Weekend funny stuff: Some posts from here and there, TrumpWatch, Animal Crackers

I'm using the Monty Python picture here because this year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of Monty Python and the Holy Grail -- and the Knights Who Say Ni! will never be forgotten!

Tonight I have just a few funny posts, my new "TrumpWatch" feature, and, of course, Animal Crackers.

Starting with this:

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This is really neat:

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Today's News: My response to the Carney push-backs (Plus, Sunshiny's excellent Mandate Letter tweet thread)

So the usual suspects are whining about PM Mark Carney tonight -- there seem to be three "push-backs" underway. 

The first pushback is about Carney's mandate letter. 

If you haven't seen it already, at the end of this post I have reposted Sunshiny's excellent tweet thread analyzing what the letter means.

But getting back to the critics, the complaints I am seeing are that Carney's priorities are either too specific or not specific enough -- the Carney mandate letter doesn't provide detailed lists of expectations for each government department; neither does it explain in detail exactly how each department should interpret the overall Canadian mandates within its own sphere.

But maybe Carney expects Cabinet ministers and their newly-appointed Chiefs of Staff to figure these things out for themselves? Like heads of departments always do in every office in every business and corporation across the country?
The CBC At Issue panel said the mandate letter sounded suspiciously "corporate".  Well, of course it does. Carney is a corporate kind of guy and that's why Canada voted for him.

Which leads me to the second pushback -- that Carney says he has a mandate to carry out his agenda but critics say really he doesn't. 

Because, I guess, he didn't quite get a majority government? So somehow that means Canada doesn't actually support what Carney wants to do?
But for the first time since 2015, the Liberals were supported by a plurality of Canadian voters, with MPs elected from every region. This seems like a pretty broad and deep mandate to me. 

Regardless of whether every single Canadian who voted Liberal actually supported every single plank on the entire Liberal platform, the Carney mandate letter provides us with a good place to start.

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The third pushback is some bitching about Carney's management style -- supposedly, Carney is too much of a hands-on manager but also his office is chaotic.

Hmmm....I wonder where these stories are coming from?  I have a sneaking suspicion there might be a opposition leader office trying to distract from its own internal chaos by whispering about how awful the other guy is.

Harvard, keep your Elbows Up!

So the Trump administration is trying to wreak its vengence on Harvard for lèse-majesté -- they wouldn't knuckle under to the Orange King and his MAGA knuckle-draggers.  

Searching for excuses to deport anyone brown, the Trump administration has seized on last spring's pro-Palestinian protests at universities to target international university students and kick them out of the country - they're highly visible, outspoken, easy to find, easy to target, non-violent, and MAGA hates them anyway for their supposed "elitism".

This is some authoritarian shit. Noem said since Harvard won’t give her disciplinary records on students, she’s terminating their foreign exchange student program immediately, and ordered that foreign students must transfer to other schools or have visas revoked. pic.twitter.com/oV3TXVVb1x

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 22, 2025

Associated Press reporters Collin Binkley and Michael Casey / Toronto Star (gift link) provide a broader context:

Trump administration bars Harvard from enrolling foreign students
The Secretary of Homeland Security accused Harvard of “fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party.”
...The Trump administration’s clash with Harvard, the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university, has intensified since it became the first to openly defy White House demands for changes at elite schools it has criticized as hotbeds of liberalism and antisemitism. The federal government has cut $2.6 billion in federal grants to Harvard, forcing it to self-fund much of its sprawling research operation. President Donald Trump has said he wants to strip the university of its tax-exempt status.
The administration has demanded records of campus protests
The threat to Harvard’s international enrollment stems from an April 16 request from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who demanded that it provide information about foreign students that might implicate them in violence or protests that could lead to their deportation.
In a letter to Harvard on Thursday, Noem said the school’s sanction is “the unfortunate result of Harvard’s failure to comply with simple reporting requirements.” It bars Harvard from hosting international students for the upcoming 2025-26 school year.
Noem said Harvard can regain its ability to host foreign students if it produces a trove of records on foreign students within 72 hours. Her updated request demands all records, including audio or video footage, of foreign students participating in protests or dangerous activity on campus.
“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Noem said in a statement.
The action revoked Harvard’s certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which gives the school the ability to sponsor international students to get their visas and attend school in the United States.
Harvard President Alan Garber earlier this month said the university has made changes to its governance over the past year and a half, including a broad strategy to combat antisemitism, but warned it would not budge on its “its core, legally-protected principles” over fears of retaliation. He said he wasn’t aware of evidence to support the administration’s allegation that its international students were “more prone to disruption, violence, or other misconduct than any other students.”
Students in Harvard College Democrats said the Trump administration is playing with students’ lives to push a radical agenda and to quiet dissent. “Trump’s attack on international students is text book authoritarianism — Harvard must continue to hold the line,” the group said in a statement.
The administration drew condemnation from free speech groups, including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which said Noem is demanding a “surveillance state.”
“This sweeping fishing expedition reaches protected expression and must be flatly rejected,” the group said in a statement.
The revocation opens a new front in a closely watched battle
Many of Harvard’s punishments have come through a federal antisemitism task force that says the university failed to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence amid a nationwide wave of pro-Palestinian protests.
Homeland Security officials echoed those concerns in their Thursday announcement. It offered examples, including a recent internal report at Harvard, finding that many Jewish students reported facing discrimination or bias on campus.
It also tapped into concerns that congressional Republicans have raised about ties between U.S. universities and China. Homeland Security officials said Harvard provided training to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps as recently as 2024. As evidence, it provided a link to a Fox News article, which in turn cited a letter from House Republicans.
Asked for comment on the alleged coordination with the Chinese Communist Party, a Harvard spokesperson said the university will be responding to the House Republicans’ letter.
Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, called the latest action an “illegal, small-minded” overreach.
“I worry that this is sending a very chilling effect to international students looking to come to America for education,” he said.
The Trump administration has leveraged the system for tracking international students’ legal status as part of its broader attempts to crack down on higher education. What was once a largely administrative database has become a tool of enforcement, as immigration officials revoked students’ legal status directly in the system.
Those efforts were challenged in court, leading to restorations of status and a nationwide injunction blocking the administration from pursuing further terminations.

Canada needs to tell Alberta we love her....

Here's a snap I took on the Icefields Parkway, during one of our many great vacations in Alberta:

We loved those vacations, and we love Alberta.

I know that Wexit, AKA Alberta Separation Referendum, is just getting started and I know the percentages now favour that Albertans will want to stay in Canada.

Alberta - Support For Alberta and Saskatchewan Forming An Independent Nation: Oppose: 63% Support: 30% Leger / May 12, 2025 / n=1000 / Online

— Polling Canada (@canadianpolling.bsky.social) May 20, 2025 at 7:04 AM

So does this mean Wexit is something the rest of Canada doesn't actually need to worry much about?

Well, maybe. 

But there are no guarantees, and I'm seeing a flood of social media hate-posts now talking about how Alberta can hardly wait to leave. 

I just read an interesting piece by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, about what Democrats are doing wrong in trying to refute the Republican and Trump lies, and it struck me that Canadians need to be aware of these issues too. 

Here's what Marshall said: 

...The overriding problem Democrats have today is a general belief that they’re not effective at fighting for what they believe in or what the country needs to be protected from. 

There’s a related, but secondary issue that they worry that Dems are most focused on issues that are obscure or not connected to the lives of the great majority of people struggling to make ends meet. 

That lack of fight is shattering for self-identified Democrats as well as highly damaging for genuine independents and low-information voters who genuinely flip from party to party from election to election. That is overwhelmingly the challenge Democrats have right now... 

Applying this wisdom to Canada, I think we need to take Alberta seriously, even if we don't yet think Alberta Separatism is worth worrying about. 

We need to speak up, to tell Alberta that we love them and we want them to stay.

Just Keep On Truckin'

I started assembling a post tonight about all the ways that America is sliding into a lawless authoritarian pit, but I couldn't finish it -- because yes, we know that already and there's just about nothing anybody can do, really. So all we can do is to keep on truckin'. 

Here's a post about some of the better news I read today:

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there's a house on my street that leaves their Christmas lights up year-round. Not just until February or March like the procrastinators. ALL year. The neighborhood association has sent letters. People complain. But every night, those tiny white lights outline the small house like a constellation. Last week, when I saw him during morning walk, I finally asked why. "My daughter is autistic," the man said. "The lights help her find her way home from the bus stop. They're her North Star." Now I get angry at anyone who complains about them. Some rules are meant to be broken indefinitely.

- Darshak Rana

Read on Substack

Just a bunch of random stuff - hockey downs and ups; Carney learns us some economics; fun with mis-pronouncing words; Pope Leo disses the Vances; Biden's awful diagnosis; and the Battle Hymn Updated

OK, I think I can safely say now that we are finished with winter -- it's planting season for the flower pots, too.  So for now, here's just a random selection of interesting stuff I saw today: 

 First, we watched Toronto lose - doom and gloom all around! 

They just couldn't seem to play like a team tonight, even though they pulled together all season. Maybe they annoyed the hockey gods somehow?  

And it was just as sad to see the Jets lose on Saturday. So thank heavens Edmonton made it through, and we still have a Canadian team to cheer for.

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— The Globe and Mail (@theglobeandmail.com) May 18, 2025 at 9:42 PM

Leafs are a fascinating psychological study. Their fans even more so.

— Andrew Coyne 🇺🇦🇮🇱🇬🇪🇲🇩 (@acoyne) May 19, 2025

Weekend funny stuff: Cartoons, insult comics, Poilievre slogans, super cows and other funny posts, plus some good Animal Crackers

Just some funny stuff to enjoy this weekend, starting with some good cartoons:

Next, I do love the insult comics of the internet:

JoJoFromJerz / Are you f'ng kidding me?

It Was the Darkest of Times, It Was the Dumbest of Times.
The stupid burns…
Let’s not sugarcoat shit—we are being held hostage by the dumbest dumbfucks who ever dumbed. Not just dumb—like, “oops, I microwaved a fork” dumb, or “I tried to charge my phone in the toaster” dumb or “I thought Bluetooth was a dental condition” dumb, but cosmically, generationally, ‘you must be this tall to ride democracy’ dumb. Every day, we all wake up and have to share a country with people whose brains look like they were assembled by a team of blindfolded squirrels high on Four Loko, using blueprints they found in a box of expired Pop-Tarts.
But it’s not just that they’re stupid—it’s that their stupidity is blasted from every rooftop, tattooed on their faces, and woven so deep into our national fabric it’s like we’re all being waterboarded with Mountain Dew Code Red.

Today's News: Turning America into Oceania

*illustration from Wayne Horton's substack

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It is not just Canadians and other foreign visitors who are running afoul of America's border police. It's now happening to Americans too. The US Customs and Border Protection and the Immigration and Naturalization Service might as well start wearing brownshirts.

Example one: 

Former FBI head James Comey (you remember, the dumbfuck who sabotaged Hillary's campaign a week before the 2016 election? Yeah, that guy!) 

So yesterday he tweeted and the entire Trump administration lost their minds:

James Comey just broke the Internet 🤣

Epic! pic.twitter.com/MC6jsE72Ms

— Quadcarl (@quadcarl_carl) May 15, 2025

Pushing back against MacKinnon's awful article

The University of Saskatchewan has been in the news lately. It's where I worked for much of my career, so of course I'm interested in how they are getting along.
Very well, overall -- but with evidence lately that some don't want to get with the tour and join the rest of us here in the 21st Century.
First, ever since Trump started babbling about it, the North American right wing has concluded that DEI is just awful in every way. Somehow, trying to be fair and equitable and thoughtful to people of all genders, colours and religions by learning about different cultures and being willing to listen better is now a very terrible thing -- its particularly mean to those rich white guys like Trump who apparently don't get hired first anymore. 

And here in Canada, the right-wing is just following along with the DEI hatred. Thus, on May 2, the National Post published this derisive piece:

Tristin Hopper First Reading, Canadian politics newsletter / National Post

FIRST READING: Saskatchewan professor blogs his way through mandatory anti-racism 'boot camp'
Participants told that 'meritocracy' leads to 'inequities'
A University of Saskatchewan law professor provided a unique window into the equity mandates now ubiquitous at Canadian universities by blogging the details of a compulsory anti-racist “learning journey.”

Hopper's article begins by describing the workshop content, then continues with the point of view of one participant, a U of S law professor Mickael Plaxton who posted dismissive tweets about his experience on X beginning here and ending here. 

Hopper continues:

....Michael Plaxton, an expert in criminal law and statutory interpretation, alternately called the course a “mandatory DEI bootcamp” and a “forced march of self discovery.” He noted that it began with a declaration of “we’re not here to debate.”
....Plaxton told National Post that he wasn’t any kind of “crusader on the whole DEI thing,” and that he didn’t think any of the course leaders “were anything other than earnest, well-meaning people.”
“No one was rude to me,” he wrote in an email, adding that he mostly felt “awkward” about the whole affair....

Yeah and you should be embarrassed now, fella, because you got played right royally, by a national media that now has adopted Trump's anti-DEI agenda and will seize on any excuse to echo it.

Carney's new cabinet - comments from Brittlestar, Delacourt, Wark;,Urback, Ling, and Scrimshaw.

I gathered some of the comments on Prime Minister Carney's new cabinet.

Overall, the judgement seems to be "lets wait and see".

First, this is hilarious:

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Alberta separatists want to have their cake and eat it too

Yep, let's move fast and break things. 

This is NOT what Canada needs to deal with right now, but I guess we don't have any choice:

An Alberta separatist group released on Monday a referendum question on independence from Canada that it will petition to get in front of provincial voters — but only once it has garnered support from 600,000 Albertans.
That's more than triple the number of signatures the Alberta Prosperity Project (APP) would need under a new United Conservative Party government bill that makes it much easier to force a referendum on the ballot.
The group also said it would push Premier Danielle Smith to allow a separation referendum later in 2025, instead of next year as she's suggested. They said a critical mass of separatist UCP members can persuade the premier to fast-track the referendum — and to join their cause as well....

Here's the discussion on Power and Politics:

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Weekend Stuff: More laughing at Poilievre, More in Elbows Up!, Other funny moments, More about Pope Leo, and Animal Crackers

First up, laughing at Poilievre never gets old

Today's News: let's laugh at Poilievre; let's laugh at Alberta separatists; let's find out about Pope Leo

Let's laugh at Poilievre!
So much for Poilievre regaining anyone's respect now:

Inspiring! Pierre Poilievre just released his new campaign slogan for Battle River-Crowfoot and it is truly moving! One word, but it perfectly encapsulates voters who support a leader who has to manufacture an election after losing the last one. #Pierre4PM #abpoli

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— Danielle Smith ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎(Parody) (@abdanielsmith.bsky.social) May 9, 2025 at 12:52 PM

Things I learned today: the new language of the Internet, the tariff "deal" with the US/UK, and Prof Galloway on Trump's corruption.

Meet Tralalero Tralala, the Italian Brain Rot AI meme.

Did you know there is a whole new language around Artificial Intelligence and Internet memes now?
One of the internet columns I follow is Casey Newton's Platformer, and today he introduced me to the term Italian Brain-rot, which led me to other new terms: Uncanny Valley, AI slop (which is sort of a 21st Century version of the old Telephone Game - remember that?), Shitposting, Rage-baiting. The only one I had already heard about was enshitification - Cory Doctorow's great term for how social media invariably gets worse as it gets more successful.
Speaking of betting worse -- Parker Molloy reports this week on a creepy recent court case where the victim's sister produced a AI video "victim statement" showing the victim himself "speaking" to the person convicted of killing him, and the judge loved it!

Canada's Alberta square-dance: "Promenade and don't be slow, Where we're going nobody knows"

Just a little square-dance patter for Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who seems to be doing the Wexit do-se-do-- getting closer to it then backing around it, then sashaying closer again. She can't say yes and she can't say no, and where we're going nobody knows. 

So I asked ChatGPT to give me a picture of Danielle Smith at a square dance and I think it did a pretty good job ⬆️ 

Maybe even a better job than Smith herself is doing. 

Tonight I found some posts and commentary on what is happening. 

And really, my square-dance analogy seems apt: 

"Inviting (the separation referendum) experience to Alberta, and to Canada, especially now, is more than a failure of duty and leadership; it’s a failure of character." #ableg #abpoli #cdnpoli

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— Deirdre Mitchell-MacLean (@mitchellab.bsky.social) May 7, 2025 at 1:39 PM