Have You Ever Been To Canada? It's A Nice Country

COVID-palooza by Chip Proser

Yesterday I referenced Señor Trumpanzee farting out, during his daily barrage of misinformation and manipulative lies, that "Our death totals, our numbers, per million people, are really very, very strong. We’re very proud of the job we’ve done." As I pointed out the U.S. death totals per million are anything but "really very, very strong." They're really very, very mediocre and lag badly behind many other countries, including the most American-like of countries, Canada.

Yesterday, U.S. deaths came in at 197 per million. Canada's was a far more reasonable 90 per million. Yesterday, Canada reported 54,784 total cases and 3,387 deaths. Our neighbors to the north have 1,452 cases per million. That isn't great but the states that have been most steepening the curve are in worse shape than Canada's 1,452 cases per million:

• South Dakota- 2,921 per million
• Indiana- 2,807 per million
• Georgia- 2,656 per million
• Mississippi- 2,413 per million
• Nebraska- 2,248 per million
• Tennessee- 1,788 per million
• Florida- 1,686 per million
• Utah- 1,585 per million
• North Dakota- 1,472 per million

These are also states with Trumpist governors opening up too rapidly and too early and likely to cause big jumps in reinfection rates, not just in their own states, but subsequently everywhere. And big reinfection rates always mean that a month later there are jumps in the death rates too. Congratulations, Kristi Noem, Brian Kemp and Ron DeSantis... you're killing off your state's citizens. And-- no coincidence-- these are also states that would rather take advise from the NRA than from public health experts.

While Trump was encouraging the right-wing vigilante terrorists bringing assault weapons to rallies protesting social distancing rules, Trudeau announced that his government is banning 1,500 types of military grade assault weapons.

Starting today, licensed gun owners will no longer be allowed to sell, transport, import or use these sorts of weapons in this country.

"As of today, the market for assault weapons in Canada is closed," Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said. "Enough is enough. Banning these firearms will save Canadian lives."

Trudeau said there will be a two-year amnesty period to allow people who already own these firearms to comply with the ban. Trudeau promised to pass legislation in the coming months to provide "fair compensation" to people who own these firearms.

..."These weapons were designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time," Trudeau said. "There is no use and no place for such weapons in Canada."

Trump, on the other hand... back to describing terrorists as "very good people."

Rev. John Pavlovitz devoted his blog yesterday to discussing The White Privilege to Terrorize, something many people thought of when they saw Trump encouraging them (again). "As a white man watching the Michigan protests of Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders," he wrote, all I could think was: 

• Black people don’t get to do this.
• Muslims don’t get to do this.
• Latinos don’t get to do this.
• People who don’t look like this don’t get to do this.

Pavlovitz noted that non-whites "don’t get to swarm American capitol buildings in tactical gear with high-powered weapons, screaming in close proximity to police officers. They don’t get to dress up like Call of Duty cosplayers and attempt to physically intimidate politicians into bending to their wills. They don’t get to get to stop traffic in city streets decked out like they work at the Death Star and brazenly wield semi-automatic rifles. They don’t get to terrorize decent people and walk away. Only white people get to do this. This violence is a singular privilege afforded to caucasian men in America."

12 year old black boys playing with a toy gun in a park are shot down by the police who are then exonerated.

Black people don’t get to to wear menacing masks or flash handguns on courthouse steps or accost strangers looking like dollar store stormtroopers, in an attempt to frighten people.

They frighten jittery white people by simply existing in their blackness.
They frighten them by lingering in coffee shops.
They frighten them by eating lunch in their cars.
They frighten them by standing in front of their own homes.

...It’s no coincidence that in the middle of the fight to oppose stay-at-home protections by Blue governors choosing humanity over commerce, Trump tweeted out seeming non sequitur invocations to LIBERATE several cities and warned of second amendment encroachment. Though on their surface the subjects seemed unrelated to stopping the spread of the virus, these tweets were clear dog whistles for his snarling white base to suit up, strap on weapons, and provide the free muscle in his reckless push to reopen American in the throes of a pandemic, knowing they’d never be held accountable.

This is MAGA America in its dawning renaissance of outward racism, showing us what is at stake as we approach another election. We aren’t just choosing a president or party to steward us through the coming years, we’re making a statement on what we will and will not tolerate as a people.

What we witnessed in Michigan was an act of terrorism, by the very definition of the word. We have seen many such acts this week, and if November allows this malevolence another four years, they will seem tame. The self-appointed soldiers in the army of the lord will grow more brazen and become more violent in their holy war to make America whiter-- so decent white people need to resist them in the streets, on social media, and at the polls.

I fully suspect people of color will oppose this presidency in large numbers, because they see the disparity.

What I hope and pray, is that more white people, especially those who claim to be Christian, will also stand to reject the supremacy and racism that yields such willful homegrown terrorism; that we will use the unearned currency of our privilege to declare this violence un-American and inhuman and unacceptable.

White terrorists can no longer have a friend in the White House-- not if we really want to make America great.

Write your own caption without mentioning man-boobs

Friday Morning COVID-19 Update: It's OK To Blame Trump And His Regime

Trump's coke-fiend chief economic advisor, Larry Kudlow-- too stoned and irrational for Fox News, but just fine for the White House-- told the congressional Republicans early yesterday morning, just days after he lied to them and said the whole COVID-19 was "locked down," that Trump was finally about to sign the disaster order he should have signed in January. Everything Trump is doing now-- when he does something right, which is almost never anyway, is weeks or months behind when he should have acted too prevent the pandemic decimating America.

As Peter Baker noted in his New York Times column yesterday, Presidents Forge Their Legacies In Crisis-- "moments when presidents can rise above prior troubles or sink deeper into them, as Mr. Bush discovered. A onetime political colossus with a 90 percent approval rating built on his response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Mr. Bush’s presidency was marred by Katrina, which became a modern metaphor for a mishandled crisis." Baker doesn't realize it yet, but Bush's mishandling of Katrina is like a 1 on a 10scale of mishandling, compared to Trump's 12 on that same scale. "The history of presidents grappling with crises," he wrote, "is replete with lessons that sometimes go unlearned and examples that go unheeded." That pretty much defines the Trump regime's handling of this catastrophe.

Even Pence accidentally chastised Trump's handling of the crisis. On Today with Savannah Guthrie yesterday, Pence admitted that there has been "irresponsible rhetoric" from people who have downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic in the U.S. He started with a veiled semi-apology and ends with an outrageously false piece of propaganda: "There's been some irresponsible rhetoric, but the American people should know President Trump has no higher priority than the health and safety and well being of the people of this country." They're finally panicking in the White House-- after telling the nation not to when everyone could have been preparing and taking sensible precautions-- and now they're also getting nervous about Trump's reelection. You think headlines like this don't get noticed and dwelled upon?

To the Imbecile-in-Chief, COVID-19 is a "foreign virus" in his boneheaded address to the nation Wednesday night. CNN noted that "The characterization of the global pandemic as a foreign virus aligns with how some Trump allies have described the coronavirus in recent days, which critics have called xenophobic." It's also an incorrect way of thinking about the global pandemic, which is why the U.S. is lagging every other nation on earth in its response. We're all in this together. And the offing imbecile never even mentioned "social distancing" in his speech, something that every American-- even his moron followers-- are going to have to understand and get used to and start practicing if we're going to ever stop this thing.

Reporting for the Associated Press, Jonathan Lemire noted that Trump is continuing to botch up America's response. It's "a challenge for which he appears ill-equipped, his favorite political tactics ineffective and his reelection chances in jeopardy. A rare crisis battering the White House that is not of the president’s own making, the spreading coronavirus has panicked global financial markets and alarmed Americans, many of whom have turned to the Oval Office for guidance and reassurances. But what they have found is a president struggling for a solution, unable to settle Wall Street and proving particularly vulnerable to a threat that is out of his control. In an address to the nation Wednesday night, Trump announced a sweeping travel ban for much of Europe as well as a package of proposals to help steady the teetering economy. But he continued to play down the severity of the situation, painting it as a foreign threat that soon will be banished rather than focusing on managing the growing number of cases at home." He bungled the written response he read on the air Wednesday, sewing the confusion and chaos he's so famous for. The financial markets crashed on the opening again, sinking over 9% before the Fed intervened by announcing "extraordinary funding actions to ease strained capital markets in the wake of the coronavirus sell-off." They are "printing" one and a half a trillion dollars to insert into the markets. They can't do that every day.

"The virus," continued Lemire, "has appeared impervious to the Republican president’s bluster. The virus does not have a Twitter account and, unlike so many previous Trump foes, is resistant to political bullying or Republican Party solidarity. It has preyed on his lack of curiosity and fears of germs while exposing divides and inadequacies within senior levels of his administration. It has taken away Trump’s favorite political tool, his rallies, from which he draws energy and coveted voter information... One of Trump’s most potent political assets is his ability to read a room, or a moment, often eschewing long-term planning for instantaneous reaction. But he was slow to come to grips with the threat posed by the coronavirus as it exploded in China, distracted by impeachment and unwilling to scare the markets by stirring panic or upsetting his trading partner in Beijing, Xi Jinping."

Once the people around him convinced him the pandemic was not a "hoax," as he kept calling it, he "believed that through his force of will and ability to dominate a news cycle, he could alleviate the crisis, taking to Twitter and the White House briefing room podium to dismiss the threat." In the meantime, he was losing valuable time to actually prepare for the worst. "[W]hile Trump deemed the media coverage of the virus 'a hoax' meant to create hysteria and tank his poll numbers, it is a harder sell to ask his supporters to dismiss media reports when they see people in their own communities getting sick, schools closing and local drugstores unable to keep hand sanitizer on the shelves."

Infighting erupted within the administration, as Trump blamed and then sidelined Azar, relegating the health secretary to a secondary role behind Vice President Mike Pence on the coronavirus task force. But while Trump empowered Pence and respected medical professionals to take the lead on briefings, he ignored his advisers’ advice to let the vice president be the public face of the administration’s response, according to the officials.

Unable to cede the spotlight, Trump spoke extemporaneously to reporters at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta on Friday, requiring the vice president, who addressed the media in Washington moments later, to correct the president’s misstatements about the availability of testing kits and the fate of a cruise ship filled with coronavirus patients.

It was only on Monday, as he was flying from Florida back to Washington, that the economic severity of the crisis hit home for Trump, according to three of the officials and advisers.

In one cabin on Air Force One, Matt Gaetz, a Florida GOP congressman who had accompanied Trump to a series of Orlando fundraisers, had isolated himself after learning he’d come into contact with someone infected by the virus. And on the TV in Trump’s aircraft office, Fox News was broadcasting dire graphics illustrating the single worst day for stock markets since the 2008 financial crisis.

By the time the plane touched down at Joint Base Andrews, Trump told aides he would change tactics and propose a broad economic stimulus to reassure investors. But the fate of his plan, which included a suspension of the payroll tax, remained unclear as the week went on and the markets’ roller coaster ride continued.

“I think that in many ways this has made Trump a wartime president,” said former campaign communications director Jason Miller. “This virus has no borders, doesn’t discern between allies and foes and attacked the nation’s health security and economic security. It is going to take continued bold action from the president.”

After surviving impeachment, Trump has in earnest remade his White House staff to focus on reelection, prioritizing loyalty over experience. Increasingly focused on his campaign, Trump pushed aides to continue scheduling massive rallies, even as his Democratic foes had begun canceling theirs.

Predictably, his European travel ban went over the a lead balloon. NY Times: "On both sides of the Atlantic on Thursday, the consequences of President Trump’s decision to ban most travel from Europe began to be felt economically, politically and socially. European Union leaders issued a scathing statement condemning the move even as many nations on the Continent moved to tighten their own restrictions on the movement of people. 'The coronavirus is a global crisis, not limited to any continent and it requires cooperation rather than unilateral action,' it said. 'The European Union disapproves of the fact that the U.S. decision to impose a travel ban was taken unilaterally and without consultation.'"

With Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau's wife in quarantine with coronavirus symptoms after attending a charity event with 12,000 people, Trudeau acknowledged that with hundreds of thousands of people crossing the border every day, the U.S. is 'a real potential vector of transmission.'"

The Times also reported that after spending a lot of time with Trump and Pence, Fábio Wajngarten, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s communications chief, a fellow fascist, has tested positive for coronavirus. Others who had been in close proximity with Wajngarten at Mar-A-Lago included Ivanka and Jared. Florida GOP Senator Rick Scott had met with Bolsonaro and is now in quarantine. Today Bolsonaro will get his own test results back and find out whether or not he's infected.

The chances of Pence and Trump not having coronavirus are very small. Prediction: Trump will be dead before summer. People will emerge from their quarantined homes to cheer in the streets.

Yesterday, Alan Grayson told me that he really hopes "that Trump gets tested soon, because the only way that he’s going to give a damn about this problem is if he’s sick himself. I hope that the next person who gets laid off and sent home because of COVID-19 is Donald Trump... We’re about to have 75,000 people laid off here (Orlando/Disneyworld), with no income and no savings. They will soon be roasting and eating their cats. Damn him.

Meanwhile everyone serious has started ignoring Trump when it comes to dealing with the pandemic. "As the toll of those afflicted by the virus continued to soar and financial markets from Tokyo to New York continued to swoon" wrote Mark Landler, "world leaders are finally starting to find their voices about the gravity of what is now officially a pandemic. Yet it remains less a choir than a cacophony-- a dissonant babble of politicians all struggling, in their own way, to cope with the manifold challenges posed by the virus, from its crushing burden on hospitals and health care workers to its economic devastation and rising death toll. The choir also lacks a conductor, a role played through most of the post-World War II era by the United States. President Trump has failed to work with other leaders to fashion a common response, preferring to promote his border wall over the scientific advice of his own medical experts."

Landler also noted that other political leaders, like Trump, with whom humanity would be better off without, are using the pandemic for their own ends. "The same denigration of science and urge to block outsiders has characterized leaders from China to Iran, as well as right-wing populists in Europe, which is sowing cynicism and leaving people uncertain of whom to believe. Far from trying to stamp out the virus, strongmen like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia have seized on the upheaval it is causing as cover for steps to consolidate their power... The trouble is that, with few exceptions, their efforts have been hapless. In the United States, the delay in developing coronavirus test kits and the scarcity of tests have made it impossible for officials, even weeks after the first cases appeared in the country, to get a true picture of the scale of the outbreak."

Domestically, political leaders are also giving up on working with Trump to ameliorate the spread of the disease. Politico reporters Heather Caygle and John Bresnahan wrote that "For any other leader, the rapid turnaround on the recovery plan would be a herculean feat at best. But for Pelosi, successfully negotiating a multi-billion-dollar economic package with a hostile and often antagonistic Trump administration was just another day in the speaker’s suite. It’s also a reminder that for all Trump’s omnipresence on Twitter and cable TV, Pelosi remains the dominant figure on Capitol Hill when it comes time to actually getting something accomplished. 'She understands what has to be done, and will do so in a very limited time frame and scope while trying to be inclusive with a very diverse caucus that also has a lot of their own ideas on how to solve the problem,' said Rep. John Larson (D-CT). 'While there can be some consternation going forward, at the end of the day, she has the trust of the caucus.' ... The face of the U.S. response-- of course-- is Trump. And he announced plans for some executive action to help the public in a Wednesday night address, including on paid sick leave. But he’s also taken a sometimes-erratic approach to the outbreak, often undermining his own administration’s recommendations and repeating falsehoods about the coronavirus being 'very much under control' in the country... Pelosi also has enormous political leverage during this episode. By moving quickly, Pelosi has put pressure on the White House and GOP leaders to respond. She could put a bill on the floor and see if Republicans would vote against it, something top Democrats believe will never happen. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), a key Trump ally, said Tuesday his conference could end up backing the Democratic bill."

Something to think about that Felix Salmon shared on Axios: "The fate of countries around the world lies in a very few individual politicians' hands-- more so than at any other time in half a century or more... The spread of the novel coronavirus is similarly a function of decisive action by heads of state, or the lack thereof. Governments alone determine whether the number of new cases increases exponentially, or whether it is brought under control within days. The Chinese government, through inaction, allowed COVID-19 to grow to the degree that global infections were inevitable. Subsequent Chinese actions, however, were decisive and effective. South Korea has also been effective in combating the coronavirus and has managed to do so through 'openness and transparency' rather than lockdowns. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has locked down the entire country, imposing severe restrictions on travel and shuttering all stores except groceries and pharmacies. Donald Trump, by contrast, sent markets into a series of tailspins by talking about the virus as a political attack rather than as an epidemiological emergency. His plan for minimizing the domestic spread of COVID-19 is notable mainly for its nonexistence. ... In normal day-to-day life, someone with the novel coronavirus will infect more than 3 other individuals. That's a simple recipe for exponential growth."

Effective heads of state have shown that they have the ability to change individual behavior across their country so that the number gets reduced to less than 1.

Normally, the health of a country is a function of the strength of its economy. That correlation has now temporarily been upended. Politicians need to slow down economic activity to save their countries.

Trump has failed, utterly and undeniably. Financial Times writer Edward Luce: "On Wednesday night the global pandemic met US nationalism. It will not take long to see which comes off best. As Donald Trump was speaking, the Dow futures market nosedived. His Europe travel ban came just a few hours after the US stock market entered bear territory-- a fall of 20 per cent or more-- for the first time since the global financial crisis. It also followed the World Health Organization’s declaration of a global pandemic. Mr Trump’s address was meant to calm the waters. By the time he finished they were considerably rougher… It is unclear how Europe and other countries will respond to Mr Trump’s dramatic announcement. In an ideal situation, America’s president would have acknowledged that the pathogen knows no borders and has no political loyalties. It poses a common threat that requires a co-ordinated global response. That is not the way Mr Trump thinks. Public health officials say that millions of Americans will probably be infected. The official total now stands at 1,312. Mr Trump has never faced a crisis on anything like this scale-- and it is still in its early stages. His remedies so far are cause for deep concern. Who will he blame when they fail?"

This is part of a note I got from my financial advisor yesterday: "You actually did more than just lighten up. You are about 70% cash and fixed currently. I would leave the 30% in with the diversified fund managers we have. They are patient and will act accordingly to pick up things when they get really cheap. I agree the market has to fall more. There are stresses behind the scenes in private equity and other areas caused by this which are creating downward pressure as well. And of course there is a vacuum in leadership which is starting to rattle everyone…"

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Ah, the longing! The longing! We can see what Queen Melanoma longs for for Christmas, a man, a real man, a real president!

But here's what I long for. Here's what I want for Christmas: I want a patriotic Two Million Whistleblower March On Washington! That's right. I want a world where 2,000,000, hell, make it 5,000,000, patriotic Americans purchase a whistle and get their butts to Washington and parade around the White House blowing their whistles day and night as loudly as they can for as long as they can. They can use a referee's kind of whistle or a slide whistle, it doesn't matter. If 1776 of them want to blow a trombone for variety, that's fine, too. Just do it!

If President Mental Case heads off to Mar-a-Lago to escape this demonstration of true patriotism and street justice, Floridians can head to Mar-a-Lago. If you live in or near Washington, why not consider doing this on any day at any hour? Can't sleep some night because of what the Republicans are doing to this country, go to Moscow Mitch's house. Go to whatever bed of straw Moo-er Nunes beds down in. If your congresscritter is any kind of Repug Party goon and you can't get to Washington, take this tactic locally. Take this bit of guerrilla theater to its office with as many patriots you can gather up in a posse and blow away! Are you near a FOX "News" building or Sean Insanity's house? Do it there, too! You can even call in to right wing radio talk radio programs under the pretense of agreeing with whatever lunacy the host is espousing at the moment. Once on the air, blow away with every ounce of power in you lungs!

The mass march idea is the best, though. That is, if the corporate media covers it, and if they don't, well, you now know what to do!

This Christmas, why not... Disturb The Peace!

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Makin' Eyes: Left- Obviously lovestruck Melania coming on to Canadian PM Justin "Swoon-o-Matic" Trudeau in her 4 digit Red Devil Fuck Me Frock last weekend at the G7 in Paris. Right- Ivanka swooning at Justin 2 years ago at a roundtable event in Washington. I have to laugh at the pained expression on Senor Trumpanzee's face. He knows he's A1 cuckold material. Happy dreams, Donnie! Got an extra $130,000 in your pocket? It's OK, Donnie. You can always dial up a porn star. You'll never be a man and your wife knows it.

But let's be fair to Melania and Ivanka. They spend all day surrounded by croaking toads. Toads named Steve Mnuchen, Mick Mulvaney, Stephen Miller, Jared Kushner and god knows what else is hopping around the White House looking for flies. You think either woman has ever spent even a second fantasizing about Ben Carson, Sonny Perdue or Wilbur Ross? Not bloody likely!

Guess what, Donnie. Trudeau's already got your wife and daughter. Anytime he wants. And, unlike you, he didn't have to grab them by the pussy. Now all that's left for you to fret about is a White House 3-Way going on while your sitting in your bathroom on your gold toilet tweeting away.

"Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery"-- Or Did Wilde Get That Wrong?

Luke Savage has a very good question for Jacobin readers this week: Who Will Be the American Justin Trudeau? "With a restless Democratic base leaning left," he wrote, "party centrists are looking for their Justin Trudeau-- a candidate who will seem progressive while preserving the status quo." I offered 4 pretty obvious possibilities in a twitter poll yesterday:

The question wasn't who's as good looking as Trudeau, but it was always a neck and neck race between Beto and Kamala anyway. A friend of mine was making fun of Trevor Noah Monday for referring to Julian Castro as "a progressive candidate." I almost defended Noah, explaining to my friend that although Castro's record shows him to be nothing more than a garden variety establishment Democrat, he is running as a progressive. All those popular Bernie ideas and Elizabeth Warren ideas just floating around out there, makes it much easier for clueless political hacks to redo themselves as "progressive," progressive-lite or progressivish.

Luke Savage is no fan of Prime Minister Trudeau's. Trudeau may look dreamy to some and especially awesome in contrast to the lump of stinking crap sitting in the Oval Office but... he and his Liberal Party made a deliberate decision before the 2015 Canadian elections to "embrace left-leaning rhetoric around taxes, spending, the economy, and social policy. Unlike other recent efforts from the political center (notably Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated 2016 presidential run), Trudeau made a professed desire to tax the rich and fight inequality a central theme of his campaign, and reaped the electoral rewards. When examined in detail the Liberal program was in fact fairly modest and has only grown tamer in government. Yet by embracing the language of redistribution and activist government, albeit in vague and qualified terms, Trudeau successfully convinced large numbers of Canadians that they were voting for a progressive, left-wing agenda-- a narrative that came to be channeled in media coverage both during and after the election."

Savage seems certain "some centrist Democrats will very likely look to Trudeau’s charade as a model to be emulated." It's too late for Biden, Bloomberg, McAuliffe, Frackenlooper or that Starbucks guy to pretend to be anything but right-of-center, but just take a look at the ultimate political opportunist, Kirsten Gillibrand if you want to see someone turn on a dime.

The Liberal campaign of 2015, for all the hype it generated, was anything but radical in tone. Nevertheless, a carefully crafted platform incorporating language about taxing the rich, spending more on public goods, and rejecting austerity gave many ordinary Canadians a different impression while simultaneously reassuring elites they had nothing to fear.

For one thing, it promised to raise taxes on “the wealthiest 1% while cutting them for the middle class” and closing loopholes benefiting the rich. In the realm of social policy, Trudeau championed the Canada Child Benefit-- a means-tested cash transfer-- as a way to help low-income families. The platform’s biggest theme was arguably deficit-financed investment in “social infrastructure,” supposedly signalling a break from prevailing economic orthodoxy and (for some commentators) a bold embrace of activist government.

Parts of the plan were mostly illusion from the get-go. While the language of the “1 percent” vaguely hinted at Occupy-inflected class rhetoric, the corresponding policy actually amounted to a net reduction in income taxes. Though the government did create a new bracket for incomes over $200,000 a year at a marginal rate of 33 percent, its “middle-class tax cut” also lowered taxes on incomes between $45,282 and $90,563, a move whose biggest beneficiaries were ultimately those in the top 10 percent of incomes-- hardly the “middle class” as most people understand it, and certainly not the poor. Tax loopholes, such as one that allows compensation earned through stock options to be taxed at half the regular rate (mainly used by lushly paid corporate executives) have remained open despite the Liberal commitment to close them. Late last year, supposedly in response to Trump administration policy, the government also unveiled billions in corporate tax cuts-- hardly the behavior of a left-populist administration.

With childcare widely inaccessible and cripplingly expensive across the country, the Canada Child Benefit was a particularly resonant campaign promise. While it is indeed a cash transfer to low-income families and an improvement on the Conservative-era benefit it replaced, Trudeau advanced the policy in explicit opposition to the universal public model being championed by his rivals in the NDP, declaring, “When it comes to child benefits, fair doesn’t mean giving everyone the same thing, it means giving people what they need.” While this no doubt sounded intuitively correct to some voters, it in effect meant leaving Canada’s inefficient, pricey, and market-driven childcare model intact while offering subsidies to some families worth a maximum of a few thousand dollars a year (childcare in Canadian cities outside Quebec can easily cost $1,000 a month or more).

Trudeau’s supposed embrace of deficits and Keynesian economics employed a similar sleight of hand. While the government is indeed running deficits and pursuing an infrastructure program, it has channeled billions into an infrastructure bank designed to attract private capital and even hinted at the mass privatization of public assets. The once-promised “social infrastructure” and stimulus spending that enabled Trudeau to rhetorically repudiate austerity has therefore taken a back seat to an effectively neoliberal model of public spending.

What was innovative about this strategy was the way it channeled widespread concern about poverty, inequality, and an economy rigged towards the rich while ultimately offering little to meaningfully address those problems. For some, it appeared to reflect the same priorities as the NDP platform-- which included among other things the creation of national childcare and prescription-drug benefit programs-- allowing the Liberals to absorb and neutralize competition to their left. (The NDP, for what it’s worth, needlessly compromised its own program and created space for the Liberals by promising balanced budgets).

After more than three years in government, Trudeau’s Liberals have done little if anything to alter the economic fundamentals of the country or significantly improve material conditions for most of its people. Nevertheless, the prime minister has made a regular habit of issuing pronouncements about inequality at international conferences that seem deliberately choreographed to maintain his 2015 brand. In a similar vein, his government has also introduced rather misleadingly titled “national strategies” for both poverty and housing that are far less grand in scope than their labeling suggests (essentially amounting to a series of small subsidies and new metrics).

A combination of superficial gestures, bad-faith promises, skillful branding, and political sleights of hand, Trudeau’s inequality scam has proven a resounding success.

How might an opportunistic Democratic politician looking to win over the base while reassuring corporate America launch their own phony war on inequality in the 2020 primaries and beyond? Justin Trudeau’s strategy offers us some clues.

Instead of simply ignoring or rendering poverty, inequality, and public goods secondary to his brand, Trudeau has made them central, even faintly invoking the language of class to that end. But despite going to great lengths to show how much he recognizes people’s problems he has always remained assiduously vague about how he intends to solve them and adopted a decidedly nonconfrontational posture towards corporate Canada and other powerful interests in the process. While appearing to embrace core progressive concerns, particularly around taxes and social policy, he has quietly doubled down on all-too-familiar neoliberal shibboleths and policy thinking-- rejecting universality and leveraging a phony language of activist government.

With potentially transformative proposals such as a Green New Deal and Medicare for All on the table in the US ahead of the 2020 presidential election, and an anxious donor class tugging in the opposite direction, it’s all too easy to imagine centrist Democrats looking to Trudeau’s example. If the American left, broadly defined, wants to avoid a repeat of Canada’s experience it should be vigilant about the prospect of phony wars on inequality-- and settle for nothing less than the real thing.

Señor Trumpanzee FARTs-- Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act

Fucking Moron by Chip Proser

Mexico elected-- by a landslide-- a new president, a left-wing populist, in a landslide Sunday. Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Unlike Trump, whose election is arguably illegitimate, López Obrador can claim a mandate to make structural changes in his country.

• Obrador- 24,127,452 (53.0%)
• Anaya- 10,249,705 (22.5%)
• Meade- 7,472,431 (16.4%)
• Calderón- 2,339,431 (5.1%)
• Zavala- 64,643 (0.1%)

He was elected because he campaigned on a platform of change, a platform to change the status quo in a country beset by corruption, violence and enduring poverty. He agenda included free access to the Internet, a doubling of pensions for the elderly, educational grants for students, an increase in the minimum wage and subsidies for small farmers and single mothers. None of the candidates were fans of Trump or his policies. That said, let's turn to a draft of the America illegitimate president who claims a mandate to shake up the status quo even though most voters cast their ballots for his opponent:

• Hillary Clinton- 65,853,514 (48.2%)
• Donald Trump- 62,984,828 (46.1%)
• Gary Johnson- 4,489,235 (3.2%)
• Jill Stein- 1,457,226 (1.06%)
• Evan McMullin- 732,273 (0.53%)

That's not a mandate for structural change, although Trump is governing as though he had been elected in a massive landslide. He also campaigned on a platform of change. Trade was one of his issues, although, what he offered was a mishmash of incoherent ill-thought out ideas, populist slogans and emotional assertion of victimhood and blame, an agenda-- or at least its latest manifestation-- condemned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce this morning This morning Axios reported his latest attempt to blow up the status quo, the FART Act, "America’s abandonment of fundamental World Trade Organization rules." If Congress passes it-- unlikely-- it would prove Trump "license to raise U.S. tariffs at will, without congressional consent and international rules be damned. The bill, titled the "United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act," would give Trump unilateral power to ignore the two most basic principles of the WTO and negotiate one-on-one with any country:

Trump was briefed on this draft in late May, according to sources familiar with the situation. Most officials involved in the bill's drafting-- with the notable exception of hardline trade adviser Peter Navarro-- think the bill is unrealistic or unworkable. USTR, Commerce and the White House are involved.

1- The "Most Favored Nation" (MFN) principle that countries can't set different tariff rates for different countries outside of free trade agreements;
2- "Bound tariff rates-- the tariff ceilings that each WTO country has already agreed to in previous negotiations.

"It would be the equivalent of walking away from the WTO and our commitments there without us actually notifying our withdrawal," said a source familiar with the bill.

• "The good news is Congress would never give this authority to the president," the source added, describing the bill as "insane."
• "It's not implementable at the border," given it would create potentially tens of thousands of new tariff rates on products. "And it would completely remove us from the set of global trade rules."

It's not going to happen. The only farting coming out of the White House will be Trump's when he eats fat food.

Trump was briefed on this draft in late May, according to sources familiar with the situation. Most officials involved in the bill's drafting-- with the notable exception of hardline trade adviser Peter Navarro-- think the bill is unrealistic or unworkable. USTR, Commerce and the White House are involved.

• In a White House meeting to discuss the bill earlier this year, Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short bluntly told Navarro the bill was "dead on arrival" and would receive zero support on Capitol Hill, according to sources familiar with the exchange.
• Navarro replied to Short that he thought the bill would get plenty of support, particularly from Democrats, but Short told Navarro he didn't think Democrats were in much of a mood to hand over moreauthority to Trump.

Spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said, "It is no secret that POTUS has had frustrations with the unfair imbalance of tariffs that put the U.S. at a disadvantage. He has asked his team to develop ideas to remedy this situation and create incentives for countries to lower their tariffs. The current system gives the U.S. no leverage and other countries no incentive."

• But Walters signaled that we shouldn't take this bill as anything like a done deal. "The only way this would be news is if this were actual legislation that the administration was preparing to rollout, but it’s not," she said. "Principals have not even met to review any text of legislation on reciprocal trade."
• Between the lines: Note the specificity of Walters' quote above. Trump directly requested this legislation and was verbally briefed on it in May. But he hasn't met with the principals to review the text.

Congress is already concerned with how Trump has been using his trade authorities-- just look at recent efforts by Republican Sens. Bob Corker and Pat Toomey and Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet to roll back the president's steel and aluminum tariffs.

The bottom line: As a smart trade watcher told me: "The Trump administration should be more worried about not having their current authority restricted rather than expanding authority as this bill would do."

Meanwhile, the U.S.'s biggest trading partner, Canada, just slapped a retaliatory tariffs, to the tune of $12.6 billion, on a wide variety of U.S. goods. "Some U.S. products, mostly steel and iron, face 25% tariffs, the same penalty the United States slapped on imported steel at the end of May. Other U.S. imports, from ketchup to pizza to dishwasher detergent, will face a 10% tariff at the Canadian border, the same as America's tax on imported aluminum."

Trump had enraged Canada and other U.S. allies by declaring imported steel and aluminum a threat to America's national security and therefore a legitimate target for U.S. tariffs. Canada is the United States' second-biggest trading partner in goods, just behind China.

Speaking Sunday in Leamington, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau thanked Canadians for standing united against President Trump's sanctions. He urged Canadians to "make their choices accordingly" in considering whether to buy American products.

The selection of Leamington, known as Canada's tomato capital, was no accident. The town is home to a food-processing plant that supplies tomato paste and other products to French's, a major competitor of Kraft Heinz. Heinz left Canada and sold its Leamington plant in 2014, after 105 years of Canadian operations.

The new Canadian tariffs, which took effect at 12:01 a.m. Sunday, are hitting a long list of U.S. consumer goods, including ketchup and other Kraft Heinz products.

As part of his combative “America first” approach, Trump has repeatedly attacked the trade policies of the United States' northern neighbor, citing Canada's triple-digit tariffs on dairy products, which account for only about 0.1% of U.S.-Canada trade. The United States, in fact, last year enjoyed a $2.8-billion overall trade surplus with Canada.

Trump has also tried to pressure Canada and Mexico into agreeing to rewrite the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement to shift more auto production and investment to the United States. But that effort has stalled, and Trump said Sunday that he didn't expect a deal that he could support until after the U.S. midterm elections in November.

The Washington Post reported this morning that Señor T is defiantly standing by his tariffs "as Canada hit back hard, Mexico elected a new leader who seems prepared to confront him, and the European Union issued a scathing condemnation of his policy as 'in effect, a tax on the American people.' Instead of backing down, Trump brushed off the mounting pressure from businesses and world leaders to scale back the taxes before they cause additional job losses and slower economic growth."

Also this morning, the Wall Street Journal reported that farm belt, which helped deliver the White House to Trump, "drawn to his promises to revive rural America and deregulate industry," is feeling that his "global trade offensive is threatening the livelihoods of many farmers... Mounting trade disputes, spurred by U.S. threats to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement and tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of goods from key trading partners, have cut U.S. agricultural exports and sent commodity prices tumbling. Many farmers, who depend on shipments overseas for one-fifth of the goods they produce, say they are anxious, especially because they are already expecting bumper harvests or grappling with a dairy glut."

America First? Polling Shows It's Trudeau First Over Trump

Want to drive Trumpanzee up a wall? Every poll should ask, who do you like more, Trump or Canadian Prime Minister JustinTrudeau? Trump is completely, obsessively jealous of Trump, because Trudeau is intelligent, well-spoken, handsome, with it, fashionable and vigorous, while Trump is... well, none of those things. (And rumors are that both Melania and Ivanka went completely "gah gah" over Trudeau.) The one poll that was done, by Ipsos shows that both Canadians and Americans prefer, as you can see above, Trudeau's approach to trade over Trump's approach.

Now a new poll by the Canadian polling firm, Campaign Research "revealed that 81% of Canadians “disapproved” of Donald Trump’s performance as the President of the U.S, a 5% increase from September 2017. Those who showed the highest level of disapproval were females (86%), as well as members of the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) (91%) and the New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP) (93%). A full 2/3rd’s of Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) supporters (66%) also expressed disapproval."

When asked if they believed that Donald Trump has helped or harmed the Canadian economy, 72% of Canadians believed Donald Trump has harmed the Canadian economy. This sentiment was consistent across all age groups and regions.

Over the last 9 months, members of NAFTA have engaged in discussions regarding re-negotiations to various terms of the agreement. A large majority of Canadians (87%) were aware of these discussions.  Millennial awareness of these discussions taking place were the lowest at 63%, while the topic was very well known among older Canadians aged 45+ with over 90% awareness. Men (92%) seemed to be more engaged with the issue than women (83%). Awareness levels were also consistently high across all regions in Canada.

Donald Trump recently imposed tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum imports to the USA. In retaliation, Canada decided to implement its’ own tariffs on hundreds of U.S. products imported into Canada. The response from Canadians was positive, with 74% agreeing with the Canadian Government’s decision to implement these tariffs. Regionally, Atlantic Canada (76%) and Ontario (79%) had the strongest levels of support for the Canadian Governments decision to impose the tariffs.

61% of Canadians were concerned about the relationship between Prime Minister Trudeau and President Trump. This level of concern was consistent among all age groups. 68% of CPC supporters expressed the greatest level of those who were concerned.

“Donald Trump has not fared well with the people of Canada. His implementation of tariffs on Canadian resources and demands to renegotiate NAFTA and recent comments toward Prime Minister Trudeau and Canada have contributed to the belief among Canadians that he is harming the Canadian economy rather than helping it. Canadians are united in opposition to President Trump and Canadian retaliatory measures thus far.” said Eli Yufest, CEO of Campaign Research.

Come on, PPP, get with it! Just include it as a question in your surveys from now on.

Trump Knows How To Be A Hardass-- Although Not With Fascist Dictators

Though some White House imbecile told Trump that the Canadians burned down the White House, economically and strategically there is no country more important to the U.S. than Canada, nor closer to the U.S. in every conceivable way. Tuesday Toronto's biggest newspaper reported that the circus performer Putin saddled the U.S. with as "president" said in Singapore after his meeting with the savage and bloodthirsty North Korean dictator that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s assertion that Canada "will not be pushed around" will end up costing Canadians "a lot of money." And as always, money was very much of Señor Trumpanzee's mind-- money for himself. He referred to Trudeau, as "dishonest" and "weak." (If ever there was a case of projectionism!!!)

Trump can play hardball with our friends in Canada-- but not with the North Korean fascist. The NY Times reported that "People briefed on the meetings said American negotiators had found it difficult to make significant headway with the North Koreans, in part because the White House did not back them up in taking a hard line."

As for Korea... "They have great beaches. You see that whenever they're exploding their cannons into the ocean. I said boy look at the view. Wouldn't that make a great condo?" He told the press gaggle you could have the "best hotels in the world" on the beaches that North Korea uses for its artillery drills. He's talking about this guy:

Trump is more ignorant than an average junior high school student. Boldly not preparing for the summit was bizarre enough. It led to this:

And worse. But, of course, not for indispensible men Trump and Kim. Both authoritarian-minded lunatics wanted a summit, with all its spectacle that allowed them to revel in the spotlight and ameliorate choppy political waters back home. Trump was willing to give up a lot, announcing without consulting South Korea that the U.S. would be ending "war games" (AKA, Joint Military exercises) between the U.S. and South Korea. (Nor did Trump tell the Pentagon he was going to do this.)

We'll never know what the 2 dictators, as Fox put it, really said because there is no record, Trumpanzee, drug-addled and prematurely senile, claiming he has "one of the great memories of all times." Christina Wilkie tweeted that "By allowing only their interpreters, Trump and Kim left no one who could verify what they agreed to in the meeting. Policy experts agree, this is probably bad for the world. But for Trump and Kim, who both built empires on fictional narratives, it’s just fine. In fact, it’s ideal."

The NY Times reported that Señor T said that denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula would begin "very quickly," defining neither "denuclearization" nor "very quickly." In a joint statement, Trumpanzee "committed to provide security guarantees" to North Korea, and Kim "reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," which is hardly new and is only an agree to "work towards," an intention. Everyone except the moron fake president knows this has happened before. Will it-- the top priority-- get Trump a Nobel?

The wording of the document signed by Trump and Kim Jong-un on Tuesday falls some way short of the dramatic billing the president gave it at the end of the leaders’ historic summit in Singapore.

Trump described it as a “very comprehensive” agreement that would “take care of a very big and very dangerous problem for the world.”

...There is no direct commitment here to formalise those sentiments with a peace treaty to replace the armistice signed at the end of the Korean war in 1953. That would require the involvement of China and other countries that took part in the conflict. As expected, Trump offered “unspecified” security guarantees to North Korea, a gesture whose vagueness matches that of Kim’s commitment to denuclearise.

Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work towards complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.

This is the most critical, and easily the most problematic, of the leaders’ statements. It does not meet Washington’s long-stated goal of complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement (CVID) of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, but simply restates Kim’s position after his summit with Moon.

No serious analysts expected the North Korean leader to commit to CVID in his first meeting with Trump. That process-- if it happens at all-- could take years and cost billions of dollars.

It also fails to define what is meant by denuclearisation. In Washington, it requires Kim to abandon his nuclear ambitions. But the North Korean interpretation is more complicated. The regime believes it should include the withdrawal of the US nuclear umbrella from South Korea, possibly including the withdrawal of all 28,500 US troops ranged along the South’s border with the North.

As the Atlantic Council’s Alexander Vershbow said, it comes down to the difference between the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and the denuclearisation of North Korea.

In an interview, Trump, undoubtably the stupidest and most ignorant person to ever occupy the White House, said to George Stephanopoulos, "I do trust him." And who exactly is "dishonest and weak?" Should Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill have given in to Hitler and Tojo? Ask yourself that... because Kim is more brutal and bloodthirsty than either of them. Yesterday both Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell were out front advocating their support for Trump's appeasement-- in a very big way. Your crackpot fake "president": "Honestly, I think he’s going to do these things. I may be wrong, I mean I may stand before you in six months and say, hey, I was wrong-- I don’t know that I’ll ever admit that, but I’ll find some kind of an excuse." Trump, incoherent and delusional, as usual, publicly lavished praise on Kim, calling him a "very talented man" who "loves his country very much... A worthy negotiator...a very worthy, very smart negotiator. We had a terrific day and we learned a lot about each other and our countries... I think our whole relationship with North Korea and the Korean peninsula is going to be a very different situation than it has in the past,.. "We’ve developed a very special bond."

Few members of Congress on either side of the aisle, have been as forthright about this bogus "deal" as Elizabeth Warren has. This was her statement Tuesday: "Yesterday's photo op doesn't change the fact that a nuclear-armed North Korea is a threat to the security of the United States, our allies, and the world. Generations of North Korean leaders have made and broken promises before-- this Administration's success will be judged on whether it can eliminate Kim's nuclear weapons and verify they are gone. We're at the beginning of a diplomatic process that will require patience, experience, and close coordination with our allies. I want to see the President succeed, but a handshake is no substitute for a binding, verifiable deal."

Oh, I found a Republican who feels just as strongly as Warren-- Meghan McCain, who said, also on Tuesday, "This is a totalitarian communist dictator in the same vein as Hitler-- murder, enslavement, imprisonment, sexual violence, starvation, forced abortions, political, racial, religious persecution... [Kim’s regime] is completely and utterly the closest thing to Hitler’s Germany that exists in modern time. My problem was how far it went with the buddy-buddy, and there was no talk whatsoever of the human rights violations going on in that country."

Can A President-- Even An Illegitimate One-- Be Guilty Of Treason?

The Diplomat by Nancy Ohanian

Yesterday, the NY Times reported that Señor Trumpanzee "upended two days of global economic diplomacy late Saturday, refusing to sign a joint statement with America’s allies, threatening to escalate his trade war on the country’s neighbors and deriding Canada’s prime minister as 'very dishonest and weak,' In a remarkable pair of acrimony-laced tweets from aboard Air Force One as he flew away from the Group of 7 summit toward a meeting with North Korea’s leader, Mr. Trump lashed out at Justin Trudeau. He accused the prime minister, who hosted the seven-nation gathering, of making false statements."

At the same time, Bloomberg reported that Señor T's comments "undermine the G-7, a bloc that was once a pillar of U.S. foreign policy and has long acted as a defender of the global economic system. It could also cause fresh friction with his northern neighbor as tensions percolate over efforts to redraw the North American Free Trade Agreement." The joint statement Trump refused to sign is the one he had already agreed to, Everyone knows that the fat drug addicted slob in the White House is jealous of the handsome, fit and intelligent Canadian prime minister. Canada's tariffs are about half what the U.S.' are.

Trudeau’s office responded to the tweets with a written statement, saying the prime minister’s comments in public and in private with Trump were “nothing he hasn’t said before” and that he was “focused on everything we accomplished here at the G-7 summit.” Trudeau himself declined to comment during an appearance with Argentina’s president. "Good to see you guys," Trudeau said to journalists asking for reaction. "It’s a beautiful evening, a great weekend."

A senior U.K. government official said Theresa May’s government stands by commitments made in the communique, and a similar statement was issued by the German government. “I think they’ll all come down on Trudeau’s side” with the possible exception of Japan’s Shinzo Abe, Kirton said. “This is clearly six versus one.”

French President Emmanuel Macron has not responded to Trump’s post-summit tweets.

Even before Trump’s shock reversal, Macron bemoaned the lack of G-7 unity, giving a hint that the tensions hadn’t been put to rest. Trump had at one point proposed that G-7 nations eliminate all tariffs, barriers and subsidies.

“I heard President Trump say he wants maximum trade and minimum tariffs for G-7 members. Be my guest,” Macron told reporters Saturday. “We need seven to dance that tango, and the next move needs to be made by the one who first took a step backward.”

In a tweet later, Macron said Trump’s isolation from the international community is “contrary to American history.”

Butcher's Helper by Nancy Ohanian

Later in the day he issued a statement: "We spent two days to obtain a text and commitments. We will stand by them and anyone who would depart from them, once their back was turned, shows their incoherence and inconsistency." Why is Trump doing this? Can an one doubt he was repaying a debt to his benefactor in the Kremlin?

Yesterday, after the damage was done, Putin said he is ready to meet Trumpanzee "as soon as Washington was ready, adding Vienna could be a possible venue for such a summit."

Putin: "As soon as the American side is ready this meeting would take place depending on my working schedule of course. The US president himself repeatedly said that he would consider such a meeting helpful. I can confirm this. It’s true."

Putin asked Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on a visit to Vienna earlier this week to help organise such a meeting and that Washington was considering it.

Under the conservative [neo-fascist, not conservative] Kurz, Austria has strived to act as a mediator between Russia and the West.

While the EU-state imposed sanctions on Russia over Crimea along with the rest of the bloc, Austria did not expel Russian diplomats like other Western nations following the March poisoning of a Russian former double agent and his daughter in Britain, an attack London has accused Moscow of being behind.

Trump's Director of National Intelligence former Indiana Republican Senator Dan Coats told the Atlantic Council that Russia "is attempting to influence the midterm elections in the United States in November as well as divide the transatlantic alliance." His statements are sure to flip Trump out and send him into a rage.

Coats said Russia had already undertaken an “unprecedented influence campaign to interfere in the US electoral and political process” in 2016. Russia, Coats pointed out, has also meddled in France, Germany, Norway, Spain, and Ukraine. "It is 2018, and we continue to see Russian targeting of American society in ways that could affect our midterm elections," he said.

Coats’ comments are aligned with assessments by the US intelligence community and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who in his previous role as director of the Central Intelligence Agency warned that he expected Russia to attempt to disrupt the midterm elections.

...“These Russian actions are purposeful and premeditated and they represent an all-out assault, by Vladimir Putin, on the rule of law, Western ideals and democratic norms,” he said.

“[Putin’s] actions demonstrate that he seeks to sow divisions within and between those in the West who adhere to democratic norms,” he added.

Is Congress going to let this slide? Probably. I don't see Ryan and McConnell standing up to Trump on this; do you? Max Boot is a conservative foreign policy expert but does anyone care that he's saying that "This transatlantic rift is a gift to Russia that amply repays Vladimir Putin's investment in helping the Trump campaign." It's the truth but Republicans aren't ready to hear it. John Kasich is leaving office and he said that Trump's pivot "does not protect or defend the national security interests of the United States or our allies." Who care what he says? Independent voters in November? Or is Putin taking care of that, as Coats alleges?