Friday, August 09, 2024

Did you know its International Cat Day?

Credit: Getty Images Copyright: Nico De Pasquale (Nico De Pasquale (Photographer)

August 8 is "International Cat Day" so let's go!
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Thursday, August 08, 2024

Today's News: Cue the Swiftboating


So at first glance, this story questioning Tim Walz's service record really does look innocuous -- another "just asking questions" article in the New York Times:
Post by @murshedzaheed
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But as Jamison Foser writes tonight, it isn't harmless at all -- Breaking: The New York Times helps JD Vance swiftboat Tim Walz:
...This is an extremely simple situation: JD Vance is lying about the military service of a fellow veteran for political gain. The story is extremely simple, and extremely important — and it is a story about JD Vance being a liar.
Journalists have a responsibility to tell that story, the story about JD Vance smearing a fellow veteran. Vance and Donald Trump want the story to be about a controversy over Walz’s military service. But that isn't the real story, because there is no controversy. There is the truth — Walz retired before his unit was called up — and there is JD Vance lying. Liars telling lies does not make a controversy; it’s just a guy lying.
Predictably, Vance and Trump are already getting a helping hand from the news media, which is privileging their lies.
...The first seven paragraphs of the New York Times article are devoted to recounting Vance’s false claims — without once even hinting at their falsity. The article portrays this as a problem for Walz instead of for Vance — and thus makes it so.
This is a classic example of privileging the lie, a phrase I developed in 2008 while at Media Matters for America to describe news reports that centers a false claim (rather than centering its falsity) and thus helps the person making the false claim spread their lie instead of holding them accountable for lying....
What Trump and Vance and the New York Times are doing is also a textbook example of “Swiftboating.” During the 2004 presidential campaign, Republicans — led by current Donald Trump advisor Chris LaCivita — smeared John Kerry over his service in Vietnam, where he served on Navy swift boats and was awarded three Purple Hearts.
What JD Vance is doing is as disgusting as politics gets. Privileging his lies, as The New York Times has done, is as disgusting as journalism gets ...
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Wednesday, August 07, 2024

Today's News: Laughing all the way



Saw some funny stuff today: And just to follow up on my last post:
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Tuesday, August 06, 2024

Today's News: RFK and the dead bear cub


This is even weirder than the dead brain worm story, and that's saying a lot. 
And yes, that's Roseanne Barr who he is talking to:
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Monday, August 05, 2024

Today's News: Poilievre's "Bot-gate" scandal


Hundreds of very excited twitter posts today from people from around the world talking about a recent Pierre Poilievre rally in Kirkland Lake Ontario. 
But they're all just fake "bots". 
They're not Canadians at all, they're not even real people -- its just a ridiculous grift to inflate Poilievre's support.
They even "braved the cold" to attend! Wonder what they thought about the black flies? And there's more... Canada should just point and laugh: Here's the reality: I'll bet Poilievre's staff will start claiming that all these people could have "participated" by Zoom, just like the Kamala virtual rallies going on.
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Sunday, August 04, 2024

Weekend funnies and animal crackers


Hope your mood is Quokka #7 at least.  And enjoy some of the other good stuff I have collected over the past few weeks.

First up, so to speak - the lighter side of the Olympics: And just by the way, Imane Khalif is a woman, not trans. 
And France should never have apologized for including trans-gender performers in the opening ceremony Last Supper parody, it just made the MAGA haters think they could boss everyone around. 

Moving on, it appears that Trump is still trying to figure out some way to avoid debating with Harris while somehow blaming her for it: Its becoming a meme too:
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Wednesday, July 31, 2024

Today's News: "Brace yourselves"


Americans are wondering how they will deal with a three-month presidential campaign -- of course, the rest of the world is saying "that long? Ours are just a few weeks!". 
Just this year, England and France have both campaigned and voted in the few months between the US primaries and Biden's withdrawal. 
But America is used to a more leisurely pace.
Here is Josh Marshall talking about the unprecedented dynamics of a 100-day US presdential campaign:
...something totally unheard of and unprecedented in modern American political history. American presidential campaigns last at least 18 months. In some ways they’re perpetual. But there’s nothing in recent American history to compare to what Kamala Harris is doing right now.
The Trump campaign is obviously furious about the switch. Vance called it a sucker punch. They essentially wasted their convention on the wrong candidate. You can understand why they’re mad.
But the key part that stands out to me is this: a huge amount of modern Republican campaigns are based on wearing down a Democratic politician over months and years in the right-wing echo chamber. We saw it with Clinton, Obama, Clinton, Biden, Kerry. It’s a well, well worn thing. But it takes time. There are seldom knock-out punches. It’s a slow osmotic process. And the critical part of it takes place at the nexus where what’s happening in the right wing echo chamber bleeds into and begins to shape mainstream media reporting.
Obviously we don’t know how this campaign is going to play out. Looks pretty good ten days in, but there’s ten times more days coming. But regardless of how it plays out, this blitz factor — something totally new and unexpected right as the true campaign starts — is clearly wreaking havoc not only with the Trump campaign but with the whole far-flung Republican political and media apparatus.
Obviously there was no planning any of this. It only becomes possible out of the ashes of an electoral disaster. But some portion of what we’re seeing now derives from the fact that this late switch simply breaks the structure of American presidential politics and has, at least for the moment, allowed Harris to begin the presidential sprint while her opponent’s campaign is still trying to make sense of what happened.
This seems prescient:
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Tuesday, July 30, 2024

Today's News: from Biden passing the torch, to Olympic success, to Weird Trump, to White Dudes for Harris



Moving on to the Olympics, we see Canada doing great today. 

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Thursday, July 25, 2024

Today's News: Terrible news that Jasper is on fire


Terrible news tonight from Jasper National Park - multiple buildings in the town of Jasper are burning.. 
We always loved visiting Jasper -- it was almost as scenic as Banff, but without the crowding and the touristy kitsch (or at least, not as much). 
It was a easier drive too, from Saskatoon, especially after most of it was twinned. 
Whenever we drove to Vancouver, we usually took the easier Edmonton route, with its long and lazy valleys instead of twisting through the Calgary to Kamloops route. 
I cannot imagine how frightening and terrible it would be to get told to evacuate at 10 pm, then drive all night to get to safety. 
Such outstanding courage those people are showing us all.
...Parks Canada says firefighters continue to battle to save as many structures as possible in the Jasper townsite.
“Today has been an exceptionally difficult day for Jasperites, incident personnel and everyone who loves Jasper,” said the agency.
Crews working to save homes, businesses and critical infrastructure will be supported by “many more” structural firefighters en route to the community.
...Jasper is under attack by fires from the north and south, and the town’s 5,000 residents -- along with 20,000 park visitors -- have already left.
The northern fire was spotted five kilometres from Jasper earlier Wednesday.
The southern fire had been reported eight kilometres distant from the town, but Katie Ellsworth, with Parks Canada, said strong wind gusts swooping in behind it sent it racing.
Everything that could go wrong earlier Wednesday did go wrong.
Fire perimeters changed minute by minute.
Ellsworth said bucketing efforts by helicopter failed.
Crews using heavy equipment to build fireguards couldn’t complete the work before having to pull back for safety.
Water bombers couldn’t help due to dangerous flying conditions.
A last-ditch effort to use controlled burns to reroute the fire to natural barriers like Highway 16 and the Athabasca River failed due to “unfavourable conditions.”
The hope was that up to 20 mm of rain, forecast to begin falling in the area later Wednesday night, would bring some relief.
Alberta Forestry Minister Todd Loewen has asked the Canadian Armed Forces for help.
"We are requesting firefighting resources, aerial support to move wildfire crews and equipment and more," Loewen wrote on the social media platform X.


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Monday, July 22, 2024

Farewell to Biden; Hello to Kamala

https://x.com/TerryMosher1/status/1815119625895747862

Biden was one of the best presidents America has had but I expect Kamala will be even better. 
Tonight, social media is full of great tweets and stories about Biden, about Kamala, about Democrats. And there was definitely a tone of relief tonight that things are settled.
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Friday, July 19, 2024

Today's update: That rascally Biden!


Today it seems people are realizing the Biden-Must-Go campaign could be retitled as "Elitist Dems and Fat Cats v. Biden" - yes, Biden stumbles over his words, but his ideas and goals are clear and admirable. 
AOC speaks: And Bernie: Both of them understand that unions and workers have never had as good a president as Biden: Amazing pushback from MAGA over this tweet: And this is also the truth:
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Today's News: Trump babbles while Biden burns


I didn't watch it - apparently a good decision - but here are some comments about the Trump speech at the Republican Convention last night:
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Sunday, July 14, 2024

Weekend Funny Stuff and Animal Crackers


We need a break before plunging into the fresh hell of next week. 

First, some funny stuff:
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Tuesday, July 09, 2024

Today's News: Save the Last Dance For Me

 
So some Democrats may still be flirting on the dance floor, but Biden is telling them all to save the last dance for him. 
Josh Marshall describes the media frenzy around Biden and whether he will withdraw from the nomination:
...For the second half of last week I was basically certain that Joe Biden would be forced to end his candidacy and that it was simply a matter of time before he did so. Then, starting Saturday, things seemed to shift. These things work in waves. For any politician the best way to avoid being forced to resign ...is simply not to resign. It’s one of those truisms that contains more depth and nuance than one at first realizes.
One of the reasons for that shift was simply that Biden was still there. He’s still running and still the nominee. We’re in the midst of a level of feeding frenzy I’ve only seen twice as a political observer — the first week of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in 1998 and the one that ended Al Franken’s career in the Senate in 2018. The Washington press corps and national political press overwhelmingly and vociferously want to force Biden out of the race. I don’t say that in the sense of bias, per se — it’s not even necessarily at the level of intentionality. It’s more at the level of crowd behavior. It’s just how these feeding frenzies work. What do foxes think they’re doing when they rip through a hen house? For the DC press, this is all mixed in with ego and a sense of vindication. But again, it’s just how feeding frenzies work. But at a certain point, the feeding frenzy has been churning for days and Biden’s still running and there’s some element of a wave cresting. Like, hey we’ve been telling you all the reasons why Biden has to withdraw from the race for days but he’s still running and okay, well, maybe not — or, like, we can’t keep up this 100 yard dash forever. It’s just a cresting pattern.
At the same time I think there were the first hints of a realization that this has been overwhelmingly a conversation among media and political elites without much focus or knowledge about anything average voters are thinking or doing....
As the days go by and as Biden holds fast, the tide is turning. 
At No More Mister Nice Blog, Steve M writes
...It's striking that his poll numbers have dropped only slightly since the debate -- he trailed Trump in FiveThirtyEight's poll average by 0.2 on debate day, and trails by 2.2 now. FiveThirtyEight's forecast has Biden winning in 49 simulations out of 100. And Morning Consult's polling shows Biden gaining ground in swing states.
...When people ask about Donald Trump's baffling popularity, one frequent answer is that voters look at him and think, "He fights." I wonder whether Biden's refusal to step aside is being seen by some Democratic voters as a "He fights" moment. That might explain the polls that show only slight slippage, or even an improvement, in Biden's standing.
I think this battle is effectively over. I just hope that Biden's renewed fighting spirit doesn't dissipate once his would-be dumpers have retreated. I hope he stays invigorated, and pivots to fighting Trump with the spirit he's showing in fighting his intraparty doubters.
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Wednesday, July 03, 2024

Today's News: Moving on from Biden?


As the days pass after Biden's disastrous debate, I'm reading more stories from people I respect, saying that Biden needs to withdraw from the presidential race. 
For a time after the debate, I dithered about this. But the problem as I see it now is this: Trump is a terrible person, and Biden is a great one. But Biden's awful debate performance demonstrated that he isn't able to rise to the occasion anymore, he has apparently lost the ability to lead, to be a president. Americans have never voted for a leader they consider weak, and the way things are going, Biden will not only lose himself, he will drag down the whole ticket with him: Then again..
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