Today's News: He just couldn't help it!

Five more days. 

All Trump needed to do was to keep quiet about Canada for just five more days. 

He just couldn't do it.

Danielle and Pierre must be simply furious:

Eight-year-olds are trying to run the world. #ElbowsUp #CanadaStrong https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-canada-politics-1.7516951

- Nathan Sager

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Today's News: Just gotta laugh...

Here's some mid-week humour, as we sit on pins and needles waiting for next Monday. 

First, Poilievre finally released his budget plan and Canada was predictably underwhelmed:

Did this one make the cut? #cdnpoli https://t.co/XnLIj7uVuJ pic.twitter.com/ZYRnclwrfT

— Keith Torrie 🇨🇦 (@ktorrie) April 22, 2025

🚨Since releasing his hilariously vacant, ChatGPT-inspired "Platform" 3 hours ago, Poilievre has lost 4% points to Carney @Polymarket, who now leads PP by 58% pts... Polievre is prolly surprised that the rest of us can read...

- Dean Blundell

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Carney's "Liberal Strong" plan for Canada

Now, I am no economist nor can I make an informed analysis of election platforms. 

But I'm seeing some interesting posts from knowledgeable people about the Liberal Strong platform that Carney released:

This is a massive shift in approach from the 2021 Liberal platform. Building up Canada's assets to Trump-proof the economy. Ignore those who are pretending this is similar, it's literally the inverse of 2021, in terms of spending focus. pic.twitter.com/E28PMz8x49

— Bruce Anderson (@bruceanderson) April 20, 2025

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Weekend funny stuff: Some good signs, some good laughs, some little kids being cute, and Animal Crackers

Happy Easter, everyone!

pic.twitter.com/snWTyIqf1Q

— E. Jean Carroll (@ejeancarroll) April 20, 2025

Today's Heros: Universities, Pope Francis, Canadian voters

Universities
My love for my university is life-long and deep.
After I got my own degree, I spent much of my working life as an employee of my university. I had various positions over the years - writing the alumni magazine and other publications, assembling the college's course catalogue, advising students, assigning offices for faculty, working with faculty committees - it was interesting and rewarding work. 

Not only that, but my family's involvement with my university was historic - in the 30s, a time when many women never considered going to university, my mother and her three sisters all graduated from my university with degrees - two teachers, a nurse and an accountant. When I attended in due time, I met my husband there. And our children also got their first degrees there; now our daughter and daughter-in-law are on the faculty.
"Academic freedom" is a core value for my whole family.
So I am absolutely appalled by Trump's attempt to tell universities who to hire, what to teach, and what to research. 

And I am so proud that, led by Harvard, universities across the United States are now standing up to his fascism.

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Finally, its time to vote, vote, vote...

Doesn't this feel like the longest election campaign ever? 

It's actually an average length of 37 days, it only seems like Canadians have been waiting FOREVER to get this election decided so we can get on with whatever comes next. 
The advanced polls opened on Friday and the lines were long:

All good Americans stand with Canada during their election!! Good luck Carney!! 🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦 ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

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— 🌸🌺Cindy Cardno🌺 (@cyn1422.bsky.social) April 18, 2025 at 8:37 PM

It's a lineup to vote!!! It's never been a lineup at advanced polls! That's why we do them! Wow!!!

— Catelli (@catelli.bsky.social) April 18, 2025 at 10:29 AM

Today's News: "Mark Carney made his case"

 

Tonight was the last of the federal election debates. The overall media conclusion was that nobody "lost". 

While the CBC At Issue panel discussion above was interesting, I found the Toronto Star columnists live-blog to be a detailed yet thoughtful survey of the entire debate, well worth reading. 

Here are a couple of excerpts:

Susan Delacourt
Carney made his case, despite Poilievre’s strong showing at final debate
Three leaders walked on to a stage in Montreal on Thursday night with one mission — to take the front-runner shine off Liberal Leader Mark Carney.
If there was any doubt about Carney’s lead in this election, it was dispelled within minutes after the opening of the English-language leaders’ debate.
None of it seemed to rattle Carney...

Justin Ling
Carney won the debate, and it wasn't close, says Ling
...Mark Carney won, and it wasn’t even close. He was even-tempered, he sounded prime ministerial, he rattled off plans, promises, and numbers without hesitation. He managed to turn questions about his record at Brookfield, including its use of tax havens, into a point about his experience. I think that for Canadians who are anxious and nervous about what the future holds, his performance was pretty comforting — particularly for those who may have watched him struggle in the French debate last night. He even managed to get in his favourite line about Trump: “They want to break us so they can own us.”
He was helped enormously by Jagmeet Singh, who was in fine form. ...I doubt it won him any converts tonight. Still, it may have stopped the bleeding.
And then there’s Pierre Poilievre. I think he may have excited his core supporters, but I think he looked ideological, defensive, and without any new ideas. It’s been clear that his campaign refuses to pivot or change from the strategy that they drew up long before the political ground shifted underneath them. If affordability and desire for change overcomes anxieties around this trade war and the fate of the liberal world order, Poilievre could still win this election. But I think tonight’s performance was a tactical error for Poilievre.

This was the most Important statement of the debate.

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— Aaron YVR (@areynaldos.bsky.social) April 18, 2025 at 1:12 AM

Today's News: Media declare the French leaders debate a draw; Carney leaps tall buildings with a single bound; Poilievre has figured out how he can undercut the Charter; and what is Carney's cat called?

Media declares the French leaders debate was a draw:

Wednesday was the first of the two leaders debates. 

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Poilievre and his short pants boys have had two years to figure out their policies and THIS is the best they can do?

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Today's News: California, we won't come; Americans gagging at Trump's cruelty; American universities fighting back; Send Canada the huddled masses; latest Elbows Up; Election update

I think I'll just stay in Canada, thank you:

Today, California governor Gavin Newsom decided he would try to get Canadians to visit ....

 

Nah, one way tickets to El Salvador are cheaper if you fly direct. #cdnpoli

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— Anonymous (@youranoncentral.bsky.social) April 15, 2025 at 4:42 PM

...ain't gonna happen, buddy: 

Weekend funny stuff: First-world problems, baseball funnies, political stuff, Animal Crackers

First world problems:

Cruel Fate, 1525: Our cow died during the night. We will surely perish. Cruel Fate, 2025: Our Keurig stopped working during the night. We will surely perish.

— Stop Illegal Ideas Hat (@kenwhite.bsky.social) April 13, 2025 at 11:27 AM

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This is exactly true:

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Today's News: de-bunking the Carney smear campaign

Graeme MacKay/The Hamilton Spectator

As the Conservatives get more desperate, the attempts to smear Carney get more heated. The latest is something about offshore tax havens. 

While the smears are stupid, they need to be de-bunked. To the rescue comes this great article:

“ Dear Canada: We're at the Peak of the Election "Smear Campaign" This post Letter from a Maritimer resets the narrative on Mark Carney by calmly unpacking the lies, distortions, and innuendoes being weaponized to undermine him. Please read and share open.substack.com/pub/aletterf...

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— Carole Paré Payne (@paros13.bsky.social) April 12, 2025 at 7:25 AM

A Letter from a Maritimer

Dear Canada: We're at the Peak of the Election "Smear Campaign"
This post resets the narrative on Mark Carney by calmly unpacking the lies, distortions, and innuendoes being weaponized to undermine him.
Canadians are the target of a massive disinformation campaign that we witnessed in real-time during the past US elections, during Brexit, during the elections in France and in Germany.
And at the centre of its crosshairs right now stands a man who represents perhaps the most credible threat to the rise of Canada’s populism: Mark Carney.
You’ve seen the memes. You’ve read the comments. “Liar.” “Globalist.” “Elitist.” Words tossed around with the same aggression that has been used against democratic politicians and leaders everywhere, making them targets of hate and harassment. This is psychological warfare.
Right now this disinformation and smear campaign against Mark Carney is in full swing. Before we all start screaming let’s remind ourselves what honour, steadiness, and public service look like.
...The smear campaign aims not to question Carney’s policies, but to destroy his character. To whisper that he is not “one of us.” That he is part of some secretive, Davos-borne cabal. The language of nationalist paranoia is being mainstreamed in Canada and it is targeted at Carney precisely because he is effective.
...Mark Carney is, by any honest measure, the most seasoned and accomplished leader Canada has today. No one else brings his combination of global economic experience, steady crisis management, moral clarity, and proven public service. To attempt to discredit him with innuendo, manufactured mistrust, or weaponized perfectionism is not just dishonest, it’s absurd!

Maritimer then analyzes all of the smears against Carney that we have heard in this campaign, from his PhD thesis to his Brookfield position. They conclude:

We owe it to ourselves, and to future generations, to evaluate each candidate not through the distorted lens of disinformation, but by their record, their competence, and their commitment to Canada’s future.
Let us meet this moment with level heads.

Doom and Gloom and Lord Dread's Lair

First, here's some doom and gloom to kick off your weekend:

Trump crash economy

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— mtsw (@mtsw.bsky.social) April 11, 2025 at 9:12 AM

Atrios (Duncan Black) / Eschaton

Empty Shelves
Global "just in time" supply chains don't have a lot of wiggle room. Things could get very interesting in ways no one can really predict.

“We’ve halted all shipping plans from the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia,” the employee said. “Every factory order is halted. Anything that hasn’t been loaded will be scrapped, and the cargo already at sea is being re-costed.”
One client had told the company it was abandoning goods already on the water and giving them to the shipping company, as “no one will buy them after the tariffs are imposed”.
The company’s leadership had returned to China to manage a flood of order cancellations and had instructed its staff to suspend all container business until tariffs stabilise or alternative markets are secured.

Paul Krugman

The Third-Worlding of America
How to destroy 80 years of credibility in less than 3 months
...savvy traders have realized that there’s no coherent economic strategy. There’s an old line about military analysis: “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals talk about logistics.” Well, when it comes to taking the pulse of financial markets, amateurs talk about stocks, but professionals talk about bond and currency markets. That’s because bond and currency markets are generally less driven by emotion. There’s no “meme gambling investing” in bond and currency markets. And these markets are both signaling major loss of faith in America.
...It’s hard to overstate the craziness of announcing a radical tariff plan, then announcing a quite different but equally radical plan just a week later. Furthermore, the claim that the wild zigzags in policy were always part of Trump’s plan just adds to the destruction of the administration’s credibility.
But are these tariffs just an opening gambit for trade negotiations? I doubt it.
...The combination of interest rates soaring amid a slump and the currency plunging despite rising interest rates isn’t what we normally expect for advanced countries, let alone the owner of the world’s leading reserve currency. It is, however, what we often see in emerging-market economies. That is, investors have started treating the United States like a third-world economy.
Did I see this coming? No, not really. Unlike the sanewashers, I knew that Trump’s policies would be irresponsible and destructive. However, even I didn’t expect him to destroy credibility accumulated over 80 years in less than three months. But he has.
And even if Trump were to backtrack on everything he’s done, we wouldn’t get the lost credibility back. The whole world, sanewashers aside, now knows that America is run by a mad king, surrounded by enablers, who can’t be trusted to behave rationally.
I don’t know how this ends. In fact, I don’t know what policy will be next week. But that’s basically the point.

Cole Bennett / Cole.notcole

The Dollar’s Cracking And Canada’s on the Hook
The bond market is screaming, oil is falling, and Canada's bracing for impact 04/11/2025
...All signs point to one thing: the U.S. bond market is in trouble, and that spells real danger for Canada.
Canada holds around $300 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds essentially, we’ve loaned the U.S. money and we earn interest in return. It’s the kind of investment central banks and pension funds love because it’s supposed to be ultra-safe.
But not anymore.
In the last 48 hours, the bond market has started to panic. There’s been a major selloff and it’s not because of some random market mood swing. It’s deeper than that....
And What Happens When Confidence Cracks?
The U.S. dollar weakens. And when that happens, the Canadian dollar rises not because our economy is booming, but because investors are losing faith in the U.S.
But that’s bad news for Canadian exporters. A stronger loonie makes our goods more expensive for American buyers. From cars and tech to wheat and timber suddenly, Canadian exports look overpriced.
Meanwhile in Alberta, Trouble Is Brewing
Oil prices are falling. Fast. And with the U.S. dollar sliding too, Alberta is getting hit from both sides: lower revenue for each barrel sold, and fewer buyers able to afford them.
Don’t expect any new pipelines to get built in this climate no investor is going to fund a long-term energy project with prices this volatile and political risk this high.
And if things don’t stabilize soon, mass layoffs could slam Alberta’s oil and gas industry, just as families are already feeling the pinch.
This Couldn’t Come at a Worse Time All of this the bond selloff, the weak U.S. dollar, trade disruptions, and the threat to pensions is unfolding right now, in real time.
This might be the worst possible moment for anyone to be Prime Minister.
And yet, it might also be the most important time to have the right one.

On the lighter side, a visit from Lord Dread:

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Off-topic, but this is hilarious:

The latest in Elbows Up!

Here is some of the Elbows Up that I have seen recently.

Enjoy! 

A couple of good slogans:

The Stupid, It Burns!

They call economics "the dismal science". And now I know why. 

We are all, unfortunately, learning more about international trade policy than we ever wanted to know.

tbh i didn't know one person could destroy the global economy

— derek guy (@dieworkwear.bsky.social) April 9, 2025 at 10:18 AM

What a crazy day it has been today -- either Trump cancelled the tariffs because he panicked when his idol Goldman said there would be a Trump recession. Or he engineered a blatant insider trading scheme so he and his sycophants could buy low, announce the tariff cancellation, and then sell high. Or maybe both?

So Trump pauses implementing HIS OWN tariffs, the markets surge because nobody likes Trump’s tariffs, and Trump then takes credit for the markets surging. We live in such a stupid time.

- Joe Walsh

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There are always wheels within wheels when dealing with Trump:

Actually the real story today—not the bullshit tariff thing—is that Trump does not have enough Republican votes to get his budget passed in the House. He’s destroyed his air of invincibility and is now officially a lame duck.

- Andy Borowitz

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"Too big to rig"? It's really just another Trumpism

I'm seeing some more references about "sore loser-ism" and how Conservatives are now convincing themselves that their large rallies in Pentiction (3,000) and Edmonton (15,000) must mean Poilievre actually has the election in the bag. 

They think the polls showing Carney and the Liberals ahead by double digits must be rigged, but they think the massive Conservative voter turnout they are anticipating will make the election "too big to rig". 

And when Poilieve loses the election, they will think the Liberals cheated.
(Even though Poilievre himself is the only party leader in this election who had to sign an Elections Canada compliance agreement in 2017 because he had broken election rules as a cabinet minister when he got cutesy at a government funding announcement.)
So I thought it might be useful to bring a little more attention to this issue.
Last night, I posted Dan Gardner's ominous note:

Trending in Canada on X is the slogan “too big to rig.” That last word caught my eye. It’s one of Donald Trump’s favourites. Everything he doesn’t like is “rigged.” And sure enough, that’s exactly how it’s being used: People are sharing pictures of big crowds at Conservative rallies and saying Conservative support is so huge that the nefarious forces out to rig the election won’t be able to. Or they exhort people to get involved and vote and make the outcome “too big to rig.” It is, in other words, a manifestation of the cynicism Trump has promoted from the beginning of his political career: If we don’t win, it was rigged. For a healthy democracy, that is poison. Let’s not do this, fellow Canadians. Whoever wins, wins. Period. Grumble over your beer but accept it, and have at it again in the next election. Delegitimizing outcomes you don’t like simply because you don’t like them, and can’t imagine they could happen in a fair election, is the path to social disintegration. Let’s not go there.

- Dan Gardner

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Here are some remarks about the "too big to rig" delusion:

When does “Too Big To Rig” change to “Stop The Steal!”?

— Sneaky Jiggly 🇨🇦 (@JigglyPants44) April 8, 2025