Monday, September 02, 2024

Today's News: Paralympics pride; remarkable connections; funniest book Forward ever; and Animal crackers


I haven't been following the Paralympics as much as I should have, but here's some great news:
Here is a wonderful statement about the meaning of the Olympics and Paralympics:
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Today's News: International Overdose Awareness Day 2024

Saturday, Aug 31 was International Overdose Awareness Day and in Saskatoon it was marked at Prairie Harm Reduction through memorial and remembrance. 



The photos show artist Kamisha Alexson placing a star on the star blanket. Photos and story by Star Phoenix reporter Julia Peterson:
A bright red rose. A feather. A child’s hand outlined in blue. Dozens of names — full names, first names, nicknames, initials. Messages written on paper diamonds in careful script; in crayon scribbles:
“Forever in our hearts.” “#1 Dad.” “Brother.” “Love and miss you forever.”
Birthdays. Death days.
Laid out on purple canvas in front of Prairie Harm Reduction in Saskatoon, the community memorial star blanket filled up quickly, each diamond in the pattern paying tribute to a loved one who died from overdose.
When the International Overdose Awareness Day gathering began on Saturday morning, the plan had been to fill the canvas with 72 diamonds. Less than two hours in, organizers were quickly cutting their remaining blank tiles into quarters, so the memorial wouldn’t run out of space.
“It’s hard, as someone who has had some family history with addiction, to see so many names in such a short amount of time,” said lead artist Kamisha Alexson. “It’s eye-opening.
“But it’s empowering, too, to see how people honour those who have passed on: There’s no shame, no guilt, no anger or resentment. Just something beautiful.”...
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Sunday, September 01, 2024

Today's News: "But how is the chicken cooked?"

Sometimes I have thought that bloggers like me are too "down" on the media.
And then then I see how many in the American media persist in living in a myth world where they can pretend there is still a reasonable choice to make about whether Harris or Trump would be "better" for the country. Writer David Sedaris says this:


Some American media keep pretending Trump actually makes sense, and that the decision to vote for him or for Harris is just an ordinary choice between two credible candidates. 
But while Trump can charm people when he tries, basically he is dumb as fuck. 


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Saturday, August 31, 2024

Wrapping up the week: why Poilievre really wants an election; why Harris still needs to work really hard



Why Poilievre wants an early election: Too late! Looking to the United States, we see that Democrats still need to be the grownups while Republicans can still act like children Josh Marshall sums up The State Of The Race:
... in June and July, Joe Biden was looking at a map where the only clear road to victory was through the Blue Wall states, so plausible victory was holding the Blue Wall and winning with literally a single electoral vote. Harris now has multiple paths to victory. She can win in the Blue Wall states. She could win with a mix of Blue Wall or Southern Tier states. She could win them all. Simply put, she has options. She has to fight for every one of them. But she doesn’t have to win every one of them. And Donald Trump is fairly close to having to win every one of them.
Let’s remind ourselves that a two-to-four point lead for Harris isn’t necessarily a “lead.” It’s the range a Democrat needs to be in to overcome Republicans’ Electoral College advantage...
... Donald Trump has no better than a tie now in four or five states, all of which he needs to win: Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania. That’s not a good place to be. At the moment Harris is nominally ahead in all but one of those states.
...I like where Harris is at this point in the cycle. It’s infinitely better than where Biden was even though numerically speaking they’re not dramatically different. But this is going to be hard slog all the way to November 5th.
Finally, this --  off topic but beautiful:
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Friday, August 30, 2024

Today's News: Christ, What An Asshole!

Back in 2006, blogger Charles Lavoie did a post to assert that all New Yorker cartoons would still be just as funny with the caption "Christ, what an asshole" and everyone was surprised about how well that works. It works with most cartoons and it became a meme.

Two stories today in the "Christ, What An Asshole" news, and its not surprising they concern Pierre Poilievre and Donald Trump.
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I hope Singh is smart enough to realize that if he is ever elected PM, Poilievre will try to get rid of Pharmacare and Dental Care and Day Care -- it doesn't matter how many Canadians like them or need them, they are "Trudeau programs" and therefore Poilievre hates them. 
So the longer Singh waits to pull NDP support from the federal Liberals, and risk Poilievre getting elected as PM, then the longer these programs will have to consolidate and become integrated into Canadian consciousness.

Moving on to Trump's latest stumble, Arlington-Gate is entering Day 3 with no end in sight.
Josh Marshall describes Trump’s Arlington Cemetery Campaign Event:
... Three days ago, the Trump campaign held a campaign event at Arlington National Cemetery. The idea was to lay a wreath honoring the 13 members of the U.S. military who were killed during the evacuation of Kabul in 2021 and film a political ad. They would distribute the video and attack Vice President Harris and President Biden for not “showing up” for their campaign event, which they sought to portray was an established memorial. ...a brief NPR article, published a day later, which reported that cemetery staff had sought to prevent the campaign from violating the law by holding a political event on the cemetery grounds. The details were limited but it seemed a verbal altercation became violent and two Trump campaign staffers physically assaulted a cemetery employee. The impression I got from the article was that they likely shoved the woman to the ground. But the details were cryptic.
What wasn’t cryptic was the Trump campaign’s wildly over-the-top response. Campaign spokesman Stephen Cheung denied a physical altercation had taken place... He then proceeded to make a series of bizarre claims suggesting the attacked employee was actually some random person undergoing some sort of psychotic break. ... Later the campaign’s hyper-aggressive co-chair Chris LaCivita gave an even wilder comment to the Times, calling the assaulted cemetery employee “a despicable individual” and “a disgrace” who “does not deserve to represent the hallowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery.”
At a speech Wednesday, vice presidential candidate JD Vance doubled down on the campaign’s defense, seeming to imply that campaign staffers were right to assault the cemetery employee. He said VP Harris could “go to hell” because of the backlash Trump is facing....
By Wednesday night a host of other details emerged.
The cemetery employee, a woman, filed a report about the incident. But she later declined to press charges, fearing — according to military officials who spoke to The New York Times — that Trump supporters would try to retaliate against her. ...
Late this evening, the Daily Caller reported that Speaker Mike Johnson actually got involved to force cemetery officials to allow Trump to hold his campaign event on the grounds.
... Arlington cemetery officials could see this was a trainwreck-in-the-making from the start. And the Speaker of the House was brought in to overrule cemetery officials simply trying to enforce the prohibition against holding partisan political events on the cemetery grounds, especially in the area of recent burials...
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Wednesday, August 28, 2024

Today's News: Thinking positive thoughts about Trudeau


Last week, Ekos published the poll above - here is the discussion:
Conservative Party Sees Seven-Point Decline: The Harris Effect? Party still leads by 14 points, would likely win majority if election were held tomorrow
The Conservative Party has enjoyed a profound advantage in federal vote intention since Pierre Poilievre assumed leadership. Over the past year, this advantage has been in the high teens and reached 24 points in June. The stability and magnitude of this lead pointed to a pretty certain path to a commanding majority government. While the Conservative lead continues to be sizable, the past few weeks have seen the largest decline since Mr. Poilievre’s ascendance as leader. While the Conservative lead is still comfortable, the massive advantage of 24 points in June is now a more modest 14 points. The key movement has been a decline in Conservative support rather than a clear rise in another party....
... after a protracted period of holding a stranglehold on a majority outcome, the Conservative Party’s prospects appear less certain. The Conservatives are still in a majority position, but it is a far less commanding advantage than we saw only a month ago. ...
So things are a bit better for Trudeau, but it is still an enormous gap to try to overcome. 
The Liberals just wrapped up their caucus meeting in Halifax:

Some positive thoughts about Trudeau:
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Long Threads: Some things I didn't know


I suffer from"vellichor" myself!

X is slowing down but I still find some great "long threads" posts.

These comparison photos are fascinating:
Here's a "time capsule" post - some amazing facts and photos: Hilarious maps - I thought "the world according to fish" was particularly funny: Finally, a funny story:
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Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Today's News: Show Me The Money! Why Trump wasn't impeached in 2020

So Trump could well have been found guilty and impeached at his first impeachment trial, in February 2020. 
But the key people who could have testified against him -- John Bolton, Jim Mattis, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster -- all decided to shut up and let the nation suffer. 
They saved their juicy tales of treason and malfeasance for interviews with journalists or for their own books -- basically, they took the money. 
Yes, the House impeachment heard from Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman and Fiona Hill. Their testimony was devastating. 
But it wasn't enough to enrage the country - so in the end, the only Senate Republican who voted to impeach was Mitt Romney. 
Just six months later, Bolton confirmed in his book that Trump actually had tried to withhold military aid to Ukraine so they would investigate Joe and Hunter Biden.
Jim Mattis stayed quiet about how incompetent Trump was until he saw how Trump was mishandling the Floyd protests in June 2020.
In 2021, it was revealed that John Kelly had told reporter Michael Bender about Trump's Hitler envy, but nobody knew about it until the reporter's book was published in 2021. 
Now - four years later - we see H.R. McMaster also confirming Trump's incompetence in foreign policy and willingness to kowtow to Putin. 
I can hardly imagine how the world could have changed if they all had stepped up in December 2019 to tell the House impeachment what Trump had done. Their testimony would have been so devastating that I expect enough Republican Senators would then have voted with the Democratic Senators for impeachment on Feb. 5, 2020. 
And Mike Pence would have been president when COVID hit six weeks later. 
At least 1.1 million Americans died of COVID -- I wonder how many would have lived if the Orange Turd and his callow son-in-law had not still been in charge?

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Monday, August 26, 2024

Today's News: President of Joy


David Rothkopf writes Navigating Bullshitworld How Do We Keep the Fires of the DNC Burning When So Many Seek to Douse Them With Torrents of Crap?: 
As the peaks of last week’s Democratic National Convention recede into memory I feel they are also at risk of gradually being submerged by the ocean of bullshit that will immerse us from now through Election Day...The joy and the energy that was supplied by last week’s events was due in large part to the fact that the messages of the convention were so damn straightforward that even the nattering of commentators and the counter-programming of the opposition and the disinformation of our enemies and trolls and bots and army of idiots on social media could not obscure them or diminish their power.
Jeff Teidrich writes Kamala’s successful convention has broken the media’s brain boo fucking hoo, you sad losers and he has a message for the media whining that Kamala won't talk to them: 
 stop wasting Kamala’s time on bullshit, and maybe she’ll talk to you. 
Here is an excellent CNN article from a week ago, describing how Harris got her campaign underway so quickly and so well: Inside the fast-moving launch of Kamala Harris for president
Three weeks into her presidential run was the first time the Biden campaign’s pollsters — now hers — held a deep-dive call with Kamala Harris’ inner circle to discuss what she’s been saying on the stump.
Over the line came a lot of praise, but also some suggested tweaks. First, said veteran Democratic numbers man Geoff Garin, summarizing their analysis, stop saying, “We’re not going back.” It wasn’t focused enough on the future, he argued. Second, lay off all the “weird” talk — too negative.
Harris’ advisers listened. They considered the arguments. They decided to stick with what the crowds were chanting in the arenas.
When advisers who had been on the call briefed the vice president on the suggestions, according to CNN’s conversations with close to a dozen people involved with internal campaign decisions, she told them she wasn’t going to listen to the pollsters herself and would instead trust the instincts she had buried under self-doubt for so long.
Harris has shocked even people close to her with how she’s been coming across in the just four weeks since she became a presidential candidate. Many political obsessives who had largely written off the vice president can’t understand how a woman whose early struggles they still keenly remember is now projecting as succinct and punchy, comfortable onstage and in her own skin.
And Dems just wanna have fun --  we will, we will rock you!
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Sunday, August 25, 2024

Weekend funny stuff: from Escher to Hercules; from politics to CEOs; from ancient wonders to wonderful paintings; from funny maps to funny dogs; from dancing ostriches to Ted Lasso!

First, a glance at art:



Here's a short look at politics with some compare-and-contrast posts:
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Saturday, August 24, 2024

Today's News: RIP Expertise


I'm seeing a number of news stories lately about how expertise is being downgraded, and experts dismissed. Tom Nichols talks about all this in his book, The Death of Expertise:
But I think it is important to remember that "both sides" are not equally to blame for this expertise problem -- for the most part, it is Conservatives who are the most vigorous at disputing expert advice and denigrating expertise.
I guess they simply cannot accept that reality has a liberal bias!  
Recent examples?  First, the Ford government decision to close Safe Injection sites in Ontario -- they just cannot seem to wrap their tiny minds around the harm reduction approach to addiction. It's like they are still thinking Nancy Reagan's "just say no" is the only plan we need. And they are following along with Poilievre's "Liberal drug dens" smears too - another evidence-free component of our Conservative anti-harm reduction / pro-lockup doctrine:
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Friday, August 23, 2024

Today's News: Kamala Harris, the Serendipity President

As I watched Kamala Harris's great speech tonight, I pondered the serendipity of the moment, the incredible chain of accident and surprise and coincidence and luck that brought her to that stage:
First, in 2020 Biden had picked her for VP, so she achieved a national profile and, eventually, hired an excellent staff.
Then, in 2023, Biden decided to seek another term, so the Democratic primaries last spring were not contested by democrats with much more political credibility and experience -- I suspect dems like Pete, Whitmer, Newsom, Booker, Warnnock, Beto, and Kelly, even AOC, might well have beaten Harris in primary voting last spring; she wasn't recognized as much of a campaigner and anyway she would have been stuck in Washington for Senate votes.
Then, the Republicans were so successful with their "he's old" smear / whisper campaign -- too successful, because it doomed Biden's reelection chances.
Then, Biden did himself no favours either. He was either so pigheaded or so poorly advised that he stretched himself too thin over the last year - agreeing to the Hur interview last Oct 8, when it looked like the Middle East would go to war, and to the June debate with Trump, even though he was sick, and exhausted from two overseas trips,  So ultimately, by July, Biden was losing so badly that even a slam-bang press conference couldn't save him, even though millions watched. So fnally Pelosi and, I think, Obama were able to persuade him to withdraw.
And the last serendipitous event: when Biden called Harris that Sunday, she was ready. She had obviously prepared for it to happen, she had set up her team, decided on her plan, and jumped into it so quickly, making hundreds of phone calls that very day, lining up endorsements and taking advantage of Zoom organizing sessions, with such verve and panache that no one else could catch up. 
And in the weeks since, she hasn't made an error or a flub.
The result was this magnificent speech:
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Thursday, August 22, 2024

Today's News: "The audacity of our hope; the vitality of our vote."

 
Here is poet Amanda Gorman's new poem The Sacred Scene at the Democratic National Convention. 
The speeches at this convention have been extraordinary. 
David Rothkopf thinks we're seeing the beginning of a new era: When the Obamas are Just Your Warm-up Act How to Make a Political Tsunami Into an American Renaissance
...It’s not easy to be at the top and then hand the stage to the next great star. Much has been written about Joe Biden’s selflessness in this regard. But Hillary Clinton and the Obamas offered further examples that all those at the pinnacle of influence in the Democratic Party—every single one of them—are throwing their best efforts and energies into the support of the Harris-Walz ticket.
What we are seeing is an unprecedented display of spontaneous, heartfelt party unity...
...all the quibbling I hear among some in DC about whether she will be more of an Obama or Biden disciple is just so much dirty bathwater. Kamala Harris will not be and should not be Obama 2.0 or Biden 2.0. She will be and must be Harris 1.0, something entirely new, elevated and informed by what has come before but not limited by it, unwilling to repeat past mistakes or to let nostalgia lead her to be blind to those errors.
And so the flow of this convention is getting it exactly right. Its narrative arc is that of the Democratic Pary as it has entered the current era. And it will culminate in the nomination of someone who owes much to the leaders who came before her on the stage but who is very different, very much her own person, very much the reason that this convention and the campaign of the past four years feel unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.
American media don't know what to make of it - they have been reduced to inane "fact-checks" about whether Trump really exchanced love letters with dictators (he did) and whether maybe we should all be offended at Obama's dick joke (we won't be). 
If you've been watching the Democratic National Convention, the story of the week has been the almost unnerving positivity, unity, and competence of the Democratic Party as they make the formal handoff ending President Joe Biden's reelection and nominating Vice President Kamala Harris to be the new torchbearer. 
If you've been reading about the Democratic National Convention, however, your most likely takeaway from this week's events is that it has somehow managed to break our big-league media "fact checkers" completely.
Because much of the "fact checking" that the press has scrambled to do, even as they ignore the ridiculous lie-a-paloozas that take place whenever Donald Trump opens his mouth, or surrogates of Donald Trump open their mouths, or partisan ultra hacks in Congress pipe up with new theories of "okay okay, our Joe Biden investigations were all duds but what if Governor Tim Walz something something communist spy," has been ... dishonest. Just straight-up dishonest.

You know, Poilievre must be terrified:

The Democrats nominated Ted Lasso for VP.

— Gerald Butts (@gmbutts.bsky.social) Aug 21, 2024 at 11:42 PM
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Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Today's News: Obama Nailed it!


Obama gave a great speech tonight at the DNC, but there was one "short" part in particular that will never be forgotten:
And today Trump tried to counter the DNC by holding his own little event, at a Michigan town known for its KKK history.
I have never before heard the term "sane-washing" but it is exactly what the media find themselves trying to do now when they report on Trump's babble: UPDATE: I just saw this, too:
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Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Today's News: "When we fight, we win"

 

The Democratic Convention speeches tonight were outstanding, but none so much as Biden's - Dark Brandon was in the house tonight, and unexpectedly, I found myself crying at the end - "America, I gave my best to you."

But already, America is moving on -- David Rothkopf writes that This is the first Convention of the Post-Trump era:
...the big difference between the Biden Era and the Harris Era to come is that the Biden Era took place in a moment in our history when the specter of Trump and MAGA and the end of democracy and a national movement founded in hate and division was always near.... part of the genius of Harris’ approach to this campaign 2024 is that she has chosen to turn the page, to look to the future rather than to respond to Trump. While her opponent in this election is Trump and MAGA, she is running this campaign as the first post-Trump, post-MAGA campaign almost a decade.
And this is the first post-Trump convention in that period. Old, tired, devoid of ideas, burdened by his horrific record and his many crimes, Trump is faint orange shadow of his former self. There is no doubt he must be stopped. But it is clear that the Vice President and the Governor of Minnesota understand that the way to stop him is to deny him the chance to set the terms of the election, to stop letting outrage at his antics and more grave threats be the core Democratic message and to say, “Enough. We will lead. We will set the terms. This is between us and the American people. We will not let extremists hijack our elections or threaten our system any longer. We will win by tapping into the idea of America that is shared by the vast majority of Americans. We will win by charting our own course.”
It is satisfying to see a candidate who you believe in be celebrated. But I think it will be hard for anyone who is under say 40 or so to understand how deeply gratifying and reassuring it is to see the hopes and dreams you had for the future seemingly be restored, to see a reality you had only imagined come into focus, to be within reach.
The new Democratic "Freedom" ad speaks to this too - "when we fight, we win": Here is AOC's speech, who I am convinced will be the Democratic presidential nominee for 2040 (after two terms each for Harris and for Walz, AOC will still only be 52): America is singing tonight:

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