The only thing Moe can sustain is a non-stop stream of BS. Hot dog guy at ballpark; “I’ve been here all season, done a lot of hard work, talked to many people. I’d say winning the World Series is my best accomplishment to date”. — Clare Hecla (@hitaskunk) May 24,
Continue readingTag: politics
Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Texas Can Power SK with Wind
With the Saskatchewan Government touting nuclear ambitions again, only 10 years after it was soundly rejected by the population, I’ve been reviewing what I wrote at the time then. One person in the audience of the UDP forum in Regina noted that Texas could power Saskatchewan with its wind power
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Life Changes Only When We Say “Enough” Collectively – Winnipeg 1919
The working conditions we have today were born in struggle and paid for in blood. We don’t understand the sacrifices others made for us these days. Not completely our fault as the Powers that Be have employed several strategies against the working class, most notably, divide and conquer, to ensure
Continue readingThings Are Good: Christiana Figueres: The Climate Risk Reward Ratio has Changed
The architect of the Paris Agreement, Christiana Figueres, is optimistic about the future of the planet and she sees the technology sector key in moving our economy to a carbon neutral system. She sees the exponential growth in the technology sector and argues that we need that sector’s help to
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Venezuela – Update
This from Counterpunch shedding some light onto what is happening in South America, without being filtered through the corporate press. “Over the last year reports about Venezuela in the corporate media have been depicting a country undergoing a “humanitarian crisis.” What they described was not consistent with what I know
Continue readingScripturient: Stalin’s ghostly influence today
I recently finished reading the second volume of Stephen Kotkin’s magisterial biography of Josef Stalin: About 1,700 pages so far, with another 400 or so in small-type notes. Brilliant stuff, but a lot to absorb and consider. A bit of a slog if you’re not at least somewhat familiar with
Continue readingDented Blue Mercedes: “Unthinkable”
American religious conservatives have a problem. Riding high on their partnerships with the Trump administration and the perception of being political kingmakers, they need to be sure that they will be able to sustain their momentum for years to come. And with the newly-stacked U.S. Supreme Court making the overturn
Continue readingpolitics – Christy's Houseful of Chaos: Independant Media and the Canadian Budget
Today on Facebook I noticed a story about how the Trudeau government is creating “newspapers and websites deemed reliable.” That makes it sound like the government’s creating a serious official list of which papers are trustworthy or not. Except that isn’t what is really happening. The article in question was
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Mayor Tory asks the rhetorical.
Asking a question rather than making an accusation is another piece of equipment in the politician’s toolbox. Mayor John Tory of Toronto should be an expert at this form of bafflegab. He would have learned it in his years as a disciple of Ontario premier Bill Davis. Bill never publicly
Continue readingThings Are Good: How one Political Party Mocked Pro Global Warming Government
The current “conservative” government in Ontario hates the environment so much that they keep producing policies to increase Canada’s carbon output. Indeed, they’ve made it mandatory for gas stations to post stickers fighting a federal carbon tax. There are legal challenges underway already to this sticky waste of money by
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: To the Rich Go the SpOILs
Oil and Gas don’t clean up their messes, we the Canadian citizen do. https://t.co/xaSJBNciJz — John Klein (@JohnKleinRegina) May 7, 2019 == Unrelated, the Bare Naked Ladies song $1000000 mentions John Merrick. “I’d buy you John Merrick’s remains” Just read this story today about John Merrick. How strange I was
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Damn the Torpedoes! – US Democrats Stopping Socialism in the US
Political theatre is interesting to observe. Not so much when the strongest nation on earth continues to dable with proto-fascist notions and leaders. The Democrats in the US will shortly (again) be showing their allegiance to the corporate interests that support them. Let’s hope they can’t obstruct Sanders this time
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Divided and Conquered – Social Movements in the US
Interesting question. The US is home to some of the largest social movements in the Western World, yet the US is also the farthest behind in terms of actual gains for the working class, women, and minorities. How does this work? Vincent Navarro describes the situation in the US and
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The Politics of Conspiracy Theorists
Who knew? Populists have a ravenous appetite for conspiracy theories. You can feed those bastards just about anything and they’ll thrive on it. And people like Donald Trump would be just another laughingstock without them. Populists across the world are significantly more likely to believe in conspiracy theories about vaccinations,
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: How it Feels to be in Edmonton After the Election
Getting elected is one thing, being effective in government is quite another. Thanks for the info ipolitics: “Trouble is, while Kenney’s frothy campaign bluster successfully fanned Alberta’s collective outrage, very little of it bore any resemblance to reality. Notley, far from being “complacent on pipelines” as Kenney accused
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: The Town Hall on Fox Featuring Bernie Sanders
In the second part, start at 10:05 for that, if Bernie actually means this, then he should be the next President of the United States. If he has an actual commitment to justice, and this isn’t just rhetoric… this may indeed be me looking to the east by light of
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Life After Warming
David Wallace-Wells’s book The Uninhabitable Earth starts out with a repetition of facts that won’t be news to anyone paying attention, but he has a lovely way with words. Four of the last five extinctions were from greenhouse gases, and now we’re adding carbon to the atmosphere 100 times faster than
Continue readingPolitical Potshots: Meet The Neil Before Zodcast
I am so happy to announce the Neil Before Zodcast, Episode One – The One Where Neil Gets His Own Podcast (With Guest Lindsay Stamhuis). I talk about why I started the podcast, talk about Doug Ford’s non austerity – austerity budget, and have a conversation with Lindsay Stamhuis. Lindsay
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Like Rats Jumping a Sinking Ship
My class had a great conversation the other day about discrimination and W.E.B. DuBois’s “double consciousness.” I discussed the theory and solicited for comments, but there were none, as I expected. This kind of thing needs to sit a little and gel before we can really address it. So I
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: The Return to Corporate Rule in Alberta
Hey folks, The fascists are once again in power here in Alberta. They will soon be deconstructing all the careful people centric legislation that our provincial NDP has enacted the last years. “The UCP has made no secret it will scrap the carbon tax, but it would also kill
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