An Indictment of Our Prime Minister and Many of Our Premiers

‘Politicians who think they can solve the climate change crisis by expanding hydrocarbon production have become terrorists in our communities, anarchists in our oceans and arsonists in our forests.’

The Canadian journalist who knows more about western energy politics and the Athabasca Tar Sands than all others, Andrew Nikiforuk, is calling out every petro-pimp politician in the country from our prime minister on down.

On Saturday, a group of Canadian writers protested the federal government’s purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline with a public reading attended by almost 200 people.

Writers and poets including John Vaillant, Patrick Freisen, Eve Joseph, Deborah Campbell, Bill Gaston, Shaena Lambert, Caroline Adderson, Brian Brett, Briony Penn and Ronald Wright took part in the reading on Burnaby Mountain. 

Novelist Margaret Atwood also contributed to the event with a short and pointed statement that warned that “Canadian taxpayers are now unwilling participants in a potentially ocean-killing project that ignores Indigenous rights… Human life on earth cannot survive dead oceans.” All the submissions to the event — some 150 pieces by writers and poets across the country — will be sent to the prime minister.

The protestors, most of whom were women, all risked going to jail for 14 days.

But Kinder Morgan did not file a complaint with the RCMP about our action. A foreign corporation decides when the law is broken on Burnaby Mountain, and the idea of telling the police to arrest one writer and several courageous women apparently didn’t appeal to Kinder Morgan that day. So there were no arrests Saturday, although 220 people have been arrested since protests began.

Nikiforuk added his indictment.

Writers, by their trade, work in isolation and often live comfortable lives. 

If they have one duty — one soulful commitment — it is to serve truth and freedom. 

These duties, as Albert Camus often reflected, can be arduous.

More than 50 years ago he argued that writers cannot serve those who make history; they must serve those who are subject to it. 

He added that “the great citizens of a country are not those who bend the knee before authority but rather those who, against authority if need be, are adamant as to the honour and freedom of that country.” 

I am here today to defend liberty and freedom, and I am here to defend the rights of Coast Salish people and the residents of Burnaby to protest an egregious pipeline. 

The Canadian government has bought this leaky steel pipe from a corrupt Texas company with taxpayers’ money. 

To defend its purchase the government has lied about the economics. 

There is no Asian price premium for bitumen and there never will be. Bitumen is junk crude and it is priced as cheap refinery feedstock around the world. 

Our government has also lied about its abilities to clean up bitumen spills in the ocean.

And it has lied to the Canadian people about the consequences of expanding fossil fuel production, which now directly feed the wildfires that are consuming our treed landscapes and poisoning our watersheds. 

Politicians who think they can solve the climate change crisis by expanding hydrocarbon production have become terrorists in our communities, anarchists in our oceans and arsonists in our forests. 

They are behaving like crazed firemen who think they can fight fire with gasoline. 

Our children, who can see the moral hazard clearly, are now living with the flames and carbon-filled skies.

Our government now thinks it is serving justice by arresting and jailing a 75-year-old citizen and recipient of the Order of Canada who merely exercised her civic duty to protest the construction of an unnecessary pipeline. 

Our Crown prosecutors have argued for longer and stiffer jail times — without shame. 

In such a time the writer’s role is clear and simple. We must resist the lies. We must resist the deception and we must resist the political bullying. 

Camus said it best: “Without giving up anything on the place of justice, yield nothing on the plane of freedom.”

Now, before you dismiss this is a smear against Trudeau, it's not. I have no illusions that the Conservatives would be any different. Notley, meanwhile, has shown that a New Democrat won't hesitate to join the ranks of the petro-pimps. I take it on faith (for what 'faith' is worth) that the Greens would not cross that line but I can't be sure.

What I do know is that I and many like me are on one side of that line and most of our political leadership, for that matter most Canadians, are on the other side. You can't pretend on this one. You can't pretend you're on our side of the line if you support the Liberals or the Conservatives or even the New Dems. If you back those parties you've chosen the side of what Nikiforuk calls the terrorists, the anarchists and the arsonists.

Sorry, but some times you just have to choose.

Krugman's Clarion Call of Warning

Paul Krugman writes that democracy in America will be won - or lost - in the November mid-term elections. If it is lost, it's probably gone for good.

Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a friend of mine — an expert on international relations — made a joke: “Now that Eastern Europe is free from the alien ideology of Communism, it can return to its true historical path — fascism.” Even at the time, his quip had a real edge. 

And as of 2018 it hardly seems like a joke at all. What Freedom House calls illiberalism is on the rise across Eastern Europe. This includes Poland and Hungary, both still members of the European Union, in which democracy as we normally understand it is already dead.
In both countries the ruling parties — Law and Justice in Poland, Fidesz in Hungary — have established regimes that maintain the forms of popular elections, but have destroyed the independence of the judiciary, suppressed freedom of the press, institutionalized large-scale corruption and effectively delegitimized dissent. The result seems likely to be one-party rule for the foreseeable future. 

And it could all too easily happen here. There was a time, not long ago, when people used to say that our democratic norms, our proud history of freedom, would protect us from such a slide into tyranny. In fact, some people still say that. But believing such a thing today requires willful blindness. The fact is that the Republican Party is ready, even eager, to become an American version of Law and Justice or Fidesz, exploiting its current political power to lock in permanent rule. 

...We’re currently sitting on a knife edge. If we fall off it in the wrong direction — specifically, if Republicans retain control of both houses of Congress in November — we will become another Poland or Hungary faster than you can imagine. 

...A year ago it seemed possible that there might be limits to the party’s complicity, that there would come a point where at least a few representatives or senators would say, no more. Now it’s clear that there are no limits: They’ll do whatever it takes to defend Trump and consolidate power. 

This goes even for politicians who once seemed to have some principles. Senator Susan Collins of Maine was a voice of independence in the health care debate; now she sees no problem with having a president who’s an unindicted co-conspirator appoint a Supreme Court justice who believes that presidents are immune from prosecution. Senator Lindsey Graham denounced Trump in 2016, and until recently seemed to be standing up against the idea of firing the attorney general to kill the Mueller investigation; now he’s signaled that he’s O.K. with such a firing. 

But why is America, the birthplace of democracy, so close to following the lead of other countries that have recently destroyed it?
Don’t tell me about “economic anxiety.” That’s not what happened in Poland, which grew steadily through the financial crisis and its aftermath. And it’s not what happened here in 2016: Study after study has found that racial resentment, not economic distress, drove Trump voters.] 

The point is that we’re suffering from the same disease — white nationalism run wild — that has already effectively killed democracy in some other Western nations. And we’re very, very close to the point of no return.

Breathing Bad Air Makes You Dumber

It's well known that breathing heavily polluted air can exact a toll on respiratory and cardiological health.  Now it turns out it can also make you a fair bit dumber.

Air pollution causes a “huge” reduction in intelligence, according to new research, indicating that the damage to society of toxic air is far deeper than the well-known impacts on physical health. 

The research was conducted in China but is relevant across the world, with 95% of the global population breathing unsafe air. It found that high pollution levels led to significant drops in test scores in language and arithmetic, with the average impact equivalent to having lost a year of the person’s education.

Air pollution causes seven million premature deaths a year but the harm to people’s mental abilities is less well known. A recent study found toxic air was linked to “extremely high mortality” in people with mental disordersand earlier work linked it to increased mental illness in children, while another analysis found those living near busy roads had an increased risk of dementia.

...Derrick Ho, at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said the impact of air pollution on cognition was important and his group had similar preliminary findings in their work. “It is because high air pollution can potentially be associated with oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, and neurodegeneration of humans,” he said.

Chen said air pollution was most likely to be the cause of the loss of intelligence, rather than simply being a correlation. The study followed the same individuals as air pollution varied from one year to the next, meaning that many other possible causal factors such as genetic differences are automatically accounted for.

What Causes Republicans to Wake Up In a Sweat

This is kind of precious. Congressional Republicans have compiled a list of what awaits them and their president if the Democrats win control of the House in November. They've even logged it all in a spreadsheet.

Publicly, House Republicans are putting on a brave face about the midterms. But privately, they are scrambling to prepare for the worst. This document, which catalogs requests Democrats have already made, is part of that effort.
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It has churned Republican stomachs. Here are some of the probes it predicts: 

President Trump’s tax returns 

Trump family businesses — and whether they comply with the Constitution's emoluments clause, including the Chinese trademark grant to the Trump Organization 

Trump's dealings with Russia, including the president's preparation for his meeting with Vladimir Putin 

The payment to Stephanie Clifford — a.k.a. Stormy Daniels 

James Comey's firing 

Trump's firing of U.S. attorneys 

Trump's proposed transgender ban for the military 

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's business dealings 

White House staff's personal email use 

Cabinet secretary travel, office expenses, and other misused perks 

Discussion of classified information at Mar-a-Lago 

Jared Kushner's ethics law compliance 

Dismissal of members of the EPA board of scientific counselors 

The travel ban 

Family separation policy 

Hurricane response in Puerto Rico 

Election security and hacking attempts 

White House security clearances

The spreadsheet is said to list 100 items that the Republicans would rather see unexplored.

Thanks to their control of Congress, Republicans have blocked most of the Democrats’ investigative requests. But if the House flips, the GOP loses its power to stymie. Lawyers close to the White House tell me the Trump administration is nowhere near prepared for the investigatory onslaught that awaits them, and they consider it among the greatest threats to his presidency.

If you were Paul Ryan you too might want to beat feet out of Washington, or at least Capitol Hill, while the getting is good.

Because, Justin, It's 2018, Not 2050.

It's now inescapable that Canada has crossed several red lines on climate change. What is unclear is when Ottawa will respond accordingly, responsibly.

This is not "pick on Justin" day. There's no need for that. His record speaks for itself. The Justin Trudeau Memorial TransMountain Pipeline is what it is. The federal and Alberta governments' commitment to flooding world markets with as much toxic, high-carbon ersatz petroleum, bitumen, is inarguable. The fact that my province is in the throes of what is already the second worst wildfire season on record (only next to last year's) is incontestable. The role that climate change has played in these worsening annual wildfires is conclusively made out.

According to Chilliwack fire ecologist Robert Gray, the scale of the wildfire emergencies we've lived through in 2017 and 2018 wasn't expected for decades. 

"What we thought was going to be an average condition in 2050, we're starting to see those conditions coming a lot sooner," Gray told CBC. 

"There's been a lot of discussion in the scientific community about really changing what we think the future is going to look like."

University of Alberta professor, Mike Flannigan, doesn't hesitate to say what our prime minister won't.

"Colleagues and I have been saying for years that the increase we've already seen in the area burned across Canada — a doubling since the early 70s — is due to human-caused climate change," he said.

Warmer weather brings longer wildfire seasons and more lightning, while the atmosphere gets better at sucking the moisture out of plants and dead wood, researchers say. 

The end result is both bigger and more intense fires, and Flannigan's research suggests a significant increase in wildfire intensity in recent years. 

"This is really key, because as fires become more intense, they're difficult to impossible to put out," he said.

B.C. is stuck with the question of how to better prepare for the years ahead. 

Limiting the release of greenhouse gases might be a good long-term option, but both Gray and Flannigan point out that any positive impacts won't be felt for several decades. 

In the meantime, they would like to see more measures like controlled burning, thinning out forests around communities, preparing homes and businesses through the Fire Smart program, developing early warning systems for wildfires and allowing more fires to burn if they aren't threatening human homes, lives or infrastructure.

"We have to learn to live with fire, coexist with fire. There's no other solution," said Flannigan.

Among the proposed solutions, one that is conspicuously absent is that Canada should "go green" by flooding world markets with bitumen. No, that's what they call "counter-intuitive" or, in less polite circles, utter bullshit.

The world, our world, is in the throes of very destructive, often lethal, climate change and all indicators suggest it is rapidly worsening. Meanwhile, prime minister Nero flogs bitumen as the country burns.

When It Comes Down to It, Survival Is Not Out Priority.

A couple of weeks ago, 2018 was said to be the fifth-worst season for forest fires in British Columbia history. A week ago that had bumped up to third-worst. Now 2018 is second only to 2017 and we've got a good stretch of forest fire season still ahead.

Writing in The Tyee, Guy Dauncey excoriates the Horgan NDP government for its timid response to the growing wildfire catastrophe.

Our forests are burning, not just in B.C. and California but also in Russia, Europe, and even in the Arctic Circle. A persistent heat wave has been breaking all weather records in Canada, the United States, Europe and the Middle East. Torrential downpours and mudslides have been killing people. Flooding has inundated cities. Some cities in India, Pakistan and the Middle East have been having temperatures as high as 50 C, the level at which “human cells start to cook, blood thickens, muscles lock around the lungs and the brain is choked of oxygen.” A report published in Nature this month found that the warming Arctic is slowing the circulation of the jet stream, causing prolonged weather patterns and making the weather less able to moderate itself. These things will all become common, unless we get an urgent grip on what’s happening. 

This is crazy. Another study published this month found that we are pushing our planet toward an irreversible “Hothouse Earth,” with catastrophic warming of 5 C or more causing an eventual long-term sea level rise (after many hundred years) of up to 70 metres. Its authors warn us that we may be much closer to the point-of-no-return than most people realize. It suggests that because of numerous feedback factors, the path to catastrophic climate collapse is more like a cliff, and once you cross it, it triggers a rockslide that will quickly bring ruin. Large areas of B.C.’s Lower Mainland are less than three metres above sea level.

Victoria's dereliction of duty. Does this sound familiar?

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a senior advisor to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the European Union, warned in the foreword to the new Australian report What Lies Beneath: The Understatement of Existential Climate Risk, “Climate change is now reaching the end-game, where very soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action, or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences.” 

So what unprecedented action is the B.C. government proposing to address the advancing catastrophe? It feels a bit like “punt it into the future and let the next generation sort it out,” with goals of reducing emissions by 40 per cent by 2030 and 80 per cent by 2050, but without annual goals or carbon budgets or the needed policies. Our NDP MLAs should be embarrassed. Our Green Party MLAs should be screaming from the legislature rooftops. It’s just not good enough. (I don’t expect the Liberal MLAs to contribute much; they have never seemed to understand the issue.)

Dauncey concludes his article with 12 steps the British Columbia government (all Canadian governments for that matter) can and should implement if we're to have some chance of averting the worst of climate change.  Follow the link to read them if you like. I won't dwell on them here because, while I think his ideas are sound, I believe the public is not prepared to change their ways, including sacrifice, that reversing course would entail and, without a clamoring public forcing their hand, no politician will try to lead from the front on climate change.

Hedges on America's New Serfdom

Think of it as neofeudalism in which the masses, stripped of economic and political clout, are consigned to servitude. Chris Hedges writes of the ascent of neofeudalism.

We live in a new feudalism. We have been stripped of political power. Workers are trapped in menial jobs, forced into crippling debt and paid stagnant or declining wages. Chronic poverty and exploitative working conditions in many parts of the world, and increasingly in the United States, replicate the hell endured by industrial workers at the end of the 19th century. The complete capture of ruling institutions by corporations and their oligarchic elites, including the two dominant political parties, the courts and the press, means there is no mechanism left by which we can reform the system or protect ourselves from mounting abuse. We will revolt or become 21st-century serfs, forced to live in misery and brutally oppressed by militarized police and the most sophisticated security and surveillance system in human history while the ruling oligarchs continue to wallow in unimagined wealth and opulence.

“The new tax code is explosive excess,” the economist Richard Wolff said when we spoke in New York. “We’ve had 30 or 40 years where corporations paid less taxes than they ever did. They made more money than they ever did. They have been able to keep wages stagnant while the productivity of labor rose. This is the last moment historically they need another big gift, let alone at the expense of the very people whose wages have been stagnant. To give them a tax bust of this sort, basically reducing from 35 percent to 20 percent, is a 40 percent cut. This kind of crazy excess reminds you of the [kings] of France before the French Revolution when the level of excess reached an explosive social dimension. That’s where we are.”

It is predicted that the Republicans, if they can hang onto Congress in November, will follow up their tax cuts for the rich by pleading poverty (entirely self-inflicted) to justify cuts to social security and medicaid, thus further impoverishing working class Americans including the Gullibillies they've  groomed so well.

NAFTA Dead?

So much for grand words of unity and solidarity. While Trump sidelined Canada, Mexico cut a trade deal with the US.

That is Trump's way and now he'll use his deal with Mexico to exact no end of concessions from Canada.

McCain Dies.

John McCain has succumbed to brain cancer at age 81. A far from perfect man with a sometimes mercurial temper, McCain nevertheless even in death towers over his sordid adversary and frequent antagonist, Donald Trump.

With the Arizona senator's death, his Senate colleague Lindsey Graham will soldier on without any trace of his balls.

McCain specifically directed that Trump was not to be welcomed to attend his funeral. Obama will attend along with Bush Jr. and Clinton. McCain's friend of many years, Joe Biden, will also attend.

Trump's Millstone - the National Enquirer?

During the runup to the 2016 presidential election, the National Enquirer went on a full court press to malign Hillary Clinton and tout for Donald Trump.

I know, I know, that's generally considered First Amendment stuff. Free speech. Off limits.

But what if this isn't a matter of freedom of speech? What if the National Enquirer was a de facto public relations organ of the Trump campaign, its CEO, David Pecker, coordinating the Enquirer's coverage with the campaign and, by some accounts, Trump himself? One source claims that Trump actually chose which stories would appear on the Enquirer cover.

In that case, all those Enquirer editions could be seen as a massive, undisclosed and probably illegal campaign contribution.

I don't pay attention to the Enquirer or other tabloids that you see at grocery store checkouts but Rachel Maddow showed several Enquirer covers from the pre-election period and they were remarkable to say the least. Bizarre.

Trump's always demanding evidence of "collusion." I think the Equirer business qualifies and it goes to campaign finance law violations, tax law violations, who knows what else?

And then there's the safe where Pecker is said to have stashed spiked stories

A Week Like No Other

What a deliciously horrible week for Donald Trump. His former lawyer and fixer cops to eight felonies. Rat. His former campaign manager is convicted on eight felonies and faces a bigger trial next month. His media mogul bestie, Pecker, cuts an immunity deal with prosecutors. Rat. And then, the icing on the cake. His family's right hand man for the past half century, Weisselberg the accountant/CFO, who knows where all the bodies are buried, cuts an immunity deal with prosecutors. Rat.

Trump has the tenacious New York Attorney General nipping at his heels, tearing into the Trump Organization, the Trump Foundation, and the kids - Ivanka, Don Jr., Eric, and Kushner. He's got the federal prosecutor for New York Southern District following the Trump blood trail. The federal Attorney for Washington is pursuing Trump and his minions. And there's the Mueller investigation spinning work to all of the others and ready to pounce on the Russia connections. They're gunning for the Mango Mussolini and they're coming at him from all directions.

The various prosecutors are employing RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) tactics, rolling up the suspects, getting them to rat out the guys above. They're falling like dominoes.

Team Mueller has done its homework. One witness who testified before Mueller's Grand Jury said the prosecutors knew him better than he knew himself.

Even Trump's lawyers are lawyering up.   Rudy Giuliani has decided to go golfing in Scotland.

Trump is desperate to fire his AG, Sessions, and replace him with some malleable stooge who will shut down the Mueller investigation but it's hard to see how Congress can do that now that the floodgates of scandal have opened so wide. Mueller hasn't even submitted his interim report yet but that will come out well before Trump can get a new AG in place to silence the special prosecutor.

If Mueller moves on the kids, Trump's best move might be to resign and have Pence do a Gerald Ford, pardoning everyone named Trump or married to one.

A World Ablaze

Here's the state of Planet Earth generated by NASA's Worldview technology.

In this photo, the red dots designate points on the planet where NASA's thermal bands have detected actively burning fires. In Africa, says NASA, where the majority of the world fires appear to be burning, a vast number of these are most likely strategically set agricultural fires, designed to manage land and return nutrients to the soil. 

However a large number represent out of control wildfires. Particularly in North America and Chile. 

The fires in Australia are bushfires, which tend to be common during dry seasons, but Australia is currently in the middle of winter (and a drought). "As the climate continues to change," said NASA in a post, "and areas become hotter and drier, more and more extreme bushfires will break out across the entire Australian continent."

This Could Send Trump Running Amok

What a week this has been for the Mango Mussolini. Cohen cops to eight felonies. Manafort convicted of eight felonies. Trump bestie, media mogul David Pecker, strikes an immunity deal with federal prosecutors.

Now it's Allen Weisselberg's turn to get under the federal immunity umbrella.

Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, entered an immunity deal with federal prosecutors in exchange for his testimony about Michael Cohen, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

...Weisselberg’s knowledge of the inner workings of the Trump Organization may be second only to Trump’s. He has served as executive vice-president and chief financial officer of the organization for decades. After he was elected, Trump said he was leaving the business in the hands of Weisselberg and his sons.

 More, from Wiki.

Following college, Weisselberg worked as an accountant for real estate magnate Fred Trump in the 1970s.[6] By the late 1980s, he was controller of the organization and worked under CFO Stephen Bollenbach.[5] In 2000, Weisselberg was named chief financial officer and Vice President of Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts. He also served as treasurer of the Donald J. Trump Foundation, and has handled the household expenses of the Trump family.[7][5] 

On January 11, 2017, it was announced that Weisselberg would serve as a trustee at the Trump Organization alongside Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. while Donald Trump serves as President of the United States.[4] 

On April 4, 2017, a report by ProPublica revealed Eric Trump was degraded from a trustee to an adviser to the trust, leaving Trump Jr. and Weisselberg as its sole trustees. The report clarifies that the only people who know the details of the Trump trust's finances are its trustees.[1] 

Weisselberg arranged for the Trump Organization to pay Michael Cohen a $35,000 monthly retainer fee following Cohen's hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.[7] The Wall Street Journal reported on July 26, 2018, that Weisselberg had been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury regarding the Cohen investigation.[8]

Trump's attempts to derail the Mueller investigation by replacing Jeff Sessions with a more malleable (i.e. "corruptible") Attorney-General may now be too little/too late. New York state Attorney-General, Barbara Underwood, is fast closing in on the Trump Foundation charity, the Trump Organization (the business operation) and Trump's family - Ivanka, Don. Jr., and Eric, along with aides including Weisselberg, Lewandowski and others. Replacing Sessions, in other words, won't stop Trump and family's woes.

"When You See Me, Cry" - Europe's Hunger Stones Emerge

This year's drought in central Europe has exposed stones in the Elbe River bed inscribed with ominous warnings.

The low water levels in the river that begins in the Czech Republic then crosses Germany into the North Sea has exposed stones on the river bed whose appearances in history used to warn people that hard times were coming. 

Over a dozen of the hunger stones, chosen to record low water levels, can now be seen in and near the northern Czech town of Decin near the German border. 

The oldest water mark visible dates to 1616. That stone, is considered the oldest hydrological landmark in Central Europe, bears a chiseled inscription in German that says: "When you see me, cry."

The Elbe isn't the only European river at record low levels. The Danube, used for river cruises and cargo transportation, is at record lows in three areas near Budapest impeding navigation.

Meanwhile the combination of heatwaves and extreme drought has sharply impacted European agricultural production that may result in food shortages.

Has the US Government Become a Criminal Enterprise?

There's a lot of talk today that the Republican-controlled Senate is willing to collaborate with Trump, allowing him to fire AG Sessions and appoint a replacement specifically for the purpose of sabotaging the Mueller investigation into the criminal enterprise known as the Trump White House. This would, in effect, transform the Senate into a criminal enterprise unto itself. The House of Representatives has held that dubious honour since the orange stain was sworn into office.

If Senate Republicans do Trump's bidding, that's the effective end of the Rule of Law in America and the demise of the American Constitution. After that it's all Alibaba and the 40 Thieves.

Criminality runs deep throughout the Republican party. Here's a handy comparison.

We can only hope that Mueller is ready with a pre-emptive strike should Trump toss Sessions. He's going to have to be prepared to spill everything his investigation has uncovered about Trump, his aides, Trump's congressional collaborators and the kids - Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka and Kushner.

One Juror Took Manafort Off the Hook for Ten Felonies

One intransigent juror is all that stood between Paul Manafort and conviction on all 18 felony counts at trial.

“There was one holdout,” the juror in the trial, Paula Duncan, said in an interview. We all tried to convince her to look at the paper trail. We laid it out in front of her again and again and she still said that she had a reasonable doubt.” 

The jury on Tuesday found Manafort guilty on two counts of bank fraud, five counts of tax fraud and one charge of failing to disclose foreign bank accounts, giving special counsel Robert Mueller a victory in the first trial arising from his investigation of Russia’s role in the 2016 US election.

Is Catherine McKenna as Addled as She Sounds?

Consider this excerpt from today's National Observer.

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna tried to square the circle of the federal approach to pipelines and climate change. 

On her way into the retreat, she said the forest fires "demonstrate that climate change is having a real impact on Canadians." 

"This summer is a wake-up call. We've seen extreme weather, we've seen extreme heat that is literally costing lives, we've seen here forest fires, we've seen extreme flooding," she said. 

"We know we need to be taking serious action on climate change and that's exactly what we're doing," she added, touting the federal plan to put a price on carbon, phase out coal and make historic investments in green infrastructure and climate adaptation. 

That said, McKenna said the country is in a transition from its reliance on fossil fuels that contribute to global warming. 

"Transitions do not happen overnight," she said. "I've always said I'm the environment minister for energy workers as much as environmentalists."

In other words, Dame Cathy imagines her ministerial duties put energy workers on a par with environmentalists. This is nothing new for her. She has repeatedly equated the economy and the environment as her Environment and Climate Change ministry's portfolio.

That's sort of like proclaiming herself the minister for poachers as much as endangered wildlife species they target.

Besides I thought we had a ministry for energy and natural resources. If she's going to be doing both jobs, at least fire that other dude.

PostMedia Director Given Immunity Deal in Michael Cohen/Donald Trump Investigation

Who knew that American Media CEO and Trump bestie, David Pecker, also sits on the board of directors of Canada's slowly dying PostMedia news conglomerate.

The Pecker was implicated yesterday as Michael Cohen's co-conspirator in the Trump philandering cover-up just prior to the November, 2016 election.

NBC News is reporting that Pecker has been given immunity in exchange for co-operating with federal prosecutors.

The Madness of King Don

Donald Trump delivered himself of some pretty bizarre views this morning on his favourite cable show, Fox and Friends.

Apparently still smarting from the realization that his former fixer, Michael Cohen, has turned on him, Trump said it "almost ought to be illegal" for a person to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for a lighter sentence.

He also brought up the magic word "impeachment."

“If I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash. I think everybody would be very poor,” adding that Americans would see economic “numbers that you wouldn’t believe in reverse”. In characteristic ebullient style, he also doubted it will happen. 

“I don’t know how you can impeach somebody who’s done a great job,” he said.

Boot on Trump - "An Illegitimate President Whose Election is Tainted By Fraud"

The once reliably Republican pundit, Max Boot, now says Trump should not be in the White House but rather the Big House, the Greybar Hotel. Boot even channels Oliver Cromwell.

The Manafort charges of tax and bank fraud do not directly implicate the president, but they do vindicate the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, showing that his inquiry is no “Rigged Witch Hunt” but a serious investigation that has produced 35 indictments, six guilty pleas and one conviction. No special counsel has done more, faster. If Manafort had been found not guilty, it would have been a massive blow to Mueller. Because he was found guilty, it is a blow to Trump. 

But not nearly as a big a blow as Cohen’s admission under oath that he violated federal campaign laws by arranging illicit payments to adult-film star Stormy Daniels and Playboy playmate Karen McDougal “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.” For the first time since Watergate, the president is now an alleged co-conspirator in the commission of a federal crime. As Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, said, his client “testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election. If those payments were a crime for Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?”

.
..In short, there is growing evidence that the president is, to use the word favored by Richard Nixon, “a crook.” Even buying the silence of his reputed playmates could by itself have been enough to swing an exceedingly close election decided by fewer than 80,000 votes in three states. Trump certainly would not have authorized the payments unless he thought it was politically imperative to do so. There is also considerable evidence, as I previously argued, that Russia’s intervention on Trump’s behalf affected the outcome. Even more than Nixon, Trump is now an illegitimate president whose election is tainted by fraud. 

The inevitable question is: Now what? If Trump had an iota of decency, he would resign — but he doesn’t, and prevailing Justice Department guidelines hold that a president can’t be indicted while in office. So the onus is on Congress to act. A responsible Congress would have by now already convened an impeachment inquiry. But that is not the Congress we have. We have a Congress dominated by political hacks and moral invertebrates who are determined to act as the president’s enablers and legitimizers at all costs.

...But the far more serious crimes of Trump’s congressional supporters do not involve personal peculation. They involve violating their oaths of office by failing to hold the president accountable for misusing his office. Some, such as Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), have gone much further by actively attempting to impede the Justice Department investigation into Trump’s alleged misconduct. They have become, in a moral if not legal sense, accessories to obstruction of justice.

And they have gotten away with it because the congressional leadership has allowed them to do so. Judging by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s (R-Wis.) cowardly and cautious statement on Tuesday — “We are aware of Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea to these serious charges. We will need more information than is currently available at this point” — there is no sign that the Republicans in Congress will ever provide any serious oversight of the Republican in the White House.

The voters of the United States must now say to this Congress what Oliver Cromwell said to the Rump Parliament in 1653: “Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government. . . . Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance. . . . Go, get you out! Make haste! . . . In the name of God, go!”