Today's news: Standing athwart dictatorship, yelling "stop!"

Today's topic is finding leaders who will try to stop dictatorship - I think we are doing it now.

Carney, for one -- he is rocketing around Europe now, lining up allies for Canada and for Ukraine, and he appears to be very effective. 

Shankar Narayan / The Concis

Canada's Checkmate: Why Putin's Betting on Western Collapse Just Failed
Canada finally has a leader. So does the world.
... Carney was clear and precise. He told Ukraine exactly what they would get, and when. No need to read between the lines.
Carney and President Zelensky signed a deal on drone co-production worth $680 million, set to begin next month. Canada also joined the PURL scheme — a funding pool where allies contribute money, Ukraine prepares a weapons list, and the U.S. supplies them.
More importantly, Carney declared that Canada will not rule out sending troops to Ukraine after a peace agreement. He didn't hedge. His words carried the weight of intent:

"In Canada's judgement, it is not realistic that the only security guarantee could be the strength of the Ukrainian armed forces in the medium term. So that needs to be buttressed. It needs to be addressed."

This wasn't vague diplomatic language. It was a signal to every NATO strategist in Europe: Canada is ready to move....
By declaring Canada's readiness to join a peacekeeping force, Carney cut through the diplomatic fog. He wasn't making a suggestion—he was staking out a position. NATO strategists in Brussels now have a concrete framework to build around. Berlin, which has been cautious about postwar commitments, suddenly has political cover to move forward. Paris, which has talked about troops but wavered on details, now has an ally willing to share the burden. London, wobbling under domestic pressure, has been handed a lifeline.
The signal to Moscow was equally clear: there will be no victory through waiting. Putin's calculation has always been that Western resolve would crack, that domestic politics would eventually force Ukraine's allies to abandon ship. Carney's declaration shattered that hope. A peacekeeping force backed by Canada, Britain, and France—with German support—isn't a negotiating position Putin can simply outlast. It's a permanent commitment he'll have to live with.
This is how leadership works in wartime: not through grand speeches, but through irreversible commitments that force everyone else to choose sides.
...If Putin once dreamed that Western support would dry up, those dreams are over....

Carney's other stops are also showing how Carney intends to connect Canada with Europe:

RIGA – Prime Minister Mark Carney says Canada will keep troops in Latvia through to 2029, as part of a mission to deter Russian aggression in Europe.

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— Winnipeg Free Press (@winnipegfreepress.com) August 26, 2025 at 11:04 AM

Today's News: Poilievre's humble pie, Carney's strategic approach to tariffs, plus some apt comments about America

Now that Pierre Poilievre has his job back, for the next several months at least, he is desperately trying return to his usual schtick of slamming the Liberals about everything all the time. 

I think Canadians are sick of it.

Poilievre’s problem isn’t just that Carney is well-liked - it’s that Poilievre isn’t. Simply waiting for Carney to shed popularity is more like a hope than a strategy for the Conservatives. bruce728.substack.com/p/let-pierre...

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— Diane (@dianeellison.bsky.social) August 25, 2025 at 8:55 AM

Sunday Funday: What a crazy week, plus TrumpWatch and Animal Crackers

What a crazy week 

We saw Poilievre return to the Commons and the Liberals must be delighted:

- Kier Atkinson 🇨🇦

Read on Substack

We saw even more examples of how Trump and MAGA think they can tell everybody what to do 

And the more trivial the issue, the more hysterical MAGA gets. So Trump thinks he can extort universities about what they teach, and tell Coke to change their formula, and tell the Smithsonian to revise their exhibits. 

Then MAGA thinks they can tell Cracker Barrel to keep their old logo, and tell the Minnesota Vikings football team not to have male cheerleaders. 

And meanwhile Trump is so pathetically obsessed with getting a Nobel Peace Prize like Obama did that he keeps boasting about how resolved six wars, or maybe it was 10 and nobody knows what he's babbling about.

The internet we need

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— Seth Abramson (@sethabramson.bsky.social) August 19, 2025 at 5:08 PM

1) declared war on paper straws, he won that one. 2) declared war on Coca Cola, won that one 3) declares a war on golf fashion 4) declared war on public health, won that along with Gravely Jacked McBrainworm. 5) declared war on trade, winning-at our expense. 6) War on decor with gaudy gold.

— Roy Kent's Niece (@tedlassofangirl.bsky.social) August 19, 2025 at 5:34 PM

Commentary: Carney's tariff news; Trump's Washington takeover; and a thread about the German Military Cemetery at Normandy

About Carney's tariff news:

Pragmatism in action. We’re so fortunate to have such a qualified person leading us. Imagine slimeball Poilievre bunging everything up, stumbling out of Diagalon trailers dishevelled and making decisions based on dated right wing populist ideology and punitive grievance.

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— Stephano Barberis 🍁 (@hellostephano.bsky.social) August 22, 2025 at 2:47 PM

Tariffs are like shooting yourself and hoping the other country bleeds. Go ahead, drop them, we don't have to buy their shit Their liquor industry found out there's worse things than tariffs: exclusion. Keep up the #BoycottUSA hurt them hard. Hurt them often. #Elbowsup www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

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— L Bennett 🇨🇦 🇪🇺🇺🇦✌🏻#TeamCanada #ElbowsUp (@thatgenxwidower.bsky.social) August 22, 2025 at 12:26 PM

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

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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

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— 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

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— 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?

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

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

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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.

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

Current mood in Norway regarding Trump and peace prize

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— 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:

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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...

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