joe riel

Louis’ grand nephew

[Troy Westwood @TroyWestwood]

This is gold.

[Canada Hates Trump @AntiTrumpCanada]

Every. Fucking. Word.

Comedian Cliff Cash delivers a brutally on-point takedown of the so-called “tough” MAGA men, describing Trump as “a dying pedophile…with a pussy on his neck, who paints his face orange every day and shits in his pants.”

Watch the whole thing. 🔥

[politicalnash @Nach9636]

The Ballad of Steven Miller @StephenM #DV1 #DemsUnited

[joe riel @riel_joe]

@Devin_Heroux Been there, done that. YOU SHOULD TOO!

[George Stroumboulopoulos 🐺 @strombo]

Of all the things I’ve seen said about the [other] halftime show. This seems to be the [most] accurate.…

the people who want “their own” halftime show are the same people who wanted their own drinking fountains.

[Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 @cmclymer]

Today, Canada announced its divorce from America. I'm not kidding.

Every January since 1971, thousands of business leaders, politicians, journalists, economists, policy experts, and celebrities have gathered at a mountain resort in Switzerland to discuss the most pressing global issues of the day in hundreds of sessions scheduled over the better part of a week.

The conference, organized by the World Economic Forum, has come to be nicknamed after its Alpine host town: Davos.

The annual gathering in Davos has been criticized in many corners over the years for its exclusive nature, which is somewhat fair and somewhat reductive.

Progress does emerge from these sessions among the assembled players, but so, too, does the feeling of window-dressing for what is mostly supercharged networking.

This weekend, while talking with friends who have attended in the past, I asked if they had experienced anything extraordinary during the scheduled sessions, or if Davos is more of an opportunity to meet influential people and kibitz about preferred projects?

Well, today could not have delivered more of an empathetic answer to that question.

Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, gave a magnificently powerful speech before the gathered elites that will be discussed many years from now. Decades, likely.

It was, essentially, an eloquent and poignant announcement that Canada is divorcing the United States. Over sixteen minutes, Prime Minister Carney called upon the world to recognize that the current global framework in which superpowers run the show is stale, destructive, and unnecessary.

Right out of the gate, early in the speech, he took a direct shot at Trump and Putin and Xi—but mostly directed at Trump—with a searing anecdote from an essay written by Václav Havel, the late president of the Czech Republic (remarks italicized):

In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel, later president, wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless. And in it, he asked a simple question: How did the communist system sustain itself?

And his answer began with a greengrocer. Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: “Workers of the world, unite!” He doesn’t believe it. No one does. But he places the sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists.

Not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.

Havel called this “living within a lie.” The system’s power comes not from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true. And its fragility comes from the same source: when even one person stops performing — when the greengrocer removes his sign — the illusion begins to crack.

Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.

This was the first applause break, and the tone was immediately set. You can feel people sitting up in their seats and thinking: Oh, damn, this is gonna be good.

He then briefly outlined the current system of geopolitical power: the strongest nations (United States, Russia, China, etc.) chart the course for the rest of the world, typically through international organizations, and the rest of the world accept this in exchange for security, predictability, and a practical trajectory for their own prosperity.

He pointed out that the rest of the world have always known this is a “partially false” framework and that the strongest nations are never held to the same standards they expect of everyone else.

But still, it’s what they had, and even if frustrating (and infuriating at times), it mostly worked in the past. He then says this:

This fiction was useful. And American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes. So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

This bargain no longer works.

Let me be direct: We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

This is the diplomatic equivalent of a wronged spouse telling their partner: No, I am not asking for a break or a trial separation. It’s time to move on.

He then got to the heart of the matter: all these instruments supposedly existing for global policy based on mutual cooperation—the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, NATO, etc.—only work if the superpowers who have the most leverage within them are engaging in good faith.

What, then, are the current incentives for the rest of the world to trust the United States and other superpowers? He delivered this devastating summation:

But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot “live within the lie” of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

[…]

And as a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions — that they must develop greater strategic autonomy: in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains.

And this impulse is understandable. A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.

He basically called out Trump’s fecklessness and isolationism and toddler antics while the rest of the world has bent over backwards to placate Trump’s nonsense:

And the question for middle powers, like Canada, is not whether to adapt to the new reality — we must. The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls or whether we can do something more ambitious.

Canada was amongst the first to hear the wake-up call, leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture.

Canadians know that our old, comfortable assumptions — that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security — that assumption is no longer valid.

[…]

Principled in our commitment to fundamental values: sovereignty and territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force except when consistent with the UN Charter and respect for human rights.

For a big chunk of the speech, he outlined all the reasons Canada is ready to stand strong with the rest of the world in this New Order as it leaves the Old and Stale. He talked about his nation’s economic development and diplomatic strides and growth as a trusted partner all over the world.

This is PM Carney saying: Canada knows its worth, and we know this current relationship is complete bullshit. We’re not taking it anymore. We’re done:

Middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.

But I’d also say that great powers can afford, for now, to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity and the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not. But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what’s offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating.

This is not sovereignty. It’s the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination. In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: compete with each other for favour or to combine to create a third path with impact.

We shouldn’t allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity and rules will remain strong — if we choose to wield them together.

Hey, middle powers, we don’t need these dickhead superpowers, he says with far more eloquence. The writing is on the wall. It’s time to ditch these assholes and foster the network of relationships between nations who engage in good faith.

He then closed with more pride in Canada and made it clear they’re ready to start this new chapter with every middle power who’s tired of this shit:

Canada is a pluralistic society that works. Our public square is loud, diverse and free. Canadians remain committed to sustainability.

We are a stable and reliable partner in a world that is anything but. A partner that builds and values relationships for the long term.

And we have something else. We have a recognition of what’s happening and a determination to act accordingly.

We understand that this rupture calls for more than adaptation. It calls for honesty about the world as it is.

We are taking the sign out of the window.

We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.

But we believe that from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, more just.

This is the task of the middle powers. The countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from genuine co-operation.

The powerful have their power. But we have something too — the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together.

That is Canada’s path. We choose it openly and confidently.

And it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.

He finished his speech and received the rare standing ovation of the gathered elites at Davos and deservedly so.

Because guess what?

The rest of the world is tired of America’s bullshit — problems that existed before Trump but were largely manageable enough to fall in the realm of pragmatic working relationships have now worsened exponentially in the past year.

Trump has pissed off one of the nicest countries on earth—our northern neighbors, who have faithfully stood by us in times of great calamity and never wronged us—so much that their leader told the world today that enough is enough and the United States and other superpowers should understand what has been done cannot be undone.

As an American watching this, I felt tremendous guilt and embarrassment over what Trump has done to our global reputation, when even our closest allies are thoroughly and openly repulsed at the thought of working with us, so much so that nothing can repair the damage inflicted by this coward and his enablers in the Republican Party.

But I also felt hope watching the Prime Minister. For the first time in a long time, I was struck with a sense of optimism over how much more outside pressure is being applied to the fascist clowns currently running our government.

Let this be a wakeup call, indeed. We can’t fix all that has been broken, but there is still time to save what can be fixed.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Thank you for galvanizing us, Prime Minister Carney.

----
Link to full essay available here for easier sharing: https://t.co/1Lbq7WSCZX

[Emoluments Clause @Emolclause]

#BREAKING: Legendary #Maddow opener: "...today a federal court BLOCKED the Trump administration from cutting energy funding just for blue states, these are billions of dollars that Congress appropriated for clean energy projects of various kinds all over the country. Trump administration decided--and they admitted this--they decided that just in blue states, just in states that didn't vote for Trump, they would cut all of that funding. They'd leave the funding in place in states that voted for Trump, they would cut it in states that didn't vote for Trump."🤦‍♀️

[Ed Krassenstein @EdKrassen]

BREAKING: CBS just pulled this episode of 60 Minutes claiming it is “postponed” Here is the trailer that was pulled for the now “postponed” segment.

Make sure everyone sees it.

It’s remarkable how much harm Pro-Trump Bari Weiss has managed to inflict on CBS News in such a short time.

[P a u l ◉ @SkylineReport]

60 Minutes pulled their own trailer and abruptly canceled tonight’s “Inside CECOT” episode.

Not because it was wrong. Not because it failed fact-checking.
Because Trump reportedly didn’t like what was about to air.

When a sitting president can pressure a flagship news program into going dark on a story about secret deportations, torture, and court defiance, that’s not editorial discretion. That’s intimidation. And it tells you exactly how damning the footage must have been.

Here’s the trailer they deleted.

[joe riel @riel_joe]

@winnipegsun Vague accusations. Nothing in the article spells out the so-called egregious behaviour. Yet we do have very specific examples from the other side of the house. Refer to “waa waa” in response to the injustice of not affording the right to vote for our indigenous peoples.

[Senator Mark Kelly @SenMarkKelly]

When I was 22 years old, I commissioned as an Ensign in the United States Navy and swore an oath to the Constitution. I upheld that oath through flight school, multiple deployments on the USS Midway, 39 combat missions in Operation Desert Storm, test pilot school, four space shuttle flights at NASA, and every day since I retired – which I did after my wife Gabby was shot in the head while serving her constituents.

In combat, I had a missile blow up next to my jet and flew through anti-aircraft fire to drop bombs on enemy targets. At NASA, I launched on a rocket, commanded the space shuttle, and was part of the recovery mission that brought home the bodies of my astronaut classmates who died on Columbia. I did all of this in service to this country that I love and has given me so much.

Secretary Hegseth’s tweet is the first I heard of this. I also saw the President’s posts saying I should be arrested, hanged, and put to death.

If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work. I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.

[guyfelicella🇨🇦🍁 @guyfelicella]

Scott Galloway doesn't hold back and annihilates Trump for his tariffs and treatment towards Canada 🇨🇦

A decades long relationship that Trump has ruined within 10 months 🤬

Thank you Scott.

[Badlydone Emma is with her #Harris2024 @chemimommy]

Rep Neguse talking to the press the way Democrats should talk to the feckless media.

He handled that question spectacularly.

[Amy Klobuchar @amyklobuchar]

I went to the Senate floor to make the case for the resolution I lead with Senator Kaine to overturn the punishing Canadian tariffs. No way to treat an ally 🇨🇦 and no way to treat the American people.

It passed the Senate! The House needs to come back and act.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Angus: We were being led to believe by you that Trump was all ready to sign a trade agreement. And then Canada had an ad that just quoted Reagan during the World Series, and your president lost his shit — and now he’s saying there’s never going to be a trade agreement, that he’s not going to talk to Canada again.

How the hell did you get hired, Pete, to be the ambassador to what was America’s number one ally? But let’s face it, Pete — we know Canada is not America’s number one ally anymore. Vladimir Putin is.

[Jean Charest @JeanCharest_]

Thank you President Trump for drawing our attention to a historic and foundational document in the Canada–U.S. economic relationship. I invite everyone, especially our American friends, to listen to President Reagan’s full speech and form their own opinion about what he was truly saying.

[Aaron Parnas @AaronParnas]

This is the ad Donald Trump woke up furious about.

Would be a shame if it went viral.

[Wab Kinew @WabKinew]

President Trump’s tariffs go against Ronald Reagan’s legacy.
Doug Ford’s ads are good — keep them on TV 🇨🇦 #elbowsup

[George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway3d]

There he goes again

[BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ @mmpadellan]

BREAKING: trump is having a temper tantrum, ending ALL trade negotiations with Canada.

He's butthurt that they aired an ad of President Reagan that shows how dumb trump's tariffs are.

It's VERY effective.
Be a shame if it went viral. 🇺🇲🇨🇦