What's That Dripping Sound? Oh, It's What Remains of Alberta's Petro-Prosperity Stream.

We can't say we weren't warned. The fossil energy giants warned us. The Europeans warned us. The investment and insurance giants warned us. They told us, by their words and by their deeds, that fossil fuels, especially the high-carbon/low-value stuff - bitumen and coal, were a lousy bet, some at risk of becoming "stranded assets."

Athabasca's bitumen pits are as popular as a leper colony. The big insurers won't cover the projects. Big investment houses such as BlackRock and Goldman Sachs are trying to unload whatever they still have, if they can. The fossil energy giants are taking their leave before government comes calling with the cleanup bill for those tailing ponds. Exxon has just written off 20 per cent of the company's fossil energy reserves as economically unviable. When a company cuts 20 per cent off its asset sheet, it's a drastic act. Drastic enough that after nearly a century, Exxon has been dumped from the Dow Jones to make way for a tech stock.

Jason Kenney's UCP government just released a fiscal update that is reminiscent of a big black spot on a chest x-ray.

Revenue from the oilpatch is expected to be $1.2 billion this year, down from the $3.9 billion forecast and a far cry from better days in the sector, such as 2014-15 when those revenues were $8.9 billion. 

Revenues from the oil and gas sector haven't been this low since the early 1970s, according to government documents.

The oilsands are especially woeful. Bitumen royalties were expected to generate more than $3 billion this year, but instead could now provide just $686 million. 

Many oilsands projects are generating little to no positive returns this year, according to government documents, since many are unable to turn a profit. 

Projected corporate income tax revenue has been cut in half.

Omitted from this sob story is the environmental liability issue. The Alberta government's own in-house tally puts the remediation cost from the Tar Sands and the thousands of orphan wells at about $230 billion.  A $230 billion liability versus $1.2 billion in annual revenue. At that rate the government should break even in just under two centuries.

I know. Here's the answer. Let's build more pipelines. That's 'let's' as in "let us." The private sector won't touch these investments. These costs now have to be borne by the federal and provincial treasuries. Is that throwing good money after bad? Sure sounds like it.

The Paralysis of Polarized Thought

There's a thoughtful essay in today's South China Morning Post that touches on the trap that snares polarized societies. 

It begins with a passage attributed to John Maynard Keynes:

"When my information changes, I change my mind. What do you do sir?"

It’s a good rule for people to follow in life. Unfortunately, I don’t always – because it’s actually very hard to. Often, I just block out new or contrary information and points of view I don’t like or share, without even thinking about it.

But if more people at least try to follow Keynes’ rule, there may be much less fanaticism and dogmatism in the world, whether in religion or even in science and academia, perhaps especially in university today.

But in the end, we all live in our own Matrix or Plato’s cave. The sunlight of truth outside is just too bright for me. It’s far more comforting to stay in the shade inside.

Keynes’ rule has its equivalent in statistics. It’s called Bayes’ rule or theorem. Thomas Bayes, an 18th century philosopher and Presbyterian minister, thinks you can strengthen your belief in something – increasing your “epistemic confidence” – by updating new information to your initial probabilistic belief that something is true or has happened. As a good Christian, he might have been motivated to develop the idea to defend the truth of miracles based on Biblical testimony against David Hume.

“Epistemic confidence” – towards which Bayes’ rule is supposed to move you – is the opposite of what the contemporary philosopher Gillian Russell has called “epistemic viciousness”, our inclination to hold false beliefs, despite new evidence or updated information. The latter is a natural human tendency; the former, though, takes serious mental discipline.

Bayes and Keynes tell us how to update previous beliefs in light of new evidence and in terms of probability. But their rules – whether quantitatively or qualitatively – can’t tell us what such beliefs to hold.

Say, you are a national security official in Washington and your previous belief is that most cyberattacks are carried out by state actors like China and Russia. This hypothesis could be tested in terms of Bayes’ theorem with new evidence. But suppose you are really committed to the hypothesis, like those who believed in the existence of weapons of mass destruction before the US invasion of Iraq, nothing will ever change your mind.

The columnist, Alex Lo, cites Hong Kong as an example where a society is so deeply polarized that neither side will allow nothing new to change their outlook. Isn't that what we're nervously watching occur in the States today, an impulsive tendency to reject information that contradicts dogmatic belief?

Maybe it's time we all became a little more Keynesian in our outlook. I know, I know, them first. Of course.

Your Pre-Election Reading List

The next two months will see the release of a slew of "tell all" books on Donald Trump, Trump's administration, a panoply of alleged crimes and grifting, and the Trump clan including Melania, Ivanka, Uday and Qusay.

The most recent books came from John Bolton and Trump's niece, Mary. Niece Mary has gilded the lily by releasing to the Washington Post recordings of her conversations with Trump's sister, retired federal court judge, Maryanne, who seems to think 45 is a real piece of shit.

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former friend and adviser, “taped the first lady” and plans to share the remarks in her book. 

They include “harsh comments about Ivanka Trump, the president’s elder daughter and a senior adviser”, Ali wrote.

Wolkoff has an axe to grind with her former long-time friend, Melania, who recruited Wolkoff to organize the inauguration. Scads of money went missing, fingers were pointed at Wolkoff and Melania, who supposedly knew the truth, never came to her friend's defence.  Wolkoff is said to have tapes of Melania saying what she really thinks of Trump and his daughter/bride, Ivanka.  Revenge - cold - served.  "Melania and Me" is out next week.

September will also see the release of former Trump fixer, Michael Cohen's, tell all, "Disloyal - a Memoir." Cohen says he'll reveal where all the bodies are buried.  That should sell well to those with an insatiable appetite for the dirt on Dirty Don.

Bob Woodward is releasing his book "Rage" that examines correspondence between Trump and Kim Jung Un.  This follows Woodward's 2018 best seller, "Fear: Trump in the White House."

According to multiple sources, the book has explosive accounts of Trump's thoughts and actions on national security, the coronavirus pandemic, the economic collapse and the Black Lives Matter protests.

Low on the radar but another potential bombshell is a book by Mueller attack dog, Andrew Weissmann, the prosecutor that Team Trump so feared that the positively squealed. That could be the sleeper in all of these books.

Former Trump national security adviser, Gen. H.R. McMaster is releasing his memoir of his days (weeks, months?) in the administration.

Welcome Aboard, Ensign O'Toole

He may not be much but Canadians, 38 per cent of them at least, consider Justin Trudeau their choice to handle the pandemic and engineer some sort of economic recovery.

Respondents to the poll, conducted by Leger and the Association for Canadian Studies, were split about the prospect of a confidence vote triggering a federal election this fall, with 42 per cent opposed to an election and 38 per cent in favour. 

But if there were an election today, 38 per cent of decided voters said they’d support Trudeau’s Liberals, compared to 30 per cent for the Conservatives, 18 per cent for the NDP and six per cent for the Greens. 

The Bloc Quebecois were at 33 per cent in Quebec, statistically tied with the Liberals in that province at 32 per cent, with the Conservatives well behind at 16 per cent, the NDP at 12 per cent and the Greens at four per cent.

38 per cent shouldn't be breathtaking but this is Canada and in our deeply flawed iteration of democracy that's often enough to translate into a solid majority.

Bad news for Pudgy O'Toole and his social conservatism. He'll probably start backpeddling the tough talk before the week is out. After all this is not an auspicious moment to make Wexit your first priority on taking office. Silly bugger.

It's All About That Apple in the Garden of Eden

It's the Forbidden Fruit parable for the 21st Century.  Jerry Falwell Jr. brought low by an unfaithful wife who could not resist the devil's apple, a hotel pool boy. It's positively Biblical.

A faithless wife, easily seduced, who then drew her husband, her Adam, into a rebellion against the Lord. Together they are to be cast out of the Garden of Eden or at least the campus of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. It all sounds so familiar.

Falwell need not deny it, any of it. He needs to admit everything for how else can he be redeemed? He has his temptress Eve, Becki, who set him against his Gawd but he can dump her now that all is revealed.

Isn't this America's fundamentalist morality play? Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Ted Haggard, countless mega-church preachers, they're even popping up in Top Ten lists. The Boston Globe sees it as a rerun of the scandalous 80s. In their excellent book, "The Spirit Level," epidemiologists Wilkinson and Pickett, found that sexual peccadillos of all sorts were far more common in Bible Belt  red states than in any blue state. It seems they've got a knack for it.  Maybe that's why these guys can rebound so easily.

Trump Unleashes Psy-Ops on America

We saw a hint of this in the runup to the 2016 presidential election when then candidate Trump hinted that he might not accept the election results - unless they went his way.  Thanks to a perverse electoral system, Hillary won the popular vote by a 3 million margin but Trump won where it mattered, the Electoral College.

It was a bizarre period back then. Donald Trump, his kids and the rest of his team had no expectation of winning. They didn't even bother filling in the mandatory disclosure statements in anything but the most cursory manner, reluctant to reveal the truth for a campaign they felt sure to lose. Some, like Kushner, spent months "amending" information dozens of times. Not one was prosecuted for what was, essentially, perjury.

For a while it seemed that, if he lost, Trump might stir up unrest among his base, the radical right. The menace certainly dripped from his words.

The Electoral College handed Trump the White House, the Democrats dutifully fell into line, and the astonishingly ill-prepared* Donald Trump was inaugurated the 45th president of the United States of America.

* Just a few weeks before taking over, Trump met with Obama in the White House. Trump indicated he thought he inherited the lot - even the staff. Obama had to tell Trump he had to find his own staff. After all why would a Republican want a staff of devoted Democrats? Trump didn't have applicants being screened, people lined up to undergo the transition.

Much has transpired over the past four years, a lot of it sordid, perhaps even criminal. At times it seems Trump's main focus has been on successfully corrupting the Department of Justice which he achieved by the appointment of William Barr, as partisan an attorney general as any in recent memory.

But Trump's main focus was on the office of the US attorney for the southern district of New York, the DoJ office where Trump's dealings are/were under investigation. He got rid of two "meddlesome priests" who seemed to be doing their job not to his liking.

Why does any of this matter to the current election campaign? Easy. The best defence Trump has against prosecution is his presidential tenure. That new inner wall he had built around the White House reinforces his Festung Trump mentality. He is conveying the message, true or not, that he'll defend his turf.

Once Trump is out of office, once he is stripped of the protection of a corrupt attorney-general, once he reverts to "citizen Trump" he, his family, and the Trump Organization are easy meat for state and federal prosecutors and he becomes just another Ferdinand Marcos on the run. 

A former Trump administration insider, ex-DHS chief of staff, Miles Taylor, warns that Trump will go to almost any lengths to cling to power even if he loses.



Taylor's warning is consistent with Trump's efforts to delegitimize the November vote. His cudgel of the moment is his completely unsubstantiated claim that mail-in votes will be rigged against him. Trump has also been rallying the radical rightwing groups, even QAnon included, to his side against what he presents as a Democratic coup.  These groups - the Boogaloo Bois, the Klan, QAnon and the remaining gaggle of rightwing lunatics are heavily armed and susceptible to Trump's incitements. They hear his apocalyptic vision of war in the streets.

This is unprecedented but what makes it vastly worse is the Republican Party's refusal to stand against it. There is no opposition, in the party, in the Congressional caucus, at the convention, to Trump's incendiary menace.  What for so long undeservedly called itself the "party of Lincoln" now offers fealty to Trump. They are his vassals. They see in Donald Trump their best, perhaps last, hope.

What Trump is doing is waging a campaign of psy-ops on the American people.

Psychological operations are operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.

It appears to be working.

Washington State Posties Give Trump a Big "Up Yours."

Wexit Is a Shakedown And the Tories Are Blackmailing Canada

Erin O'Toole could hardly wait to get his ass in Andrew Scheer's old chair before he was on the phone to Justin Trudeau to raise that gravest threat facing Canada, Wexit.

By midday, O'Toole had already spoken to his main rival in Parliament, a call both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's office and O'Toole's described as cordial and covered topics both personal and political, including western alienation. 

According to a statement from O'Toole, the party wants to see a plan in Trudeau's upcoming throne speech to directly address the issue. That the Tories would advocate for more action from the Liberals on that front was a key ask by Alberta MPs during the leadership campaign.

This is Culture War 101 bullshit at its finest.  Separation - Alberta, Saskatchewan - really?  Them and whose army?

Ottawa isn't denying them their Gawd-given bountiful future. They're fossil fools if they think there's a future in high carbon, low value coal and bitumen. Day by day it's worsening. Those are becoming stranded assets in a world awash in cheap, relatively clean carbon energy. Northern Alberta is a giant Love Canal.

In a recklessness befitting a back alley drunk, Alberta "pissed away" its wealth, its future and its political clout. They did everything Peter Lougheed warned them to avoid and now they're reaping what Lougheed said awaited the Wild Rose if they acted recklessly.

The whole Wexit business hinges on British Columbia ignoring both instincts and self-interests for the sake of the poxed-up cutie next door. What do they have to offer British Columbia to throw in with them? Nothing.  What, is BC going to pick up $80 billion or more as our share of cleaning up the environmental catastrophe of their profligate ways? These are the same people who repeatedly threatened us with dire consequences if we refused to submit to their will and now we're supposed to look kindly on them and their hair-brained scheme?

These Wexit scammers, O'Toole now included, know they're holding a dead hand. They got nothin'. It's time to call their bluff and shut them up for good. Do they think the capital that's still propping up their economy, Canadian and foreign, won't head for safer ground in a heartbeat. They would be travelling an already well-trodden path.

Another Roller/Trump Buddy Bites the Dust

Life is not going smoothly for Jerry Falwell Jr., son of the late Talibangelist, Jerry Falwell Sr.

Junior was recently suspended from his job as president of Liberty University, a fundamentalist Christian school in Lynchburg, Virginia, after a risque photo was circulated of Jerry Jr. on a yacht with his pants undone and an arm around the bare waist of a woman who definitely was not his wife.
JJ tried to foist an improbable explanation on the university governors but they weren't buying it and sent him packing.

How could it get any worse for Jer-Jr. It began this morning when Falwell broke the news that several years ago his devoted wife played a little lap tango with the poolboy at some resort and now the Falwells were being blackmailed by the guy.

The guy, a Mr. Giancarlo Granda, concedes that he and Mrs. Falwell indeed did the nasty - apparently a lot - but says that not only did Jer-Jr. know about it, he liked to watch.

The Miami native is now speaking out against the explosive accusations, denying any involvement in extortion, according to Reuters. Granda says he was “preyed” upon by Falwell, one of “the most influential figures in the American Christian conservative movement, ” and his partner, Reuters added.

Partner? It seems Granda got into a business not just with Jer-Jr. but with the missus to boot.

Although he “willingly” entered into a 7-year sexual relationship with the couple, he now feels like he was taken advantage of, he told the outlet. 

“Whether it was immaturity, naïveté, instability, or a combination thereof, it was this ‘mindset’ that the Falwells likely detected in deciding that I was the ideal target for their sexual escapades,” Granda expressed. 

When their relationship soured, Granda said he sought to “negotiate a buyout” from a business arrangement he had with the pair, Reuters reported.

Here's Granda pressing the flesh with Donald Trump during a 2012 meet and greet at Liberty University with Jer-Jr. in the background. The dark haired woman just behind Trump looks a lot like Mrs. Falwell.

As these evangelical scandals go, this one is way more sordid than most. There's even a recorded 3-way phone call between the Falwells and Granda where she complains that he upsets her by telling her of his latest tinder conquests.

Trump and Falwell Jr. have been allies for years. Here's a photo of the Falwells in Trump's office in 2016 after Jer-Jr. had introduced Trump at a Religious Leaders Summit.

You never know with these characters. Their ability to rise from the dead time after time would put Jeebus to shame. Only this time I think that the Falwell dynasty might have run its course. The sanctimonious bastard deserves it.

I wonder how long before Trump goes "Full Epstein" on Falwell putting as much distance between himself and the disgraced preacher as he possibly can.   You will remember that Trump did the Epstein on Steve Bannon this week after his former election guru was charged with fraud. In the next post we'll visit Trump's connection to Bannon's wall. There's more to it than Trump wants the voting public to know.

Manhattan D.A. Shelves Demand for Trump's Tax Returns

It was a long and hard-fought battle against the legal legions of Trump but, finally, Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., triumphed. He could get Donald Trump's tax returns.

At the very moment of victory, Vance has decided to take a breather.

Cyrus Vance Jr., the Democratic district attorney for Manhattan, had the legal right as of this Friday to enforce a New York grand jury subpoena to obtain a lengthy financial paper trail that includes Trump’s corporate and personal tax records.

But Vance instead has agreed to temporarily shelve the subpoena against Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA. The delay allows for another round of litigation, which will prolong the nearly year-long court battle over the subpoena in which Trump has lost every bout, including a landmark decision last month at the Supreme Court. 

The deal between the Manhattan district attorney’s office and Trump’s lawyers comes after a federal district judge in New York last week denied President Trump’s latest bid to invalidate the subpoena.

As a result of the deal, Trump has at least one more opportunity to argue in court that the subpoena for his tax records is unlawful. The 2nd Circuit will hear arguments Sept. 1.

It's Not Like They Had Much to Choose From

Canada's Tories, like their Republican cousins to the south, are old, white and increasingly irrelevant. Both parties have to pander to an aging demographic that is becoming more xenophobic and bigoted with every passing year.

That's good news for the Liberals who themselves are bereft of the calibre of talent that once filled their front benches to overflowing.  With the Tories setting the bar so low the Liberals can slide through on mediocrity. And so they are.

So it seems that Erin O'Toole becomes the new leader of Her Majesty's Official Opposition in place of the part-time, summer help, insurance agency counter clerk, Andrew Scheer.

To me, it doesn't matter. Canadian politics is becalmed in a political Sargasso Sea. As the problems facing our country rapidly increase our political caste become ever less useful, ever more irrelevant. There are no Pearsons, no Diefenbakers, no Lewises or Broadbents, no Pierre Trudeaus or Lauriers or St. Laurents on offer.

Kelly Anne Says Adios, Donaldo

Trump apologist extraordinaire, Kellyanne Conway, is leaving the Trump administration - and there's no two-week notice either.

Kellyanne is clearing out at the end of the month. Her husband, George, a fierce Trump opponent is also quitting his post at the Republican anti-Trump, Lincoln Project. Both are doing it "for the family."

Conway called her time in the White House "heady" and "humbling." She thanked Trump, first lady Melania Trump, Vice President Pence and second lady Karen Pence, and offered praise for their work during the administration's first term.

Stranger Things - Election Eve Edition

Will Americans go to the polls as scheduled on November 3rd? Probably.

However there is a 1 in 200 chance of an asteroid hitting Earth the day before.

NASA says it is an asteroid but nothing to write home about. It's only 6.5 feet in diameter. If it does hit our planet it could cause a local problem but it won't end the current iteration of 'Life on Earth.'

But, let's look on the bright side. It might hit. It's a long shot but it might. And, if it does, it might hit America. It might hit that part of America where Donald Trump will be wrapping up his campaign. It might be the Perfecta. Not likely but not impossible either.

A 0.41 per cent chance isn't all that encouraging but we must always live in hope. Besides, wouldn't that be something to share with the grandkids years from now?

Sturgis, the Results Start Coming In

It's only been a week since the 80th annual Sturgis motorcycle rally wrapped up and, as expected, the Covid-19 pandemic results are beginning to flow in.

So far Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota are reporting in.

A company, Tectronix, has prepared a map of the revelers from their cellphone tracking. 

The Latest in Mod-Cons, a Wildfire Smoke Tracker

California Redwood burning

What will they think of next? Canadians now have a website devoted to wildfire smoke. A quick click shows you where the smoke is coming from and where it's headed. It also shows the pm 2.5 particulate density in the smoke heading your way.

So far this year it hasn't been too bad, save perhaps for Calgary. Out my way the winds off the Pacific have kept us clear of smoke. I suppose we need some reward for our dreary, cold and damp summer.

The western United States have not fared so well.  California, already dealing with a fresh outbreak of the Covid pandemic, is being swept by wildfires caused by the lethal mixture of tinder dry forests and lightning. What began in the south now threatens the Bay Area, even (heaven forbid) Napa. The majestic redwood forests are said to be in peril. Meanwhile Californians endure the worst air quality in the world.

Think of it as Climate Breakdown 101.

There’s an idea that when the climate crisis begins, we will know it. Movies present it as a moment when the world’s weather suddenly turns apocalyptic: winds howl, sea levels surge, capital cities are decimated. Climate messaging can bolster this notion, implying that we have a certain number of years to save the day before reaching a cataclysmic point of no return.

Living in expectation of a definitive global break can blind us to the fact that gradually, insidiously, the climate crisis has already arrived. 

In few places is this as clear as California, where extreme wildfires have become the new abnormal. There is currently a “fire siege” in northern California, with wildfires burning in every one of the nine Bay Area counties except for San Francisco, which is entirely urbanized. Tens of thousands of residents have evacuated and people are choking on smoke.

In the last decade, amid drought and searing heat, California has entered the “era of megafires”. Our new book, Fire in Paradise, tells the story of a town that was almost entirely wiped out by a fire of unheralded speed in 2018. It killed 85 people, making it the deadliest ever fire in California. Other notable blazes include a 1,000-ft wide fire tornado that churned through the town of Redding a few months before the Paradise catastrophe, and fires in California’s Wine Country that killed 44 people.
All of this is why, as we scan the headlines for the planetary shift that will mark the true arrival of the climate crisis, we risk losing sight of the fact that places like California are already experiencing it.

This is not entirely surprising. According to the ecological theory of “shifting baselines”, we do not notice the degradation of the natural world because little by little we get used to it, like a frog in hot water. We think that it has always been this way.

What the writers are referring to is more commonly called "creeping normalcy" and it has been bringing civilizations to collapse at least as far back as the Mesopotamians. The Mesos saw what was happening. They looked the other way. They destroyed the 'fertile crescent' of the Tigris and Euphrates by using too much brackish water and then their crops failed. Slam, bam, thank you Ma'am.

For a couple of decades we've been talking about 'global warming.' In the early part of the last decade research came out predicting the arrival of something more insidious, more immediate - global heating. Studies emerged warning that in this current decade, the 2020s, we would see heating on scales never experienced by mankind. Never, as in not ever. Guess what? It's here.

It takes many forms including the loss of Arctic sea ice, wildfires in the Tundra, the accelerated melting of the major ice caps and major glaciers, the massive and usually unnoticed migration of marine life (fish, mammals and sea birds) poleward to escape warming oceans, the wildfires sweeping our forests, pest infestations, flash droughts, on and on  and on.

Climate breakdown has arrived and there's no grace period. You either meet it, stay ahead of it, or you fall behind and take your lumps. At the moment we're opting for the lumps. Sucks to be us, I suppose.

When it comes to California wildfires, the ground has been moving under our feet for decades, as heat rises, snowpacks shrink, and plants dry out. The baseline has shifted. How long before we forget that it was ever otherwise?

How long? Not very long. We've got this place called a Memory Hole.

Just be grateful you live at such a temperate latitude. Be even more grateful no country lies between you and the pole.

Can We Tough It Out Until 2022? And, If We Do, What's Next?

It could be two more years before the Covid-19 pandemic is reined in.  That's the latest from the World Health Organization. It probably comes down to the fact that, while mild in lethality rates compared to something like Ebola (which, by the way, is staging a comeback), Covid-19 is really transmissible, especially when people ignore the modest precautions - masks, social distancing and loads of handwashing throughout the day and we've got a load of those types in our midst.

Two more years. Maybe less if Big Pharma can develop effective vaccines in the coming months and flood the markets with enough doses to make a difference.  We're told there are several drugs under development but you know, don't count your chickens...

So far the focus of our governments has been very near-sighted. In an effort to avert serious economic collapse governments have doled out scads of money to keep people afloat. What's unclear is how they can keep that up in the longer run if no Covid magic wand appears?

Where does the tax base come from if people are skint and scrambling for work in a troubled economy rigged to serve the few, not the many? There are pockets of wealth as Krugman pointed out in his column yesterday. We could eat the rich although I'd rather think of them as the "fatted lamb." If you get all wobbly at the idea of confiscatory taxes - wealth taxes, luxury taxes, that sort of thing - just tell yourself that even Theodore Roosevelt would have approved.

"One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege. The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows." 

We also have to consider the health of the government treasury. With climate change now bearing down on us this is no time for a government down to its last dime. The federal government's record on mitigation, i.e. cutting greenhouse gas emissions/decarbonizing the economy, has been lousy. At least it can focus on adaptation, especially bolstering the essential infrastructure we all rely upon. That, obviously, ain't cheap.

It's said that drastic times require drastic measures. It may not feel like it, not yet, but these are drastic times. Planet Earth, nature, is becoming a much more dangerous and unforgiving host to mankind. A civilization carrying a Herculean debt load on its shoulders has a real problem if we're to respond to both man-made and natural imperatives. Some solution must be reached to forestall a collapse of the global order. Debt and wealth. Wealth and debt. There are two things that are careening out of balance. Two things to focus on. Getting rid of the neoliberal order might be a good start.

The Markets and the Economy. Might As Well Be on Separate Planets.

There was a time when stock markets were expected to rise and fall in step with the health of the economy. We call that the Era of Sanity. That time is past.

Paul Krugman explains:

On Tuesday, the S&P 500 stock index hit a record high. The next day, Apple became the first U.S. company in history to be valued at more than $2 trillion. Donald Trump is, of course, touting the stock market as proof that the economy has recovered from the coronavirus; too bad about those 173,000 dead Americans, but as he says, “It is what it is.”

But how can there be such a disconnect between rising stocks and growing misery? Wall Street types, who do love their letter games, are talking about a “K-shaped recovery”: rising stock valuations and individual wealth at the top, falling incomes and deepening pain at the bottom. But that’s a description, not an explanation. What’s going on?

The first thing to note is that the real economy, as opposed to the financial markets, is still in terrible shape. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s weekly economic index suggests that the economy, although off its low point a few months ago, is still more deeply depressed than it was at any point during the recession that followed the 2008 financial crisis.

What about stocks? The truth is that stock prices have never been closely tied to the state of the economy. As an old economists’ joke has it, the market has predicted nine of the last five recessions. 

Take the example of Apple, with its $2 trillion valuation. Apple has a price-earnings ratio — the ratio of its market valuation to its profits — of about 33. One way to look at that number is that only around 3 percent of the value investors place on the company reflects the money they expect it to make over the course of the next year. As long as they expect Apple to be profitable years from now, they barely care what will happen to the U.S. economy over the next few quarters. 

...So big tech stocks — and the people who own them — are riding high because investors believe that they’ll do very well in the long run. The depressed economy hardly matters.

So here’s the current state of America: Unemployment is still extremely high, largely because Trump and his allies first refused to take the coronavirus seriously, then pushed for an early reopening in a nation that met none of the conditions for resuming business as usual — and even now refuse to get firmly behind basic protective strategies like widespread mask requirements.

Despite this epic failure, the unemployed were kept afloat for months by federal aid, which helped avert both humanitarian and economic catastrophe. But now the aid has been cut off, with Trump and allies as unserious about the looming economic disaster as they were about the looming epidemiological disaster.

So everything suggests that even if the pandemic subsides — which is by no means guaranteed — we’re about to see a huge surge in national misery.

Oh, and stocks are up. Why, exactly, should we care?

Which raises the question of what will happen should Trump win a second term.  A president in his second and final term. Correction, a "grifter president" enjoying a second term without the slightest incentive to look after anyone's interests but his own. Four years to pillage the country, to siphon what wealth remains in the working classes into the coffers of the new aristocracy, perhaps to start a war just because he can as he slides even deeper into his psychosis. Enough, by any measure, to fracture today's already deeply divided America.

The economy versus the market, the people versus "his people," in Trumpland nothing is as it seems.

Is This What Awaits Our Kids? You Need to Watch This.

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at a sometimes disturbing Chinese experiment at blending early education and artificial intelligence learning.

Tick-Tock. One Million Tonnes - Per Minute

There are roughly 525,600 minutes in a year. There are just over 2,200 pounds in a metric tonne.

The most recent survey shows that the Greenland ice sheet has been shedding one tonne of ice - every minute.  525,000 metric tonnes every year. That's a massive amount of fresh water that pours into the salt water, the seas around Greenland.

That sounds like a long way away but it's felt around the world in various ways, especially in sea level rise.  The faster the Greenland ice sheet slips into the sea the faster the oceans rise.

This is probably not the first time you've heard about this melting Greenland ice sheet. It's probably not the first time you've heard that the science types have discovered it's melting faster than they had foreseen. Yeah, it's been a source of constant surprises. But of all those reports, year upon year, you haven't heard that that the ice melt has slowed. You haven't heard that it has reversed, the ice is building back. That's not happening.

If the entire Greenland ice sheet melts, sea level would rise by six metres. But the researchers said it was not certain that the sheet had passed the point of no return and that cutting carbon emissions will slow the melting, which would take centuries to complete.

“[2019 was] really shocking and depressing in terms of the numbers,” said Ingo Sasgen, of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany, who led the analysis. “But it’s also not very surprising, because we had other strong melt years in 2010 and 2012, and I expect we will see more and more.” 

Snowfall in Greenland was low in 2019, also due to the blocking pattern, meaning relatively little new ice was added. “The real message is that the ice sheet is strongly out of balance,” Sasgen said.

So we can slow the melt. All we've got to do is slash greenhouse gas emissions. We have to kick the fossil fuel habit and that process has to begin with the dirtiest fuels, the high-carbon/low-value fuels, coal and bitumen.

Sea level rise is a real menace. Greenland is one source, a major to be sure, but there are many others. This is a real worry in some places, including any place that has a sea coast. You know where they don't much care about sea level rise? Alberta is one. No skin off their backsides. Sea level rise only brings "tidewater" that much closer to Athabasca. Hey, what's not to like?

Growth - More Deadly Than Fentanyl

For all the potentially devastating scourges humanity will confront this century, growth may be the deadliest. Growth not only drives these existential threats, our blind adherence to growth ensures we will fail to solve them.

Our leaders - intelligent, educated, experienced people, real top drawer folks, still cling to the idea of perpetual exponential growth as the measure of a successful government and a prosperous society.  When we don't have to think on it, most of us would agree.  3 per cent is the usual target. 3 per cent annual growth. Hey, how modest is that?

Imagine you are offered a deal with your bank, where your money doubles every three days. If you invest just $1 today, roughly how long will it take for you to become a millionaire? 

Would it be a year? Six months? 100 days? 

The precise answer is 60 days from your initial investment, when your balance would be exactly $1,048,576. Within a further 30 days, you’d have earnt more than a billion. And by the end of the year, you’d have more than $1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 – an “undecillion” dollars.

Now, at 3 per cent, the doubling rate is just over 23-years.  Doesn't sound too bad. Another 23 years and it's 4X. 23 more years it will be 8X. By century's end it'll be 16X. That's when the numbers really go crazy. 16 begets 32 which begets 64 which begets 128.

If your entire economy was X at year one, before 200 years passed it would be at 128X. That's 128 times more resources, more production, 128 times more waste.

At the outset it took 23 years to double. In that final 23 years the already massive economy 64 times what it had been in Year 1.

This is one dirty trick to play on nature. Nature, at least on Earth, is finite. It has a limit, a carrying capacity. Those what want to survive harmonize their activity with nature's limits. Those who don't, ignore those limits. Like lemmings of legend they keep racing for the cliff edge until they fall over and die.

Even with the economy-wrecking pandemic we are so far beyond the finite limits of our one and only biosphere that we exhaust the Earth's annual carrying capacity by August. That means we have to cannibalize the planet to make good what Earth cannot sustainably supply. That's what people who don't want to survive do and it's stupid, insanely stupid.

It's a path that cheats by rampaging through the Earth's resources. It's tangible, it's visible. We can measure it. The signs are everywhere. Satellites measure with astonishing accuracy the surface subsidence caused when we drain underwater aquifers. In some parts of California, decades of great agriculture caused the surface to drop by 30 feet.

Other telltales are deforestation and desertification. We savage forests, the lungs of the planet and the habitat of many non-human species. We exhaust arable farmland into desert by intensive, industrial agriculture. Our response is to increase the application of agri-chems (fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides) and did ever deeper wells to chase rapidly depleting groundwater needed for irrigation. We use so much of those chemicals that, when it does rain, they're flushed into our rivers and lakes where blue-green algae blooms, turning the water hypoxic and killing off the fish. It also leaves pretty nasty burns on swimmers and can kill creatures coming to the shores for a drink.

Each passing year leaves the forests more depleted, our farmland more degraded, our surface water resources more contaminated and yet with each passing year we demand ever more.

Now we've got a bright young man as our prime minister, he's got a few bright people in his cabinet and a load of bright people in his public service, so why are we still chasing perpetual exponential growth? Is this like the tiger of legend that you can never risk getting off? Does greed run the world?

I harp on this problem from time to time because I think we need to change our focus. Forget about growth that we can't sustain, growth that we cannot survive. There has to be something more valuable than killing ourselves off.

Here's an idea. Let's focus on what we can do to bolster our chances of survival. Whether it's climate change or soils degradation or freshwater contamination, any of this stuff, that begins by deciding that we can't live outside nature. We have to find ways to live in harmony with nature. We must conform to nature's finite limits. We really have no choice. The way we've been going is closing in on us. We are poisoning our world. We are poisoning the future.

As Einstein said, we can't solve problems with the same thinking we used to create them.

Well His Wardrobe Won't Change Much

He's the self-proclaimed wizard who propelled Donald Trump into the Oval Office. It was a boast that so grated on Trump that he got rid of Steve Bannon.

Bannon cultivated a "bum" look with army surplus jackets, hair in bad need of a shampoo and a trim, face in need of a shave (it's only fashionable if you're young and hot, not when you're fat and old with grey whiskers).

Rocking that look, Bannon shouldn't stand out in his next job as a resident of the Greybar Hotel. Since he left Trump stories said he was handsomely well-off. Whether that's true or not it seems that, given the opportunity, he couldn't keep his hand out of the till.

Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former top adviser, was charged on Thursday in New York with fraud for his role in a scheme related to “We Build the Wall,” an online fund-raising effort that collected more than $25 million for the president’s much-touted plan to erect a barrier on the Mexican border, officials said. 

Mr. Bannon and three other defendants “defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction,” Audrey Strauss, the acting United States attorney in Manhattan, said in statement Thursday.

Bannon and his pals set up a fund to help "build the wall" assuring donors every dime would go to that project. Every dime after they skimmed the donations for themselves. Postal inspectors allege Bannon pocketed a nice million bucks.

Trump gave Bannon the full "Epstein Treatment." He barely remembers him, hasn't seen Bannon in years.  Bannon did work for the campaign, just a little bit. Sad to see him run afoul of the law. Trump knew next to nothing about this venture. Just heard about this from his staff. Only he read about it back in the day and let it be known he didn't like it. So he knew about what he didn't know about and, besides, he probably wouldn't recognize Bannon if they passed each other on the sidewalk.

You Know How Sometimes When You See a Familiar Name From the Past?

You're just scanning through the headlines. There's a name. It might take a minute or two but you go scrambling back to check it out.

Name:  Nigel Wright.

Nigel is in the prisoner's dock, convicted of two counts of extortion and another two counts of contaminating food, baby food.

Nigel Wright put metal shards in baby food sold by Brit grocery giant, Tesco. He tried to shake down the chain for some $2 million, CDN.

Only it wasn't Stephen Harper's Nigel Wright, our Nigel Wright. This was farmer Nigel Wright from Market Rasen in Lincolnshire. This guy.

This Nigel Wright is going to be held to account for his crimes. No "immaculate extortion" here.

Our Nigel Wright is in London, running the European operation of Onex Partners.

I Wonder if Airbus Chipped In?

Peter MacKay seems poised to be the next leader of the Conservative Party.

As he tries to erase his lasting shame for having betrayed the Progressive Conservatives, MacKay has attracted $3.1 million in donations. No, not in a day, not in a week, in total. $3.1 million. His nearest rival, Erin O'Toole, trails by some $600,000.

Still Peter could use a little help to top up his coffers. Is Karl Heinz Schreiber back on the streets yet? And what about Airbus? They used to be pretty good with handing money around.

Notre Dame Re-Opened. How Well Did That Go?

It took just eight days for Notre Dame to shut down the campus. Eight days and 146 students infected with Covid-19.

“The virus is a formidable foe,” Notre Dame University President Father John Jenkins said in a news release. “For the past week, it has been winning. Let us as the Fighting Irish join together to contain it.”

Since Aug. 3, 927 people have been tested for the virus and 147 have returned positive results, the school said. 

Most of those students were seniors living off-campus who contracted the disease at gatherings where social distancing rules were not followed and masks weren’t worn, the school said, citing a contact tracing analysis.

The University of Michigan chose to play it safe.

In Michigan, the university hadn’t yet begun their fall semester as they abruptly told students to stay away from campus. In a Tuesday letter to students, University President Samuel Stanley Jr. attributed the move to the “current status of the virus in our country — particularly what we are seeing at other institutions as they re-populate their campus communities.”

On Monday, UNC-Chapel Hill became the first university in the United States to abandon in-person classes after reopening for the fall semester on Aug. 10. Five school employees and 130 students tested positive, the school said. 

"Many students, graduate workers, staff, some faculty members and even the local county health department warned that this was going to happen," said Lamar Richards, a student chairperson on the Commission on Campus Equality and Student Equity at UNC.

Oh those crazy Yankees and their high-risk hedonist ways and their Gawd-given constitutional freedoms. What did they expect? They're not responsible people, not like us. We won't have problems like theirs when re-opening our schools.

A Former Trump Insider On the Lunatic at Large Inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

A glimpse at the monster running America.



Rolling Stone reports that Trump says he wants not one more term but two. Trump says he was spied on and therefore he deserves a "redo" on his first term.

Meanwhile, The Hill reports that Trump has praised the QAnon conspiracy theory movement. Sort of like white supremacists, Trump thinks they just love their country and, best of all, they like him.

So Much for Kushner's Middle East Peace Breakthrough

WARNING - I'm leaving this post up, for now. However I tried to confirm this information and, in the process, learned that the source of this story is unreliable and associated with conspiracy theorists.  Even Al Jazeera has nothing about this supposed breakdown of the UAE-Israel pact.  

No, that's it. There's nothing online anywhere that backs up the claim that the UAE is walking from the pact. Nothing.

To those I might have misled, I apologize.

Here, Have a Quick Look at This

I know little about medicine, even less about dermatology, but, being not that many years younger than the Mango Mussolini, I'm sometimes struck when I see close up photos of Trump's face. Check this out.

Too many hours in the tanning booth? Too many applications of fake tan? Too many hours of golf under the Florida sun?  Could it be the makeup?

Talk about "20 miles of bad road." Hell I've known people in their 90s with hides way younger looking than Trump's. 

What do you make of this?

Alan Fotheringham, RIP

One of the greats of Canadian political punditry, Alan Fotheringham, dead at 87.

Anyone remotely sentient who enjoyed Canada in the 70s and 80s will recall "the Foth" or, as a few of his less charitable rivals sometimes called him, "the Froth."

He revelled in his ability to draw blood, for sport as much as for therapeutic purposes. He took down mayors and monarchists, prime ministers and PR men, other journalists and the justice system, bureaucrats and the bourgeoisie with whimsical wordplay that was no less cutting for its folksiness. He built them up, too, taking credit for sparking the political careers of Brian Mulroney, Paul Martin, and Stockwell Day. 

A prairie boy turned expense-account bon vivant, celebrated as much for his wit and wardrobe as his reporting, Mr. Fotheringham was, according to the Progressive Conservative Party backroom operator Dalton Camp, “the only stand-up comedian we know who works sitting down.” 

And so, among his pithy descriptors known as Fothisms: he dubbed Brian Mulroney “The Jaw That Walks Like a Man”; our neighbours to the south, “The Excited States of America”; the first Prime Minister Trudeau, “Pierre Elliott Himself”; Ottawa, “the town that fun forgot” and “yesterday’s city tomorrow”; Vancouver, “the Narcissus of the West Coast”; and when the CN Tower neared completion, he declared Toronto to be in the grip of a “pathetic phallusy.”

Allan Fotheringham was born Murray Allan Scott, the third of Edna and John Scott’s four children, on Aug. 31, 1932, in Rouleau, Sask. (home of TV’s yokel-fest, Corner Gas), and raised in nearby Hearne – a place, he frequently quipped, "so small that we couldn’t afford a village idiot. Everyone had to take turns.”

Earth Overshoot Day Arrives this Week

This graphic depiction from The New York Times indicates our worsening predicament. 

The black bars represent the Earth's capacity to deliver the resources that sustain humanity. The battery is fully charged in January. By March, it's down to 60 per cent. That drops to 20 per cent in June. And now, in August, capacity has fallen to zero. We have reached Earth's annual carrying capacity.

We've got almost five months left to go. We need to consume resources that Earth can't provide. The biosphere is tapped out. But, hey, it could always be worse. We've got Covid-19 to thank.

Demonstrating its role as a high-level indicator, this year’s Earth Overshoot Day will, for the first time, arrive later than it did the year before. (By more than three weeks!) That’s a direct result of the coronavirus shutdowns, which reduced humanity’s ecological footprint by 9.3 percent, according to estimates from Global Footprint Network researchers.

“The fact that Earth Overshoot Day is later this year is a reflection of a lot of suffering, and the reflection of imposed changes to our lives,” said Laurel Hanscom, chief executive of the Global Footprint Network. “I don’t think there’s a silver lining to that.”

What a 4C World Looks Like

This graphic from The Guardian depicts what a world at 4 degrees Celsius (above pre-industrial levels) will mean for humanity.

If it looks grim, it is. The red zone, as we have been warned repeatedly, including densely populated India, Southeast Asia and Asia Pacific, Sub-Saharan Africa including the Horn of Africa and Yemen; a big chunk of South America including northern Brazil, the Amazon, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Guyana(s), and Suriname; almost all of Central America, will be rendered uninhabitable. Southern Europe may desertify. Some parts of it are already experiencing the arrival of the Sahara. Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, the Balkans. The yellow zone won't be spared either, especially in those regions nearest the equator.

The graphic anticipates a general migration out of the tropical and then temperate zones, humanity heading ever poleward.  It mistakenly suggests that agriculture will be possible across northern Canada, Scandinavia and Russian Siberia. Two problems with that. The soils in that region are poor to marginal. Second, climate change will not shift the Earth's axis. The more intense sunlight that has enabled us to grow enough crops to foolishly expand to 8 billion is in the equatorial and temperate zones.

Leaving pandemics aside for the moment, this graphic depicts the world that humanity is on course to achieve. I realize "achieve" may sound inappropriate but, hey, we know or ought to know that this is where we're heading.

Extinction Rebellion is scheduled to emerge from the Covid-19 fog on Friday with the release of a new video, "The Troublemaker." Here's a trailer.

A Voice From the Past

Over the past couple of years I've been exploring early progressive thought. Yesterday I stumbled across the following passage that immediately hit a chord:

The misery of the people is not caused by individuals, but by an order of Society by which they are bound together in a way that puts them in the power of a few, or, more often, of one man: a man so depraved by his unnatural power - that he is always in an unhealthy state and suffering more or less from a mania of self-aggrandizement, which is not noticed in him only because of his exceptional position.

The only part of the Press that reaches them, and which seems to them to be the expression of the feelings of the best of the people or their best representatives, exalts all their words and deeds, however silly and wicked they may be, in the most servile manner. All who surround them, men and women, cleric or lay, all these people who do not value human dignity, vie with each other in flattering them in the most refined manner, agree with them in everything, and deceive them continually, making it impossible for them to know life as it is. These men might live to be a hundred and never see a real, free man, and never hear the truth.

The writer is discussing the ruling caste of his day, "Nicholas or Alexander, Louis or Napoleon, Frederic or William, Palmerstone or Gladstone, McKinley or anyone else."

The essay, "Anarchism. Thou Shalt Not Kill," was written by Leo Tolstoy. It's undated but is one of forty essays/lectures published in the 1905 book, "The Meaning of Modern Life." I was able to snag a first edition in remarkably good condition cheap, cheap, cheap.

I wonder what Count Tolstoy would have made of the current president, the Mango Mussolini, DJ Trump. I'm sure he would be very familiar with the character flaws and the servile acolytes who surround him.

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Too Toxic to Continue

They're the Old School chapter of the GOP, conservative Republicans alarmed at how their party, the
'party of Lincoln' succumbed to rightwing extremists, misogynists, xenophobes, white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, racists and bigots of every description also known as 'Trump's base.'

These Patricians conveniently forget who it was that allowed that camel to get its nose under their tent. It was them back in the days when they were cocky and sure they could pander to the mob as they milked them of their votes while manipulating and controlling them.  This was  back in the early days of the Tea Party. Those who let them into the tent did not foresee Donald Trump and his coup de main!

Now, after nearly four years of Trump and his bizarre team some on the right are worried that, even if Trump is ousted when Americans go to the polls in November, the Republican Party may be too tainted, too broken to switch back. They speak in a lexicon that includes Trumpocracy and Trumpocalypse.

Some have suggested that, like the city of Hue after the Tet Offensive, the only way to save the GOP may be to burn it to the ground.  They envision a party purged of the vermin rising, like Phoenix, from the ashes.

Some Democrats aren't so optimistic. They fear that the GOP, even with a Democrat in the White House, will still cleave to Trump's malignant ways.

If Mr. Biden wins and if Mr. Trump leaves office peacefully — two big ifs — Democrats will be confronted with a more intractable problem: The Republican Party is the party of Donald Trump, and it is not likely to change. 

If Mr. Biden wins, there will be a temptation to embrace a big lie: Mr. Trump was the problem, and with him gone, the Republican Party can return to normal. But today’s Republican Party won’t moderate itself, because Trumpism is its natural state. Democrats should avoid the temptation to expect Republican cooperation in governing this country.

In 2016, Mr. Trump didn’t change the Republican Party; he met it where it was. The party had been ready for him for years: In 2012, the congressional scholars Thomas Mann of the center-left Brookings Institution and Norm Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute wrote, “The G.O.P. has become an insurgent outlier in American politics.”

This is not a party poised to pivot toward moderation — even in the face of an electoral landslide loss. The inevitable calls for reform (like the party’s abandoned “autopsy” report after the 2012 election) will yield to the inescapable gravitational pull of the party’s own voters and the larger forces dominating our politics. 

Instead of moderates, Republicans may be more likely to turn to reactionary politicians like Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. A first-term senator with few substantive legislative accomplishments, Mr. Cotton rocketed to fame through his provocative actions against Democrats...

Snookered.

If the forces shaping party politics provide the motive for Republicans to continue down Mr. Trump’s path, the Senate will provide the means. Because of how the Senate has evolved in recent decades, it takes a supermajority of 60 votes to pass most bills. A minority of 41 senators can throw a monkey wrench into most aspects of governance, from major bills to mundane business. Republicans can muster those 41 seats using only states Mr. Trump won by an average of 24 percentage points in 2016. Even if Mr. Biden wins and Democrats take the Senate, Republicans will hold enough power to derail nearly everything the new president wants to do.

Breaking the Flyover States' deathgrip on democracy. Do it in the sacred name of the Founding Fathers.

It is encouraging to see Mr. Biden shifting from his staunch opposition to reforming the filibuster, whose modern iteration is what has allowed Republicans to raise the bar for passing most bills in the Senate from the majority threshold the framers set to the current 60-vote supermajority.

...The Republican Party is now an even more hopeless tangle of pathologies than it was back then. If Republicans choose to take personal responsibility for unwinding themselves and contributing productively to intelligent solutions, they are welcome to do so. But Democrats cannot bet the future of the country on it.

What Remains For the Trudeau Liberals?

Bill Morneau was not the problem but a symptom of a greater failure known as the Trudeau government. With his finance minister out, resigning both his cabinet post and his seat in the House of Commons, Justin Trudeau is looking weak, wounded, vulnerable.

He's got Mark Carney waiting in the wings but it's hard to imagine Justin Trudeau wanting to invite comparisons between Carney and himself. Of the two, Carney is the most progressive on everything from the economy, inequality, fossil fuels and climate breakdown. In his successful terms as governor of the Bank of England, Carney championed all of those causes even as this prime minister dithered, uttering empty promises one atop the next.

It begs the question how Mr. Trudeau managed to lose the popular vote  to a chump such as Andrew Scheer. That's the sort of thing that sets off alarm bells and flashing lights in the reactor room.

Is it possible that the minority Liberals could fall to the Tories given the Conservatives' dog eared leadership prospects? Elmer MacKay's progeny, Peter? Peter "Quisling" MacKay, is that the best they've got? It would be laughable if the gaffe-prone Trudeau Liberals weren't so weak.

What have the Liberals got? Chrystia, the Ice Queen, friend to Ukrainian fascists and Israel's Bibi to boot? She's got the charm of a skinning knife. Speaking of knives, there's Marc Garneau. I know a couple of RCN destroyer drivers who went through Royal Military College with Garneau and told me there wasn't anyone he wouldn't stab in the back for a shot at advancement. Of course that was decades ago. Maybe he's mellowed out since then. Joyce Murray, my choice, is too Left Coast for today's Conservative-Lite Liberals.

What really sticks in my craw is timing. Canada is adrift, rudderless at the very moment of our greatest peril. Our people are concerned, afraid and for good reason. The people they're supposed to be able to look to for vision and answers are empty vessels.

Covid-19 is a Delayed Action Killer

The anti-mask/anti-vaccine crowd routinely downplays the severity of the Covid-19 virus. Some like to compare the current pandemic, now in its seventh month, to the Spanish Flu of 1918 that kept killing until April, 1920, 26 months in total.

There is no comparison between the two. We have better healthcare today. We understand how to curb viral pandemics that no one understood at the end of WWI. Viruses vary in transmissibility, doubling times and lethality. Some viruses run their course only to return a few years later.

We are still figuring out Covid-19. As it turns out it can kill its victims in different ways over very different timeframes.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, was initially thought to primarily impact the lungs — SARS stands for “severe acute respiratory syndrome.” Now we know there is barely a part of the body this infection spares. And emerging data show that some of the virus’s most potent damage is inflicted on the heart. 

Eduardo Rodriguez was poised to start as the No. 1 pitcher for the Boston Red Sox this season. But in July the 27-year-old tested positive for Covid-19. Feeling “100 years old,” he told reporters: “I’ve never been that sick in my life, and I don’t want to get that sick again.” His symptoms abated, but a few weeks later he felt so tired after throwing about 20 pitches during practice that his team told him to stop and rest. 

Further investigation revealed that he had a condition many are still struggling to understand: Covid-19-associated myocarditis. Mr. Rodriguez won’t be playing baseball this season. 

Myocarditis means inflammation of the heart muscle. Some patients are never bothered by it, but for others it can have serious implications. And Mr. Rodriguez isn’t the only athlete to suffer from it: Multiple college football players have possibly developed myocarditis from Covid-19, putting the entire college football landscape in jeopardy.

The gift that keeps on giving.

An intriguing new study from Germany offers a glimpse into how SARS-CoV-2 affects the heart. Researchers studied 100 individuals, with a median age of just 49, who had recovered from Covid-19. Most were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms.

An average of two months after they received the diagnosis, the researchers performed M.R.I. scans of their hearts and made some alarming discoveries: Nearly 80 percent had persistent abnormalities and 60 percent had evidence of myocarditis. The degree of myocarditis was not explained by the severity of the initial illness.

The reality is that there is much about Covid-19 that we still don't know and probably won't for some time to come. People who contract the virus but remain asymptomatic are not out of the woods. For some this virus is a ticking time bomb.

Higher Learning, Higher Infection

Many of us live in dread of Covid-19 creeping into our children's classrooms. Little kids, getting sick, bringing the virus back home to their siblings, parents, perhaps grandparents. Scary stuff.

But it doesn't seem to scare the older kids, those returning to college and university campuses. They're getting back and a lot of them are hitting it pretty hard.

Music blared outside a row of off-campus houses on Saturday near the University of North Georgia as hundreds of students packed the streets and front yards. Virtually no one wore a mask.

The huge party in Dahlonega, Ga., captured in a viral Twitter video, was one of a number of mass gatherings around the country this weekend as tens of thousands of students returned to college towns already on edge amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Local officials from Georgia to Alabama to Oklahoma reacted with horror and anger on Sunday, warning that unless students take social distancing and mask rules seriously, the fall semester could come to a swift end.

“Why?” tweeted Walt Maddox, mayor of Tuscaloosa, Ala., above a photo of hundreds of mostly mask-free University of Alabama students outside downtown restaurants. “We are desperately trying to protect @tuscaloosacity.” 

Timothy Snyder Urges Americans to Keep a Close Eye on Belarus

Yale prof, Timothy Snyder, is probably best known for his book, "On Tyranny, Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century." (available free on PDF here) He's considered something of an expert on authoritarianism and despots.

In today's Washington Post, Snyder warns Americans that if they want to salvage what remains of their democracy from the claws of Donald Trump they would do well to study the uprising now underway in Belarus.

The predicament of Belarusans after the rigged presidential election of Aug. 9 is a sharpened preview of what Americans will face this November. The local dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, responded to the outbreak of covid-19 with magical thinking. As the economy crumbled, his opponents realized that they enjoyed a majority. When Lukashenko claimed an improbable victory after the election, Belarusans took to the streets. They were beaten and detained by riot police; Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his congratulations to Lukashenko. It is not hard to imagine that Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr would be satisfied with a similar turn of events here in November.

Americans have had other things on our minds this past week, but this is no excuse for looking the other way as others defend values we claim to hold dear. Yet even if we missed what happened Minsk, people in Minsk had learned from Minneapolis. The rhetoric and tactics in the cities and towns of Belarus carried echoes of Hong Kong; Khabarovsk, Russia; and Portland, Ore. Protesters around the world increasingly learn from one another.

Just as Trump is already preparing to do, Lukashenko was counting on the support of his cronies among local election officials, police and Russia. We cannot know whether his opponents will succeed: Unlike the United States, where the most effective Russian intervention comes through the Internet, in Belarus, Putin and Lukashenko can threaten an invasion.

As Americans think ahead to November, we should learn from people who have taken risks for democracy, in circumstances more challenging than our own. Belarusans teach us what I would call “the six Ps” of defending an electoral victory against authoritarian chaos: preparation, predominance, protest, peace, persistence and pluralism.

Preparation means understanding that your local authoritarian will spoil the election and planning in advance. Predominance means getting out the vote and winning by a wide margin, so everyone will know that the authoritarian is lying. Protest means taking the streets when the authoritarian makes his move. Peace means keeping demonstrations nonviolent as the regime discredits itself with violence. Persistence means coming back anyway the next day, and the day after that. And pluralism is a summons to groups, such as those Belarusan workers, women and doctors, to make their presence and their feelings known.

Democracy is a value, so it must be valued, and it is a practice, so it must be practiced. If we want it, we must be open to learning from others, and then be prepared to take responsibility for ourselves.

In this and so many other things today, we're being held back by a failure of imagination. It's hard for people to imagine that their country has been taken over by a tyrant. It's hard for many people to imagine that their country, their society is already, now, confronted by the existential threats of the climate emergency. It's hard for us to imagine that our democracy has been watered down, polluted by the neoliberal order. When you cannot imagine such things it leads to denialism which itself is a gesture of forfeiture.