Bernardo de La Paz
Bernardo de La Paz's JournalCanada Announces Bombshell Break With U.S. Over Trump
Source: The New Republic
The new Canadian prime minister announced the two countries’ relationship is “over.”
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney gestures while speaking at a podium
David Kawai/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney officially broke things off with the United States Thursday, marking a seismic shift in relations between the longtime allies.
“The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over,” Carney said during a press conference, following a meeting in Ottawa with his ministers to “discuss trade options” in response to Donald Trump’s “permanent” 25 percent tariffs on all imported vehicles and auto parts.
“What exactly the United States does next is unclear, but what is clear, what is clear is that we as Canadians have agency. We have power. We are masters in our own home,” Carney said.
[...]
“We will need to dramatically reduce our reliance on the United States. We will need to pivot our trade relationships elsewhere. And we will need to do things previously thought impossible at speeds we haven’t seen in generations,” Carney said.
[...]
The White House has pretended that the steep tariffs on Canada are a bargaining chip to help curb illegal drug trafficking—a threat so minor that it warranted no mention in the Trump administration’s first Annual Threat Assessment—but Trump openly admitted that he hoped to use tariffs to bully Canada into becoming a U.S. state. His bullying has since escalated into an all-out trade war, which could potentially devastate states along America’s northern border.
Read more: https://newrepublic.com/post/193287/donald-trump-canada-prime-minister-break
Usually "bombshell" is hyperbole. But this is serious and the adjective is properly applicable.
Here is a 77 second clip of the key part. Watch it to see a true example of calm, articulate, determined, competent leadership:
https://x.com/i/status/1905350369334755769
It is an evasion of personal responsibility when a post has the poster's name on it. They own it
If someone says tRump has 3 convictions and we say no he has 34, then correcting it is a public service. So it is with spelling, grammar, and especially people's names (other than satirical / parodic naming), and especially names of beloved people. I made a mistake and I went back and showed I owned it by correcting it.
It is a mistake to use Autocorrect. It is a smart move to use spell-check as a warning and then make a proper choice, personally.
It is evading personal responsibility to blame errors on software or lack of caffeine when the real error is a lack of proofreading. If patterns of caffeine drug consumption are a problem then own it and adjust it. If a person is groggy in the morning before coffee, then one or both of two things is operational: not enough sleep and too much caffeine the days before. Suggestions: cut back to about 500 to 700 ml a day; don't have coffee after 3 pm but have green tea instead. That's what I do, and this morning I posted for five hours before remembering to serve myself my 700 ml of coffee. I made one spelling mistake (that I know of) during that time and I never blame my mistakes on the drug or lack of it; I own my mistakes.
You are stronger than software. Take charge and be strong.
Heinlein wrote the greatest time travel story ever, the gender-bending "All You Zombies", which has no zombies
He also wrote the second best time travel story: "By His Bootstraps".
Here's the link to the "All You Zombies" article but I really recommend reading the short story first before the article.
by Robert A. Heinlein
Back in the 1950s the sophisticated editors of that sophisticated magazine Playboy asked Robert A. Heinlein for a story, an adult story, of course, and Heinlein sent along this eye-opening mind-bender. Turned out the editors of the bunny mag weren’t sophisticated enough to wrap their brains around “—All You Zombies—” and rejected the story, after which it saw publication in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which may have lacked a foldout but was sophisticated enough to see the story’s merits. So did Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig, who in 2014 made the story, with small changes, into a very effective movie, Predestination, well worth checking out.
2217 Time Zone V (EST) 7 Nov 1970 NYC–“Pop’s Place”: I was polishing a brandy snifter when the Unmarried Mother came in. I noted the time—10.17 p.m. zone five or eastern time November 7th, 1970. Temporal agents always notice time & date; we must.
The Unmarried Mother was a man twenty-five years old, no taller than I am, immature features and a touchy temper. I didn’t like his looks—I never had—but he was a lad I was here to recruit, he was my boy. I gave him my best barkeep’s smile.
Maybe I’m too critical. He wasn’t swish; his nickname came from what he always said when some nosy type asked him his line: “I’m an unmarried mother.” If he felt less than murderous he would add: “—at four cents a word. I write confession stories.”
... {the full story}
Market uncertain bc corps uncertain bc tariff tax is uncertain
The main thing we tell ourselves these days is that these are not normal times. But until this week, it seemed most of the chatter was normalish as if these were not the radically abnormal times they are; like articles about stock picking on the pullback to be ready for the next bull run.
This past week's earnings guidances began to talk about uncertainty and Chair Powell was cautiously and wisely uncertain. A few analysts have concluded that these are not normal times, but most analysts and managers and investors are pausing and hedging as you say.
What is normal is that bear markets have pauses and pullbacks on the way down, regardless of whether or not the proximal causes of them are normal. Just like a bull market can have a "correction", a bear market can have a "correction", which would be a 10% rise from some level. And of course just like a bull market there can be a number of moves counter-trend for small reversals less than 10%.
The biggest non-normal factor is that the tRump regime has pressed the Start buttons simultaneously on multiple contractionary events. They have not been felt economically yet but soon will be. Thus the total effect may be deeper than the regime and normal-minded people expect.
To my eye, the S&P chart looks more like a six-month top has formed and we are on the downside -- the tRump bubble you allude to. I think, but have no calculations to show, that "corrections" usually take less time than 3 months, whereas the sentiment change underlying the formation of a top takes time. The market rose for two years, then in the last six months it slowed down, levelled briefly and then slowly moved down (though there were some minorly dramatic 1% down days).
The Leading Economic Indicators are pointing down, but they have been pointing down for about 18 months or so, which makes it a muddy signal this time around. Current EI are neutral, if I recall. Lagging EI is up, but I think that is evidence of the tRump bump / top formation we passed.
tRump's April 2 ego-drama event will probably include a good hard thump on tariff taxes, though he may play games with pauses, suspensions, demands, deadlines and stupid "deal" trial balloons from the goobermint. There may be two weeks of churn or doldrums ahead, unless some hard data begins to show some contractionary symptoms.
Yes, and at the very least, it keeps those names and faces and stories alive
to Robert Heinlein. I should reread it.
At the 2016 WorldCon the story won the 1941 Retro-Hugo Award for Best Novella of 1940.[1]
Plot
The story is set in a future theocratic American society, ruled by the latest in a series of fundamentalist Christian "Prophets." The First Prophet was Nehemiah Scudder, a backwoods preacher turned President (elected in 2012), then dictator (no elections were held in 2016 or later).
{...}
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22If_This_Goes_On%E2%80%94%22
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_History_%28Heinlein%29
Why wait? Do it ** now **. Good form of mass action to overwhelm them now with millions of people
Go there to ask for an appointment. (I had been thinking of the way it is here. You walk into the Service Canada office downtown, speak to a human immediately, get service after a short wait or an appointment or you are given the needed forms.)
Go in person. Bring a book or a downloaded movie, beverage, folding chair.
Go to ask a person to check up on your status with SSI. Ask a specific question or two and a follow up. Take your time to understand the answer.
Fill the chairs in the waiting room. Fill the waiting room. Fill the waiting room so much that they call the fire marshal.
Form lines outside. Make new friends. Motivate them to specific actions. Recruit for upcoming protest marches.
The more people the better. The sooner the better.
And then come back another day. However many days it takes.
Mass action.
It was going to happen one way or another
Of course the deadline is October.
But Pierre Axe The Tax Poilievre was determined to force one as soon as possible, still is. He (his party) was riding high in the polls for almost two years but have dropped a lot in the last couple of months.
Either we have an election now or we re-open Parliament. In Parliament there would be a No Confidence motion. If the NDP vote with the Liberals they would keep the government in power. They have dropped in the polls as the Conservatives have fallen and the Liberals risen as Carney looked like winning and then won the leadership. If there is an election now the NDP will be squeezed so they might have.
Carney has done a quick calculation based on the idea that now with the wind in his sails is the best time to seek a mandate. Many Canadians want a strong capable leader right now while under this economic back stab by our one-time friend. Right now, Mr Axe The Tax is view as perhaps a bit too much adjacent to tRump and tRumpism / Muckism.
Though Doug Ford is Conservative, he just won a majority in Ontario's election by running as a "strong leader", anti-tRump despite previous embraces. Carney is sensing that being a credible counter to tRump-Lutnick-Bessant is a winning play right now.
Canadian radio includes CBC Radio 1: news, discussion & Radio 2: music. No commercials, streams free online
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: https://www.cbc.ca/
CBC Radio: https://www.cbc.ca/radio Headline article today: Nobelist Joseph Stiglitz on Tariffs and Trade
CBC Radio shows: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/shows
CBC News: https://www.cbc.ca/news
My recommendations for Radio 1, long running but very "with it" today and relevant:
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-478-frequencies
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas Launched in 1965, IDEAS features documentaries, illustrated interviews, and panel discussions which have earned it a raft of international and national awards and distinctions.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks Quirks and Quarks, 40 years running science show of interviews with the actual researchers
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent Current affairs
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/q Q with Tom Power: Current culture
Can happen. The country is measured in thirds and sixths
The boundaries of the groups I will discuss are not sharp or easily marked. The groups are blurred, overlapping and multi-dimensional. They have sub-groups. But whatever, this is a first-order model. Measurements stated here are approximate but I think capture most of the actual proportions. One third is about 33 %. One half of one third is one sixth or about 15 % (rounded down a bit, a rounder number).
One third is blue, one third is red, and one third is the wobbly middle. tRump won 1 percent more of the wobbly middle than Harris did. As far as I know at this time. The wobbly middle doesn't pay much attention to news or politics and is more erratic in its rate of voting.
The red at this point is basically tRumpian maga. The third has two halves. The softer half is the life-long conservative Republicans who are pretty steady and traditional. The hard core is cult members who have been on board since tRump 1.0. They are irretrievable. They are about the same size as the 15% that clung to Nixon as an icon in the late 70s.
The middle has an extra wobbly half of the third (one sixth) in the very center.
tRump's approval rating is a good measure (esp. in relation to other Presidents). It shows that the extra wobbly center has moved against tRump. They don't know much, but they've heard the stock market is down and Muck is taking a chainsaw to government. This worries them a little.
One half of the middle half of the middle third has shifted to disapproval, moving the needle from 50% to 44%.
Before long just about all of the middle will have shifted. That would move the needle to about 33%. If tRump has not made a big course correction and is reversing a lot of stuff by then, conditions will continue to worsen and the soft part of red will start peeling away like a drip, to mix my metaphors. I think by time the needle gets into the thirties, we will be seeing mass action in multiple forms, with very noticeable participation but not revolutionary. If it gets into the low thirties, pressure from mass action will be making the tRump-Muck presidency crack in several ways.
As I see things, Muck is breaking things in ways that no President could fix quickly, and certainly not tRump even if panics and reverses course at some point. He is incompetent and they are both short-sighted and unwise.
Muck is breaking things at the same time as tRump is fucking up US foreign and trade policy and overturning domestic labour markets. tRump is not targetting his tariff taxes one at a time, but is using a blunderbuss to fire at the whole world.
Much depends on when the reds start drifting away from tRump and when the middle gets angrier.
My conclusion is that there will be a tipping point and whether or not there is a visible "Have you no decency, Sen McCarthy" event, once it passes, things will get a bit heated. At that point if tRump-Vance-Patel-Bondi don't reverse course, or get impeached or get forced into resignation by twelve Republican Senators going to the White House ... it could get very heated.
But mass action could convince tRump to reverse course before that point, to "save" his legacy, since he is very ratings oriented.
CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) is generally progressive-centrist
It's a publicly funded system that has no ads on radio but does have ads on TV.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/cbc-news-canadian-broadcasting/
Factual Reporting: HIGH (1.0)
Country: Canada
MBFC’s Country Freedom Rating: EXCELLENT
Media Type: TV Station
Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY
(I say US center-left is centre-center in Canada.)
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