Author: The Mound of Sound

With time running out will the Covid pandemic block meaningful action to thwart global climate breakdown? The ‘Rona has plenty of governments going into hock to fund massively costly “relief” programmes that are primarily focused on preventing economic collapse, itself a worthwhile and necessary goal. We won’t know just how

  Herman Cain, Hope Hicks, Donald and Melania, KellyAnne and now Chris Christie. Everybody got the ‘Rona. Even Trump’s latest, pinch-hitter campaign manager got the ‘Rona. Three White House press corps journos got the ‘Rona.  Trump promised to drain the swamp. Looks more like he’s turned the White House into

I’ve received around eight phone calls since yesterday urging me to vote for various candidates for the leadership of the Green Party of Canada. The party must maintain a list of those who haven’t voted. Yesterday I also received my write-in ballot for British Columbia’s snap provincial election. I think

  Trump is off to Walter Reed hospital where he’s expected to remain for several days. He’s said to be exhausted and to have developed a fever. It seems there is a presidential office within the hospital.

NYT conservative columnist, David Brooks, writes that Trump and “his felons” are dragging America into moral chaos. The crucial thing about Donald Trump is that he is not a nationalist who uses immoral means. He is first and foremost an immoralist, whose very being was defined by dishonesty, cruelty, betrayal

  Donald Trump pissed off a lot of people back in March when questioned about whether he felt responsibility for America’s Covid death rate. He replied, “I don’t take any responsibility at all.” Outrageous that he should shirk responsibility for his own dereliction. What kind of a human being was

What if Donald Trump had contracted Covid-19 months ago at the outset of the pandemic? What if he got a hard case of the disease, akin to the “touch and go” bout experienced by Boris Johnson? How much better off might the American people have been? How many of the

  It’s unclear how Trump, his missus and close aides mingle aboard Air Force One, the presidential incubation chamber, but it is a 747 which means it doesn’t get anywhere at warp speed nor is there much room for social distancing, etc.  Trump, from what I’ve discovered, has quarters including

  Donald Trump has tweeted that both he and Melania have tested positive for Covid-19. It couldn’t possibly be that, after the blowback from Tuesday’s debate, he just wants an out. I’ll believe it when I see the morgue toe tag. That said, I wish Melania a speedy and complete

Trump may still surround himself with climate change deniers but the climate breakdown hens are coming home to roost in almost every corner of the United States. Trump didn’t create the problem but he’s definitely making it worse, as he usually does on just about everything.  The American west has

  Google reports a big spike in Americans looking for information on how to relocate to Canada after Tuesday’s presidential debate. Following a debate derailed by interruptions, people speaking over each other, and insults hurled back and forth, Google reported a peak number of searches for “How to apply for Canadian citizenship”

  When I was young, a guy’s first car tended to be a real beater. As long as it was cheap and it ran, it was okay if it was on its last legs. You nursed it along, trying to get another year, another few months, an extra week out

US intelligence agencies are warning of the threat of extremist violence in the runup to the November 3 elections. From Reuters: U.S. security officials are warning that violent domestic extremists pose a threat to the presidential election next month, amid what one official called a “witch’s brew” of rising political

 The Glass Mountain Inn on the Silverado Trail north of Napa. This is the inn as it once was  

  The world is changing faster than we imagine and most of the change will be lasting. There won’t be a lot of ‘bouncing back.’  The experts predict an upsurge in countries turning into failed states. One of these is Pakistan and it’s already in the chamber, locked and loaded.

  Some badly needed good news on the pandemic front. Scientists are testing a nasal spray that could impede coronavirus infection. It seems to work on ferrets (who don’t wear masks or wash their hands). Now scientists have released the results of initial work on a drug-like molecule they say

  Who remembers Brian Peckford’s ‘pickle palace’? Just over 30 years ago, Peckford, then premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, decided to invest provincial funds, $22 million, to develop a hydroponic cucumber factory, Mount Pearl. As he put it, “Holy Smokes, let Newfoundland be first in something.” Well the project, as

The New York Times has used 20 years of Donald Trump’s tax returns to paint a picture of Trump as a tax avoiding bum facing serious financial trouble. Among the key findings of The Times’s investigation: Mr. Trump paid no federal income taxes in 11 of 18 years that The Times examined.

  How did it come to this? How did humanity become so homogenized? In his new book, “Commanding Hope,” director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads, Victoria, Thomas Homer-Dixon looks at the evolution of a profoundly global civilization that reaches into almost every corner of the world and powerfully

  It is axiomatic that, in a liberal democracy, justice must be free from bias. Every human is a breathing bag of biases but those that judge us are bound to set theirs aside in the discharge of their duties. It was almost a century ago, 1923, that the English