This and that for your Thursday reading. – Mark Sumner discusses the World Health Network’s recognition that the damage from COVID-19 includes harm to people’s immune systems which has made the effect of other diseases more severe. – Patrick Metzger examines how the climate crisis is accelerating faster than anticipated. And
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Cathie from Canada: Today’s News: Declare victory and leave
If former Sask premier Brad Wall had ever bothered to learn French, he could have been a Conservative prime minister. He had the persona of a golden boy and the Toronto suburbs might have voted for him. But as it turned out, just as well he stayed in Swift Current.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Ivan Semeniuk reports on the response to the Omicron COVID variant both globally and in Canada. But Eric Topol writes that the U.S. is kidding itself in pretending that a wave hitting Europe won’t affect it as well, while Lauren Pelley highlights how
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Gary Mason writes that our leaders appear to have learned nothing as we face a third wave of COVID-19. Hasan Sheikh and Munir Sheikh point out how the insistence of right-wing governments in taking ineffective half-measures rather than action which could actually provide
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lauren Krugel reports on a push by Alberta doctors to avoid the further lifting of public health restrictions which will increase the risk of COVID-19 transmission. Sarah Zhang notes that we’re just now seeing a return to widespread recognition of the importance of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On cultured ignorance
Evan Radford’s report on the insufficient public response to soaring COVID-19 case loads in rural Saskatchewan surely reflects the polling (PDF) showing a higher proportion of social irresponsibility than in any other province. But it’s worth noting how that in turn can be traced to years of anti-science propaganda from
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Math is hard, but not so hard you can’t spot the holes in Tyler Shandro’s cost-saving shell game
Math, apparently, remains hard. Except, perhaps, calculus of a political sort. The real Mr. Shandro (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr). On its face, Health Minister Tyler Shandro’s claim that firing 11,000 low-paid public sector health care employees will save about $600 million makes little sense. Others have done the same calculation and
Continue readingAlberta Politics: What was Saskatchewan’s media doing when it wasn’t reporting on Scott Moe’s driving record?
Seriously, what was the media in Saskatchewan doing when it wasn’t investigating Scott Moe’s history of drunk and, on one occasion, deadly driving? Wednesday morning, the province’s Saskatchewan Party premier got up on his hind legs at a campaign event and “spoke to an impaired driving charge he faced following
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the criticisms which were used to push Andrew Scheer out of the Cons’ leadership role in fact reflect the fundamental problems with a party built around selfishness as the sole ideal to be pursued. For further reading…– David Akin reported on Scheer’s prolific spending when he was
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On rejected applications
Let’s see what Scott Moe is demanding from the federal government now… On the immigration file, one goal is to “assert provincial control over the [Saskatchewan Immigrant Nominee Program] (SINP).” Interesting. Now, there’s certainly reason to question Moe’s governance in a lot of areas. But surely he wouldn’t be so
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Joseph Stiglitz discusses how decades of laissez-faire economics and deference to the rich have undermined any effective democratic decision-making. Bruce Boghosian observes that structural change is needed to avoid a tendency toward the concentration of wealth and concurrent rise of inequality. And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On selloffs and sellouts
So far, there hasn’t been much follow-up since the revelation that the Saskatchewan Party set up (PDF) a committee, and arranged for sensitive operational details to be handed over to bidders in the process. But while there’s plenty left to be investigated about how both the secret committee and the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: It’s time for a frank talk about the T-word: Just who’s advocating treason here anyway?
It’s time, my fellow Canadians, for us to have a frank talk about the T-word. Albertans who have been paying attention to politics for the past few years cannot have missed the fact certain elements of the right-wing ideological ecosystem have been sloppy and irresponsible in their use of terms
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Nick Hanauer discusses the futility of “educationism” which treats schools as the only factor in social outcomes without recognizing the importance of inequality and precarity in restricting opportunities for far too many children. And PressProgress points out that Brian Pallister’s Manitoba PCs –
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On crisis acting
Shorter Brad Wall, Distinguished Statesman: Never mind the facts about my trumped-up grievances, I demand that we break up the country in order to burn down the world!
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Riley Yesno rightly calls out the Libs for telling Canadians they have no choice but to settle for a slight variation in tone from Andrew Scheer: When we become comfortable with the idea that the best we can hope for is a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On obvious motives
Murray Mandryk is absolutely right in his point as to why Scott Moe and his government shouldn’t be using the trappings of power to intervene in Alberta’s election campaign. But in claiming there’s no explanation, he unfortunately misses Moe’s obvious and problematic motive for doing so. After all, it’s been
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Happy New Year! What’s Brian Jean up to? Is the former Wildrose leader plotting a comeback?
Happy New Year! So, now that it’s 2019, what’s Brian Jean up to? Maybe it’s just me, but he’s sure acting like a guy who’s thinking about being a political candidate again! You remember Brian Jean, don’t you? He used to be the leader of the Wildrose Party. Indeed, he
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the needless use of the notwithstanding clause is just one more of the ways in which Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party is dangerously similar to Doug Ford’s PC government. For further reading…– CBC News reported on the Saskatchewan Party’s own use of the notwithstanding clause to avoid a
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Saskatchewan, Ontario have no constitutional case against Ottawa’s carbon tax, only a political strategy
By vowing to go to court to fight the federal government’s carbon tax, Saskatchewan and now Ontario are rejecting the most cost effective way to reduce carbon pollution, the Pembina Institute complained yesterday. “It is deeply irresponsible of the Saskatchewan and Ontario governments to reject carbon pricing,” said Isabelle Turcotte,
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