History Lesson, Part I...To The Condo!

BannedIn

Lotusland


By now, you've likely heard that Mr. Mark Marissen and a number of his 'progressive' minions have been banned from running for civic office through 2026.

Bob Mackin, writing in Business in Vancouver, summarizes the details:

...Elections BC cited Progress Vancouver for multiple violations: Taking a non-permissible loan of $50,000; receiving donations without reporting the required information (missing or incomplete contributor names and addresses); prohibited campaign contributions from outside B.C.; and contributions more than the annual limit...

Regarding that $50K loan, which Mr. Marissen says he took because he didn't know that big money donations had been banned and because he received bad legal advice from an as yet unnamed lawyer, Mr. Mackin was on that story back in February of this year:

...The fourth-place finisher in last fall’s race for the Vancouver mayoralty received an illegal $50,000 loan and is now struggling to return the money.

Mark Marissen was the leader of Progress Vancouver and had received the loan from Jason McLean in February 2022 “to finance the day-to-day administration of Progress Vancouver's elector organization office intended to operate on a continuing basis outside campaign periods,” according to an Elections BC prohibited campaign loan form...

{snip}

...Jason McLean is CEO of the privately held McLean Group, which owns real estate, construction, film production, IT and communications, and flight charter companies. He is a former chair of the then-named Vancouver Board of Trade, and a former Vancouver Police Board member who worked as an aide in the office of Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien. He declined to comment...

But that was then and this is now, and the 'non-permissible loan' has still not been re-paid.

So, what was the good Mr. Marissen to do?

Why, gather all his friends and influential uncles for a fundraiser of course!

From Mr. Mackin's most recent piece:

...In a June 18 Facebook post, Marissen posed for a photograph with (Jason) McLean in a Coal Harbour condo at a fundraiser aimed at paying off campaign debts: “It’s much more challenging afterwards — every bit helps,” Marissen wrote.

Also present were former B.C. premier and Marissen’s ex-wife Christy Clark, former Vancouver mayor and former BC Liberal MLA Sam Sullivan, ex-Liberal MP Herb Dhaliwal and Daoping Bao, the CEO of Burnaby’s Smart Label Solutions, where Marissen is on the advisory board...

All the usual super-fine folks, given Mr. Marissen's ties to the BC and Federal Liberals, right?

But Herb Dhaliwal?

Isn't that a bit of a surprise you might be asking yourself (and/or half remembering)?

Well.

It's now time for the history lesson, as told by the venerable Paul Willcocks writing in BC Business way, way back in 2007:

...There is no denying the Marissen team played rough. The most infamous episode saw the (Paul) Martin forces take over the riding association of (then Liberal) MP and Chrétien supporter Herb Dhaliwal in 2002, while Dhaliwal was out of the country and his wife was dying of cancer. The takeover not only locked up delegate support for Martin; it killed Dhaliwal’s chances of running again. He blames (David) Basi and others on Marissen’s team, complaining of questionable mass sign-ups of instant Liberals...

Gosh.

So many names, so much history.

Stay tuned for the next installment...



_____

Header comes from Mr. Mike Watt, infamous bass player and historian of the musical underground...And former member of  The Minutemen.

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Man Of La Merger Says...Merge More!

QuixoticMaybe

ButNeitherTheDonNorCervantesVille

Mr. Conrad Black, the man who once controlled 59 of 105 of Canada's daily newspapers, writing under the headline 'How the Postmedia-Nordstar merger can save journalism' in the National Post, leads with the following:

"It was announced this week that advanced negotiations are underway for an effective merger between Nordstar Capital, the publisher of the Toronto Star and the Metroland suburban newspapers, and Postmedia, which publishes this newspaper as well as the Sun newspapers and the principal English-language daily newspapers in Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. This is not surprising, as both companies have been losing money, which is a process that even our governments in all their profligacy will eventually discover cannot continue indefinitely. The commercial advantage of such an arrangement would be to merge the business aspects of the two companies, while maintaining editorial separation: the savings would be considerable, at no cost to editorial quality..."

Leaving aside the gratuitous comment about 'our governments' for the moment*, anyone who reads the Vancouver Sun and the Province with any regularity, and has any historical memory of Lotuslandian newspapers past whatsoever, would very likely beg to differ that such mergers have 'no cost to editorial quality' not to mention all the jobs lost to the considerable 'savings'.

Mr. Black goes on to explain, in his view at least, how things got this way:

"...Both groups have had a rocky recent financial history and an uneven editorial performance..."

Gosh.

Given that statement, and all the explanatory fodder that follows it, the inattentive reader might assume that the real problem driving all this loss of big media profitability is financial history and editorial performance and not, say, the de-monetization of massive legacy newspaper chains that were built to rely on economies of scale that have been dismantled, piece-by-profitable-piece, by the machinations of de-regulated digital disruption.

Well.

It turns out that good Mr. Black, does mention the internet when it comes to providing a rationale for why he and his 'associates' got out of the 'Postmedia' side of the nouveau mega-merger side of the equation  back at the turn of the century:

"...Postmedia, a company whose principal assets were assembled by my associates and myself, including the National Post, which Ken Whyte and I founded in 1998, became entangled in the financial difficulties of the succeeding owners, after we made the strategic decision to depart the business after carefully considering the implications of the internet..."

Gosh.

That was some strategic decision, that decision to divest himself of all those merged newspaper assets way back in the year 2000 after carefully considering the 'implications of the internet'.

But here's the thing.

It's not like all those the 'implications of the internet' have lessened in the ensuing twenty-three years, right?

So, given that all that, how can Mr. Black expect one more massive newspaper chain merger to save anything at all in the year 2023?

The key, says Mr. Black, is to 'increase their quality':

"...The way to operate newspapers now is not to keep reducing quality by cutting costs, in a race to the bottom against declining revenues, but to increase their quality, which can be done relatively cheaply as it is a distressed industry and there are many talented journalists who are underemployed or doing work that they don’t enjoy. If the quality of the product rises, cover prices can be raised and more of the revenue base can be contributed by the proceeds of newspaper sales..."

Hmmmm...

Once again, I refer the reader back to Mr. Black's initial comments regarding how mergers result in cost-cutting savings while maintaining editorial separation and all that did to 'increase the quality' of the two daily newspapers currently produced by Postmedia in Vancouver.

As a counter-point, it is my opinion that the one, and perhaps only, time that Mr. Black himself significantly increased the quality of newspapers in this country was not due to any merger that reduced competition. Instead, it occurred when Mr. Black and his 'associates' themselves increased competition when they started, wait for it...

...The National Post.

Heckfire (and I can't believe I'm actually going to type this)...

On this one I actually agree with Barbara Kay.

OK?

_____

*'Our governments' according to the Lord of Crossharbour?...Yes, that's right!...In case you missed it,  the good Lord Black is once again, as of this very spring, a Canadian citizen.


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The Genius of Cousin Mose.

BastardsOf

NoneVille

On the surface at least, the life of TV writer Michael Schur, who also played Dwight Schrute's ping pong playing cousin Mose in the non-Brentian version of The Office, has a life so wonderful that it combines all the best accomplishments of both George and Peter Bailey.

After getting into Harvard on what may or may not have been the legacy ticket, Schur went on to run the infamous Lampoon. After graduation in 1997, Schur was almost immediately hired by Dr. Evil to write for Saturday Night Live and was soon in charge of Weekend Update, starting with the first show after 9/11. A few years later he left SNL to write for, and occasionally act in, Greg Daniels' US version of Ricky Gervais' and Stephen Merchants' ode to those who sell paper. Then, mid-run, Schur left Dunder Mifflin and turned what was supposed to be a spin-off into an entirely new show, Parks and Recreation. After that the shows just tumbled out, from Brooklyn Nine-Nine-Nine to The Good Place to Masters of None to Rutherford Falls to Hacks, and so on.

Beneath the humour, the set pieces, and the softening of stereotypes (i.e. Rutherford Falls had an indigenous show runner and tried to mostly do the right thing but it was no Reservation Dogs) the underlying theme of most Schur projects is that there is an inherent goodness at the core of the human condition.

Apparently, at least according to a piece in Schur's old school paper, it's a philosophical thing.

Given all that, I was really looking forward to Schur's coming adaptation of W.P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe, which had gone into heavy pre-production that included the building of a yet another ball field deep in the corn rows of Iowa, when the streaming service financing the project suddenly pulled the plug last summer.

Which is a real bummer but likely says more about the current state of the streaming business than the genius and/or philosophical bent of Michael Schur.

****

At this point it's important for me to note that, while I pursued lots of sports as a kid, I was crap at baseball and never played for real, not even in Little League.

But later, while still a kid, albeit in gradual school, I fell victim to all those free tickets that Stu Kehoe used to give out like candy at gas stations. As a result, often together with C., I got hooked on the local Lotuslandian, then Triple A, minor league team. The hook went in even deeper when the chief troublemaker up in the Nat Bailey's bleachers relented and let me write stuff for his monthly rag.

After that, especially after we moved to California, I went a little bit bonkers, spending hundreds of dollars a year on Baseball Weekly and America scouting prospects to draft and follow for fantasy purposes, pre-internet.

And while following all those prospects, for real, I once caught a foul ball behind home plate in San Jose while holding a then infant-sized tiny e. in my arms.

Which is just a way of explaining why, after I heard his baseball TeeVee show had been dumped, I decided to go hunting for evidence that Schur actually cared about the game.

It turns out that the evidence is everywhere.

First, there is a podcast he does with a veteran wordsmith Joe Posnanski wherein the pair of pontificators are as likely to spend two hours talking about the intricacies and/or validities of the most arcane of Sabremetric statistics as they are to start making up new wings for the Hall of Fame based on each inductee's acts of pure awesomeness, either on or off the field.

But the real gem I stumbled upon recently is, wait for it...

A blog.

Yes, a good old fashioned linear type-type blog from the dinosaur times (i.e. 2005 to 2008) wherein Schur and a couple of other TeeVee writer types spilled barrel after barrel of pixel ink making fun of any and all manner of baseball 'media' inanities*. 

Now that's entertainment!

_____

*And yes, the inclusion, despite what I learned from Mrs. Griffiths in grade two, of three 'types' in one sentence was purposeful!

At first I couldn't figure out why there were so few comments posted on the blog in question...And then I realized that the entire thing was written prior to the 2009 Haloscan massacre that wiped out bloggerly discourse pretty much everywhere at the time. In fact, the massacre even disappeared almost 10,000 comments at this little F-Troop listed endeavour...

Very bizarre, and yet somehow fitting, ear worm from the sub-header given that fellow Harvard alum and Master of None co-creator Alan Yang was also one the baseball blog guys?...This!

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The Total Ensh*ttifcation Of A Podcatcher.

DeathByOneVeryDeepCut

NotByObamaOnMaronVille

Enshittification, as defined by Cory Doctorow, codifies the decline and destruction of once fine landing places on the interwebz:

..."Here is how (online) platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die."...

Today, the final stage in the process was reached by my (soon to be former) podcatcher, the Stitcher app:

...Satellite-radio provider SiriusXM said it will shut down its Stitcher podcast app at the end of August...

I have used the entirely free version of Stitcher for approximately three online epochs, starting back in the days when I had nothing but a little Nokia android device.

Even though I now have one of those ridiculously overpowered Tim Smith machines, I still favour Stitcher because it is the most straightforward podcatching app around (that I know of, at least). All I do is judiciously add new favourites and have them show up chronologically, in a single linear feed, as each new episode comes out. No fuss, no mess, no need to search through my own choices to find what I want, and no damnable algo-driven experiences appearing seemingly randomly whenever they want to for no good reason at all.

And I don't even mind the ads that come with the free versions of both the app and the podcasts I reel-in, especially those generated by the OG's who just read the copy out, straight-up, between segments.

So.

Why did 'Sirius', who bought the Stitcher for $325 million back in 2020, kill it?

Well...

...(Sirius, t)he audio corporation known for its satellite radio stations is shutting down Stitcher in an attempt to get customers over to its flagship subscription service...

Wow.

That's some bait and switch mixed in with all the bubbling crap.

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Coo - Coup - Ka - Choo.

Where'sMrsRobinsonWhen

YouNeedHerVille


Apparently, the Russian civil war that started, like, yesterday, is over.

For now:

Meanwhile, the elites or, more likely their children appear to be fleeing:

...Flights from Moscow have reportedly sold out as the Wagner mercenary group approaches.

Der Spiegel has reported that tickets for direct connections from Moscow to Tbilisi, Astana and Istanbul are no longer available...

____

As for the Impalinist himself?...Well?

Need background/context?....Anne Applebaum's latest in the Atlantic is solid...And the WikiCanoodlers are actually doing a solid job of keeping up...

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Bring On The Yutes!

BerkeleyOfThe

RockiesVille


When I was a (very) young and (very) junior science geek I went to a conference in Boulder Colorado.

It was during the summer and all the gradual students and post-docs stayed in the dorms on the University of Colorado campus. This led to the kind of late night hijinks, etc., that you might expect from kids from all over the world, unleashed. Personally, I was too freaked out with nervousness to participate in most of the fun given that I was presenting some of my very first experimental work in the last poster session of the meeting.

Poster sessions are kind of like a science fair where anybody can grill you on what you've push-pinned to the board. I've always found presenting data on a poster way more nerve-racking than giving a talk, despite the fact that the latter is much more prestigious.

Anyway.

The weird thing was that my boss at the time also stayed in the dorms with us rather than at one of the local hotels like just about all the other senior science folks did.

So, as we were packing up and getting ready to head to the airport at the end of meeting  I asked N. why she hung out with us kids in the dorms and slept on the crummy beds the entire time.

She just laughed and said, "I like to be around all the youthful enthusiasm".

To be honest, I didn't know what she meant given that she most certainly didn't partake in the  late night hijinks.

But I'm pretty sure I know what she means now, given that I am now one of the olds.

Case in point...

I spent the morning interviewing  a bunch of young gradual students for a couple of teaching assistant positions I have coming up in the fall. 

By the end of the session I was all charged up by their ideas and suggestions, not to mention their enthusiasm.

And, now, instead of looking ahead to the fall teaching schedule with dread, I'm almost looking forward to it.

Almost.


_______
Don't get me wrong. I actually enjoy teaching and I'm not that bad at it...It's just that at this time of the year there's a real feeling of freedom to concentrate entirely on the research side of the equation...Once the teaching starts up again in the fall  that feeling often evaporates...

And, from the Bloggodome, local Lotuslandian division...If you haven't been by Norm Farrell's place lately, get over their pronto...He's on fire!

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For Our Dad.

Rockin'Around
TheMontereyTreeVille


Those of you who have been stopping by here for awhile now may be asking....

Why this post again?

Because, as nobody had to remind this year... It's a tradition - that's why!

As for the photo at the top of the post...Our Dad, far left with his all of his boys (including his favourite dog Wally) and his Dad too, probably taken 40 years ago.

Happy Day of the Fathers, et cetera, everyone!

****

My old man was a Union man.

And the folks in the Union fought like bastards...and they fought constantly, usually for the tiniest of things in each successive contract...things like an extra quarter percent on a COLA clause, or one little add-on like an extra free filling per year on the dental plan.

And when I was a kid, especially during that time when I was a barely no-longer-a-teenager-aged kid, I thought the folks from the Union were just a little bit off their nut....all that energy going into what, exactly?

After all, it was the 80's, and Dave Barrett and the Socialist Hordes were long gone, and the Wild Kelowna boys were rolling along, and Unions were bad, and Expo was coming, and Trudeau was going, and John Turner was hiccupping, and Mulroney was lurking, somewhere off in the distance....

....And if you were a half-bright, apolitical science-geek kind of kid like me, breezing your way through college and thinking about graduate school, you laughed when you saw the boy wonder from Burnaby, Michael J. Fox, shirk his Family Ties and ape the young Republicans while making fun of his willfully neutered Leftie of a Dad on the TV screen...

....And if you were that kid, you thought that you were living in a golden age that was tied, not to the social democratic reforms of the past, but to the coming of Free Trade and the promises of the Reaganites from the South...

...And from that perspective you sure as heck didn't always get the irony of Bruce Springsteen singing about the plight of the working class in 'Born in the USA'.

But now that I have spent a good chunk of time in USA where I started a family of my own before coming home, I do get it.

I understand that my Dad spent his entire adult life hauling logs up and down the West Coast, working his guts out to help keep the robber baron families rich because he had to make a living to support his own family....

....And I get the fact that, because of the Unions, my family's standard of living gradually improved, bit by bit, over the years so that by the time I had grown up to be that callow young man described above my parents had saved enough to help me go to University....

....And I get the fact that I was the first one in my family who got to go to University....Ever.....And it wasn't because I was so damned smart....

....And I get the fact that, while my parents' limited financial help and support was important, it would never have been enough to get me into the same good schools if I had arrived on the scene a single generation earlier or, perhaps, later....

....And I get the fact that those Wild Kelowna Boys, and all the other neo-cons that have come since, have been doing their damndest to destroy the dream of a University education for all, and instead have instituted an elitist education for some and one-trick-pony Technical training for everybody else.....

....And I get the fact that, if it wasn't for folks like my Dad and the other lefties of his time, my current world, one in which I make a living with my eyes and my mind wide open, would not be what it is today.....

....And most of all, I now get the fact that my Dad was, and is, my hero.

____

One of these days I should probably write a little about my Dad's Dad's story...Tugboats too...Unions, less so (I think)...

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Hey, You! Get Off A My Lawn!

Actually, there are no lawns at the corner of Fraser and 29th.

At least not on the southeast corner where the local Loblaws discount(ish) outlet reigns supreme. 

When I stopped by one evening last week on my way home from work the bike rack was already full. 

So I chained up to the no parking sign across the street and headed into the harsh neon to stock up on hard fibre and various other assorted sundry items.

When came back outside fifteen minutes later my shoulders sagged as I crossed the street and noticed that the headlight was no longer strapped to the handlebars of my bike.

I looked to the sky and took a long, slow breath while while I considered whether it was advisable to ride the few blocks home in the gathering dusk sans incandescence.

That's when I noticed the young kid sitting atop the now empty bike rack across the street in front of the store.

In that moment, to this old man's mind eye at least, the kid looked snotty, dismissive and downright shifty. 

I gave him a good stare as he pretended to look at his phone and, with righteous indignation simmering, I almost crossed over to ask him a question or two.

Now.

I wish I could say that the thing that stopped me was the wisdom of one of the kids in 'Reservation Dogs',  shown in the trailer above, who somehow seems to get along with everyone because of his credo, which is that he always does his best to treat everyone well in the hopes that they will do the same.

But no.

It wasn't anything that pure of heart, or even just plain reasonable, that led me to turn my bike the other way and head for home.

Instead, it was the gathering darkness.

Of course, later, as I was emptying my pack I found the light.

Clearly, this time the 'Sheesh' was all on me.

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Shakin' All Over.

GonnaTakeA

LottaLoveVille


This little F-Troop-list blog has come to the attention of a Singapore-based 'Crawl and Trawl' bot swarm recently.

And the page they most often crawl all over looking for what, exactly, I don't know is a nine year old post about Neil Young and his efforts to raise money for First Nations folks who were doing their darnedest to force the Tar Sands extraction outfits to act responsibly on their lands.

Anyway...

The image I pasted into the post in question was the following:

Note the two singers sharing the microphone on the left.

As longtime reader SH noted - they are Nicolette Larson (also shown, above, as a kid) and her then roommate, Linda Ronstadt.

It turns out that the two of them were Uncle Neil's backup singers for 1977's  'American Stars and Bars' album.

Soon, Larson fell for Young and she went on to do a whole lot of harmonizing on 1978's 'Comes A Time'.

But here's the thing....

At the (actual) time, Larson was married to Emmylou Harris' sideman Hank DeVito.

DeVito was devastated and he and Larson soon divorced. DeVito then wrote 'Queen of Hearts', which was recorded by Juice Newton. Reportedly, the subject of the line 'Joker ain't the only fool who'll do anything for you'  was, you guessed it, Shakey. 

So.

Stick that in your word salad-driven, syntax-mangling machinery Trawl Bots!


_____
Ms. Larson died tragically in 1997 at the age of just 45 from cerebral edema...A good retrospective of her life is...Here.

Earworm In The Subheader?...Ms' Larson's big hit, written by Young...She first listened to the tune on a cassette tape that she found tossed on the floor of Young's car...

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The Real Fargo.

WeDon'tNeedNoStinkingWoodChipper
NotBuscemiVille


Doug Burgum, the pride of Fargo North Dakota and the state's current governor, is running for president.

Burgum, who made his fortune when he sold off his regional software company to Microsoft for a 'B' number back in the days when that actually meant something, is running as a 'good government' Republican who eschews all the culture war stuff.

Which, of course, is a crock given that, as governor,  Burgum has signed off on laws banning abortion after six weeks, gender transition care, and the discussion of LGBTQ issues in schools. 

And, while he is no Jerry Lundegaard, when the going gets tough, Mr. Burgum knows how to play rough with those he perceives to be political enemies, sometimes with bizarre, unintended consequences.

The following is from a NY Times piece by Jonathan Weisman published last week:

...In 2020, Burgum clashed with the state House Appropriations Committee chair, Jeff Delzer, especially over the governor’s prized project, a new Theodore Roosevelt presidential library near the Burgum ranch in Medora, North Dakota. After the conflict, Burgum funded a primary challenger running as a “Trump Republican” against Delzer.

The challenger, David Andahl, died of COVID-19 before his name could be taken off the ballot — and won. Then local officials reappointed Delzer to the seat...

Gosh.

Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction and/or anything the Coen brothers could possibly come up with.


_____

As for the real, real Fargo?...Thanks to that trigger law on abortions, North Dakota's last remaining women's health clinic has moved across the river into Minnesota... In other words, culture wars that target actual people and their bodies have real consequences...Was listening to Ramy Youssef on Maron earlier this week...Youssef pointed out that in many instances it is now easier for women to access a safe, medically supervised abortion in Saudi Arabia than it is in many 'triggered' US'ian states.

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Rodents...Ship...Sinking.

ThirtyEightCounts

NotSpringsteen(Yet)Ville


From Kyle Cheney writing in Politico:

Two of Donald Trump’s top lawyers abruptly resigned from his defense team on Friday, just hours after news broke that he and a close aide were indicted on charges related to their handling of classified documents.

Jim Trusty and John Rowley, who helmed Trump’s Washington, D.C.-based legal team for months and were seen frequently at the federal courthouse, indicated they would no longer represent Trump in matters being investigated and prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith, who is probing both the documents matter and efforts by Trump to subvert the 2020 election...

And here's a name you will likely hear quite a bit about in the coming days....Aileen Cannon.

______

Tangential Earworm in the Sub-Header?....This.

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Neither Gaynor Nor Cake.

WhatWouldTedSay
NotRogersVille


As per a recent post...

Tom Wambsgams, errrrr, Chris Licht, is gone and Gerri and her crew are in charge.

For now:

June 7 (Reuters) - CNN Chairman and Chief Executive Chris Licht has stepped down from the media company, effective immediately, parent company Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD.O) said on Wednesday.

The company said that as it seeks Licht's replacement, it has put in place an interim leadership team including Amy Entelis, EVP of talent and content development; Virginia Moseley, EVP of editorial; and Eric Sherling, EVP of US programming, as well as David Leavy, chief operating officer, on the commercial side...

No word, yet, on whether or not cousin Greg survived.

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Gloom Over Gotham.

FromTheArcticToTheBigApple
InTwoStepsVille


It turns out that here is bit of a debate going on between climate scientists about whether the greenhouse gas-fuelled loss of Arctic sea ice is just really bad or if it is actually really, really, really (i.e. never fixable) bad.

Essentially, some groups have been suggesting that we're doomed no matter what, while the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has come to the conclusion that doom can be staved off, at least in terms of the complete loss of the Arctic ice during the summer months, if we move to a 'low' carbon emission scenario as opposed to ending up in either an 'intermediate' or a 'high' emission state.

In contrast to the IPCC's conclusion, the following is from a near-top-of-the-science-geek ladder paper published earlier this week in Nature Communications  by a Korean/German/Canadian group:

...(W)e project an ice-free Arctic in September (by 2050) under all scenarios considered. These results emphasize the profound impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the Arctic, and demonstrate the importance of planning for and adapting to a seasonally ice-free Arctic in the near future...

Now, I'm not sure about you but in my mind's eye at least, the prospect of an Arctic sea completely free of ice at the end of every summer is mind-boggling.

And then there is the fact that, regardless whether all or just most of the ice melts,  the massive volume of fresh water going in the ocean is going wreak havoc on global weather patterns:

...Prof Seung-Ki Min, of Pohang University, South Korea, who led the new study (described above), said: “The most important impact for human society will be the increase in weather extremes that we are experiencing now, such as heatwaves, wildfires and floods...

Which, given that weather extremes have already become the new normal, brings us to the terrible wildfire situation that is currently raging out of control in late spring Northern Quebec:

People who had to leave their homes due to fires burning across northern and western regions of Quebec will not be able to return to their communities until next week, says Premier François Legault.

Legault, speaking at a news conference Wednesday morning in Quebec City, said dry weather and strong winds are creating dangerous conditions and heavy smoke in areas that have been evacuated so far...

And where is all the smoke from those wildfires going?

You guessed it:

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday halted flights bound for New York’s LaGuardia Airport as smoke from Canada’s wildfires cut visibility in the area.

“The FAA has taken steps to manage the flow of traffic into the New York City area due to reduced visibility from wildfire smoke,” the agency said in a statement. “Flights bound for LaGuardia International Airport have been paused. Flights to Newark Liberty International Airport have been slowed.”...

Of course, if and/or when the smoke shuts down the Banksters' ability to take off from their East River heliports so that they can get out to the Hamptons for the weekend in 30 minutes or less, maybe then we'll get somewhere.

Maybe.


_____
Tip-O'-The-Toque to the always great, almost daily,  links round-up over at Greg Fingas' Accidental Deliberations.

Update: Zero visibility over the Hudson...

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Gloria Gaynor He Is Not.

NoTriumph
NoWillVille

The CNN guy responsible for the odious Town Hall/MAGA Rally, Chris Licht, is no Gloria Gaynor.

And now it is not even clear that he can make like the band 'Cake', shown above.

****

The following is from a statement by corporate uber-boss David Zaslav that was released after company man David Leavy was brought in to oversee things at the (so-called) news network:

“CNN is a very important business for us, and, in fact, we believe that nothing we do is more important....We aspire to be the news organization most trusted by viewers globally. We set a high bar for ourselves and while we know that it will take time to complete the important work that’s underway, we have great confidence in the progress that Chris and the team are making and share their conviction in the strategy.”

So, what, exactly is the problem?

The following is from the deeply buried lede in an LA Times piece by Stephen Battaglio and Meg James published yesterday:

...While the town hall attracted more than 3 million viewers, the audience has left CNN in droves since, with the network finishing behind the small, right-wing network Newsmax on some nights in prime time. Veterans at CNN said the Nielsen data shows that its audience is clearly angry at the network...

Which gets us to the real thing.

Zaslav made it clear to Licht that he wanted to boost CNN viewership amongst US'ians who identify as Republicans.

So Licht went off the deep end and ran the rally that had the whiff of 1933 about it, sans klieg lights, with disastrous results amongst all viewers (i.e. those who couldn't stomach it and those who still want to get their even redder meat elsewhere).

One can only wonder if they Zaslav and Licht now wish they'd gone with an episode of 'Golden Escalator, Part Deux' instead.

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The Seven Percent Solution.

ActivatingThePassive
OlympiaVille


Something most interesting is happening just south of Lotusland.

The following is from a piece by Claire Withycombe, published last week in the Seattle Times:

Early figures suggest (the state of) Washington could bring in $849 million in its first year of collecting the state’s new capital gains tax, potentially sending hundreds of millions more than expected to schools across the state.

State lawmakers passed the 7% tax on the sale or exchange of stocks, bonds and certain other assets above $250,000 in 2021. It has faced legal challenges, but got the go-ahead from the state Supreme Court in March.

The Legislature passed a budget based on earlier projections indicating Washington could collect $248 million in capital gains tax payments in the 2023 fiscal year, which ends July 1.
Instead, as of May 9, the state has collected $601 million more...

Secret Canadian Cory Doctorow explains why this is a revenue stream that is both a gusher and progressive:

...Capital gains taxes are levied on "passive income" – money you get for owning stuff. The capital gains rate is much lower than the income tax rate – the rate you pay for doing stuff. This is naked class warfare: it punishes the people who make things and do things, and rewards the people who own the means of production...

{snip}

...The Washington State tax is levied exclusively on annual gains in excess of a quarter million dollars – meaning this tax affects an infinitesimal minority of Washingtonians, who are vastly better off than the people whose work they profit from...

{snip}

...Washington's tax was anticipated to bring in $248m. Instead, it's projected to bring in $849m in the first year. Those funds will go to public school operations and construction and infrastructure spending...

Gosh.

An infinitesimal minority, who profit from the work of the majority, paying their (still less than) fair share to make a big difference that benefits everyone?

Imagine that!

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