Thursday, June 15, 2023

Laughing at Trump



So we were told all day last weekend that there would be riots in Miami when Trump was arraigned and tens of thousands of people would be showing up to support him and there were buses coming from here and there and it would be another Jan 6. 
Then on Tuesday: Pffft! 
 Dozens of reporters arrived at dawn to find only tens of Trump supporter nutcases, and that was it. 
But I got the impression that the news networks were devastated -- their "all Trump all day" news model is wearing pretty thin, and they couldn't talk about the small crowd at all
On his substack, Parker Molloy writes They Miss Trump so Much and Will Do Anything to Get Him Back 
The people who showed up outside the Miami courthouse seemed to be the usual bunch of weirdos, peddlers of goofy wares, and, of course, the former cult member who always wears a “Blacks For Trump” shirt at Trump events. 
There were, at most, a few hundred people there. Far fewer than the thousands that had been anticipated. 
What you need to know: mainstream media outlets like the New York Times desperately want Trump back in office, even if they sometimes pretend they don’t.
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Monday, June 12, 2023

So what did David Johnston actually say?


We're watching history being rewritten in real time. 
The discredited election interference allegations are now supposedly "credible" and the Johnston report that proved they were exaggerations or lies is now "controversial"
Its an attempt to smear Trudeau and the Liberals -- and it just infuriates me that Canadians are now being told to believe that our last two elections were tainted or questionable, and that the Liberals needed help from the Chinese to win. 
Canada wanted minority Liberal governments in 2019 and in 2021 and that's exactly what we got.
The smear started with Polievere's Friday night tweet:
And this weekend we saw media starting to pick up the "credible allegations" that China helped elect the Liberals: Finally, here's Fife calling the Johnston report "controversial": David Johnston spent the last three months looking into exactly these allegations of foreign interference, and he produced a 60-page report which found, well, nothing - NOTHING! 
A nothing-burger. Zip-patootie. Smoke without fire. All hat, no cattle.
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Saturday, June 10, 2023

Be Careful What You Wish For

So Canada's foreign interference rapporteur David Johnston has left the building: Dale Smith has an excellent column Exit David Johnston about the resignation, and what might happen next:
None of this solves the underlying problem that a public inquiry is not magic. 
Everyone demanding one seems to think it can be wrapped up in the space of a few months, and that can be broad enough in scope to fully understand how deep Chinese infiltration goes into our country, while also providing concrete recommendations for protecting the next election. That’s not going to happen in a few months—that kind of scoping takes years, and is not going to get to the fundamental issue here, which is that this is ultimately a process story about the machinery of government, dealing with classified information, and that a public inquiry can’t hear most of it. 
That is, if they can find someone to head it who meets everyone’s satisfaction and who is willing to put themselves through the character assassination that will follow.
Once again -- as it was with SNC Lavelin, JWR, WE -- the ultimate goal was always to find something that would force Trudeau to resign in disgrace. So now the parliamentarians who spent the last six months trashing Johnston are perishing the thought that they ever intended to tarnish HIS reputation:
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"The Godfather, if it was re-enacted by a five-year-old"

How it started: How it's going: 


Here is the link for the indictment and here is an excellent article from the Lawfare blog about what it means- United States of America v. Donald J. Trump and Waltine Nauta. 
TL;DR? Here's The Business Insider summary - Trump Used Bumbling "Godfather"-Like Tactics To Hide Docs From FBI:
...The Justice Department's indictment against the former president depicts blundering, incompetent attempts to cover up clear violations of the Espionage Act, as well as obstructing justice by "suggesting that his attorney hide or destroy documents," along with other alleged crimes.
To veteran national security lawyer Kel McClanahan, it brought to mind "the Godfather — if it was reenacted by a five-year-old."
"I found it hilarious that some of his most incriminating things were recorded by his lawyers," McClanahan told Insider. "Beautiful."
..."Everything in here was designed to craft the narrative that this is a kingpin who knowingly broke the law, endangered national security, endangered nuclear weapon security, endangered other countries' national security — and his faithful butler carried this all out for him and is going to go down with him because he refused to come clean about his boss's criminal dealings," McClanahan said. "You can't write this in a plot of a procedural."
Trump could have easily avoided criminal charges by simply handing over the documents in the first place, Jon Sale, a former federal prosecutor, told Insider.
If you're wondering about what those confidential documents are, Matt Tait is investigating exactly this on his substack What Are The Classified Documents?
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Thursday, June 08, 2023

Wild (fires) in the Streets (of New York)


In Canada, the weather isn't news unless it happens in Toronto. 
In the United States, the weather isn't news unless it happens in New York.
Here's a roundup of tweets:
 
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Wednesday, June 07, 2023

Today's News: Fighting Back


I am seeing some positive signs that people are mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore. Specifically, I mean that people are realizing that we cannot continue to politely tolerate anti-gay anti-trans bashing while we wait for conservatives to come to their senses. 
Nope, its time to fight back. 
Click here for the Pride Defense Guide and a two-page Pride Defense Handout:
Pride defence is the act of going to any Pride event to protect the 2SLGBTQ+community from far-right activists who show up.
Pride Defenders are the brave people who show up to counter the far-right, using many different tactics. Some have used spectacle and created a party-like atmosphere with dancing and music to keep the far-right out, while others have blocked them from accessing events using their bodies.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s better to take one action than freeze up because doing everything feels impossible. With that in mind, we’ve organized this guide into three parts—Before Pride, During Pride, and After Pride—and within each section, we’ve highlighted the one or two points we would suggest prioritizing. We recognize not everyone will be able to participate in the on-the-ground action on the day of the event, so we have taken care to include points that folks can participate in from home.
While this guide specifically refers to Pride events and defences, the information can be used to prepare you for many kinds of defences or counters against the far-right.
The guide is just in time, because violence and right-wing rage appear to be increasing:
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Monday, June 05, 2023

Laugh of the day: It's beginning to look a lot like Trump-mas!


Today I just can't stop myself from hoping to see Christmas In June this year - apparently Trump's attorneys met the Justice department this morning and now Trump is hysterical.
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Today's random stuff: from Pride to politics to happy dogs

First up, a few tweets about Saskatoon Pride!
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Friday, June 02, 2023

Today's News: Throwing mud


I think Poilievre and the CPC brain trust have realized that they're not going to get Trudeau to resign over ancient CSIS briefings about Chinese political donations.
So now the short-pants boys in the Leader of the Opposition office have had to come up with other ridiculous smear attempts against Trudeau. 
Whether or not Poilievre ever gets one of these anti-Trudeau smears to land, he is rapidly convincing Canadians that PP himself is not fit to be a prime minister - temperamental, hysterical, judgemental.
 
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Thursday, June 01, 2023

Ted Lasso: three perfect seasons

We LOVED Ted Lasso - its the reason we subscribed to Apple+. 
Luckily my sister has been staying with us for a few days so we binge-watched all three seasons of Ted Lasso while waiting for the final episode and I realized again what a truly great show it was.
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Wednesday, May 31, 2023

Update: "We all belong" is the message that Saskatoon Catholic Schools just don't get

Following up on my Saturday post, here's the latest news. 
I wonder if Saskatoon Catholic School administration is now beginning to understand the difficult situation they have created for their teachers and their students? 
The "vandalism" didn't seem particularly vicious, really:
The front windows were splattered with fluorescent paint and butterfly, unicorn and flower stickers, and paper hearts. The sidewalk in front of the office had a rainbow and messages like "we all belong" and "it's queer here" scrawled with chalk.
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Saturday, May 27, 2023

Today's News: Rainbows and Drag Queens and Saskatoon Catholic Schools

 
I'm pretty sure it was the reference to "Drag Queens Story Hour" that freaked out the Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools administration this week. But they'll never admit now that they flipped out due to prejudice and ignorance. 
The documentary I posted above explains Drag Queen story hour at libraries and how much children and families enjoy and appreciate them. It also covers how some right-wingers feel hostile or threatened by drag queens and try to sexualize what is actually a performance art.
Unfortunately, I doubt anyone at the Saskatoon Catholic school administration ever watched this documentary before they started this week's controversy -- they just jumped to ignorant conclusions about drag queens, and uproar ensued. 
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Friday, May 26, 2023

Some comments on the passing scene


Saw some good comments today on various things - here they are: 

 First, this is absolutely true: The Trudeau government may be the Rodney Dangerfield of governments - they don't get no respect! - but they keep on keeping on. And people appreciate it, too: The National Post writes:
Trudeau has a 40 per cent approval rating against 55 per cent who disapprove. The pollster noted in a recent analysis that this is slightly better than his predecessor Stephen Harper, who hit his own eight-year mark at an approval to disapproval rate of 36 to 58.
And it’s way better than Brian Mulroney, whose political career was on the edge of collapse after eight years; he had a near-universal disapproval rating of 83 per cent.
Trudeau is even polling better than his father. In 1976, on the eighth anniversary of Pierre Trudeau’s swearing-in, Angus Reid Institute numbers show that nearly twice as many Canadians disliked him as liked him; approval was 32 per cent against a disapproval rate of 57.
...In the winter of 2001, an incredible 54 per cent of Canadians approved of Chrétien’s job as prime minister, against 42 per cent who didn’t.
Hmmm....I wonder what was going on in the winter of 2001? Oh, yeah...Canada went to war, which is a time when people always rally round the flag. The Post grudginly reminds us:
At the time, Chrétien was overseeing the entry of Canadian troops into Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. His government had also just finished bringing Canada back from the brink of sovereign debt collapse.
So, actually, that National Post story could have read: "Trudeau is the most popular prime minister for the last half=century, except for when the country went to war". Here are the net approval figures:
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Wednesday, May 24, 2023

Quote of the Day

Just for fun, I have now added "quote of the day" to the right sidebar now. 
And thanks to Owen Gray's Northern Reflections, the excellent blog where I first saw this plug-in.
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Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth!


So David Johnston has released his initial report to say a "public inquiry" into China China China would be neither public nor informative:
My mandate for my first report is to determine whether any further public process is required. My short answer is yes. I plan to hold a series of public hearings with Canadians (particularly from affected communities), government officials (including retired officials), knowledgeable experts, and other interested parties to discuss foreign interference, its effects on diaspora communities, and policy and governance improvements that could be made to improve the government’s response to it. I hope and believe that these public hearings will continue to shine a spotlight on the problem of foreign interference, provide public education about the threat of foreign interference, and provide a better foundation of information which I can use to make policy and governance recommendations for improvement. I also hope these hearings will accelerate government policy development to address foreign interference, stressing both the importance and urgency of action.
These hearings will not focus on “who knew what and what did they do about it.” I have examined these issues, drawn conclusions, and provided as much information as possible to the public, as well as in a confidential annex to be viewed by the Prime Minister and members of Cabinet (as well as officials or Opposition Leaders with the requisite security clearance). I also recommend the Prime Minister refer my report, including the confidential annex, to the chairs of NSICOP and NSIRA so those bodies can review my conclusions and advise the Prime Minister, Parliament and the public if they disagree.
I carefully considered whether an inquiry under the Inquiries Act could help enhance public trust in our electoral process, over and above the work I have done. When I was first appointed, my preliminary view was that I was very likely to recommend a Public Inquiry. But my conclusion is that, in light of the material and information that would lie at the heart of any inquiry, it could not be done in public. Rather, a “public inquiry” would necessarily be done in private and largely replicate the process I have undergone, and not advance the goals of transparency or trust any further than I have taken them and raise expectations that will ultimately be disappointed.
Sounds pretty good, really. But cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth today as Ottawa reporters will be denied stories and commentary until Johnston's public hearings begin this fall.
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