The Ugly American
Probably first coined in a 1958 novel, The Ugly American is a term that, unfortunately, has clear and immediate relevance: The US has bought up virtually all the stocks for…
June 2020
June 30: forgive me the long opener…..
……I lost my head….. Americans have very short memories. Today, I watched the news about how those evil Russians paid evil people to kill American soldiers. (This is not confirmed…
Justin Trudeau and the Long Road To A New Majority
Since early March Justin Trudeau has been stepping out of his residence every morning to brief Canadians on the Covid-19 crisis.And what his government is doing to try to help…
Is The Sask Party A Cult?
It’s hard to deny that the Sask Party could be a cult. I'm trying to think of a scenario where your Conservative supporters would not vote for your candidates. You…
Tuesday Night Cat Blogging
Twisted cats.
A Nation Where the Few Devour the Many
On April 9 of this year, the editorial board of the New York Times published one of the most insightful editorials I have read in many years,”The America We Need.”…
Forget Basic Income—In Canada, the New Normal Should Bring a Public Housing Revolution
In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, Canada needs a public housing revolution more than ever. As of 2019, there were more than 66,000 empty houses in Toronto. Photo from…
On backward thinking
I’ve previously discussed the telling social budget which saw Scott Moe prioritize golf and pedicures over human well-being. But even if we look only at the Saskatchewan Party’s pre-election fiscal…
Tuesday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Jason Markusoff discusses Jason Kenney’s race to the bottom as he uses a pandemic as an excuse to sacrifice yet more public…
Municipal logging program generates minimal profits, ships raw logs offshore
Originally published by sixmountains.ca More than six out of 10 trees harvested in North Cowichan’s Municipal Forest Reserve last year were exported as raw logs, the 2019 Forestry Report reveals.…
Agribusiness drives severe decline of essential insects
Photo by Phil Fiddyment/Flickr Insects are in decline across the world because of industrial farming and heavy pesticide use which are threatening food production, according to the 2020 Insect Atlas,…
Are You Ready For A New And Deadly Pandemic?
The other day I took my first ride on the Toronto subway system since the Covid-19 crisis began, and I was both impressed and shocked.Impressed by the cleanliness of the…
Should Canadian foreign policy be enmeshed with mining interests abroad?
The Essakane Mine pit in Burkina Faso. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. Should Canadian foreign policy continue to be enmeshed with mining interests abroad? That is one of ten questions put…
Spiegel Slams Trump – Again
Here’s the cover of Der Spiegel. Trump, Der Feuerteufel or Trump the Fire Devil. It’s not the first time Der Spiegel has gone after el Diablo Naranja. A trip down…
Three In One
In the middle of a pandemic — where the United States is the epicentre of the disease — the Trump administration has once again petitioned the Supreme Court to kill…
140Law: Top 10 Legal Headlines for the Week of June 30, 2020
140Law: Here are our Top 10 legal headlines for the week of June 30, 2020. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Wise Law Office (@wiselaw) on Jun…
Talking the Wearing of Masks & Police Funding with Kristy Cameron
Yesterday I joined Kristy Cameron on CFRA’s “Ottawa Now” along with Katlyn Harrison & Lindsay Maskell on the “Political Heat” panel. We talked about the latest developments in Ontario’s re-opening…
When you can’t press the flesh.
Thinking about political leadership campaigns, it occurs to me that the constraints on the candidates today are not only catastrophic for the candidates but impossible for the party faithful to…
“It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
That’s Donald Trump on February 28, 2020. Here’s this week.
The Kenney Government’s recovery plan — in times like these, we’re all Keynesians, up to a point, anyway
It’s not actually true that that everything was just copacetic in Alberta when COVID-19 kicked down the door and started smashing up the dishes. But you’ve got to give Travis…