Some days, we just need to laugh...

How funny people can be about politics, even when things are just so grim!

First, isn't this good news!

And isn't this the way we all feel now: 

Moving on:

Can’t spell tariffs without FFS.

— Jen The Feisty Librarian (@Feisty_Waters) February 12, 2025

Ok that made me laugh

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— Kara Swisher (@karaswisher.bsky.social) February 18, 2025 at 8:03 PM

"No Kings Day" - A day of protest against Trump and Musk

America won't go down without a fight. 

There were massive protests across the US on Monday, with the rallying cry "No Kings!" -- that precisely expressed the new American message to Trump and Musk. 

Here are some of the best signs - and I also appreciated how they were all handmade - no slick generic "protest" signs here, just a profoundly personal outrage:

 

Morgan Stephens / Daily Kos 

Protests ramp up across the country as rage builds against Trump and Musk 

...The demonstrations, called “No Kings on Presidents Day” or “No Kings Day,” are led by 50501, an online grassroots activist group that started on Reddit. The group initially stood for “50 protests, 50 states, one day,” but it has morphed into “50 protests, 50 states, one movement.” 

 The No Kings Day protest was the group's second wave of anti-Trump and Musk demonstrations. The first nationwide protests took place on Feb. 5 across state capitols. The movement focused on the White House’s dismantling of government agencies and threatened prosecution for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. It explicitly targets Musk’s hostile takeover of sensitive personal data in the U.S. government. 

 This time, 50501 partnered with Political Revolution to list nearly 80 events on its website. This allowed users to find a protest happening near them to attend. The group is a “leaderless” movement, which encourages others to create their own activist groups in their circles. According to a press release, 50501 states that the coalition was created to demand “justice,” “transparency,” and “accountability” to “uphold the Constitution” and end Trump and Musk’s “executive overreach.” 

.... This comes as another group of protesters targeted Tesla dealerships over the weekend. Musk’s Tesla sales have been in an unprecedented decline since he got on the right-wing political scene in support of MAGA. ... 

Good! Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy. 

Taking a step back

So now, in this Year of Our Lord 2025, let's look at where are we at.

In Canada, by mid-March, we will have a new federal Liberal leader - I hope it will be Mark Carney - who will immediately need to deal with Trump attempting to crush us with tariffs. The new PM will be implementing tit-for-tat tariffs against America, and likely need to call a new session of Parliament to pass a package of CERB-type support programs for damaged industries across the country. At some time this spring -- later in March, maybe, or in April, or maybe even early June, Carney will call a federal election. And I hope the Liberals will win again, because if they don't Canada will be taking a giant step backwards.

In the United States, they already took their giant step backwards. By mid-March, they will be experiending a profound buyers remorse -- costs for food and gas and home insurance will skyrocket, and the government they took for granted will no longer be able to respond to natural disasters, airplane crashes, hospital closures, epidemics, and all the other things that go wrong for a nation of 300+ million people -- hell, they won't even be able to do ordinary stuff like manage the campgrounds in their National Parks! -- and all the while, Musk and his short-pants boys will gleefully continue to rampage around breaking things they don't understand and causing havoc and misery to public servants who don't deserve it. Not to mention the spreading chaos this summer as crops are unharvested, meat plants unstaffed, facilities uncleaned, restaurants close, and all the other jobs done by undocumented immigrants are abandoned.

In Europe, by mid-March, the Russia-Ukraine war will still be going on, and likewise, in the Middle East, by mid-March, the Hamas-Israel war will still be going on too. While Trump and Rubio and Vance and their ignorant crew of "special advisors" and "special envoys" boast about how they are going to fix everything any minute now, as they continue to diss and insult their friends and allies while they scurry around holding summits with every dictator they can find, the more tin-pot the better. Overall, 2025 is not going to be a productive year, though it may be memorable.

If the world was experiencing an overall "anti-incumbent" spasm in 2024, when so many countries were voting against their existing progressive governments, I expect we can conclude that impulse will definitely be over in 2025 -- the horrors of what I call "Trump 2: The Revenge Tour" will demonstrate to voters around the world why they should never never absolutely never even consider letting their own far-right-wing nut jobs get power.

Weekend funny stuff: The ridiculous weather: Our ridiculous politics; and Animal Crackers

Our weather here on the Prairies has been generally awful this winter -- cold cold and more cold, week after week since November.

Well, its going to be a little more springlike next week, apparently.

Next up -- politics!

It sounds like our premiers just made themselves look ridiculous in their much-publicized visit to Washington:

Dale Smith / Routine Proceedings

Roundup: Paying $85,000 for the privilege of being humiliated

As if that “big” meeting the premiers had with those mid-level White House officials who ended up trolling and humiliating them couldn’t get any worse, well, it did. It turns out, they paid a lobbyist connected with Don Jr. $85,000 to arrange said meeting, where they didn’t get properly briefed, and froze out the Canadian ambassador (who had a meeting in the White House with actual senior officials earlier that day) ...

I’m not sure that I can stress this enough—premiers have absolutely no business trying to conduct foreign negotiations. The federal government not only has been handling the situation, but they have told the premiers not to constantly react to everything coming from the Trump administration because it’s chaotic and incoherent, and then they went and tried to get their own meetings? ...

I’m also going to point a finger at the media for emboldening these premiers because they keep saying things like “there’s a vacuum of leadership” at the federal level and so on, which is not the case. Trudeau is still on the job, even if he’s on his way out. Ministers are still doing their jobs. We have an ambassador in Washington doing her job. They have explicitly told the media that they are not going to react to everything for very good reason. There is no actual need for the premiers to step in and start freelancing. Doug Ford’s “Captain Canada” shtick was him positioning himself before an election, and thanks to uncritical media coverage, waaaaaaaay too many people fell for it. But the media needs people to light their hair on fire at every utterance, and the premiers have been only too happy to step in and fill that role...

Canada's National Treasures: Elizabeth May - Craig Baird - Gurdeep Pandher - Wab Kineau, P.J. Akeeagok and R.J. Simpson - Canadian Hockey Fans. And Moose Art

Just a post to highlight some of our most impressive Canadians in these times. 

First, Elizabeth May is a national treasure:

Elizabeth May: "This is what you get: free health care – universal free health care....Those gun laws that your Congress is too afraid to pass because of the national gun lobby. We already got our strict gun laws." pic.twitter.com/f6edx09Ec9

— PoliticsVideoChannel (@politvidchannel) February 13, 2025

Historian Craig Baird is doing outstanding work:

I'm sharing an image a day to celebrate the vibrant and unique culture and history of Canada.
Today, it is acclaimed Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis in her Nova Scotia home in 1965. #ProudlyCanadian

📸Bob Brooks pic.twitter.com/XSkrjgxRxu

— Craig Baird - Canadian History Ehx (@CraigBaird) February 14, 2025

Yes, Carney actually did save us in 2008

The Cons are trying to re-litigate and downplay Mark Carney's role in protecting Canada from the world financial melt-down in 2008, and Scrimshaw is having none of it:

Mark Carney was an “invaluable support” to Jim Flaherty, who praised him relentlessly at their joint press conference to announce Mark’s move in 2012

This is crass bullshit https://t.co/QhL31yYfPX

— Evan Scrimshaw (@EScrimshaw) February 12, 2025

Things I learned today: Canada is really pissed; the "White Horse Prophecy"; "Leprechaun economics". And an excellent rant!

Doom-scrolling through social media today, I learned some things:

First, its always better to be pissed off than pissed on!

This is what is happening across all of Canada right now!
🇨🇦😊 pic.twitter.com/VgtW7rJvVU

— JustMePam (@PamelaApostolo1) February 12, 2025

JOIN CANADA

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— Brittlestar (@brittlestar.com) February 10, 2025 at 2:21 PM

Hell yah Canada.

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— Daniel Miller (@danielmilleresq.bsky.social) February 12, 2025 at 7:12 PM

The internet brightens the day, every day.
pic.twitter.com/TKwcb8pRya

— Beefeater (@Beefeater_Fella) February 11, 2025

Canada‘s biggest aluminum-producing province with a surprising threat to the U.S.: You want to tariff us? Okay. Maybe we’ll add to it with a surtax. And sell that aluminum elsewhere. And you’ll see who needs whom. https://t.co/zTAqJ2CvQr

— Alexander Panetta (@Alex_Panetta) February 13, 2025

That sound you hear is Canada cutting off intelligence sharing with The US. https://t.co/Ik5mIS6Jlc

— Dean Blundell🇨🇦 (@ItsDeanBlundell) February 12, 2025

Bending the knee

Media organizations in the US are expected to bend the knee now:

There is going to come a time in the very near future where the only way to resolve this is for every non-MAGA media company to band together and simply refuse to walk into the presser or attend the event. Because he wants the coverage more than anything else. Divided you fall.

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— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 10:05 PM

I call out mainstream media a lot, as an opinion writer who’s watched them bow to the demands of the Right and abandon their duty to truth and pluralism. But it was always just a half step toward the goal of replacing them with actual propaganda organs whose only job is amplifying the MAGA agenda.

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— Jeff Yang (@originalsp.in) February 8, 2025 at 3:08 PM

Major media companies are reversing their longstanding stance against settling defamation claims, instead paying Trump large sums to resolve baseless lawsuits—raising alarms about press freedom. @jenrubin.bsky.social explains.

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— The Contrarian (@contrariannews.org) February 4, 2025 at 9:23 AM

The money-grubbing pettiness is the point, I guess:

This sentence from @davidfrum captures perfectly why it’s so difficult to write about almost anything related to Trump:
“The situation was simultaneously too stupid for serious journalism and too shameful for wisecracks.”

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 7, 2025

Our Tangled Border War -- comments by Charlie Angus, Wesley Wark, Dan Gardner, Paul Krugman. And new tariffs!

To illustrate this post, here is an artwork called Non-Sign II, which was built at the Peace Arch border crossing in 2010 - I think that messy tangled black border framing an empty centre is symbolic of our Canada-US border war today.

Here are some useful observations and comments:

    

Charlie Angus / The Resistance

The Power of the Boycott

Canadians Tell Trump To Stuff It

...As a tool of resistance, the boycott has a very long tradition. What makes the Canada 2025 boycott unique is that no one organized it. There are no leaders. There is no strategic team looking to use it as a negotiating tool. This resistance campaign has sprung from the determination of ordinary people to resist tyranny.

The boycott of products, alcohol, and vacation destinations is getting stronger all the time.

...Guys like Trump believe that intimidation and threats are the way of the world. It is the ideology of this new age of gangsterism. But what makes the power of the Canadian boycott unbeatable is that the more Trump threatens, the more people dig in. And it is starting to cause serious economic pain.

As I have said before, the MAGA crowd might love chaos, but capitalism doesn’t.

Once the impacts of the bourbon boycott, the grocery store actions and the cancelled travel bookings begin to pile up, you are going to see a lot of American businesses calling out the predator-in-chief.

As for Canada? Keep the boycott going. We will last one day longer and be one day stronger than the creeper in Washington.

Wesley Wark’s National Security and Intelligence Newsletter

You Got a Friend in Me

Or, the US National Security Adviser knows Canada like the back of his…?

...It now turns out that [National Security Adviser Republican congressman] Mike Waltz is an expert on Canadian public attitudes. He appeared on the US NBC News’ program, “Meet the Press,” on February 9, was asked about Trump’s annexationist remarks about Canada, and pressed about Prime Minister Trudeau’s comments at the recent business leaders’ conclave in Toronto. Waltz was reassuring, sort of —no plans for a military invasion of Canada. But then he went on to reveal his fulsome knowledge of Canada, saying he thinks that “the Canadian people, many of them, would love to join the United States.” This is clearly an evidence-free assertion, reportedly based on some random discussions with Canadian snowbirds in Florida (a flock that should rapidly thin itself, or maybe be asked rude questions by CBSA border officials on their post-winter return), or perhaps hangers on at Mar-a-Lago (you know who you are, Kevin).

OK, we can laugh at nutty comments like this, and no doubt will need to get used to them. But the less reassuring aspect of Waltz’s Trump-mouthpiece remarks was his note about the reassertion of “American leadership” in the Western hemisphere. He told the NBC

“that’s what we’re talking about, from Greenland, to Arctic security to the Panama canal coming back under the United States.”

...Canada will have to vigorously resist, at every turn, any such exercise of American “leadership,” especially in the Arctic.... You can’t play Canadian nice with these guys.

Weekend funny stuff: new maps & cartoons & football plays & funny posts & animal crackers, plus Mark Twain at the end

After this week, we need a little break:

First, some new maps for Canada to enjoy:

A comment on DEI:

Some comments on our times:

I don't plan on watching the Super Bowl - except maybe to enjoy the whole stadium booing Trump! - but here's a good football post:

View on Threads

Today's News: America is shooting the messenger

Coming soon to a university hospital in America:  

"Maybe us barbers have been wrong all these years to rely on ideas which have failed us. Maybe we should study the human body intently and make our observations on fact, not superstition. Perhaps this scientific method could extend to other disciplines, such as architecture, engineering, navigation. We may discover a bright new age... a Renaissance, if you will.

...NAAAH!"

I guess the Trump administration basically doesn't want to get any bad news from science ever again -- like Covid, like bird flu, like measles outbreaks, like climate change, like racism and sexism and gender roles -- so they've decided not to finance uncomfortable scientific research anymore. 

Easy peasy!

When Scientific American endorsed Harris, many scientists and science-friendly people were supportive and grateful, but some said: stick to science, science isn’t political, etc. But reality-denying right-wing fanatics will absolutely come for the scientists www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025...

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— Laura Helmuth (@laurahelmuth.bsky.social) February 7, 2025 at 1:47 PM

Here is a gift link to that Washington Post article

🚨THEY’RE CUTTING BILLIONS IN SCIENCE & DISEASE FUNDING🚨 “I think it’s going to destroy research universities in the short term, and I don’t know after that,” “dismantle the biomedical research system, stifle the development of new cures for disease, and rip treatments away from patients in need.”

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— Ben Ewen-Campen (@benforward3.bsky.social) February 7, 2025 at 9:00 PM

The proposed cuts to the US National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, and NOAA would decimate American science. Perhaps naturally, a “post truth” movement, powered by bullshit, is going to be “post science” as well.

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— Kate Starbird (@katestarbird.bsky.social) February 7, 2025 at 8:19 AM

This is terrible news for the United States -- it will be a generational loss of scientists, researchers, writers, graduate students, post-docs, lab techs, research administrators and librarians.

What a week! "Imagine watching a documentary reenacting the burning of the Library of Alexandria set to the soundtrack of Yakety Sax"

 

Well, this has been a shit show of a week, eh:

attempting to describe the vibes of the moment. have yet to do better than: "imagine watching a documentary reenacting the burning of the Library of Alexandria set to the soundtrack of 'Yakety Sax'"

— Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social) February 5, 2025 at 9:59 PM

Not only Canada, President Fuckface von Clownstick has lost the respect of most of the Western World and beyond. Not that he had much respect to begin with.

— Bubbe Wokestein 💙🇪🇺 🇨🇦✡️ (@veggieto) February 5, 2025

NEWS IN PHOTO: Fresh off unifying Canadians, Trump unites entire planet against his "turn Gaza into a Trump resort" plan pic.twitter.com/Sr48eS7GfI

— The Beaverton (@TheBeaverton) February 5, 2025

Today's News: Protests at last

I'm seeing many people running around with their hair on fire tonight, desperately trying to get the Democrats in Congress to stop bleating about bipartisanship and finding common ground, and to FIGHT BACK. The American people are slow to rouse, but I do believe it is heating up now -- particularly the anger against Musk and his short-pants bros trying to take over the government.

Steve M / No More Mister Nice Blog

WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE COUP, DADDY?

...We're in an all-out war to salvage what's left of America. The war can end one of two ways: with Donald Trump and his henchmen laying waste to our system of government, or with an effective fight on many fronts that pushes the totalitarians back, limits the damage they do, and begins the process of restoring what we had. If Trump's people win, it won't matter whether you chose this battle or that battle or a whole series of battles -- you'll be marked as a traitor. But if the good guys win, what people will remember is that you fought -- wherever and however you fought.

This is the central battle of our times. One way or the other, the first sentence of every prominent political figure's obituary will tell what that person did or didn't do in either the glorious Trump Revolution or the traitorous Trump Rebellion....

Created by u/TamaraLinn on Reddit. #Protest #50501Protest #Hope #Community #Togetherness #USA #50states

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— Kenzie (@littleboblue.bsky.social) February 5, 2025 at 8:30 PM

And its only been 15 days!

I am seeing real fear tonight in the United States. 

This sums it up in a few paragraphs:

Paul Krugman

What the Musk is Happening?

It’s a catastrophe, but what kind of catastrophe?

....Musk associates have been given access to the U.S. Treasury’s systems that control all federal payments, from grants to nonprofits to Social Security checks to salaries of federal workers.

The potential for mischief here is immense. The courts may have told the Trump administration that it can’t freeze spending mandated by Congress, but Musk’s people, who haven’t shown much reverence for the law, might well just ignore the courts and not cut the checks.

And they could go beyond cutting off programs the Musk/Trump administration doesn’t like. Imagine that you’re a federal contractor who has made campaign donations to Democrats; suddenly the government stops paying what it owes you and brushes off inquiries by saying that they’re working on the problem. Or you’re a federal employee who, according to somebody in your office who has a personal grievance, has expressed sympathy for DEI; somehow your regularly scheduled salary payments stop being deposited into your bank account. Or even imagine that you’re a retiree who canvassed for Kamala Harris, and for some reason your checks from Social Security stop coming.

Don’t say they wouldn’t do such things. We’ve seen these people in action, and of course they would if they could.

For the moment they probably can’t. The federal payments system is immensely complex, and like most government infrastructure has been financially squeezed for decades. So it’s cobbled together, much of it running on old hardware and even older software, kept functioning thanks to old hands and institutional memory. The 20-somethings Musk is deploying to take over, locking out those old hands and pushing aside the people who know how the system works, almost surely don’t understand enough to politicize payments right away.

As Nathan Tankus, the go-to expert on these matters, says,

I 100% believe that the primary barrier to Elon Musk gaining control of the Treasury payments system is COBOL.

For readers mystified by the reference, COBOL is a very old programming language that was once pervasive in the business world but in which hardly anyone under 60 knows how to program — yet is still widely used in government. (During Covid, the state of New Jersey put out a frantic call for people who knew COBOL to implement expanded unemployment benefits.)

But this observation raises another concern. What if the Musk people — Muskovites? — try to muck with systems they don’t understand, believing that they’re super smart and can master everything with the help of a little AI? It’s not hard to imagine the whole federal payments system — including, by the way, servicing of federal debt — crashing.

So much damage — to U.S. credibility, to the Constitution and the rule of law, and possibly even to the very functioning of the government. And Trump only took power 2 weeks ago.

And we were singing, bye-bye Miss American Pie

Well, what a day, eh?

...We all got up to dance 

Oh, but we never got the chance 

 'Cause the players tried to take the field 

The marching band refused to yield 

Do you recall what was revealed 

The day the music died?*

Here are some memes and cartoons and posts about this momentus day, the day Canada refused to yield. Some are funny, some heartfelt, some worried still. 

But Trudeau's message of solidarity and courage resonated with Canadians. and with Americans too, as the messages of a true leader always do -- today, I haven't seen a single post of anger toward Americans, just against Trump and MAGA. 

We booed the American national anthem but we aren't booing the people singing it. 

Lesson for this Trump tariff shakedown bullshit is that you can call him up and say "well okay, we'll do [list of things we're already doing], that's a really good idea" and he will take that as a win. It's like putting a blanket over a budgie's cage

— Ian Boudreau (@ianboudreau.com) February 3, 2025 at 4:06 PM