americans (and many others) owe Ukrainians a huge debt of gratitude for their resistance to Russian aggression. For some mixture of reasons, we have difficulty acknowledging this. To do so, we have to find the words. Seven that might help are: security, freedom, democracy, courage, pluralism, perseverance, and generosity....For American policymakers and security analysts, it is literally dumbfounding that another country can do so much for our own security, using methods that we ourselves could not have employed. Ukraine has reduced the risk of war with Russia from a posture of simple delf-defense. Ukraine has reduced the threat of a war with China without confronting China, and indeed while pursuing good relations with China. None of that was available to Americans. And yet the consequence is greater security for Americans...
And this is a beautiful version, too:100 years after it was performed for the first time in the US, in Carnegie Hall in NYC, the Ukrainian song “Carol of the Bells” has again returned to Carnagie Hall.
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) December 6, 2022
Via @IuliiaMendel
pic.twitter.com/P56xjzNntF
Moving on, several writers have been talking this week about the Emergencies Act hearings and what they mean. I liked David Moscrop's In Defence of Invoking the Emergencies Act:A multinational #NATO choir brings you the seasonal classic ‘Carol of the Bells,’ by Mykola Leontovych 🇺🇦 from snowy #Latvia.
— Baiba Braže (@NATOBrazeB) December 14, 2022
Season’s greetings from everyone at #NATO! https://t.co/3bhbr70KGu
For another take, here is a useful article from Wesley Wark’s National Security and Intelligence Newsletter - The Globe gets it wrong (shock, horror) - a response to a Globe and Mail editorial demanding that the Trudeau cabinet release the legal opinion that supported the Emergencies Act....I was in Ottawa during the occupation. Not only was I writing about it—a task that yielded endless grief and hate mail from so-called “freedom” supporters—I was living it. My apartment was a short walk from Parliament Hill and the besieged Wellington Street. It was just a slightly longer one to the neighborhoods where the occupiers were terrorizing residents....Society has a right to defend itself. At the time, we had no idea who was in charge in Ottawa, no idea whether violence would escalate, and no idea when the occupation would end. The occupiers were, in essence, calling for a coup. There was a log jam that needed breaking. By invoking the Act, the government seems to have done just that. And there’s evidence from Commission testimony that supports that common sense take.During testimony Ottawa’s interim police chief, Steve Bell, said the Emergencies Act was “helpful” in ending the occupation. He cited “four key areas” of assistance, including speeding up external police support by “swearing in members” from outside of the city, lowering barriers to mobilizing tow trucks to remove the semi-trucks, and providing financial tools to investigate funding.Bell said the “main benefit” of the Act was that it provided “a legal framework for us to be able to operating within.” In essence, the Act was a foundation. As Bell put it, “It allowed for us to very clearly articular to our frontline officers what their powers were…so that they could understand what to do and how to execute it.”Money was essential to keeping the occupation in place. By removing or restricting funds, the government helped clear a path to end the stalemate. The Emergencies Act facilitated the rapid freezing of bank accounts associated with the blockades and occupation. It also instructed insurance companies “to cancel or suspend the insurance policy for any vehicle taking part in a prohibited assembly.” Plus, it “subjected crowdfunding platforms and payment service providers”—two of the main sources of occupation donations and funding—"to the registration and reporting requirements under the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act.” That measure that is now permanent.The same characters returned to Ottawa post-occupation, but subsequent visits were met by a city prepared.
...The legal thresholds piece is not the main issue of importance to Canadians. The Globe’s call for a release of the legal advice provided by the Attorney General to the government is, at this stage, largely beside the point. The key issue is how the events of the Freedom Convoy came to be seen as a national security crisis by the government....five reasons were presented to Parliament to justify the finding of a public order emergency. Three of the five reasons broaden the security threat lens beyond the language of the CSIS Act—threats to economic security resulting from the border blockades; adverse effects on Canada’s relationships with its trading partners; the breakdown in supply chains. Whether it was right to broaden the understanding of threats to the security of Canada in this way is open to debate, but for the government it clearly represented its assessment of key threats on the ground.The important thing to note is that in widening its definition of threats under the EA, the government did not cavalierly discard the CSIS Act threshold. It incorporated it. Two of the five reasons directly address the CSIS Act threshold, especially s2c) of the CSIS Act.
In other political news, Evan Scrimshaw writes about the recent Ontario byelection - Mississauga-Lakeshore Recap: Turns out Poilievere Ain't Inevitable?The EA was necessary for two reasons, I think, neither of which were anticipated by the parliamentarians [of earlier years]1. Canada needed a high profile show of force to convince American business that the border blockades were OVER! and would not be allowed to restart again2. The banking threat - to freeze accounts, confiscate vehicles, etc - chilled the "hot-tub rock concert" party atmosphere; it intimidated not only the Ottawa truckers themselves, but also anybody across the country who had supported them. The mood changed overnight.
Of course, Elon Musk is still in the news. For some reason I don't understand, a throw-away comment I made about people booing Musk at Dave Chappelle's show got 4,300 "likes" on Twitter. I guess it just struck people as a good take:... really funny watching pundits who spent much of the summer proclaiming Poilievre’s inevitability suddenly claim this matters. It doesn’t, but if it makes the commentariat get their heads out of their asses it was probably a good thing.There are two things that are both fundamentally true about Canadian politics right now – there’s a lot of activity, and almost no news.......The Tories have the same problem they had when I coined Scrimshaw’s Paradox: any leader who gets through the membership cannot win a general election. It was true in February, and it feels true now, because the Tory members continue to elect insane nutters...
Over at Garbage Day, Ryan Broderick is describing Elon Musk this way:You reap what you sow.
— Cathie from Canada 🇨🇦 😷🏳️🌈 (@CathieCanada) December 12, 2022
Remember how surprised Trump was when he was booed at a baseball game?
I think guys like Musk are surrounded by sycophants telling them how great they are & how everybody loves them, & they start believing their own press.
...at this point, I also think Musk is just a being of pure impulse. He’s essentially a flatworm with a rocket company. A naked central nervous system of raw urges wandering the halls of Twitter, asking people if they know good QAnon memes to tweet out.
maybe he's just a fucking idiot https://t.co/ZggzgloO3e
— John Cole (@Johngcole) December 13, 2022
Elon Musk’s decision to make fun of pronouns and embrace the far right is so incredibly sad and repulsive when you know he has a trans daughter
— Read Jackson Rising by @CooperationJXN (@JoshuaPHilll) December 11, 2022
can't believe "just stop paying the bills" hasn't occurred to me as a cost-cutting measure https://t.co/0ZJTjYqURf pic.twitter.com/pXfHPpYyEz
— dan solomon (@dansolomon) December 13, 2022
Abstract: Eight studies document what may be a fundamental and universal bias in human imagination: people think things could be better. When we ask people how things could be different, they imagine how things could be better (Study 1). The bias doesn't depend on the wording of the question (Studies 2 and 3). It arises in people's everyday thoughts (Study 4). It is unrelated to people's anxiety, depression, and neuroticism (Study 5). A sample of Polish people responding in English show the same bias (Study 6), as do a sample of Chinese people responding in Mandarin (Study 7). People imagine how things could be better even though it's easier to come up with ways things could be worse (Study 8). Overall, it seems, human imagination has a bias: when people imagine how things could be, they imagine how things could be better.
Here’s a simple question: does peer review actually do the thing it’s supposed to do? Does it catch bad research and prevent it from being published?It doesn’t.
Monday, December 12, 2022
Today's News: "Boo-urns" is trending
And here is how its going:Truth resonates …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 12, 2022
You reap what you sow.
— Cathie from Canada 🇨🇦 😷🏳️🌈 (@CathieCanada) December 12, 2022
Remember how surprised Trump was when he was booed at a baseball game?
I think guys like Musk are surrounded by sycophants telling them how great they are & how everybody loves them, & they start believing their own press.
Yeah, Elon, you can believe this if you like:holy cauliflower the full version is so much worse 😵💫 https://t.co/unRzId198X
— Pat Dubois 🇺🇦 (@patdubois) December 12, 2022
And here is how people reacted:Technically, it was 90% cheers & 10% boos (except during quiet periods), but, still, that’s a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter).
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 12, 2022
It’s almost as if I’ve offended SF’s unhinged leftists … but nahhh.
the funniest part of this is the idea leftists are attending a 2022 dave chappelle show
— Melon Usk (@jessespector) December 12, 2022
You did great, chief. It's good to get outside your bubble. It definitely wasn't a huge public embarrassment that will be tweeted at you as a reminder for as long you own this site. https://t.co/i6V4UWdR9I
— Jacob Silverman (@SilvermanJacob) December 12, 2022
— manny (@mannyfidel) December 12, 2022
Thanks, George, for this truth:"Boo-urns, boo-urns" https://t.co/7lLaKX9uzd
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) December 12, 2022
Finally, I loved this:My pronouns are he/him. And I want to thank Dr. Fauci for his long service.
— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) December 11, 2022
Be on the right and respectful side of things. It’s better for your own soul, and better for others.
A billionaire desired a bird
— The Gil-Monster And Lamb Kept Time (@the_gil_monster) December 11, 2022
The asking price was just absurd
But still he bought it, undeterred
This fascist, lame, unfunny, nerd
Now Nazis can get in a word
And those who mock him go unheard
And "free speech" is, in fact, interred
'Cause #ElonMuskIsaGiantTurd
Sunday, December 11, 2022
Today's News: Yes, I am still wearing my mask
... the three C’s of Crowded places, Closed spaces, and Close-contact settings, and areas with greater vulnerable populations: schools, universities, public transit, congregate living, health-related settings like doctor’s offices, pharmacies, grocery stores, concerts and other mass indoor event areas, indoor weddings and funerals, and stores subject to crowding during holiday shopping season. It would be good if employers recommended workplace masking during this time as well.For mask mandates to work, there needs to be strong and committed leadership from the top to ensure there is timely action and targeting, clear goals, transparent sharing of science and evidence, helpful public education, widespread and active messaging, and ongoing communication.... No one step will solve everything, but as Yogi Berra might say, doing nothing accomplishes nothing.
I don’t understand how COVID is spiking again after we’ve tried everything from pretending it’s over to pretending it never happened
— Zack Bornstein (@ZackBornstein) December 6, 2022
Here is a photo I will never forget -- I first saw it in mid-2020, I think -- an exhausted emergency room doctor, kneeling on the floor, as he phones someone to tell them their loved one has died of Covid:This is a friendly reminder that Covid is still around and spreads rapidly in densely populated areas.
— Captain Obvious (@TheFungi669) December 10, 2022
Please stay away from dense people.
We will be getting boosters and wearing masks for the indefinite future -- all the Covid revisionism and wishful thinking is not going to change that:Continue to be stunned by how fast the COVID revisionism has taken root.
— Timothy Caulfield (@CaulfieldTim) November 7, 2022
This happened:
- Over 45,000 Canadians died of COVID
- Hospitals were overwhelmed
- Healthcare workers (and Canadians) stepped up
- Vaccines & public health policies saved lives
Stop the COVID spin. pic.twitter.com/8faFt9rLgz
In the spring of 2020 most thought this would be over in 6 months. Now this. Who would have guessed . Do we just give up? Harvest the weak? Accept massive long Covid? Move on? Or do we rise to this challenge ? https://t.co/f9HO7fq6LD
— Frank Graves (@VoiceOfFranky) December 11, 2022
December 10, 2022. Weekly Trends in #COVID19 Cases and Deaths. https://t.co/Pq5pKDM8s7 #CovidIsNotOver pic.twitter.com/Z7TCioDuaD
— Betty C. Jung (@bettycjung) December 11, 2022
Friday, December 09, 2022
Today's News: From the Substacks
The Ontario coroner is now investigating what happened. No matter what details may get changed a little, it is a tragedy.There it is. A 2 year old child at Lakeridge Hospital has CODED and died on the floor on the hospital. A 2 YO CHILD DEAD ON THE FLOOR OF AN ONTARIO HOSPITAL. Watch this clip. It’s heartbreaking.
— Christine Cooper 💪🙋♀️🦹♀️ (@coopSpeak) December 7, 2022
This is on Ford & Jones. https://t.co/lK3RKvn2Zo
Here are the stories I have been noticing lately:Maybe with any luck they'll reinvent newspapers the same way streaming services accidentally reinvented cable
— Mark Shatraw (@09mshatraw) December 6, 2022
Scrimshaw Unscripted: Evan Scrimshaw is talking about next Monday's federal byelection in Mississauga-Lakeshore:... I am aware of no public correspondenc by anyone with long knowledge of the Gallery who supports the board or the new staff leadership.Senator Patricia Bovey has some advice for Rodriguez. Bovey, a Trudeau appointee from Manitoba, is a former director of the Winnipeg Art Gallery and a former board member of the NGC. So she knows board responsibilities, the work of a museum CEO, and the legislative process. She’s just sitting there in the East Block waiting for someone to ask for advice. What’s her advice for Rodriguez? The prompt creation of a search committee to look for a new permanent director of the NGC. Public announcement of that committee’s members, who should include people with superb records in art history and museology.Honestly at this point, the minister shouldn’t need to be told to do that. But Sen. Bovey has another tip: Rodriguez should meet, and publicly announce he has met, the seven former senior curators who wrote him to sound the alarm. Mostly so they’ll feel heard. Also because they are heroes of Canadian art. They include Diana Nemiroff, who co-curated the Gallery’s first major Indigenous survey exhibition 30 years ago and who literally wrote the book on women leaders of the Gallery. And Charlie Hill, who was the Gallery’s chief curator of Canadian art for 34 years and who marched for gay rights on Parliament Hill in 1971. Hill has spent his life seeking — and not shying away from — brave conversations. I remember when a minister of Canadian Heritage would have met a group like this in the first few days of a national controversy.
Routine Proceedings: Dale Smith is covering the arguments between the Auditor General and the CRA over whether Canadians have really been doing so much cheating with pandemic government support funds - The Auditor-General is not Infallible:...The Federal Liberals are defending their least-safe Mississauga seat, won by just over 6% in 2019. If the Tories are going to win the next election, they don’t have to win this seat, and anyone who claims that a theoretical Liberal win says very much about Poilievre’s appeal is full of shit, but they need to win some number of seats kind of close to this. It’s a suburban seat, obviously, and the kind of seat where the Tories have struggled in recent years because of the Global Fucking Realignment (start the drinking game now, I guess).My instinct is the Liberals will win it, but that it doesn’t matter. The Liberals are running Charles Sousa, Kathleen Wynne’s former Finance Minister and MPP for the seat, while the Conservatives are running a cop of seemingly limited notoriety. Byelections in recent years have been wonky......Poilievre has been nowhere recently and Lakeshore isn’t exactly fertile ground for Skippy’s brand of conservatism....A Conservative win is absolutely possible for two reasons – it’s the kind of seat that would be very close on provincial swing and byelection turnout effects are wild and can be extremely variable – but there’s nothing that makes me think that this potential result would be indicative of much....To be entirely consistent, however, a Liberal win is nothing to write home about and shouldn’t be taken to mean fuck all for 2025.
...My bigger problem is the fact that this disagreement is somehow scandalising because we have an unhealthy veneration of Officers of Parliament and the Auditor General most especially in this country. A virtual cult has been built around them, particularly by media, who love nothing more than watching the AG go to town on criticising the government of the day, no matter which stripe of government it is, and they will uncritically believe absolutely everything the AG says because they are independent, and therefore must be inherently credible. There are similar problems with this lack of critical engagement with the Parliamentary Budget Officer (and the current one has been a real problem around that, as he picks methodologies out of thin air), and again, his word is gospel. But they’re not infallible. The previous AG ballsed up the Senate audit really badly, and it was an absolute mess, but nobody wanted to talk about it because you can’t badmouth the Auditor General. It’s like a cardinal sin in this city. And departments should be allowed to have disagreements, because the AG isn’t going to get it right every time. That’s just a physical impossibility, and we should acknowledge that fact, but as we see, when it happens, it’s like heresy. People need to grow up, and media needs to be more critical of these Officers, because media is the only check they have.
CERB was a new program, rolled out in 3 weeks during #COVID19, by a workforce mainly working from home. It was imperfect policy, it had holes and flaws, and was completely necessary at the time. What I am not hearing from anyone else is what their alternative would have been.
— Neil Before Zod™ (@WaytowichNeil) December 7, 2022
Wednesday, December 07, 2022
Today's news: Its a "Tridemic" now
No children’s Tylenol, no children’s amoxicillin, urgent care waits 8+ hours, walk-in waits 4+ hours, no pediatric hospital beds available whatsoever, family doctor is booking appointments a month out, worst “tridemic” RSV/flu/COVID wave in years… Canada is not okay right now 🫠
— Emily (@Youlookpretty) December 6, 2022
Today, Alberta shut down its children’s respite/palliative care center, sending the sickest and dying children and their families home to fend in their own
— Nael (@GreenSnail_) December 4, 2022
This is so the staff can be redeployed to overflowing children’s hospitals
It’s not just medically assisted suicide
Santa weeps.
— Stephen Tustin (@stustin) December 6, 2022
But we KNOW what to do to help people avoid getting sick - we just have to DO IT!Vaccines alone are not enough to stop this Tridemic from killing children.
— Kimiko Shibata 🇨🇦 🦄 (@ESL_fairy) December 6, 2022
Even if every single eligible Ontario resident were to get a COVID and flu shot today, it would not relieve the pressure on children’s hospitals.
It’s time to #BringBackMasks. pic.twitter.com/wKHkI19yFg
The enduring tragedy of 2020-21 was the deaths of millions of old people due to Covid in Long Term Care facilities across Canada and throughout the world."We have all the tools to change the trajectory of this horrible situation. The only missing ingredient is courage from our leaders to be transparent about the current situation and mandate the changes that are necessary to prevent more illness and death." @SKGandhiMD #bcpoli 6/6
— Sonia Furstenau (@SoniaFurstenau) December 5, 2022
Did you read that? Terrified. You could not send him & it’s a heart attack and that kills him. You could send him & it not a heart attack but he brings Covid/RSV/flu back with him and it kills him and may be starts a out break at a nursing home that will cost more lives 2/
— Jon O (@Jon4u16) December 5, 2022
Tuesday, December 06, 2022
Today's News: What we learned
Please enjoy my #PierrePoilievre cartoon for Tuesday's @TorontoStar pic.twitter.com/UHF3AVp4VE
— Theo Moudakis (@TheoMoudakis) December 5, 2022
Majority of Canadians favour Emergencies Act invocation, poll shows https://t.co/7S0prdOJIK
— The Globe and Mail (@globeandmail) December 5, 2022
The replies to this are out of this world. https://t.co/JSosmVJdwt
— Andrew Coyne 🇺🇦 (@acoyne) December 5, 2022
This weekend there was a fascinating article in the Globe and Mail summarizing what was learned from the Emergencies Act testimony at the POEC. Here are some revelations of note:After the televised testimony at Inquiry
— G.T. Lem (@gtlem) December 5, 2022
46% of Canadians have a NEGATIVE impression of the Truckers involved in the #FreedomConvoy
That is DOUBLE DIGITS over the 23% of Canadians who have a negative impression of the government for using the Emergencies Act#cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/ZdApSgIkAD
Ottawa police failed:...only through the inquiry did the public learn that while the leaders encouraged others to put their trucks – and therefore their livelihoods – on the line, most of the convoy leaders did not. Mr. Barber removed his truck, ‘Big Red,’ from the “red zone” after the second weekend. Mr. King left his motorhome in a “secure location” and hitched a ride downtown. Ms. Belton left her big rig at home, as did Mr. Dichter.Stephanie Carvin, an associate professor at Carleton University and a former federal intelligence analyst, said the convoy leaders have shown – at the protests and in the inquiry – that “they see reality entirely differently.”“They’re not delusional,” she said, but added, “I’m not sure anything would have convinced them that they were causing harm.”
The Ontario government failed:...In an emergency situation, a police services board and a police chief are the only ones that can ask the OPP to take over when a police force is not providing “adequate and effective” policing, Prof. Kempa said. Mr. Sloly’s senior commanders believed he thought that other police services coming to Ottawa to help craft an enforcement plan illustrated a plot against him, the inquiry has heard.Police stood by as protesters formed supply lines of fuel-filled jerry cans and indiscriminately set off fireworks near condos and office buildings. Yet Mr. Sloly testified that the chaos never met the threshold where he should have relinquished command. And then-Ottawa police board chair Diane Deans testified that she couldn’t recall if the board ever considered making a request to the OPP.The chaos should have triggered an automatic threshold for the OPP to take control, but no such mechanism exists, Prof. Kempa said.
And Canadian intelligence agencies weren't as helpful as they could have been:...the Emergencies Act assumes all parties do their jobs, as expected, not that the Ottawa police would be “dysfunctional” or that Mr. Ford would decide “he didn’t want to get involved and kick it up to the federal government.”“It assumed that the Ontario government would be working and solving this and it wasn’t. So what do you do?” she said.
I'm not sure what the POEC will make of all this, except perhaps to conclude that Mulroney and Beatty were maybe indulging in a bit of wishful thinking back in 1987 when they thought the process of declaring a state of emergency would be polite, orderly, and unencumbered by bureaucratic incompetence at several levels....The inquiry has heard that the protests in Ottawa and elsewhere did not rise to the level of a national-security threat, under the CSIS Act. Yet CSIS director David Vigneault testified that he recommended the act’s invocation – after receiving a legal opinion from the Justice Department that the Emergencies Act could take a broader interpretation than the CSIS Act.On Feb. 14, about an hour before the act’s invocation was announced, Mr. Trudeau received a memo from Canada’s top public servant recommending the act’s use. A detailed threat assessment was meant to follow “under separate cover,” but it did not. Jody Thomas, national security and intelligence adviser, had sought that threat assessment earlier that day but she testified that it “fell through the cracks and we were overtaken by events.”
Monday, December 05, 2022
🤣🤣🤣
I am doing this as an image, rather than embedding the tweets, because the Twitter Bird needs to show.
Saturday, December 03, 2022
From the bookmarks - Elon, Matt, Ye, and the gang....
So Elon’s big reveal was that the Biden team asked Twitter to delete revenge porn on Hunter Biden in 2020 when Biden wasn’t even President?
— Lindy Li (@lindyli) December 3, 2022
We’re shocked I tell you—shocked! 🙄
Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi tag-teaming to do the most ponderously vacuous thread on Hunter Biden this side of Truth Social is like the O.J. chase if the Bronco were going 7 mph slower
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) December 3, 2022
so Elon Musk throws Matt Taibbi thousands of documents for the Twitter Files & Taibbi himself claims he saw evidence implicating Trump’s White House, the actual administration in power, and Taibbi decides to…dive into the Hunter Biden stuff!!
— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) December 3, 2022
lmao pic.twitter.com/vewqjDEGcy
If I may do a @brianschatz: the most interesting revelation about Hunter Biden is that the wife of a Supreme Court justice was actively involved in a plot to overthrow the results of a presidential election, and that justice is going to hear cases related to that plot.
— David Roberts (@drvolts) December 3, 2022
Thursday, December 01, 2022
Today's News: WTF is a Henry the 8th act?
The most useful thread I saw today, explaining what a "Henry the 8th" clause is and how it works:Danielle Smith’s “Sovereignty Act” has parallels in history. Known as a Henry VIII act, it allows governments to pass laws without consent of Parliament. Hitler’s “Enabling Act” of 1933 is the most extreme example. The consequences were horrific. https://t.co/14eXSaTTbu
— Brian Mason (@bmasonNDP) November 29, 2022
Here is a key tweet:By unpopular demand, a (🧵) background explainer for what a "Henry VIII clause" is (as this phrase is being bandied about a lot at the moment).#ableg #abpoli #cdnpolitics
— Timothy Huyer (@tim4hire) November 30, 2022
1/16
And the thread ends here:This power, today known as a "Henry VIII clause", meant that the King, by proclamation, could make or amend laws, without having to consult or obtain the approval of Parliament.
— Timothy Huyer (@tim4hire) November 30, 2022
6/16
This is why Premier Loon thinks she can pass a Sovereignty Act that will permit Cabinet ministers to change Alberta laws without having to get a vote in the Alberta legislature for them.Voters also can and should demand accountability from their representatives for the use of Henry VIII clauses, and be prepared to toss out governments that seek to abuse this power and bypass the Legislature's role.
— Timothy Huyer (@tim4hire) November 30, 2022
16/16
Wednesday, November 30, 2022
Today's News: Feeling so misunderstood
Dear god.
— David Moscrop: Subscribe to my Substack. It’s fun! (@David_Moscrop) November 30, 2022
“Smith has directed her cabinet ministers to look for federal "intrusions" into provincial jurisdiction, past and future, and create special resolutions that will be introduced and debated in the spring 2023 legislative session.”
…
But tell me again about how Trudeau is a dictator... #cdnpoli #ableg https://t.co/rm7IVaIf40
— Stephen Lautens (@stephenlautens) November 30, 2022
"The bill creates choice opportunities to ramp up hostilities before the provincial election set for next May 29." Ottawa has the power to disallow this bill. That's likely what Premier Smith wants. Come May 29th, she'd rather fight Trudeau than Notley. https://t.co/8WDxk9MgxR
— Charles Adler (@charlesadler) November 30, 2022
Lunocracy: rule by loons.
— Andrew Coyne 🇺🇦 (@acoyne) November 29, 2022
The bill would "enable [the government of Alberta] to deem federal laws unconstitutional, allow it to make unilateral changes to provincial legislation, and direct provincial entities to ignore “harmful” federal policies."https://t.co/ajeANuNH6c
Monday, November 28, 2022
Beautiful
And this was beautiful too:Just a reminder that Canada's first ever goal in Men's World Cup history was scored by a kid who fled a war, came to Canada as a refugee, was welcomed by Canadians, learned English, and grew up playing soccer in the snow.
— Goodable (@Goodable) November 28, 2022
It's what Canada does.
🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/jixajtBvJe
🏆 WORLD CHAMPIONS 🏆
— Tennis Canada (@TennisCanada) November 27, 2022
Team Canada presented by @sobeys are crowned WORLD CHAMPIONS after beating Australia in the Davis Cup Finals.
Auger-Aliassime, Diallo, Galarneau, Pospisil, Shapovalov and Dancevic's amazing run in Malaga marks Canada's first ever #DavisCup Title. pic.twitter.com/1Mo1LJH27i
And here some other great stuff:how it started / how it's going pic.twitter.com/aLynOXPgdd
— lena 🇦🇷 (@shapovarolov) November 27, 2022
“Ok so there’s 3 rings for the elven kings under the sky, right? And 7 for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone. You following me?” pic.twitter.com/ZRmWeSgSKD
— Casual Thursday (@CasualThursday) November 24, 2022
When I turned 70, I thought, well that’s it. I’ve had a great career, but it’s winding down.
— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) November 27, 2022
Boy was I wrong. I found social media, and then a second wind at my sails in my 70s! I made my Broadway debut at 78, and I’ll make my London debut at 85.
Life is wonderful and magical.
I love the difference between dog and cat rescue stories. dog owners will be like oh I prepped for months and applied and had a home check then did a foster to adopt trial period and then the rescue chose me! and cat owners are like .. I found him in the trash
— danielle weisberg (@danielleweisber) November 7, 2022
This discussion about cats and dogs reminds me of one of my all-time favorites:The best thing you will watch here today.
— TG (@TG22110) November 25, 2022
pic.twitter.com/OAPW5Gh2vY
Saturday, November 26, 2022
Today's News: FluTruxKlan hearings wrap up
Fascinating to see how Mastodon is turning into Geek Twitter, https://t.co/JXyysSIK87 into Blue Check Twitter, and Twitter into Truth Social.
— scottjshapiro@mastodon.social (@scottjshapiro) November 20, 2022
This thread from pundit Scott Reid sums it up:Not accustomed to saying nice things about the PM, but here goes https://t.co/4mNUmz8x65
— Don Martin (@DonMartinCTV) November 26, 2022
Trudeau faced a grueling test today. Hours of televised, public testimony on technical, difficult and extremely important issues. And he provided controlled, compelling & in-depth explanations of his every move and consideration. He didn't take a single punch. #POEC
— Scott Reid (@_scottreid) November 26, 2022
But those hoping for a faceplant from the relevant Ministers and PM surely came away devastated. Instead, the convoy's advocates limped off looking reduced and incoherent. All week, they offered conspiracies, incompetence and heckles. And not much else #POEC
— Scott Reid (@_scottreid) November 26, 2022
Who knows what Rouleau thinks. Who knows what he'll conclude or recommend. Those are challenges to contemplate another day. But this week was a giant landmine. And Blair, Mendocino, Lametti, Freeland, Telford, Broadhead, Clow and Trudeau all walked through unscathed. #POEC
— Scott Reid (@_scottreid) November 26, 2022