In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been somewhat in the US news lately, since she announced lowering the bar on allowing citizen initiatives to be put on the ballot, which would inevitably bring the question of Alberta leaving Canada to a vote. This in turn was prompted by Mark Carney's win in last week's election. Yesterday, she addressed Albertans on how she plans to navigate the province's conflicts with Ottawa. The full text of her address is here. I can't help but put this in the context of my post here Sunday on the message Justin Trudeau brought to Trump at Mar-a-Lago following Trump's victory in the 2024 US election, that if President Trump were to make the Canadian government face reciprocal tariffs, open the USMCA trade agreements to force reciprocity, and/or balance economic relations on non-tariff issues, then Canada would collapse on itself economically and cease to exist. What Premier Smith proposes to do is renegotiate the relationship betwe...

Yesterday, Trump posted on Truth Social , REBUILD, AND OPEN ALCATRAZ! For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery and Suffering. When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. . . . That is why, today, I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders. According to the US Bureau of Prisons , The U.S. Army used the island for more than 80 years--from 1850 until 1933, when the island was transferred to the U.S. Department of Justice for use by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The Federal Government had decided to open a maximum-security, minimum-privilege penitentiary ...

First, all the YouTubers were sure Poilievre was going to win the Canadian election. Once that didn't happen, they're all now sure this means Alberta is gonna have a plebiscite and vote to become independent, or join the US, or maybe become a territory on the way to becoming a state, or somethong like that. And after all, once Saskatchewan and Manitoba join Alberta, there are lots of conservatives in BC, right? Of course, nobody even knows what kind of supermajority Ottawa will want to see in such a vote, and right now, polling suggests there's not all that much support, but hey, it's gonna happen! A post by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse suggests the whole Alberta question is irrelevant and goes into the real origin of Trump's "51st state" proposal: Following the 2024 presidential election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau traveled to Mar-a-Lago and said if President Trump was to make the Canadian government face reciprocal tariffs, open ...

I seem to be finding a lot of material at The Atlantic lately. Alan Lightman, who has been a professor at both Harvard and MIT and appears to be nothing if not a member of the academic establishment, has recently sounded the alarm: The Dark Ages Are Back . Since April 22, more than 500 leaders of America’s colleges, universities, and scholarly societies have signed a statement protesting the unprecedented interference of the Trump administration into higher education, interference that included external oversight of admissions criteria, faculty hiring, accreditation, ideological capture, and, in some cases, curriculum. As the statement says, higher education in America is open to constructive reform. However, “we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses.” Especially targeted by the administration have been international students. Here's where his argument starts to lose momentum. In this post , I looked at so...

As many know, one of my hobbies is model trains, and every now and then, I'm amused when the hobby world intersects with real life. Real life, of course, always wins, but hobby types, being hobbyists, are usually surprised and disappointed when this happens. It's a little sad when people in the hobby supply business come out on the losing end as well, but this is almost always because they seem to forget that business involves real life, not a hobby. As the New York Times put it hehind a paywall this week, "Want to Escape the Financial News? Don't Try a Hobby." Somewhat belatedly, the model railroad industry has woken up to the fact that they outsourced the vast majority of their production to a small number of factories in China. Very little is actually known about these factories -- including how many there actually are and who's behind them. I suspect that they operate on much the same basis as larger enterprises that make products like cell phones....

A week ago Monday, I noted that Owen McIntire of Kansas City, MO had been arrested on charges of firebombing a Tesla dealership. This was in the context of the remarkably high proportion of Tesla arsonists who are trans males, and I wondered, as did others on social media, whether, given his feminine appearance in photos, he was trans as well, although legacy reports carefully avoided any reference. This morning, it was confirmed : The college student accused of firebombing a Tesla dealership has been released from federal custody to continue gender affirming medical care, according to a report. . . . The University of Massachusetts physics student was granted release by US Magistrate Judge Jessica Hedges due to “serious and ongoing” medical needs — which include gender-affirming medical care that requires daily medication as well as mental health support, according to KMBC. Fox News Kansas City quoted McIntire's defense attorney : “What the courts d...

Two weeks ago, Jeff Bezos stepped into one of the biggest PR disasters you could imagine. Aaron Cohen, a PR and brand executive. wrote : Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin may have made history on Monday for sending an all-woman crew into sub-orbit on its New Shepard rocket ship for all the wrong reasons. From a pure PR perspective, this was a Jupiter-sized faceplant. . . . It reeks of poorly performed virtue signaling. Showing extremely privileged women taking a magical vacation into space as passengers while leaving common folk grinding away at their hamster wheel does not a good deed make. . . . It is difficult to imagine any PR team approving this launch without waving flaming red flags. But just yesterday, Amazon and Bezos stepped in it yet again : Punchbowl News reported on Tuesday that, according to a source familiar with the matter, the e-commerce giant will start showing the figure added to the value because of the duties right alongside a product’s total pric...