Today's Random Comments: from Liberals to Conservatives, from Tennessee to Twitter, plus a little Joan Baez

I'm seeing a lot of good comments lately on the substacks and on Twitter - here's a selection:

First up, here's Scrimshaw on why the NDP and the Liberals need to remain as separate parties:

The left benefits from being able to pitch two visions in two different parts of the country to two different sets of voters. The NDP gets to use their anti-establishment message to win regional cities and towns, and the Liberals get to use the NDP as a rhetorical triangulation point to seem moderate in the suburbs. It’s a relationship that maximizes the left’s vote share, which given the two parties have 50% of the vote and 54% of the seats, is a win.

A merger is an unserious proposition that even on political terms would fail, ignoring all the policy ramifications and the political fallout of a party that would be at war over internal control at the start.

Moving on to the US:

CANADA WATCHING US NEWS pic.twitter.com/l6QO7pqRwe

— Brittlestar (@brittlestar) April 4, 2023

Atrios comments on the liberal tendency to try to find so-called "reasonable conservatives":

A mystery to me is why so many liberals are desperate for there to be good conservatives, and often became very angry if you inform them that their favorite good conservative it not, in fact, good.

Here is Jonah Goldberg, at The Dispatch, about today's young conservatives:

With no other frame of reference, young conservatives are starting to think it’s normal to be jerks.

...Because they have no frame of reference, no meaningful political experience or memory of politics prior to this shabby era, they think being shabby is normal and smart. Last week, the New York Republican Club issued a moronic and monstrous statement in solidarity with Donald Trump. In response to my criticism these domestic birds of prey behaved monstrously and moronically. (I won’t link to it because attention is the currency they covet.) I’ve since learned that the D.C. chapter of the Young Republicans is equally asinine, embracing the goons and dupes who stormed the Capitol as martyrs and political prisoners.

Indeed, they’ve literally ditched the Republican elephant in favor of a silhouette of Donald Trump.

I don’t call attention to this because I think they are somehow worthy intellectual adversaries or anything like that. Rather, I call attention to it because it’s evidence that the corruption of conservatism isn’t just bad for conservatism—which it obviously is—but because it’s bad for these kids. Surrounding yourself with people who think it’s a sign of courage and strength to be coarse or bigoted is how you become coarse and bigoted.

Missing the Boomers

So here is the problem:

My latest article....Canadian troops in Poland not being reimbursed for meals https://t.co/GCKdKM4T84 via @ottawacitizen

— David Pugliese (@davidpugliese) April 3, 2023

The Line offers this commentary on the story:

This military fiasco is alarming because it’s a sign that our state-capacity issues are now extending into areas that previously worked. Not only are we struggling to do new things, we’re forgetting how to do things we used to be able to do. This goes beyond what our typical gripes about state capacity. This is something else. This is state atrophy, or rot.

Now that the public is paying attention, we suspect we’ll see some reasonably rapid progress. The government will throw bureaucrats and maybe consultants at the problem until it goes away. This is how they have reacted to similar issues: we hurled ground staff at airport delays until they cleared, and bureaucrats at passport offices until the backlogs eased.

But we have to ask why we now require exceptional redeployments of staff to maintain typical levels of service. And we don’t like the answers we can come up with. Ottawa has added tens of thousands of civil servants, at an annual cost of tens of billions, in recent years. During that time Ottawa has also sharply ramped up spending on consultants; the annual cost now surpasses $20 billion.

And yet.

What the hell is going on?

I'll tell you what's going on.

I retired.

And of course its not just me. Its my sister and my brother and my husband and my neighbour and my friend and thousands of other Boomers just like us.

We worked as civil servants for 40 years, from Trudeau Pere to Trudeau Fils, and we knew how to get things done within a government bureaucracy that always had changing priorities, newly announced programs, shuffled deputy ministers, temporary program directors, acting managers, part-time technicians, job-sharing leave replacements, and out-of-date technology.

We knew how to walk a requisition through a dozen required signatures in an afternoon, persuading the technical and financial staffers with smiles and donuts, to get something authorized and get the cheque issued.

We knew how to phone up a director and tell him that something was going haywire and he'd better get on top of it before some reporter noticed. And his assistant knew who to call to get the problem fixed before it could explode all over everyone's desks.

We knew how to jury-rig the new improved systems so they would work the way we knew they were supposed to, after the consultants and technical experts had set it up and gone home.

Then we retired. 

And now, the people who have only ever worked with computers are trying their best to do the job. They're great people, and they're working hard, but they don't know the systems like we did, and more importantly they don't know how to get around them like we did.

Its not easy to cajole a computer into working a little overtime, just this once, to help out our brave troops in Poland.

"Beer, bedrooms and bathrooms"

I'm reading lots of tweets and comments these days about how banana-pants crazy some Republicans are these days, and it worries me that Canada is trending in the same direction. Seems to me our politics has usually been about two years behind the US.

Conservatives around the globe have lost their fucking minds.

— Andrew (@AndrewCote91) April 6, 2023

When I was drawn to the Republican Party, the enemies were the Soviet Union and totalitarianism. Now it’s beer, bathooms and bedrooms crusades run by the angry and maladjusted who are afraid to drink Budweiser, wear Nikes or go to Disneyland https://t.co/EVwZ2BHZNc

— stuart stevens (@stuartpstevens) April 7, 2023

Kinda hilarious that some of these fragile anti-LGBTQ conservative men think beer and liquor companies marketing to the queer community will somehow result in a loss of revenue.

Do y'all know how much we drink, especially in this moment?

— Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 (@cmclymer) April 6, 2023

"Florida man charged"

I didn't bother watching any of the White Bronco chase yesterday, the Manhattan court proceedings today, or the Mar-a-Lardo speech tonight. 

But I have seen some great tweets and comments so I have to share:

How it’s going …pic.twitter.com/sXrmkMEPQO

— George Conway🌻 (@gtconway3d) April 4, 2023

My new cover for TIME magazine.
Art director: DW Pine @dwpine pic.twitter.com/NtaUY5zL5Q

— Edel Rodriguez (@edelstudio) April 4, 2023

Executive summary of tonight’s speech from Mar-a-Lago: pic.twitter.com/IXwoPYZ3Ie

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) April 5, 2023

More like elderly man from Queens now residing in Florida charged with business fraud crimes.

— So many humans, so little humanity (@JACochran29) April 4, 2023

LawFareBlog has an analysis of the indictment including some comments on what might happen next. They say "Trump will throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall in an effort to get the Supreme Court of the United States to take a look". 

Much of the media coverage has been grim and ponderous and oh so serious. But over on the substacks, the people I read are cheering.

Substack Roundup: "Don't Panic"

Before the news became completely dominated by the Orange Turd being hauled into court, I saw some interesting substack columns that are worth sharing.

First, Justin Ling asks us to consider how big is the Internet now, and he says its time to figure out how to recreate it in a more human scale.

The internet is big.

The internet is a really big thing.

If a week’s worth of Youtube videos were put on film reel, laid end-to-end, it would wrap around the world, I don’t know, at least twice. All of the words that get written on Tumblr in a day, if printed out, would fill all the world’s Olympic-sized swimming pools, probably. If you committed all of ChatGPT’s responses to hard drives, it would fill every floor of the Empire State Building, I guess.

We used to love thinking about the internet in these arbitrary physical terms — how many football fields, how many Libraries of Congress — but this is all impossible now. By the time you finish calculating the metaphor, so massive and abstract so as to be meaningless, it’s out of date.

....If the old internet was a series of small outposts in the middle of a barren wasteland, the current internet is a series of giant sprawling mega-malls, then perhaps the next internet is a medium-density city, with strip malls and apartment blocks, marked by plenty of wayfinding and readable maps.

This reminds me so much of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy:  

So maybe its time to start writing "Don't Panic" in large friendly letters, isn't it. 

Today's Random Stuff: News, views and pizza

Lots of news this week -- in Canada, the Mass Casualty Commission report was released:

Here is the essence of the Mass Casualty Commission 3000-page report: https://t.co/HYx1JuU2qC

— Cathie from Canada 🇨🇦 😷🏳️‍🌈 (@CathieCanada) March 30, 2023

in the US, the Trump indictment was announced:

First they came for Trump, and I did not speak out because lol, lmao even

— George Kolokotronis (@georgejk720) March 30, 2023

Love our Opening Day lineup:

Leading off:
Alvin Bragg
Stormy Daniels hush money.

On deck:
Fani Willis
Georgia election interference.

In the hole:
Jack Smith
Stolen Top Secret documents.

Batting clean up:
Merrick Garland
Incitement of an insurrection.

Play ball !!! ⚾️ pic.twitter.com/QLu2kbAjgF

— Billy Baldwin (@BillyBaldwin) March 31, 2023

And Thursday was when we found out that Disney had quietly emasculated Ron DeSantis, because he hadn't bothered to pay attention to what Disney was doing to protect its Florida properties. As Josh Marshall says, its Disney 1, Meatball Ron 0.

DeSantis’ expensive taxpayer-funded Reedy Creek board says Disney attorneys stripped them of power to do anything but road maintenance.

Beaten by a mouse!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/JXybfns9Dp

— 🏴‍☠️ Bob Lawrence --Obama is #1 (@TrumpluvsObama) March 30, 2023

Today's News: The Absolute Worst

The school shootings are the worst, the absolute worst. 

Here is an incredible photo -- a child weeping as she is being transported away from The Covenant School shooting in Nashville this week (photo credit Nicole Hester) 

I don't know how parents in the United States can deal with their own fear every day, much less how afraid their children must be. 

Worse still, their political system is paralyzed, unable to deal with it. 

The AR-15, along with the AK-47 and their ilk, are evil weapons, simply evil -- last night the Washington Post has an outstanding article called The Blast Effect which uses effective graphics to show why the AR15 bullets kill -- they blow a human body apart.

The AR-15 fires bullets at such a high velocity — often in a barrage of 30 or even 100 in rapid succession — that it can eviscerate multiple people in seconds. A single bullet lands with a shock wave intense enough to blow apart a skull and demolish vital organs. The impact is even more acute on the compact body of a small child.

“It literally can pulverize bones, it can shatter your liver and it can provide this blast effect,” said Joseph Sakran, a gunshot survivor who advocates for gun violence prevention and a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

During surgery on people shot with high-velocity rounds, he said, body tissue “literally just crumbled into your hands.”

The carnage is rarely visible to the public. Crime scene photos are considered too gruesome to publish and often kept confidential. News accounts rely on antiseptic descriptions from law enforcement officials and medical examiners who, in some cases, have said remains were so unrecognizable that they could be identified only through DNA samples.

As Sakran put it: “We often sanitize what is happening.”

The Washington Post sought to illustrate the force of the AR-15 and reveal its catastrophic effects.

...The records and interviews show in stark detail the unique mechanics that propel these bullets — and why they unleash such devastation in the body.

Whatever anyone thinks about our gun laws in #Canada. Did you know we’ve had 15 school shooting deaths? Not this month or this year, but total, in history. And absolutely no deaths in elementary schools. Why? Because gun laws save lives." https://t.co/LhfcUSCBcf

— 🇺🇸 OneOfTheSmiths 🇨🇦 Vaxxed & Boosted x5 👍 🍻 (@OneOfTheSmiths) March 28, 2023

This is the way the Han Dong smear ends: not with a bang, but a whimper

 

The accusations against Han Dong are falling apart. 

Watch everyone nodding along as the translation error story was reported on Sunday:

Boom. Rob Benzie’s comments on @ctvqp this morning regarding recent media coverage of the Chinese foreign interference story: pic.twitter.com/z2EGS17Vi4

— Greg MacEachern (@gmacofglebe) March 26, 2023

Scrimshaw notes that Global didn't even cover the story themselves in their weekend show:

So, Global didn’t repeat their accusation about Han Dong on The West Block this morning? They broke the political story of the week and didn’t cover it on their own show?

That’s very odd

— Evan Scrimshaw (@EScrimshaw) March 26, 2023

The tide is going back out. It's fucking hilarious to watch pundits, competing media and conservatives alike begin to back down on Han Dong because of reckless reporting by Global News.

— Raoul Duke's Salt Shaker (@RodKahx) March 26, 2023

Today's Random Stuff: Horses, Dogs. and Turning Points

First, here is an amazing photo "Slam on the Brakes" from The Atlantic. It is © Steven Zhou and was taken in Ontario in August 2022. It won the 2023 Sony World Photography Award, in the Motion category. The Atlantic writes "Barrel racing is a competition where cowgirls ride quickly around barrels; the one that does this in the shortest time wins. Every time a horse reaches a barrel it needs to brake sharply, turn around the barrel and then race to the next one." 

Next, some other animal crackers:

Pretty good frens pic.twitter.com/8hNw7nH0qj

— Madeyousmile (@Thund3rB0lt) March 18, 2023

Dalton, the storytelling dragon, has these puppies mesmerized
(jukin media) pic.twitter.com/GAtD30XyzR

— theworldofdog (@theworldofdog) March 24, 2023

Today's News: Dark Brandon comes to Ottawa

Dark Brandon came to Canada today. 

It was very funny, really -- you see, our Conservatives watch too much Fox News, so they were all thinking that the Biden they would meet in Ottawa today is the weak and stumbling Joe that Fox News has created. 

But what Canada met was the "Dark Brandon" Joe, the guy who won't put up with any right-wing malarkey, and who can dish it out faster than they can take it. 

He called Poilievre and the Conservatives out on their disrespect for women, and they couldn't do anything but take it. 

Loved POTUS for that. We have an abusive, disrespectful opposition led by Pierre Poilievre who is far too cozy with the alt-right here. His only expertise is as a finger-pointing blameologist who blames PM Trudeau for causing inflation, & a host of other idiocies. #cdnpoli https://t.co/LqCA4Matpw

— Elke Babiuk (@ElkeBabiuk) March 24, 2023

Today's News: the Han Dong accusations

Today's biggest story was the Han Dong accusations. This is what he said yesterday to Parliament:

Han Dong informs the House that he will now sit as an independent MP after Global News reported, citing unnamed sources, he secretly advised a Chinese diplomat in 2021 to delay freeing Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig. "What has been reported is false and I will defend myself." pic.twitter.com/kSX8rAbWCJ

— Power & Politics (@PnPCBC) March 23, 2023

Tonight, I see on Twitter this might all be just a stupid error in translation:

If this is true, and he told the Chinese consul to release the two Michaels immediately, and there was a mixup along the line, that would be unfortunate. I don't know if it is true.

— Stephen Maher (@stphnmaher) March 24, 2023

In other words some low level CSIS analyst read a poorly translated transcript and since nothing was done to arrest Dong, took it upon themselves to try and out him to media. I hope this bankrupts Global, there’s a reason Globe didn’t run the story.

— Eric O'Toole (@Eric_OTooleMP) March 24, 2023

Between the Globe not reporting the allegations, the PMO asking for the transcripts and deciding there’s no “actionable evidence”, this rumour, and Dong suing … this is a *disaster* for them

— Evan Scrimshaw (@EScrimshaw) March 24, 2023

This would also explain why it made no sense that releasing the Two Michaels would help the CPC, another part of Global’s story that makes no sense

— Evan Scrimshaw (@EScrimshaw) March 24, 2023

100%. The mistranslation explanation does really seem to make sense and fits much better with the overall story. #Handong #CDNpoli

— Matt Hopkins (@RealMattHopkins) March 24, 2023

Could it really be this simple? 

If so, then CSIS and Global News owe Canada an enormous apology. 

Twenty years ago

...Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity...

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I was appalled when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 -- they were without UN Security Council support, without Canada or Mexico or France or Germany or most of the other countries of the world, who refused to support so-called "preventive" war.

America had lost their minds after 9/11 and too many of them seemed to think invading Iraq was the only way to show the Middle East that America was really the boss of the world. 

A million people died because of that terrible decision. 

And the only ones who appear to be ashamed about it today are the people who said it was immoral and a mistake in the first place. 

Thank heavens for the accident of history that kept Canada out of it - luckily, Chretien was getting ready to retire so he no longer cared about the politics of America or whether Britain thought he was cowardly. Chretien knew that regime-change was not a legitimate reason to start a war, and he said so, and he wanted to prevent pointless sacrifice of Canadian lives. 

Canada has never really thanked him enough for doing that, not the way we should have.

20 years ago this week, Jean Chretien’s government boldly said NO to George W. Bush’s illegal war in Iraq.

Chrétien said NO amid very strong support for the war among the 🇨🇦 business community, media + much of the public in English Canada. Not to mention the Official Opposition… https://t.co/YknenRMVor

— Andrew Perez (He/Him) (@andrewaperez) March 20, 2023

Notwithstanding the leader of the opposition, Stephen Harper embarrassing himself and Canada by apologizing for our decision to stay out of Iraq, on Fox News.

— NS Dave (@dave1oakns) March 19, 2023

I recall that support fell from initial strong support (70/30) to roughly reverse when decision to not join was made. Retrospectively hugely the right call https://t.co/Wo8EBoTq8l

— Frank Graves (@VoiceOfFranky) March 19, 2023

Today's News: Saskatchewan has created another cat party

A new provincial political party recently formed here, calling themselves the Sask United Party, which intends to out-conservative the existing Saskatchewan Party. 

Basically, I think its just another Cat party trying to pretend to be mice (see above for a video about Tommy Douglas' "Mouseland" analogy)

If the anti-immigrant, anti-science right-wing Conservative option is central are they saying Moe is a leftist commie or something? https://t.co/PaTiQuNUAh pic.twitter.com/d1PZKCWuBC

— M 🇺🇦 (@habpipes) March 2, 2023

But, maybe rural places are this angry. And if SK United can win four or five seats, then they're real players. If it can't, it is a blip and will have no permanent presence.

— Charles Smith (@ProfSmithSask) March 3, 2023

Very funny that a conservative splinter party is calling themselves Sask United. Especially since the NDP has only really been successful there when there have been two centre-right parties splitting the vote.

Mouseland lives! https://t.co/VvkGzEK7I8

— Justin Leifso (@JustinLeifso) March 3, 2023

I also wonder if the Sask United Party is basically just another reflection of the urban-rural divide, which here in Saskatchewan has now become an abyss. Now, Saskatchewan is hardly Canada's urban hell-hole but even here, we get fear and resentment of our cities, as well as a certain amount of fetishization of rural life.

Today's News: Temper Tantrums

Here's how I see it: 

First of all, Canadian voters haven't turfed Trudeau in three elections and chances are they won't in the 2025 either. 

The opinion polls are back and forth a bit - and who knows now what might be an issue in BC and Quebec and the Maritimes in two years - but the Golden Horseshoe is basically still Liberal territory and likely to remain so.  The CPC and the small-c conservative media in Canada know this. 

So they thought maybe they could find some big scandal or controversy that would force Trudeau to resign. But its been seven years now and nothing has worked - not JWR and SNC-Lavalin, not the WE Charity, not the Convoy, not the Emergencies Act, not the Rouleau report. The smaller stuff they keep trashing at him is just silly (remember the Indian outfits? the family beach walk in Tofino? the blackface 20 years ago? the Star Wars socks?) 

So finally, they started thinking that maybe China China China could do it. 

But today they realized that ain't gonna happen. China China China is a problem for Elections Canada, CSIS, RCMP and Canadian political parties (both Liberal and Conservative) but the David Johnston report, whenever it comes out, likely won't tarnish Trudeau personally.

Cue today's temper tantrums. They really went crazy:

The former Governor General himself is now being accused of treason by journalists. My goodness. pic.twitter.com/13o10zFYs0

— Gerald Butts (@gmbutts) March 17, 2023

Today's News: David Johnston to the rescue

 

I do keep wondering what, exactly, this China scandal is all about:

Seriously. Watching journalists in Canada is like watching 7 year olds playing soccer. Just a gaggle of kids chasing the ball. No strategy or plan. Only focused on one ball while the world burns around them.

— Neil Before Zod™ (@WaytowichNeil) March 15, 2023

🧵

The most interesting thing about the China scandal that has Canadian media in a feeding frenzy is that we know exactly nothing about it. It's a scandal because they say it is, not because anything scandalous has been revealed.

My $0.02 about the media-driven "scandal". 1/ pic.twitter.com/0bJDVZSFmO

— Rambod Behboodi (@GenevaTradeLaw) March 4, 2023

Now former governor general David Johnston is going to investigate and that's good -- maybe he can tell the rest of us exactly what is going on here, and whether a public inquiry is really the only way to sort it out.

Former CSIS director Richard Fadden, who also served as national-security adviser to Mr. Trudeau and former PM Stephen Harper.... “I think [David Johnston] is probably the only person in 🇨🇦 that would add sufficient credibility to the special rapporteur process....” @globeandmail

— Judy Gombita (@jgombita) March 16, 2023

But I think Poilievre already realizes Johnston's appointment will move the story off the front pages and there aren't going to be any "gotcha" revelations about Trudeau. So now he's trying his very best to discredit Johnston - and the CPC Flying Monkeys are desperately pushing to kibosh the appointment quick. Or likely they think it would be just as useful to see if they can discredit in advance any Johnston recommendations against a public inquiry.

whatever one's opinion of David Johnston being named a Special Rapporteur, "Beijing-funded Trudeau foundation" is a crass, ignorant comment

or, as we like to say, just another tweet from Pierre Poilievre https://t.co/EsskLWHul7

— Steve Ricketts (@SteveRickettsSP) March 16, 2023