Sorry, Kim, But You've Officially Joined the Fossils

Kim Campbell made a bit of a fool of herself by claiming that women news anchors should not wear sleeveless attire. They lacked gravitas she said.

Sorry, Kim, the world has moved on and left you behind.

I'm old enough to remember when men all wore hats. It was the thing that was done. Until John Kennedy became president. He didn't wear hats and, soon enough, neither did the majority of men. JFK pretty much put paid to men's hats.

Then along came another White House resident, this one.

She wasn't a newswoman. She was the First Lady of the United States and no one, for a minute, imagined she lacked gravitas.  And, just to show that wasn't some fluke, here's the official portrait of Mrs. Obama.

Nothing frivolous or lacking in gravitas about this portrait either. It exudes elegance. So, Kimmie, get with the times. Fedoras are out, sleeveless attire for women, should they choose to wear it, is just fine.

Nobody's 'Sposed to Be Seeing That, 'Ceptin Your Man and Even Then Only With the Lights Out!

Canada's first female and legendary drive-by prime minister, Kim Campbell, has succumbed to a bout of loose-lipitis.

Her Kimship delivered herself of the opinion that it's just not right for female newscasters to wear sleeveless attire on screen.

I am struck by how many women on television news wear sleeveless dresses- often when sitting with suited men. I have always felt it was demeaning to the women and this suggests that I am right. Bare arms undermine credibility and gravitas! https://t.co/plBRrrtqKV

— Kim Campbell (@AKimCampbell) February 13, 2018

The controversy harkens back to a similar uproar over female attire on the now-defunct Sun News Network.

That flap erupted soon after the right-wing all-news network debuted in April 2011, with National Post columnist Tasha Kheiriddin deriding the network’s female journalists for dressing like cocktail hostesses in “low cut, sleeveless” attire.

At the time, Luiza Ch. Savage of Maclean’s magazine also called the all-news network “Skank TV” in a tweet that was eventually retracted.

The Cops Finally Came Knocking on Bibi's Door

They took their sweet time about it. Israeli police have recommended that Benjamin Netanyahu be indicted on corruption and bribery charges.

Netanyahu angrily rejected the accusations, which included accepting nearly $300,000 US in gifts from a pair of billionaires. He accused police of being on a witch hunt, vowed to remain in office and even seek re-election.

"I will continue to lead the state of Israel responsibly and loyally as long as you, the citizens of Israel choose me to lead you," an ashen-faced Netanyahu said in a televised address. "I am sure that the truth will come to light. And I am sure that also in the next election that will take place on time I will win your trust again with God's help."
...

But with a cloud hanging over his head, he could soon find himself facing calls to step aside. During similar circumstances a decade ago, Netanyahu, as opposition leader, urged then-prime minister Ehud Olmert to resign during a police investigation, saying a leader "sunk up to his neck in interrogations" could not govern properly.

Look At It This Way - #2

British Columbia is in a bit of a showdown now with some pretty sketchy characters, Rachel Notley and Justin Trudeau. Now, when the B.C. government insists on getting to the truth about bitumen, dilbit, and the hazards posed to our province and our coastal waters, these two dissemblers are howling like cut cats.

The Royal Society of Canada; Alberta's renowned ecologist, David Schindler; even Trudeau's own Environment Canada, all back British Columbia's case. Those two thugs haven't got a scientific leg to stand on but this has nothing to do with science. This is all about politics, politicians going along to get along, and the price they're willing to see others pay so that they and their patrons can get their way.

Which makes me wonder what if? What if British Columbia was Quebec on the Pacific? If we had the clout that Quebec is blessed with, do you really think Trudeau would even imagine pushing this pipeline through against the wishes of the Quebecois? He wouldn't dare. That's more political dynamic than this prime minister can handle.

But we're not Quebec. We're British Columbia. We are very clearly second class Canadians - at best.

Look At It This Way

Humankind today lives longer than ever before. A lot longer. Many today can expect to live into their late 70s, some much longer than that. Still it's not long enough.

What if we could reasonably expect to live for 200 years? How would that change us, especially how we see our world?

Our outlook would be entirely different. Had I a reasonable expectation of living another 130 or 140 years, I'd be scared shitless about climate change. I, we, would be taking to the streets with pitchforks and torches, chasing down the fossil fuelers and their political collaborators for condemning us to endure a dystopian future.

Most of us, however, comfort ourselves in the knowledge that we'll be safely dead before the fit hits the shan, although the latest research suggests we might be a bit too optimistic about that. And so we're content to let the good times roll even if our ongoing excess ensures that those future generations pay for our indulgence.

And that's the kind of people we are which is the only reason we elect the leaders we have.

People Don't Turn their Backs on Democracy Unless It Has First Turned From Them.

There have been a few reports recently that American millennials are souring on democracy.  Apparently it's happening across the Western world.

If you’re old enough to remember the Cold War, maybe you think of democracy as sacrosanct, an often-endangered ideal worth fighting for. But if the Berlin Wall was before your time, you might not take the value of democracy as given. That’s one conclusion that can be drawn from recent studies that suggest young people are not as sold as their parents and grandparents were on this most basic of American ideals.

According to a study published in October 2017 by Pew Research, there’s a division of opinion in many countries today on whether states are more effectively governed by “experts” or elected officials. In advanced economies, young adults are more likely than older people to prefer technocracy to democracy. The study found that in the U.S., 46 percent of those aged 18 to 29 would prefer to be governed by experts compared with 36 percent of respondents aged 50 and older.

A study from Harvard’s Yascha Mounk and the University of Melbourne’s Roberto Stefan Foa published in the Journal of Democracy in January 2017 produced an even more striking result. Just 19 percent of U.S. millennials agreed with the statement that “military takeover is not legitimate in a democracy.” Among older citizens, the total was a still-surprising 43 percent. (In Europe, by contrast, the corresponding numbers were 36 percent for younger people and 53 percent for older people.) Perhaps most alarming was the revelation than one quarter of millennials agreed that “choosing leaders through free elections is unimportant.” Just 14 percent of Baby Boomers and 10 percent of older Americans agreed.

Their attitude is entirely understandable given the degraded iteration of democracy, this Potemkin democracy on offer today. The neoliberal order is simply not, in the long run, compatible with liberal democracy. It thrives even better in command economies such as China's. Something has to give and it has, even in Canada and far more so in the United States.

Democracy hasn't existed in the U.S. for years. The Gilens and Page study, published by Princeton in 2014, vividly demonstrated that the corruption of the American government with its "bought and paid for" Congress has displaced democracy with oligarchy, plutocracy directed by America's elites.

This is what happens when progressivism is expunged from practical politics. The progressive branch of the Liberal Party was sidelined, marginalized pretty thoroughly since at least Ignatieff's reign and remains an atrophied artifact of the former Liberal party that hasn't drawn breath since Pierre Trudeau stepped down. List the major progressive achievements of every Liberal leader since Trudeau. It's a damned short list. Oddly enough the only one who showed progressive leanings was Martin with such things as R2P, the Kelowna Accords, and such.

The kids know this business about democracy is a scam. Let's not blame them for realizing the truth, their predicament. We created it. It happened on our watch and we were just fine with it.

Great. Now Notley Imagines She's Speaking for All Canadians. You Too?

Rachel Notley is taking to the interwebs in her war with British Columbia. If it's war B.C. wants, it's war she'll get.

Now the Alberta premier, speaking for Alberta and all Canadians (including you, I guess) is going to expose the recalcitrant coastal curmudgeons, damned hippies and geriatric draft dodgers,  as never before.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Notley explained that this would drive home Alberta's message in the “ongoing dispute that British Columbia has triggered with Alberta and with all Canadians.”

“Albertans (will) be able to engage with people in other parts of the country to help make our point around why this is so important for Canada, for the Canadian economy, for Canada’s environmental progress, for all these issues,” Notley told a press conference in Edmonton, Alta.

But B.C.'s goal of improving scientific research into spills was actually supported by the federal government's Environment Department in 2016.

In January of that year, Environment and Climate Change Canada told the federal pipeline regulator, the National Energy Board, that there were significant "knowledge gaps and uncertainties with respect to hydrocarbon product behaviours in the marine environment," and that the company should commit to funding more research to strengthen spill response planning and risk assessment.

"Significant knowledge gaps." Now there's an understatement. 

As renowned Alberta ecologist, the University of Alberta's professor David Schindler wrote in a recent op-ed in the Edmonton Journal, we know essentially nothing about what a dilbit spill in British Columbia's coastal waters would mean. This admits of but two possibilities. Either the federal government hasn't researched the threat, which would make Justin Trudeau a despicable liar. Or it has done the research and, for some reason, has chosen not to share it with the public, especially coastal British Columbians. 

Me? I'm going to assume Ottawa has done the research and knows what a generational, environmental catastrophe awaits British Columbia's coast when, (not if but when and how often*) a wallowing, fully loaded supertanker has a mishap. And I'm going to make that assumption based on the decision of Dame Cathy McKenna's environment minister to quietly approve the use of the lethal chemical stew, Corexit, as an oil spill dispersant.

Before that other Albertan asshat, Shifty Steve Harper, rescinded it, our federal government imposed a tanker exclusion zone, that kept U.S. supertankers carrying Alaska crude oil to the lower 48 well out of British Columbia coastal waters. That wasn't dilbit. It was the far more benign conventional crude oil. Canada didn't implement that exclusion zone for shits and giggles. We knew the hazards even a conventional oil spill would pose to our coastal waters.

So, let's recap. Justin Trudeau's own environment ministry has said all along that the essential research into dilbit spills hasn't been done, directly contradicting this prime minister's empty assurances. The eminent science body, the Royal Society of Canada, says the research hasn't been done, not a lick of it. Alberta's most renowned ecologist, professor Dave Schindler says the British Columbia government's argument isn't intransigent. In fact it's pretty much unassailable. Trudeau lies to our faces and says his government has the science but won't produce it. Possibly his dog ate it. McKenna's environment ministry has green-lighted a vicious chemical compound that sinks oil spills straight to the bottom where the toxic sludge will contaminate the marine ecosystem for generations. And those uppity British Columbians should just shut up and keep their damned questions to themselves.

* during National Energy Board hearings, many experienced mariners from the Canadian Coast Guard, the Royal Canadian Navy and the merchant marine testified that a tanker spill isn't a matter of if but of when and how often.

The Trump Monologue.

This just speaks for itself.

The Game is Afoot

It may be time to get out the magnifying glass, fire up the Meerschaum calabash and dust off the deerstalker. The game is afoot and the sleuths are in hot pursuit of - Donald Trump.  No, this isn't Robert Mueller's gang. This is the Sherlocks, the private eyes.

For the last six months, a team led by a former top FBI and White House cybersecurity official has been traveling the globe on a secret mission to verify parts of the Trump dossier, according to four sources familiar with different aspects of the ongoing probe.

Their client: BuzzFeed, the news organization that first published the dossier on U.S. President Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, which is now being sued over its explosive allegations.

...

FTI [Consulting] is a Washington-based business advisory firm that specializes in areas ranging from corporate litigation to forensic accounting, and it is a frequent post-government landing pad for FBI officials.

The ramifications of FTI’s dossier investigation could be game-changing for Mueller’s probe, because it “would establish outside veracity of dossier allegations,” a source familiar with the work told Foreign Policy. Yet news of FTI’s involvement, including the critical role of a former top FBI official, would also be controversial because the dossier itself is “a political football,” the source said.

The dossier, which was funded by those connected with the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party, has been the subject of ongoing controversy; while some of its claims have allegedly been verified, many others remain unproven. Trump and his allies have repeatedly attacked those involved in the dossier, as well as top FBI officials, as being involved in a partisan witch hunt.

[Anthony] Ferrante, a former top FBI official who previously served as director for cyber incident response at the U.S. National Security Council during the Barack Obama administration, is now at FTI Consulting, where he is leading the effort.

...

At FTI, Ferrante launched what’s now been a months-long stealth effort chasing down documents and conducting interviews on the ground in various countries around the world. His team directed BuzzFeed lawyers to subpoena specific data and testimony from dozens of agencies or companies across the country and assembled a cyber ops war room to analyze that data, according to sources familiar with the work.

BuzzFeed is being sued for libel by Russian technology executive Aleksej Gubarev, who argues that the news organization was reckless in publishing a series of memos written by former British spy Christopher Steele. Those memos — part of a so-called dossier of information about Trump — include unverified claims that servers belonging to a company owned by Gubarev were used to hack the Democratic Party’s computer systems during the 2016 campaign.

...

It’s unclear if anyone from FTI will provide testimony before the Florida court presiding over a libel lawsuit against the media outlet. The names of testifying expert witnesses are expected to be disclosed later this week, and there is a hearing currently scheduled for Thursday in Florida.

It will be fascinating to learn what, if anything, from the Steele dossier, FTI will be able to corroborate.

It's No Wonder They're Pals.

Donald Trump and Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, seem to like each other - a lot. Trump just has a baked-in fondness for his fellow despots. They're like peas in a pod.

It's not entirely clear that Duterte was inspired by Trump when he announced that his soldiers should shoot female rebels right where Trump is fond of groping women.


Duterte, a former provincial mayor, told a group of former communist rebels to “tell the soldiers…there’s a new order from the mayor. We won’t kill you. We will just shoot your vagina.”

“If there is no vagina, it would be useless,” he said, appearing to imply that women are useless without their genitals.

The President’s Communications Office included the comments in the official transcript of a speech but replaced the word “vagina” with a dash.

The Great Kleptocracy

So stupid. The Gullibillies believed Trump was going to drain the swamp only they got - just what they had coming - a true, "smash and grab" government.

They handed the keys, all of the keys (the House, the Senate, the White House), to a GOP who had been just waiting for the chance to pillage the state and did they ever.

Check out the excellent article at Vox that explains how, in just one year, the Republicans arranged the wholesale looting of America. Ever wonder why so many veteran Republican legislators have announced they're retiring, won't seek re-election? That's because the first rule is to put as much distance as possible between yourself and the scene of the crime before anybody notices what's happened.

When it comes to the Gullibillies, people that stupid will always be the lawful prey of people as corrupt as today's Republicans. Check out the article, it's a good read.



For something closer to home, more immediate and infinitely more frightening, read Michael Klare's essay at Tom Dispatch about how Trump is militarizing America's energy policy.

Unless Trump can somehow be stopped and his course rapidly reversed, the United States could plunge the world into a climate change holocaust. It'll mean death, not in millions, but in billions. And, yeah, you can fairly call that a holocaust.


Last month, if you listened to the chatter among elite power brokers at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, you would have heard a lot of bragging about the immense progress being made in renewable energy.  ...Only one major figure defied this trend: U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry. The United States, he insisted, is “blessed” with “a substantial ability to deliver the people of the globe a better quality of life through fossil fuels.”

A better quality of life through fossil fuels? On this, he and his Trump administration colleagues now stand essentially alone on planet Earth [not quite, right Justin?]. Virtually every other country has by now chosen -- via the Paris climate accord and efforts like those under way in India -- to speed the transition from a carbon-based energy economy to a renewable one.

...

From the onset of his presidency, Donald Trump has made it clear that cheap and abundant domestic energy derived from fossil fuels was going to be the crucial factor in his total-mobilization approach to global engagement. In his view and that of his advisers, it’s the essential element in ensuring national economic vitality, military strength, and geopolitical clout, whatever damage it might cause to American life, the global environment, or even the future of human life on this planet. The exploitation and wielding of fossil fuels now sits at the very heart of the Trumpian definition of national security, as the recently released NSS makes all too clear.

“Access to domestic sources of clean, affordable, and reliable energy underpins a prosperous, secure, and powerful America for decades to come,” it states. “Unleashing these abundant energy resources -- coal, natural gas, petroleum, renewables, and nuclear -- stimulates the economy and builds a foundation for future growth.”

...

What really matters to Trump are those domestic reserves of fossil fuels. Only by using them to gain energy self-sufficiency, or what he trumpets not just as “energy independence” but total “energy dominance,” can the U.S. avoid becoming beholden to foreign powers and so protect its sovereignty. That’s why he regularly hails the successes of the “shale revolution,” the use of fracking technology to extract oil and gas from deeply buried shale formations. As he sees it, fracking to the max makes America that much less dependent on foreign imports.

Does this sound vaguely familiar?

The final step in the president’s strategy to become a major exporter involves facilitating the transport of fossil fuels to the country’s coastal areas for shipment abroad. In this way, he would also turn the government into a major global salesman of fossil fuels (as it already is, for instance, of American weaponry). To do so, he would expedite the approval of permits for the export of LNG, or liquefied natural gas, and even for some new typesof “lower emissions” coal plants. The Department of the Treasury, he revealed in that June talk of his, “will address barriers to the financing of highly efficient, overseas coal energy plants.” In addition, he claimed that the Ukrainians tell us “they need millions and millions of metric tons [of coal] right now. There are many other places that need it, too. And we want to sell it to them, and to everyone else all over the globe who need[s] it.” He also announced the approval of expanded LNG exports from a new facility at Lake Charles, Louisiana, and of a new oil pipeline to Mexico, meant to “further boost American energy exports, and that will go right under the [as yet unbuilt] wall.”

Such energy moves have generally been viewed as part of a pro-industry, anti-environmentalist agenda, which they certainly are, but each is also a component in an increasingly militarized strategy to enlist domestic energy in an epic struggle -- at least in the minds of the president and his advisers -- to ensure America’s global dominance.

...

Donald Trump and his administration of climate-change deniers are quite literally living in the wrong century. The militarization of energy policy at this late date and the lodging of fossil fuels at the heart of national security policy may seem appealing to them, but it’s an approach that’s obviously doomed. On arrival, it is, in fact, already the definition of obsolescence.

Unfortunately, given the circumstances of this planet at the moment, it also threatens to doom the rest of us. The further we look into the future, the more likely international leadership will fall on the shoulders of those who can effectively and efficiently deliver renewables, not those who can provide climate-poisoning fossil fuels. That being so, no one seeking global prestige would say at Davos or anywhere else that we are blessed with “a substantial ability to deliver the people of the globe a better quality of life through fossil fuels.”

Vancouver, the Unlivable

Conde Nast says Vancouver is Number One. Forbes has the city in second place, just behind Los Angeles. But whether Vancouver is the most traffic-congested city in North America or merely runner-up, it's a disgrace.

Vancouver has some baked-in problems, foremost among them are waterways - False Creek, English Bay, Coal Harbour. Five bridges - Burrard, Granville, Cambie, Lion's Gate and Second Narrows (iron workers). That's compounded by a traffic grid that hasn't met the city's needs since the early 80s. A lot of people who work in the city live in the burbs. They cross those five bridges, plus the bridges spanning the Fraser River, twice every workday. Choke points.

Even Vancouver's residential neighbourhoods are gridlocked. A friend of mine regularly visits her mother in a nursing home, nowhere near the downtown core. She complains of waiting between four or five lights to make a left hand turn in a residential neighbourhood.

When I set up my first shop in the downtown core I could make it in ten minutes from my house to the parkade beneath my office tower. Today that can easily take you an hour or more.

But Vancouver is run by developers eager to profit from an influx of new residents, many of them with lots of money. They're in constant pursuit of places where they can slap up the next high-rise condo. And a complacent city council and bureaucracy is always ready to do their bidding.

Now they're planning a large scale redevelopment of the northeast False Creek area. Some are complaining that they'll lose their view of the majestic North Shore mountains. The response from city officials - "tough."

In a presentation to council on January 31, project director Kevin McNaney told councillors there's already "substantial amount of view protection" in Northeast False Creek.

McNaney said urban design experts informed city staff that it would be difficult for Vancouver to achieve its urban design goals while preserving the view corridors.

He also said the three new towers will provide more variation to the skyline, as well as "a celebratory moment in the skyline where we can celebrate one of our biggest entertainment districts in the province of British Columbia."

A Blast From the Past. Remember the "Peace Dividend"?

The world but especially the Western alliance breathed a huge sigh of relief at the collapse of the former Soviet Union in late 1991. Over the following years, nation after nation dialed back their military preparedness, declaring what was then called a peace dividend. Defence budgets fell from about 4% of GDP to around 1.5%, in some cases (Canada) even less. The future would be one of fewer guns and ever more butter. The nuclear Sword of Damocles had been sheathed.

Yet, instead of being appropriately grateful for our blessing, we did little to build a lasting peace. What we did was to siphon up the former Warsaw Pact states into our alliance, NATO, and then march our armies literally up to Russia's doorstep. Yeah, that Russia, the nation and people who still had vivid memories of the last time armies from Western Europe massed their tanks along the borders of the Rodina.

Triumphalism was the order of the day, especially in Washington. We, i.e. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, had crushed the Soviet menace until it collapsed under its own weight. Instead of being grateful for having averted a war we celebrated having won a war.

This is a too common failing of the United States. They're pretty good at winning battles, campaigns, but they've been utterly inept at the next step, the important phase, winning the peace. Once the smoke clears and the barrels cool, they go all ADHD.

There's a price to be paid for this neglect. Ours has been a resumption of that Cold War we talked ourselves into believing had been won. Now the emphasis is on every one reinflating their military budgets, again practicing Armageddon-grade warfare, and feverishly re-arming.

For America, this has taken the form of an additional $300-billion of military funding. That's just to top it off. We're told that money will go to refurbish an American military worn out by its endless wars in the Middle East/South Asia. That doesn't sound especially alarming but maybe that money is earmarked for something less benign.

An op-ed in Aviation Week by US defence analyst Robert Stallard contends that $300-billion is going elsewhere - into preparations for waging war with China and/or Russia. Stallard suggests the big winners will be space warfare (the ability to defend your own space assets while obliterating your adversary's), cyber-warfare (you'll just have to wait to see what the three players have in mind), and black projects, stuff that won't even be showcased to Congress. Some of these programmes such as hyper-velocity and directed-energy (set phasers to "obliterate") are already under development and have been considered in a few published articles of unknown reliability.

I would like to call it Cold War II but it doesn't seem to be a noticeable departure from the thinking of Cold War I. It may be merely a continuation of our incredibly dangerous past following a quarter-century of relative dormancy. One thing is certain. Whatever it is, "it's on."

Shame on us for having so negligently bequeathed this future to our kids and grandkids. This did not have to be.

No, Donald. That's Exactly Not What #MeToo Stands For.

The Mango Mussolini must have thought #Me Too was a gentleman's club. Scratch the surface of his White House and that much is pretty clear.


It’s no secret that Trump respects men who keep women in their place: “You have to treat ’em like shit.” Perhaps that’s why top White House staffer Rob Porter got a hero’s goodbye this week, even as a picture of his ex-wife’s battered face was splashed across the news.

Porter, accused of assaulting both of his ex-wives and a former girlfriend, gave his resignation but “was not pressured to do so”, according to press secretary Sarah Sanders. In fact, Sanders lauded Porter as having the full confidence of the president and Gen John Kelly, and took the time to read Porter’s statement, in which he called the accusations “vile” and a “smear campaign”.

This came less than a day after Kelly called Porter “a man of true integrity and honor” in response to the allegations. So much for women being “sacred”. As it turns out, the White House knew for quite some time about Porter’s history of domestic violence – he couldn’t get security clearance because of it – but continued to rally behind him. In fact, Kelly promoted Porter soon after finding out about the abuse.

The only reason Porter left at all was because the picture of his ex’s bruised face surfaced. Given that Trump has been shopping around the theory that the Access Hollywood tape of him bragging about grabbing women’s genitals isn’t really him,I almost expected the White House to call the picture “fake news”.


Porter did find the time, however, to insist he was the one that took the picture – as if that somehow excuses him from punching his wife in the face. (For a history of how the Polaroid changed how we treat domestic violence, watch this incredible Ted Talk.)

But wait, there's so much more:

The truth is that Porter’s history of abuse allegations is less of an anomaly than a feature of this administration. Former chief strategist Steve Bannon was charged with domestic violence and battery in 1996 after his then wife called 911; police noted at the time that she had marks on her wrists and neck that supported her account of being assaulted. The charges were dismissed when his wife failed to appear in court.


Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, was accused of sexual assault in 2017 and was charged with battery in 2016 after forcibly grabbing a female reporter. And Trump’s choice for labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, withdrew his name for consideration after domestic violence accusations surfaced – his ex-wife told her story dressed in disguise on the Oprah Winfrey show in 1990.

At this point perhaps it’s easier if we just sort out which of the president’s men hasn’t been accused of beating women.

Even then, it’s not great. Trump endorsed accused child molester Roy Moore for Senate, and is longtime friends with former RNC finance chair Steve Wynn – accused of harassment and sexual assault by dozens of women. And, of course, there’s Trump himself; the president has been accused many times over of offenses ranging from groping to a gruesome account of rape from his ex-wife, Ivana.

This is an administration overflowing with men who hurt women. Even so, we can’t become jaded as to how incredibly remarkable this all is. The White House, knowing that Porter abused multiple women, called him a man of integrity. They looked at a picture of his battered wife and defended him, still. He left the administration not in shame or disgrace, but honored.

“You have to treat ’em like shit” is no longer an embarrassing old Trump quote. It’s a mandate.

Leading Alberta Expert, Dr. David Shindler, Tosses Cold Water on Rachel and Justin's Bullshit.

Look into his eyes. A second or two. Then look at what he's holding out for you to see. Does he have to move his lips to convey what he's saying?

Kudos to the Edmonton Journal for publishing Dr. Shindler's op-ed, "BC's Pipeline Vigilance is Backed by Science." Rachel, and her courtier, Justin, probably won't be happy to hear what Dr. Shindler has to report for it guts their "don't worry, be happy" sham. He writes:


In November 2015, an expert panel of the Royal Society of Canada issued a report on what was needed to be able to safely transport crude oil, including both bitumen and diluted bitumen. They found that we knew surprisingly little of what was necessary to safely transport these materials, and to mitigate the damage from the inevitable spills.

High-Priority Research Needs Identified by the Expert Panel

Research is needed to better understand the environmental impact of spilled crude oil in high-risk and poorly understood areas, such as Arctic waters, the deep ocean and shores or inland rivers and wetlands.

Research is needed to increase the understanding of effects of oil spills on aquatic life and wildlife at the population, community and ecosystem levels.

A national, priority-directed program of baseline research and monitoring is needed to develop an understanding of the environmental and ecological characteristics of areas that may be affected by oil spills in the future and to identify any unique sensitivity to oil effects

A program of controlled field research is needed to better understand spill behaviour and effects across a spectrum of crude oil types in different ecosystems and conditions.

Research is needed to investigate the efficacy of spill responses and to take full advantage of “spills of opportunity.”

Research is needed to improve spill prevention and develop/apply response decision support systems to ensure sound response decisions and effectiveness.

Research is needed to update and refine risk assessment protocols for oil spills in Canada.

Such a research plan would take several years and considerable funding to complete. On the face of it, B.C. Premier John Horgan’s plan to do the necessary homework before allowing the pipeline and terminal to be built seems to be well supported by science.

One might ask: Why hasn’t the science been done to protect the environment while bitumen is shipped? After all, both the federal and Alberta governments have known for years that they wished to ship crude oil or bitumen from the West Coast.

Most likely, they were counting on the B.C. government to simply wink and approve the pipeline with the most cursory of environmental impact assessments. After all, past B.C. governments have done this with all sorts of industrial developments, to the detriment of B.C.’s environment.

Crude oil spills are no joke. Effects of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill are still clearly visible on long reaches of the Alaskan coast, and some species still show effects of the spill. We still have a thriving fishery on the West Coast, in striking contrast to Eastern Canada, where timid politicians were bullied into choosing jobs and industries over salmon and cod.

Trudeau and Notley are trying to pull a fast one on British Columbia. Notley has done everything to hector BC except launch the flying monkeys.

There's a legal maxim that he who propounds must prove. You assert some claim, the onus is on you to prove it. That onus is squarely on these governments and the Bitumen Barons they so tirelessly serve.

Even more relevant is the "precautionary principle" which, if it applies anywhere, it's the transportation and shipping of dilbit. It holds that the commencement of a process or introduction of a product whose ultimate effects are disputed or unknown should be resisted.

Dave Shindler is professor emeritus of ecology at the University of Alberta, a voice who inconveniently does not hesitate to speak truth to power.

Melania's Last Paying Gig?

What the hell, it's Friday. This might just be Melania Trump's last true paying gig. Enjoy.

The Richest, Most Powerful Nation in the Third World

She used to be Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Now she's just Sarah Sanders. I wonder if papa Pastor Mike had anything to do with that.

I often catch SarahSan's daily White House press briefings. Lately there's been an endless amount of talk about budget, budget, budget and SarahSan routinely fingers the Democrats for denying America's military the money it needs to, oh, I don't know, fail to win wars. Trump browbeat the Democrats. SarahSan browbeats the Democrats. They do it because it works. Chuck "Rollover" Schumer invariably plays dead and goes along to get along. Voila, another $300 billion for the Pentagon.

My, my, my, don't those Republicans like to spend money America don't have. After causing the meltdown of 2007-08, they were fierce austerians when Obama went the Keynesian route and poured money into the economy to prevent the Great Recession from turning into the Great Depression, Redux.

However, now the Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House and the economy is booming (for some), it's time to tax wealth, pay off debt and restore the nation's fiscal health. Only that's not happening. No, this year the budget ensures the feds will lot a trillion dollar deficit - in a boom economy. That all but guarantees that when the US economy next weakens, the American working public, blue and white collar, will be left in a desperately bad way.

But about that extra 300 billion for the military. That has The Guardian's Tom McCarthy asking whether the US really needs a huge boost in military spending when it can't turn the lights back on in Puerto Rico.

Critics, including Stephen Miles, director of the Washington DC-based Win Without War advocacy group, said the new military spending numbers were a symptom of misplaced national priorities.

“When our nation can’t manage to turn the lights on for the people of Puerto Rico, when we can’t help those suffering from opioid addiction get treatment, and when we can’t ensure education and healthcare to all of our citizens, how is it possible we can justify spending billions more on weapons that don’t work to fight enemies that don’t exist?” Miles said in a statement issued on Wednesday.

The Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, supported the deal, calling it a “win for the American people”.

In 2016, as the world’s biggest military spender, the United States racked up a larger outlay ($611bn) than the next eight countries combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The potential $80bn leap in military spending in 2018 would itself surpass the total annual military budget of any other country apart from China.

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The extraordinary levels of US defense expenditure were highlighted in a recent report by the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

The US “spends more on national defense than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United Kingdom, India, France and Japan combined”, the report said, and yet “US infant mortality rates in 2013 were the highest in the developed world”.

America, the richest, most powerful and most dangerous nation in the Third World.

The Case for Saying No to Alberta - They'll Only Piss it Away, They Always Piss it Away.

There are plenty of reasons that justify telling Rachel and Justin to shove that Kinder Morgan pipeline straight up their backsides.

Writing in The Tyee, Mitchell Anderson reminds us that Alberta with oil revenue is like a backalley wino on welfare day.

Rather than drinking more oil revenue Kool-Aid, Alberta should be more concerned with being saddled with massive cleanup costs when the market evaporates for the lowest-value petroleum on the planet. The Alberta government estimates that outstanding environmental liabilities now top $31 billion, yet security bonds cover only 0.5 per cent of that amount. Industry’s demonstrated desire to wash their hands of thousands of orphaned conventional oil and gas wells portends big problems if the bitumen market goes bust.

After squandering a resource bounty for decades and having virtually nothing to show for it other than public debt of $45 billion, the government of Alberta seems incredulous that British Columbians are less than enthused about dangerous diluted bitumen shipments off our coast. A spill of this toxic unstable emulsion, particularly in the confined airshed of Canada’s busiest port, would be catastrophic.

Premier John Horgan is correct to put the interests of British Columbians first, as Rachel Notley is doing with her own province.

It didn’t have to be this way. Alberta extracted $500 billion more petroleum than Norway, yet this small Nordic country has so far managed to sock away more than $1 trillion USD from the resource. If Alberta’s finances weren’t in such a shambles, perhaps there wouldn’t be a panic to punch a pipeline with such a dubious business case to the B.C. coast.

Alberta’s self-inflicted financial problems should not become B.C.’s environmental problems.

Mitchell points out that Norway, a country that has exported half a trillion dollars less oil than Alberta, is now sitting on the world's largest sovereign wealth fund. Why? Because when the Norwegians began realizing their North Sea oil bounty they listened to then Alberta premier, Peter Lougheed, who warned of the economic calamity that would befall jurisdictions that didn't treat windfall oil revenues cautiously, prudently.

Lougheed, very accurately, warned of boom and bust cycles. Boom cycles in which prices skyrocketed, like a sponge absorbing the easy money in peoples' pockets, wealth that evaporated overnight when the next bust cycle hit. Alberta prided itself on no sales tax, a benefit that really accrued to vendors who jacked up price tags commensurately. 

Little Norway listened. It didn't overheat its economy. It didn't squander its resource windfall. It didn't even invest that money in its own economy. It did everything that Alberta's reckless leaders didn't. An unbroken chain of fiscal sots, Rachel very much included.

Lizzie May Outs Trudeau as "Harper-Hybrid"

Green Party leader, Elizabeth May, seem to have had her fill of Justin Trudeau's duplicity.

Federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May says proposed rule changes for environmental assessments in Canada still leave the country’s environmental protection regime behind where it was prior to the Stephen Harper government.

May said she’s worried the regulation changes are too ambiguous and open to political interference while failing to bring back the kind of stringent regulations Canada had 15 years ago before the Harper government weakened them.

“It’s a substantially weird piece of hybrid legislation,” May told The Tyee. “It keeps much of what Harper did without restoring all of our protections.”

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May said the changes break election promises, ignore advice from expert panels and don’t address Harper-era omnibus bills that weakened environmental legislation. Those bills removed protections for fish habitat and opened up development on bodies of water.

May said the regimes lost with those bills have not been reinstated with Bill C-69.

Meanwhile, the Dogwood Initiative, is baring its teeth.

McKenna and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have repeatedly said the pipeline will get built.

But if Bill C-69’s regulations were meant to gain goodwill back from British Columbians it likely won’t work, said Kai Nagata of the Dogwood Initiative.

Rhetoric from pro-pipeline groups saying B.C. is defying the Constitution and bravado from the prime minister insisting the pipeline will be forced through because it is in the national interest is not helping matters, Nagata said.

B.C. is merely trying to protect its own interests he said.

“It’s not British Columbians that are threatening the fabric of Canada. It’s the people who are calling for the federal government to crack down on us like some sort of doormat compared to the other provinces.”

The Mango Mussolini Wants Himself a Parade

Not for nothing is he called the "Cheeto Benito" or the "Mango Mussolini."

Now America's own El Douchie, Donald J. Trump has ordered the Pentagon to arrange a yuuge military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, something to outdo Macron's Bastille Day parade in Paris. He wants the whole deal - troops, tanks, formations of America's best warplanes flying overhead.

Think of it as America's way of thanking Donald Trump for his service. He is, after all, the commander in chief you know, always ready to throw a snappy salute whenever he sees one of his minions in uniform. It wasn't always that way
of course. When it was Donald's turn to serve, during Vietnam, Trump was scoring Cheney-class draft deferments, five of them. Seems he had heel spurs (hey, Trump booster, Rush Limbaugh got out of the draft due to supposed anal cysts - that obviously still plague him). But let bygones be bygones. Trump loves the military now - at least from a safe distance.

It seems the parade will be staged on the 4th of July. Pentagon planners are racing against the clock to figure out how to do a world-beating military parade. Fortunately they don't have to re-invent the wheel. Just do what these other great world leaders did.