...In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are f*cked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely...
Elon Musk is telling Republican lawmakers in private meetings that he is not to blame for the mass firings of federal workers that are causing uproar across the country, while Donald Trump reportedly told his cabinet secretaries on Thursday that they are ultimately in charge of hiring and firings at their agencies – not billionaire aide Musk...
You have not read this one here before*, but good for Mr. Trudeau.
Why?
Because, in the wake of Donald Trump's latest announcement that he will delay the imposition of some his tariffs, Trudeau has responded thusly, as reported by JP Tasker of the CBC:
...Speaking to reporters at a news conference earlier Thursday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada will hold firm and push ahead with retaliatory tariffs and other measures until Trump backs off entirely.
"Our goal is to get all tariffs removed," he said...
Put another way, sovereignty matters when it comes to standing up to transnational bullies.
The then, on the eve of the US'ian invasion of Iraq in 2003:
We're the Nazis in this game, and I don't like it. I'm embarrassed and I'm pissed off. Yeah. I mean to say something and I think a lot of people in this country agree with me.'
A couple of good pieces in The Tyee the last couple of days...
First, Andrew Macleod wrote about how BC Premier David Eby is thinking of slapping tariffs on US'ian coal that is being shipped overseas from Roberts Bank after it arrives there by rail.
Interestingly, the coal from Montana and Wyoming only transits through Lotusland because American west coast ports won't touch it.
Doubly interestingly, Eby's plan, which would need support from the Feds, appears to have evolved from an original idea of applying the carbon tax to the shipments from... wait for it...John Rustad.
Triply interestingly, Eby appears to have at least of kinda/sorta acknowledged that Rustad's idea was a decent one. Imagine that!
****
Second. Jenn St. Dennis wrote about how an astroturf group front by home grown tech grifters wants to set up a DOGE-type deal in Canada:
In Canada, a group of tech CEOs has come up with a political public relations effort called Build Canada...
{snip}
...So far, Build Canada’s website offers a series of short policy statements calling for 110,000 jobs to be cut from the federal public service over four years, AI to be used in government services, interprovincial trade barriers to come down and the federal government to step in to compel provinces and municipalities to allow autonomous vehicles and delivery robots. There are also calls for immigration for humanitarian reasons to be sharply curtailed in favour of higher-income and highly skilled immigrants, and to fund content creators to tell inspiring stories about Canada...
{snippety}
...But Build Canada is connected to another website called Canada Spends that looks a lot like the DOGE.gov website...
{snippety doo-dah}
...Just like the DOGE website, Canada Spends offers a series of boxes containing random information about government spending; and like DOGE.gov, clicking on the box takes you to a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that (Elon) Musk bought in 2022...
It is the kind of thing that, until recently, would have been viewed as laughable by 99% of Canadians.
Now, with the algorithmic outrage engines fully engaged in all of the social media boiler rooms in all of our worlds, that may no longer be the case.
Peter Navarro is an economist who pushed hydroxychloroquine as a COVID cure while he was a trade advisor during Trump I. He then worked to overturn the 2020 US'ian presidential election by conspiracy theory which ultimately led to a contempt of congress conviction followed by a short stay behind bars.
Now, during the dawning of Trump II, Mr. Navarro is back as the senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing and he has inserted himself into economic negotiations with Canada. In this role you've probably heard a bit of the kerfuffle about Navarro allegedly saying that Canada should be removed from the five eyed security surveillance consortium.
To wit, here is the lede of a recent report in the Financial Times:
A top White House official has proposed expelling Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network as Donald Trump increases pressure on the country he talks about turning into the 51st US state. Peter Navarro, one of the US president’s closest advisers, is pushing for the US to remove Canada from the Five Eyes — which also includes the UK, Australia and New Zealand — according to people familiar with his efforts inside the administration...
Mr. Navarro has since denied this, but he has not denied the following, which was reported by Connor Stringer in the Telegraph yesterday:
A top White House official has threatened to redraw the Canadian border amid Donald Trump’s ambition to turn the country in America’s “51st state”.
Peter Navarro, one of Donald Trump’s closest advisers, is pushing US negotiators to discuss reworking the border with their Canadian counterparts...
Most of the Maritimes, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto are bad enough.
But South Vancouver Island?
Never!
_____ Subheader?....This is what Zelinsky said earlier today when he stood up to the made for TeeVee Bully Boy tag team and their faux balsa wood chair slams in the Oval Office this morning.
LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — A child who wasn’t vaccinated died in a measles outbreak in rural West Texas, state officials said Wednesday, the first U.S. death from the highly contagious respiratory disease since 2015.
The school-aged child had been hospitalized and died Tuesday night amid the widespread outbreak, Texas’ largest in nearly 30 years. Since it began last month, a rash of 124 cases has erupted across nine counties...
Meanwhile, from deep within the Lysenko Bunker:
...(Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) dismissed Texas’ outbreak as “not unusual” during a Wednesday meeting of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet members...
_____ The AP banned from oval office briefings?...Darned tootin'...And said banning now has a judicial seal of approval, at least for the moment.
...It Sure Would Be A Shame If Anything Were To Happen To It.
WASHINGTON, Feb 21 (Reuters) - U.S. negotiators pressing Kyiv for access to Ukraine's critical minerals have raised the possibility of cutting the country's access to Elon Musk's vital Starlink satellite internet system, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters...
{snip}
...Melinda Haring, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council, said Starlink was essential for Ukraine’s operation of drones, a key pillar of its military strategy.
“Losing Starlink would be a game changer,” Haring said, noting that Ukraine was now at 1:1 parity with Russia in terms of drone usage and artillery shells. Ukraine has a wide range of different drone capabilities, ranging from sea drones and surveillance drones to long-range unmanned aerial vehicles...
It's as if all of the world has become a stage where the leads are the Godfather and Blofeld.
A new journal co-founded by President Donald Trump’s pick to direct the National Institutes of Health (NIH) says it will “promote open and transparent scientific discourse” but is drawing controversy within mere days of its launch.
The Journal of the Academy of Public Health (JAPH), announced on Wednesday, is the brainchild of NIH nominee Jay Bhattacharya, a physician and economist at Stanford University, and Martin Kulldorff, a former Harvard University biostatistician who became known for his opposition to lockdowns, child vaccination, and other public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic...
Hmmmm...
In my opinion there is another word that should and must be used to describe this 'journal'.
And that word is fake, based on the following, also from the Science piece (bolding mine):
...The journal, which has already published eight articles on topics including COVID-19 vaccine trials and mask mandates, eschews several aspects of traditional publishing. It lacks a subscription paywall, posts peer reviews alongside published articles, and pays reviewers for their work. But other researchers have criticized the journal’s exclusivity and lack of quality control. Only members of a newly formed body, the Academy of Public Health, can submit articles, and all submitted articles are published...
Put another way, the journal's submitted articles are generated by a star chamber and the publication of those submissions is pre-ordained.
Which means that this is not science.
Instead, it's gaming the system which is also known as codswallop, regardless the make up of said star chamber.
______ Regarding the star chamber's roster, Jonathan Howard has more on that over at Science-Based Medicine...Much more. Image and Subheader?....This!
Members of Elon Musk's private security detail have been deputized by the U.S. Marshals Service, granting them certain rights and protections of federal law enforcement agents, four sources familiar with the move confirmed to CBS News Thursday...
{snip}
...It was not immediately apparent what authorities Musk's team would be granted, but special deputies are typically permitted to carry weapons on federal grounds and carry out arrests...
And how did the US'ian Secret Service respond when asked to comment?
...In a statement late Thursday, Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi referred CBS News to DOGE's communications office...
Gosh.
Like truthiness before it, this has the look of coupiness.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as the Trump Administration's Health and Human Services director on Thursday, February 13th.
On Friday February 14th, the following happened, as reported by the pre-eminent US'ian science publication 'Science':
President Donald Trump’s administration today moved to fire 5200 workers at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), using supervisors across the vast agency to warn probationary employees that they would soon receive termination notices. It also fired the director and much of the staff of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a $1.5 billion agency created 3 years ago to fund high-risk, high-payoff research.
The move came on the first full day in office of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had promised to eliminate hundreds of jobs at federal health agencies “on Day 1.”
At the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), where institute directors were hastily summoned to a meeting this morning to alert them of the imminent firings, some 1500 employees were initially scheduled to be let go; at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) the number was 1269...
And, in addition to the generalized gutting of such agencies, there is also the surgical carving up of targeted initiatives:
...At CDC, many of the 50 or so members of the first year class of the Epidemic Intelligence Service—the agency’s prestigious “disease detective” training program for young epidemiologists—were notified they would be terminated. Three division directors in the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, a key front in pandemic prevention, were also on a list of targeted employees...
Clinician scientist David Gorski, who writes at 'Science-Based Medicine', had this to say about the latter:
...It’s almost as though RFK Jr. is trying other make us less prepared for another pandemic. No, strike that. He is, just because he hates what the CDC said about COVID-19, nonpharmaceutical interventions (e.g., masks, social distancing, business closures) to slow the spread of the virus, and, above all, vaccines...
Up here in Canuckistan there is a strain of science geek gallows humour going around about all the outstanding young American talent we will soon be recruiting to the Great White North. Personally, I am not laughing.
_____ No word yet as to whether Science, the magazine, has been banned from White House, CDC and/or NIH press conferences due to a lack of knee bending...Sound far-fetched?....Well, it turns out that the Associated Press has already been banned from Air Force One and the Oval Office for refusing to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico, which was first named thusly in the mid-16th century, some 200 years before the American revolution.
For various and sundry reasons, I will not likely be watching the SNL 50 year cash-in-aversary. Regardless, I am betting that Elvis Costello's first appearance on the show back in December of 1977 will be one of the highlighted bits.
What was so special about the former Declan MacManus' first appearance in LorneVille all those years ago?
Well, the record company had pushed him to do 'Watching The Detectives', which he and the Attractions started. However, a few bars in Costello suddenly stopped the proceedings and shouted:
'I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen, but there's no reason to do this song here.'
The band, which was only booked on the show because Malcom McLaren screwed up the Sex Pistols' visa applications, then immediately launched into the much more up-tempo 'Radio Radio'.
This turn of events sent Mr. Michaels into a tizzy given that it messed with the show's timing. Feet were stomped, things were shouted and Costello was apparently banned from the show forever.
But.
This bit of snot-nosed behaviour actually served Mr. Costello well and the entire thing became quite infamous, so much so that Mr. Michaels, who never met a bit of infamy, self-generated or not, that he didn't attempt to exploit, later recycled the incident when Costello suddenly cut in on a Beastie Boys performance to sing about old timey British rules about what could, and could not, be played on the long wave.
Anyway, in an oddly irony-free twist of fate, it turns out that, whenever things go really wrong at one of his shows, Weird Al Yancovic, will suddenly halt the proceedings, shout out Mr. Costello's immortal words and, well, you guessed it...
If you need to step back from the the onslaught and are looking for perspective on what is going on down south, the piece to read a piece in Foreign Policy titled 'The Path to American Authoritarianism' by academics Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way.
Essentially, Levitsky and Way predict that the United States is well on its way down a path they call 'competitive authoritarianism' which will ultimately lead to democracy of a sort:
...U.S. democracy will likely break down during the second Trump administration, in the sense that it will cease to meet standard criteria for liberal democracy: full adult suffrage, free and fair elections, and broad protection of civil liberties.
The breakdown of democracy in the United States will not give rise to a classic dictatorship in which elections are a sham and the opposition is locked up, exiled, or killed. Even in a worst-case scenario, Trump will not be able to rewrite the Constitution or overturn the constitutional order. He will be constrained by independent judges, federalism, the country’s professionalized military, and high barriers to constitutional reform. There will be elections in 2028, and Republicans could lose them.
But authoritarianism does not require the destruction of the constitutional order. What lies ahead is not fascist or single-party dictatorship but competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. Most autocracies that have emerged since the end of the Cold War fall into this category, including Alberto Fujimori’s Peru, Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, and contemporary El Salvador, Hungary, India, Tunisia, and Turkey.
Under competitive authoritarianism, the formal architecture of democracy, including multiparty elections, remains intact. Opposition forces are legal and aboveground, and they contest seriously for power. Elections are often fiercely contested battles in which incumbents have to sweat it out. And once in a while, incumbents lose, as they did in Malaysia in 2018 and in Poland in 2023. But the system is not democratic, because incumbents rig the game by deploying the machinery of government to attack opponents and co-opt critics. Competition is real but unfair...
And how and why would this happen?
Well, essentially, the weaponization of the state would force many to give in:
...Although Trump’s critics won’t be jailed, exiled, or banned from politics, the heightened cost of public opposition will lead many of them to retreat to the political sidelines. In the face of FBI investigations, tax audits, congressional hearings, lawsuits, online harassment, or the prospect of losing business opportunities, many people who would normally oppose the government may conclude that it simply is not worth the risk or effort.
This process of self-sidelining may not attract much public attention, but it can be highly consequential. Facing looming investigations, promising politicians—Republicans and Democrats alike—leave public life. CEOs seeking government contracts, tariff waivers, or favorable antitrust rulings stop contributing to Democratic candidates, funding civil rights or democracy initiatives, and investing in independent media. News outlets whose owners worry about lawsuits or government harassment rein in their investigative teams and their most aggressive reporters. Editors engage in self-censorship, softening headlines and opting not to run stories critical of the government. And university leaders fearing government investigations, funding cuts, or punitive endowment taxes crack down on campus protest, remove or demote outspoken professors, and remain silent in the face of growing authoritarianism...
Gosh.
I'm not sure that last part even needs an insightful academic crystal ball to illuminate the future given that it already appears to be happening.
Regardless, Levitsky's and Way's piece is well worth reading in its entirety, and bookmarking for posterity if and when CanuckiStanMikitaVille starts to take on all the finest characteristics of, say, the current Hungarian regime
A year ago there were 10 Broadway Plan new high-rise projects in East Kits—today there are 25 new high-rise projects “in the pipeline” between Burrard and Vine Streets, 1st and 16th Avenues—that’s one additional per month.
Meanwhile the city’s official tracking advises 12 projects are in the pipeline—their definition of what to include is way less than the reality on the ground.1
Those 25 projects will involve demoviction of 13 existing mature rental buildings—that’s one affordable “mature” rental building gone for each pair of new projects.
The 25 projects total 3,821 homes2. At the city’s (and others’) standard of 2.2 persons per home on average, that means more than 8,400 new residents in East Kits—admittedly that excludes the populations demovicted from the 13 mature rental buildings, unknown because the city does not track that number (why not? you may ask).
“Only” four projects have had their rezoning approved to date, for a total of 795 housing units, 20% of which (159 units) are supposed to be “below market” rentals. The good news is that of these four, only one, 1960 West 7th Ave, involves destruction of an existing mature rental building. One down, 12 to go.
There are still no plans for additional schools, community centres or park space.
It's that last bullet point that disturbs me most.
______ Image at the top of the post?...A 3D projection of the potential ultimate BWay Plan build out (white towers are in the pipeline; grey towers are possible/potential) looking East from Vine St by Stephen Bohus who uses the moniker 'digitalmonkblog' over at CityHallWatch...Here's his latest post on the proposed twenty story towers just west of Arbutus on 6th avenue.
From reader Eye in the comments: ..."The reason there are still no plans for additional schools, community centres or park space, is that there is no money for it. As predicted, the Broadway subway is acting as a major black hole sucking every available dollar to fund this massive pork barrel project."...
You know that old ode to complicity, and all that it can and will wreak, that was written as a post-WWII confessional by German pastor Martin Niemoller:
...Some of the nation’s largest professional scientific and medical associations are still trying to decide how best to respond to the Trump administration’s aggressive intervention. Major research universities have been similarly cautious in their responses. The generally muted reaction, according to leaders in the research community, is partly due to the rapid pace of the executive orders, the vague nature of their wording and the judicial interventions...
To which I say hogwash.
Instead, I am of the opinion that it is a fear of retribution (including losses in big money funding) that is cowing these fine folks.
Look.
These are dangerous times.
And acquiescing in advance is not going to make things any less so.
Training for politicians that emphasizes their first duty is to the public, not the party;
Implement term limits;
Strict accountability for politicians and senior public servants;
Limit the power of unelected bureaucrats and institutions;
Reduce or end the influence of paid lobbyists and special interest groups;
Increase transparency in all functions of government and government agencies;
Address economic disparities to create a more equitable society;
Protect marginalized groups and ensure their participation in democratic processes;
Limit the influence of those who consciously spread disinformation;
Take regular advice from citizen forums involving people selected at random.
Personally, I reckon it is hard to argue against any of Norm's suggestions.
Regarding the lobbying thing, I've seen how insidious/corrosive that can be, up close.
Awhile back I was doing some science geek volunteering for a health charity that does really good work for many constituencies. When I noticed that they used a lobbyist I asked why and was informed that this was the only way they could consistently get in front of, not just elected officials, but also the politically appointed bureaucrats that run things. Essentially, it was that arms race thing that we also see with political donations wherein even good actors are afraid not to play the game for fear of being shut out of the system.
Fed Lib firebrand Evan Scrimshaw took a lot of heat for his long time insistence that big changes, including a leader change, had to happen to protect the party from an electoral massacre.
And now, well, Mr. Scrimshaw just can't help but say 'I told you so':
...In late September, I did a podcast about Ontario, but at the end I teed off on the Federal circumstances, and the fact that there was no sense of urgency despite the fact that the Liberals had just lost a second safe seat Byelection weeks before. It was obviously an exaggeration - I was not, in a literal sense, the only person trying to get Trudeau to resign, but it wasn’t much of one. That my motives and my loyalty to country were so routinely maligned by those defending the PM was infuriating, because all of this came from a sincere belief that the Liberal Party unburdened by Trudeau would be at least in somewhat fighting shape. And I have been completely vindicated, with today’s Pallas release reaffirming again that this is a tight race...
And what is this vindication born of a one-off poll from an a polling outfit called Pallas all about this time Alfie?
The confirmation hearings for Bobby the Younger are scheduled to take place later this week.
And yet, the following, as noted by Anil Oza at STAT News, has already happened:
A flurry of scientific gatherings and panels across federal science agencies were canceled on Wednesday, at a time of heightened sensitivity about how the Trump administration will shift the agencies’ policies and day-to-day affairs.
Several meetings of National Institutes of Health (NIH) study sections, which review applications for fellowships and grants, were canceled without being rescheduled, according to agency notices reviewed by STAT.
A Feb. 20-21 meeting of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, a panel that advises the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services on vaccine policy, was also canceled. So was a meeting of the Presidential Advisory Council for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria that was scheduled for Jan. 28 and 29...
The point is, they don't even need to install Mr. Kennedy as their codswallop spewing figurehead because the extremists are already at the helm.
_____ While the immediately scary stuff here is the halting of the vaccine and antibiotic resistance advisory committees, in the American NIH biomedical research system 'study sections' are, essentially, the same as grant panels in the much smaller Canadian CIHR system. These study sections are where the real hard-nosed biomedical discovery funding decisions are made by scientists, not bureaucrats. Thus, the fact that the extremists are also cancelling US NIH study section meetings is really worrisome as it could be a spanner chucked in the gears of the world's biggest evidence-based, scientifically driven biomedical research engine. And we already know how threatened the extremists are by evidence and science.
What does Joe Rogan have in common with L. Ron Hubbard?
Well, it would appear that Mr. Rogan's podcast thingy is a place where uber-thetans of a certain narcissitimilitudinous nature who were never nurtured go to get, well...
It would appear that, according to her press release at least, Christy Clark's lousy french is a major reason that she has decided not to run for the leadership of the Canadian Liberal Party:
...While we have come a long way, in a short time, there is simply not enough time to mount asuccessful campaign and for me to effectively connect with Francophone Canadians in their language. I have worked hard at improving my French but it’s not where it needs to be, today...
Ignoring that use of the collective noun for the moment, one can only wonder if, perhaps, all that time Ms. Clark spent working hard might have been more effective if she had actually spent it Francophone Canada rather than, you know, France:
However, fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your point of view), Ms. Clark has also assured us that this press release is not a 'you won't have Nixon....errrr...Clark to kick around anymore' kind of a statement because:
..Friends, I will continue to fight for Liberal candidates and am deeply thankful for the outpouring of support I have received from the grassroots over the past week.
We will meet again...
Oh boy.
_______ Of course, as we have noted before, last summer was not the first time that Ms. Clark worked hard on something that may or may have not been learning french while in France.
All snark aside, if Ms. Clark were to run for the Fed Libs in the next election, is there any riding in Lotusland, Coastal Division, that she could actually win?
Nevermind the con-party membership thing for the moment.
Instead, let's consider where Ms. Christy Clark was and what was she doing when she endorsed Jean Charest for the Conservative Party of Canada leadership in August of 2022.
The following is from a piece by Lindsay Campbell in iPolitics at from that time:
...At a conference held on Thursday (in Edmonton) by the centre-right organization Centre Ice Conservatives, Clark spoke about how there’s a need for a centrist party that’s willing to unite the country and listen to the opinions of all Canadians...
{snip}
...Clark, a keynote speaker for the conference, told attendees that as politicians move toward the fringes, Centre Ice Conservatives are part of “a special kind of activism” to preserve a middle political path and “bring Canada back together.”...
And what is Ms. Clark's 'special kind of activism' bit all about?
Well.
...Though Clark said politicians, in general, don’t know how to have constructive dialogue and listen to opposing views, she specifically put (Justin) Trudeau on blast for the way he approached the convoy protests and people opposed to vaccines...
Aaahhh...
Now I get it, it's all about that third way(ish), anti-woke, compassionate centrist conservatism.
Or some such thing.
****
In addition to agreeing to be their keynote speaker Ms. Clark doubled down and became a member of the Centre Ice Conservative's 'advisory council'.
But then, about a year later in the fall of 2023, when those same fine folks first dropped the term conservative from their moniker and then turned themselves into a brand new soccer ball-free national political party called 'Canadian Future', Ms. Clark lost all courage of any actual convictions she originally had (or did not have) and was nowhere to be found.
Natasha Bulowski of the National Observer had that story at the time:
...Canadian Future will be headed by a national council with a representative from each province and territory and it intends to hold a founding convention in 2024. The Centre Ice Canadians sports a team webpage that includes former Conservative MP Peter Kent and former Conservative Senate leader Marjory LeBreton. Former B.C. premier Christy Clark was once listed on the organization’s advisory council but is no longer there and did not return a request for comment...
In retrospect, it looks like, perhaps, Marky Mark had a premonition (and/or an mp3 file) that set him to thinking that something was coming down the tracks Thursday:
Former B.C. premier Christy Clark — who is considering running for the federal Liberal leadership — is denying that she was previously a member of the Conservative Party, despite past comments where she said otherwise...
{snip}
"I never got a membership and I never got a ballot," Clark told host Catherine Cullen in an interview airing Saturday.
"I came out and I supported Jean Charest and the reason I did this is simple: I thought it was vitally important that we stopped Pierre Poilievre."...
{snip}
..."I never got a membership and I never got a ballot," Clark told host Catherine Cullen in an interview airing Saturday.
A spokesperson for the Conservative Party refuted Clark's claims, saying they have records of Clark's membership from the 2022 leadership race.
"Christy Clark purchased a Conservative Party membership through Jean Charest's leadership campaign. That membership is no longer active," Sarah Fischer, the party's director of communications, said in an email.
When asked about Fischer's statement, Clark pushed back and insisted she had never been a member.
"Why don't they come out and show my membership or my ballot? They never sent me any of those — although I wouldn't put it past them to manufacture one of them," Clark told Cullen.
Following Clark's interview on The House, the Conservative Party provided a screenshot of a membership database that suggests Clark had membership from June 2022 to June 2023.
Clark's comments to CBC News also contradict what she had said during the time of the Conservative leadership contest...
And how did the good Ms. Clark respond?
Well.
Just as those of us who have been paying attention for the last twenty years, plus, might have predicted...
Shite, happens, indeed.
The real question, now is, what lesson did the good Ms. Clark learn, exactly?
(and please note that Ms. Clark, in the vTweet above, did not admit either that she had been a Conservative Party of Canada member or that she lied about it, multiple times, during and after a national radio interview about if and why she 'might' run for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada)
______ Tip 'O The Toque to reader Graham for the heads-up on all this yesterday afternoon....
You can, if you wish to subject yourself to it, listen to the part of the national radio interview concerned...Here...But don't complain that we did not warn you about exposing your auditory system to fingernails slowly sliding on down a blackboard for the one minute and twenty-five seconds concerned... Post to follow?...Where, exactly, was Ms. Clark, and what was she doing, when she jumped on the Charest train back in oh so long ago 2022?
Alec Lazenby of postmedia has a piece up wherein a goodly number of Christy Clark's former 'colleagues' extol her virtues as the potential leader of the federal Liberals.
It's a provincial story, in the classic sense, and it's really not worth the pixel ink that it's printed on.
But still, I couldn't lay off this bit:
“I think she certainly has the potential to be a dark horse in the race,” said Stephen Smart, general manager of Hill & Knowlton Western Canada and a former press secretary to Clark.
“I really think those who might dismiss her in this race out of the gate really do so at their own peril. She builds great teams around her. She has the potential to really get people on-board. She has been a member of the Liberal Party of Canada for a very long time.”
Ahhh yes...
The good Mr. Smart, the former political reporter who once ignored the conflicty position he put his employer at the time, the CBC, in, given his relationship with one of the members of Ms. Clark's team back in the day. This conflictyness was pointed out by the likes of Norm Farrell, was confirmed by the CBC's then ombudsman Kirk LaPointe, and was ultimately railed against by the likes of Keith Baldrey and other local corpMedia members and practitioners.
And, just to prove that the synergistic sycophancy never ends, please note that Ms. Smart now works for Hill and Knowlton, the big-time super-fine PR firm.
Gosh.
Now that I think of it.
Would it be unreasonable to wonder if Mr. Smart's current employment status had anything whatsoever to do with Mr. Lazenby's story being placed in the pages of Postmedia print organs in the the first place?
______
And ya, I still have archives and I'm going keep using them!
Remember that race card from Robert 'Send Me All Your Leaks!' Fife that had the two so-called outsiders, Mark Carney and Christy Clark, at the bottom of the odds list?
Well, Evan Scrimshaw has weighed in and he thinks that Ms. Clark has the edge:
...The difference between Carney and, say, Christy Clark - both nominal “outsider” candidates - is that everybody in the party knows Clark can do the basic things of both governing and campaigning well. There is little confidence in Carney, and his Globe op-ed has gone over like a bucket of warm piss - raising more questions about his instincts...
_____ All snark aside, we should probably give Mr. Scrimshaw a wee bit of a break...After all, he is an Ontarian who probably gets a good proportion of his takes on BC politics from the likes of Ron Obvious.
From deep within the bowels of the FifeMaster Flash's leak-laden account of Justin Trudeau's apparent coming resignation in Sunday's online version of the Globe and (nolongerEmpire) Mail:
Interesting stuff that (mostly) popped up on the Blog Crawl, which is located stage left for those of you all not on their phones, over the last little while:
...If you go back to the 2008 white paper by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto that gave rise to Bitcoin, its main argument was that we needed to replace checking accounts with blockchain-based payments because you can’t trust banks; crypto promoters also tend to preach libertarianism, touting crypto as a way to escape government tyranny. Now we have crypto boosters demanding that the evil government force the evil banks to let them have conventional checking accounts...
...(T)he real reason banks don’t want to be financially connected to crypto is that they believe, with good reason, that to the extent that cryptocurrencies are used for anything besides speculation, much of that activity is criminal — and they don’t want to be accused of acting as accessories...
Relevance?...The Bitcoinlandic aspirations of our current mayor Mr. Sim.
...The Broadway Plan will see more proposals coming forward that will ask for density well in excess of the maximums put in place. One example is tower proposal at 1110 West 10th Avenue that has a proposed floor space ratio of 10.1, while the maximum under the Broadway Plan is 6.5. Such changes will essentially make this plan meaningless and a “free for all”. Staff have no intention to Pause the Plan (see video of the Pause the Plan rally here)...
Relevance?...All (developmental big money) politics is local.
...(O)f course, (United Healthcare CEO) Thompson wasn’t doing anything illegal when he ran his company hard on health-care claims. His shareholders and his big bosses might have loved him for it. Yet millions of Americans have died, grown sicker or been bankrupted by the decisions of their health-care insurance providers. One study found that 36 per cent of the Americans surveyed had had at least one claim denied, and most of them had been denied multiple times. What justice exists in such a system? Most companies would have an appeal process for individuals, but this 2023 ProPublica article says the appeal rate is one per cent. There’s court, but that’s money and time that few have. In truth, Americans have virtually no chance of justice against corporate decision-making around health care, yet their very lives are being ripped apart by the corporate direction being set by men like Thompson...
Relevance?...When it comes to public healthcare and justice for the public, universality matters for both.
...Whether we dig out a new sub-basement to hell’s deepest circle (in 2025) rests partly in the hands of Elon “Space Karen” Musk, who’s busy gridlocking the US government, but will officially become the de facto Goblin King of Everywhere at roughly noon on 20 January. Thereafter, Xitter will shake off its remaining sane users and simply become a vast international Ouija board, amplifying the worst afterthoughts of the world’s worst people...
{snip}
...Our dying country and our dying world are mostly in the hands of underqualified nepo babies and grifters destined to fail upwards, abandoning every fire they’ve started, and kicking through drifts of our money like kids in autumn leaves. The future can seem bleak. And the majority can seem weak. But we’re not.
Need to know even more about survival? Drop in at a refugee support centre like the splendid Refuweegee and talk to the expats from countries other than Britain, people who have endured the unimaginable and not abandoned hope. Talk to domestic abuse survivors, to street homeless people, to people who are mocked and hated for simply existing. They’re still here – alive, against the odds. We’re all still here with an unmet obligation to help and learn from one another...
Relevance?... Self evident.
______
Image at the top of the post?...That 'Space Karen' reference, above, as public art, at the corner of 10th and Market in the City once roamed by a writer, Dashiell Hammett, whose characters would most assuredly wipe the floor of such creatures if they were around today.
By now you may have heard that his most highly excellent and most exquisitely exalted US'ian government-contractor-in-chief, Mr. Elon Musk, has gone to rhetorical war against the looniest of the MAGA goonery that is calling for the mass deportation of skilled immigrants who came to the country on H-1B visas.
Ostensibly, according to Mr. Musk at least, these workers are vital to the interests of the American tech industry because:
...“The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” Musk wrote on X on Christmas. “If you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be.”...
But is that the real reason why companies like, say, Tesla hire huge numbers of workers through the H-1B program?
Perhaps not, as noted in an NY Times OpEd piece today by Farah Stockman:
...Most H-1B visa holders are lower-paid labor, not top talent. In May, Musk laid off more than 14,000 Tesla workers, including many H-1B visa holders. Reddit threads filled with laments by workers who had moved to the United States from India only to be let go with no warning. They were desperate to remain in the country, but because H-1B visas are owned by the employer, they had few options for doing so...
If you are old enough, you likely remember the one liner, above, that is supposed to have, especially according to the flack who coined it, James Carville, contributed to the election of the oldest living US'ian president, William Jefferson Clinton in 1992.
But never mind the bollocks, or a guy named Ross Perot, because I figure the time has come to re-work that one liner into the snowclone that is the header at the top of this post because, according to those commie-pinko, tree-huggers at the Economist:
Energy storage for the electrical grid is about to hit the big time. By the reckoning of the International Energy Agency (IEA), a forecaster, grid-scale storage is now the fastest-growing of all the energy technologies. In 2025, some 80 gigawatts of new grid-scale energy storage will be added globally, an eight-fold increase from 2021...
{snip}
...The IEA predicts that in 2025 the combination of solar-photovoltaic generation and battery storage will be cheaper than the cost of coal-fired power in China, and new gas-fired plants in America...
And likely cheaper, too, than any of these other 'bridge' fuels we here in CanuckistanMikitaVille are constantly being told, by those who will profit most, must be extracted, shipped, exploited and burned as fast as possible before the large scale transition to renewable energy can be made economically not stupid.
Which means that it is now the year that the worsening of all things online will continue at warped speed:
Meta is betting that characters generated by artificial intelligence will fill its social media platforms in the next few years as it looks to the fast-developing technology to drive engagement with its 3bn users.
“We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do,” said Connor Hayes, vice-president of product for generative AI at Meta.
“They’ll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform . . . that’s where we see all of this going,” he added.
Hayes said a “priority” for Meta over the next two years was to make its apps “more entertaining and engaging”, which included considering how to make the interaction with AI more social...
Now.
I know that Norm Farrell, NVG, DS, and Dr. Beer 'N Hockey are on the level because I've actually met them, in person, in real life.
And I think I met GarFish in a past life.
And I've known Danneau, and Graham, and eaf, and EE, and TB, and Scotty on Denman, and Lew E, and Chuckstraight, and JP, and Keith, and Grant G, and just about all the rest of you who have been stopping by here occasionally since the days when AI grifterians like Sam Altman were still in short pants and/or were about to quit Stanford. Thus, I'm pretty sure you all are real as well.
But what do we do when a new commenter shows up now?
Do we have them to send us imprints of their retinas and, maybe, cheek swabs just to be sure they're something more than neural-networked gobs of goo in the machine?
_____ Image at the top of the post?...Header originator Dorothy Parker working her typewriter far from the madding Algonquin Roundtable crowd at her farmhouse in Bucks County PA...The guy sitting by the window is not Paul Newman. Instead, it's her then husband Alan Campbell... The photo was taken in 1937, the year the two of them worked with collaborator Robert Carson to write the screenplay to 'A Star Is Born'.
