Today's News: Americans reacting to ICE Gestapo

Many seem to be shocked and horrified at how quickly and easily Trump is pushing Americans around, his masked gangs grabbing anyone brown and disappearing them. 

But I'm not - I remember how easy it was in 2002 for George Bush to get Americans to follow him gleefully into a completely unjustified war against Iraq.
It was just a few weeks after 911 when Bush said "you're either with us or with the terrorists". Only a few Americans were concerned about this framing at the time, and when Americans held marches to protest the Bush administration's push for war with Iraq, the media hardly covered it - didn't want to be "disloyal".
We are seeing the same dynamic now, a rogue administration hell-bent on warping American values. At least this time, there is social media to communicate what the Resistance is doing.

And I'm no economist, but at some point, its going to come crashing down -- as the US economy slows because of deportations and tariffs and reduced sales of everything from ovens to industrial machinery; as the US government runs out of money because they are wasting billions on concentration camps and detention centres and national guard deployments in their own cities; as social services and hospitals close because government medicare isn't functioning anymore; as life in the United States becomes more nasty, brutish and short...

I think its going to get much worse before it gets better:

Gift Link to Washington Post story: https://wapo.st/3UIueJI

Poilievre is back, still awful

 CPC leader Pierre Poilievre won his byelection so he's back, older but no wiser - determined to ignore Canada's pressing issues, like wildfires and economic growth, while obsessing about imaginary electric vehicle mandates.

Second verse, same as the first.

Listened to 5 minutes of Poilievre's press conference today. He hasn't learned a thing from his experience. Same tired lies and slogans that got him nowhere last election. It just underlines how much we haven't missed him and how much the country has moved on. #cdnpoli

— Stephen Lautens (@stephenlautens.bsky.social) August 20, 2025 at 1:32 PM

View on Threads

Today's News: updates on Trump's Gestapo plans and Gavin Newsom's trolling, plus Marc Elias writes about Hope

You know, if I lived in the United States now, I might think twice about blogging. 

I know my little blog would never be considered to be a marshalling point for the Resistance anyway. 

But the way things are going down south, anyone who speaks out may find themselves at risk. The Department of Justice has been weaponized against anyone Trump considers to be an "enemy" and on Tuesday three dozen national security leaders who worked for the Obama administration lost their security clearances.

Its scary.  Trump's Gestapo plans are scary too:

Exclusive: An internal planning road map obtained by The Post shows the strategy behind ICE’s breakneck expansion, a chaotic effort that has already triggered lawsuits and accusations of cruelty. wapo.st/41FWkck

[image or embed]

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost.com) August 17, 2025 at 11:03 AM

You realize, don’t you, that this era will be remembered as the time when the country with the world’s strongest economy and largest military rapidly went insane.

— Mark Jacob (@markjacob.bsky.social) August 17, 2025 at 6:32 PM

Today's News: a weekend roundup of news about the Air Canada flight attendants strike, the Poilievre byelection, and the Europe-Zelenskyy-Trump meeting

Its hard to keep up with all the news just now, isn't it -- I don't do much news in my "funday" posts on Saturday nights, and I usually don't put together a post on Sunday at all. So I have a news gap from Friday night until Monday night -- and these days, there seems to be a lot happening even over the weekends. 

So let's just plunge ahead: 

Air Canada flight attendants strike

It always annoys me when media focus their coverage of Canadian labour issues almost entirely on the public inconvenienced by labour action -- in this case, tales of woe from stranded people trying to book flights on other airlines. 

We usually don't get media coverage about the strikers, which would put pressure on the company or the government to address the actual issues. But this time CUPE has done a great job marshalling support for why the flight attendants are angry - I saw a statistic that said almost nine out of ten Canadians support the flight attendants, and that is outstanding because I didn't think we could ever get nine out of ten Canadians to agree on anything.

The Carney government stepped on a rake when they immediately used Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to order binding arbitration to get the strike-lockout ended without passing actual back-to-work legislation - which I suspect would not be easy for Carney's minority government to do.
You know, I myself have been involved in several strikes over the years, sometimes in my own union and sometimes in other unions at my workplaces. And every single time my bosses and the HR negotiators sincerely but wrongly believed that the strikers "didn't really want to be on stike" and would be "really happy to be back at work" but had been "misinformed by rabble-rousing dastardly union leaders".
So I suspect that's what Air Canada also told Patty Hajdu, and now it has blown up in their faces.

Sunday Funday: Poilievre's last chance, let's dance, some oddball sports, random funny stuff, NSFW cartoons, Elbows Up!, TrumpWatch (special Alaska edition), and Animal Crackers

Poilievre's last chance is the Battle River-Crowfoot byelection is Monday and I'm NOT looking forward to Tuesday.

Poilievre promises Battle River-Crowfoot if elected they will never see him again

[image or embed]

— The Beaverton (@thebeaverton.com) August 16, 2025 at 12:54 PM

A natural mistake:

Someone asked me today about my plans for “the fall” and it took me a moment to realize they meant Autumn and not the collapse of civilization.

- Gary Trujillo

Read on Substack

Another Trump embarrassment: "That summit could have been an email"

I couldn't stand to watch even a minute of the obsessive news coverage about the Trump-Putin "summit", so I missed what may well go down in US history as the beginning of the end for Trump.

Even Fox News thought he blew it, looked inept and old and tired and defeated.
If you want to read about what happened, I found a good play-by-play summary here: ONEST Network Olga Nesterova article titled AUG 15: Trump–Putin in Alaska — What Was (and Wasn’t) Said - a very interesting piece.

A three hour meeting, probably half of it taken up by translation. And then decision to end it, before expanded meeting or working lunch, and separate statements made with no questions taken. Many signs it was a bad meeting.

— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) August 16, 2025

Pictures of BEFORE and AFTER the meeting. Your thoughts?

[image or embed]

— Olga Nesterova (@onestpress.onestnetwork.com) August 15, 2025 at 6:16 PM

Things that make me say hmmm......

View on Threads

What made me say "hmmmm...." the most this week was, of course, Trump and his shenanigans. 

One of the most pathetic things about Trump is his obsession with winning prizes. 

What kind of childhood did he have, that only external "validation" matters and it doesn't matter if its a lie?

Remember when it was found out in 2017 that he lied when he said he had been considered for Time magazine's Person Of The Year and he had made a fake Time cover for display at Mar-A-Lardo? 

And remember when last month he stole a gold medal from a soccer team?

As he ages, he is actually getting worse - he thinks he can get a Nobel Peace Prize just like Obama did:

Trump cold-called a Norwegian minister to ask about his bid to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

[image or embed]

— Politico (@politico.com) August 14, 2025 at 9:53 AM

Current mood in Norway regarding Trump and peace prize

[image or embed]

— alfhvatne.bsky.social (@alfhvatne.bsky.social) August 14, 2025 at 4:39 PM

Norway can do the funniest thing in human history by awarding Donald Trump the first-ever Nobel Peace Prize Participation Trophy.

— Rex Huppke (@rexhuppke.bsky.social) August 14, 2025 at 4:33 PM

Will Poilievre win the byelection battle but lose the leadership war?

To begin with, I think anyone who expects Pierre Poilievre to lose the Battle River-Crowfoot byelection next Monday is living in a dream world.

Its an understandable dream, of course, but just a dream nevertheless.

Here are 338Canada polling results from August 10:

Battle River-Crowfoot is a CPC riding. 

The total vote in this riding in April was 65,000 people, and 53,000 of them voted for the CPC. 

For the last quarter-century, the Conservative vote in the riding has never been less than 70 per cent.

This time independent Bonnie Critchley has run the highest profile campaign against Poilievre -- likely her vote is most of the "Independent" 11 percent in the top chart. 

But as for the chance that she might actually win the seat? Nope.

However, winning the byelection doesn't mean that Poilievre's problems are over -- in fact, they may be just beginning.

If his winning percentage is as lackluster as 338Canada is predicting -- just 70-ish percent, in the strongest conservative riding in Canada -- the party isn't going to be impressed. 

And Poilievre's boasts about how he increased the CPC seats and votes in April aren't going to cut any ice with a party that sees itself being dragged further and further down by an unpopular leader who can't lead and won't follow and isn't getting out of his own way.

If you go down to the woods today....

I don't know if Maple MAGA will ever accept that climate change is real, but apparently trying to deal with its implications - like dry forests with pine beetles -- just drives them around the bend.

 

(My apologies for the screenshots - these BlueSky posts won't embed)

Today's News: on Sask's deadname law, on tariffs, on rage, on luck, on heroes, on Trump and Putin, and on The Stupid

Just some news and comments:

First, I was thrilled to see this: the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal just ruled that, regardless of its notwithstanding clause, our courts can still decide whether Saskatchewan's Deadname law violates constitutional rights.
(And yes, I call this the Deadname law - the government spins it "parents' bill of rights" and most media make it innocuous by calling it a "pronoun policy". But what this law actually does is to require teachers to deadname their trans pupils unless the school outs the student to the parents.) 

Brandon Harder / Saskatoon Star Phoenix

Sask. pronoun consent law case can proceed following appeal court ruling
Four of five judges of Saskatchewan's highest court say a lower court can decide whether what's known as the Parents' Bill of Rights violates constitutional rights, despite the use of the notwithstanding clause.
Saskatchewan’s highest court has ruled that the provincial government’s use of the notwithstanding clause does not shield its pronoun consent law from judicial scrutiny of whether the law limits certain constitutional rights.
As a result, a legal action brought by UR Pride Centre for Sexuality and Gender Diversity (UR Pride) may proceed in a lower court.
...the government argued in September 2024 that, given the invocation of the notwithstanding clause, the court no longer had jurisdiction to weigh in on whether the law violates sections of the Charter listed within the law’s text. They argued the case should have been dismissed for being moot and suggested the addition of a further constitutional challenge was an attempt to get around the government’s lawful actions, amounting to an abuse of process.
UR Pride disputed the government’s positions and argued there is nothing precluding the court from declaring whether the law violates certain constitutional rights.
The majority decision, written by SKCA Chief Justice Robert Leurer and representing the opinion of four of five judges who ruled on the case, dismissed the government’s appeal in all but one area. The decision says the portions of UR Pride’s action seeking to have the policy that preceded the law declared unconstitutional “must be struck for mootness.”
But the majority ruled that the Court of King’s Bench has the jurisdiction to decide whether the PBR (specifically, what is now Section 197.4 of the Education Act and concerns “Consent for change to gender identity”) limits rights under sections 7 and 15(1) of the Charter and to issue a declaration to that end.
Further, the SKCA majority decision concludes UR Pride may also seek a declaration that the section of law is of “no force and effect” based on a violation of Section 12 of the Charter, which protects Canadians from cruel and unusual treatment or punishment.
...Egale Canada, a LGBTQ+ rights organization providing legal support to UR Pride, circulated a statement saying it was pleased with the outcome of the appeal.
“The Court of Appeal’s decision upholds the rule of law in Canada and, in particular, reinforces the critical role of the courts in determining the constitutionality of government action.”

Also, here's some more good news:

View on Threads

Sunday Funday: Some funny posts and some good music stuff, plus TrumpWatch and Animal Crackers

First, here are a few apt comments about the news:

Yes, in the good old days we thought W was the worst president ever...

View on Threads

Things that make you say "hmmm....." -- a Poilievre action doll, the BR-C ballot, our Purrr Minister, the grandiose White House, plus other odds and sods

Maybe Poilievre is just an action figure doll now? 

I don't know who did this, but isn't it great?

The advance polls are open in Battle River-Crowfoot. As this video shows, its quite a ballot. And now I wonder how badly mis-spelled "Pierre Poilievre" needs to be before the election workers will refuse to count a ballot?

A record 214 candidates, including Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, are running in the Aug. 18 federal byelection in Alberta's Battle River-Crowfoot. Voters at advance polls had the chance to flip through a thick booklet of candidates to make sure they spelled the names right 👇🏻 #cdnpoli

[image or embed]

— Yahoo Canada (@yahoocanada.bsky.social) August 8, 2025 at 5:40 PM

Today's News: Mboko wins, South Park wins, Carney carries on, Conservatives panic, and Trump trashes Washington

Congrats to Victoria Mboko, winning the National Bank Open in Montreal tonight - outstanding, gutsy:  

Enfant Mboko et une jeune Andrescu. Deux Canadiennes 🇨🇦 à avoir gagné le Tournoi 🇨🇦 🎾🏟️ dans les 50 dernières années. Mboko est un bel exemple de persévérance et de discipline pour le parcours de sa jeune carrière et pour sa performance today. 😉👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 #VickyMboko #Mboko #WTA #Montreal #Championne 🇨🇦🎾🏆✨✨✨

[image or embed]

— TiCoq-Rouge Hendy (@ticoqrouge.bsky.social) August 8, 2025 at 12:37 AM

Not The Beaverton? Not the Onion? Sure sounds like the August crazies are here!

I can't remember whether August has always been so bizarre -- maybe this craziness happens every year and we just forget all about it after school starts again. 

Maybe its the Perseids - their peak time is next week.
Or the phase of the moon - the Sturgeon Moon (AKA Wild Rice Moon) will rise just after sunset on both Saturday and Sunday this week.
But whatever the cause, we're seeing some truly funny stuff happening. It is to laugh....

Here in Canada, so little is going wrong with the Carney government (that is, unless they dump Pharmacare!!!) that MPs have to get mad about stuff the federal government didn't actually do.

Dale Smith reports on the handwringing about upgrading BC Ferries:

On Friday, the Commons transport committee met to wring their hands and express their dismay at BC Ferries’ decision to buy new ships from a Chinese firm, and lo, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Chrystia Freeland expressed her dismay. Gregor Robertson expressed his disappointment. The representative of the Canada Infrastructure Bank pointed out that they don’t make any decisions on procurement, and that their loan was secured before that decision was made. And the head of BC Ferries pointed out, once again, that no Canadian shipyard bid on these ships, if they did, it would take them a decade to deliver them (at least), and that the Chinese bid was $1.2 billion cheaper than any of the others.
That of course didn’t stop opposition MPs from doing the performative song and dance. Conservative Dan Albas demanded the government cancel the loan—which the government can’t do because the Infrastructure Bank is arm’s length. And now they want all documents and emails released, which is going to tell them yet again that no Canadian shipyards bid on this contract. Perhaps most galling of all was Bloc MP Xavier Barsalou-Duval wanted an apology from the government and from the Canada Infrastructure Bank because it’s “unacceptable” that the government plans to invest in foreign infrastructure when our own steel industry is facing tariffs from Trump—but the federal government isn’t investing. BC Ferries, a provincial Crown Corporation is, and the loan from the Infrastructure Bank is a fully repayable loan. You would think the Bloc of all people would rather the federal government respect a decision by a provincial body, but apparently that only matters if it’s in Quebec...

Random Roundup: that canny Carney; the diddler on the roof; no-seat Poilievre

Just a few commentaries tonight, mainly about how well Carney is dealing with Trump and the tariffs, as the American economy begins to collapse. 

Guy Lawson / Rolling Stone 

Why Canada Isn’t Sweating Trump’s Mob Tactics 

The Gang That Couldn’t Govern Straight: Under Trump, Canada’s most-favored-nation status endures, suckers 

Keeping a straight face has been perhaps the greatest achievement of Mark Carney's brief tenure as the prime minister of Canada. For months, Donald Trump has railed against Canada, threatening to turn America’s ungrateful northern neighbor into the 51st state, come what may, an achievement worthy of his visage gracing Mount Rushmore — in the same way Trump will annex Greenland, reclaim the Panama Canal, free Brazil’s corrupt former President Jair Bolsonaro, repeal the laws of climate change and gravity, and then impose tariffs on all of America’s nefarious trading partners, like the evil-doer Canada.
The only hitch, as the canny Carney has known all along: America has a thing called a “treaty” with Canada. Not one of Trump’s “deals,” the chaotic, almost certainly worthless and delusional transactions that involve the president imagining himself astride the world, TV remote in hand, a colossus of reactionary stupidity and cruelty finally delivering his promised revenge.
...The pervasive terror displayed by American institutions has disguised the fact that it is actually possible to stand up to a bully — as unassuming Canada just proved with its support for a Palestinian state. The truth is that under the terms of the USMCA, 95 percent of the goods and services that Canada exports to the United States arrive duty free, leaving a relatively small five percent subject to Trump’s imperial 35 percent tariff. But even that doesn’t capture the absurd reality. While Trump imposes across-the-board tariffs on countless countries, for reasons that escape any rational economic explanation, Canada is now perhaps the single most favored trading nation on earth. While scores of countries face Trump’s punitive tariffs, Canada largely trades tariff free with the United States because it doesn’t need a “deal” — it has a treaty.
Canada's prime minister Carney possesses degrees in economics from Harvard and Oxford, and they likely provided him with sufficient education to see the truth behind Trump’s nonsense — and ensure he has the social graces and political intelligence to not laugh out loud when the president imposes symbolic tariffs like a carnival barker. Leading the Bank of Canada during the global financial crisis of 2008 and the Bank of England through the Brexit catastrophe of 2016 certainly have endowed Carney with the fortitude to quietly keep an eye on the larger prize and persist through times of economic lunacy.
In recent months, Canada has come to occupy a unique place in the world. Sent as a canary into the coal mine of Donald Trump’s addled mind, Canada has emerged from the toxic subterranean atmosphere alive and with the urgent news that it is possible to survive the craziness that has besieged the American body politic. Lay low and say as little as possible is Canada’s message, denying Carney the cheap political thrill of telling Canadians how incredibly fortunate they are that Trump is so stupid — and risk riling the vengeful and easily humiliated Trump.

- Cathie from Canada

Read on Substack