News roundup, 17 Sept 2024

- The federal NDP managed to squeak out a win in the Elmwood-Transcona byelection. The Liberals weren't so fortunate, losing the longtime stronghold riding of LaSalle-Émard-Verdun to the Bloc Québécois.

- At the provincial level, the Manitoba NDP is facing a bit of awkwardness after Fort Garry MLA Mark Wasyliw was expelled from the party caucus. The party's caucus chair, Riel MLA Mike Moyes, was quoted as saying that this follows revelations that one of Wasyliw's colleagues in his law practice was involved in the defense of Peter Nygard. Now it's possible that Moyes was misquoted, or misspoke himself, but if not then this is a very strange and rather troubling move - even a monster like Nygard is entitled to legal representation, and this should not be seen as a stain on the lawyer who takes the job, much less their colleagues. That said, as far back as last fall concerns were raised by the party about the amount of time Wasyliw would be able to devote to the job of representing his constituents if he remained active as a defense lawyer, and he got all pissy when denied a cabinet post last fall (even though being a cabinet minister while practicing law would have been even more difficult than being a backbencher).

- Charges have been laid against the owners of Spirit Rising House, the private, for-profit foster home provider that was giving marijuana to the kids in their care.

- Amazon is completely doing away with hybrid work. They say they fear that without such measures their corporate culture could be "diluted"; as usual, they make absolutely no mention of commercial real estate. Notably, the demand for office space in Amazon's home city of Seattle is the lowest among major American cities; I have to assume that Amazon owns a fair bit of that real estate and that this is a measure to protect their investment. To be fair, there could be real issues with a crash in that market; there could be ripple effects in the economy as REITs that specialize in these products collapse, and the decline in property values could potentially starve municipalities of revenue.

News roundup, 16 Sept 2024

- Another person apparently tried to kill Donald Trump yesterday, but was chased off before he could get a shot off at the former president. The suspect has been captured alive; the impact on public opinion remains to be seen. It doesn't speak well for the political culture in that country, in any case.

- Several schools as well as state and municipal offices in Springfield, Ohio were closed on Thursday over a bomb threat. The threat was reportedly related to Trump's rather strange claims about the dietary practices of Haitian immigrants.

- The byelections in Elmwood-Transcona and LaSalle-Emard-Verdun happen today. The latter one has a ballot with no less than 91 candidates thanks to an organization called the Longest Ballot Committee, who say they recruited numerous candidates as a protest measure against the first-past-the-post electoral system. While the system is very much worth protesting, I'm not sure if this is the most effective way to do so. And you can be sure that if the Liberals hold onto that riding, but the results are delayed as a result of the committee's stunt, people will use this to claim that the election was rigged.

- Pierre Poilievre still refuses to go through the necessary procedures to get a security clearance that would allow him to read the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) report on foreign interference in Canadian politics, despite the fact that 60% of his own party's supporters would like him to do so. He says this is because he would be unable to publicly discuss details of the report. Of course he can't publicly discuss those things anyway, and some in this Reddit thread suspect ulterior motives.

- Two new candidates have expressed an intent to compete with former Winnipeg Blue Bomber and current Fort Whyte MLA Obby Khan for the leadership of the Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party. Trevor Sprague, a tax consultant and onetime Canadian Alliance candidate, announced last week that he is considering a run, and hotel operator and onetime federal Conservative candidate Wally Daudrich made a similar announcement shortly after.

- A woman in Norfolk County, Ontario was charged with assault after what she says was an inadvertent squirting of her neighbour with a water pistol while playing with her child. Folks on Reddit are insinuating that the neighbour in question has a long history with his neighbours of calling the authorities over trivial and petty matters; in this thread as well as this one it is further alleged that the woman's ex-husband is an OPP officer.

- An eastbound Ford F-150 left the road just inside the Perimeter and annihilated a bus shelter and the person inside it as well as a utility pole and another vehicle before running into a gas station. Three other people were injured.

News roundup, 12 Sept 2024

 - Jagmeet Singh has indicated that he now opposes the carbon tax as introduced by the Liberals, saying that it puts too much burden on working people. I kinda, sorta get what he's saying, but I think a better approach would be to oppose the GST. If I was in charge, what I'd do is eliminate the GST and raise the carbon tax to make the change revenue neutral; that way there'd be no net increase in the regressiveness of the tax regime, but a strong incentive to shift one's purchases towards more environmentally benign things. Of course politics is the art of the possible, and maybe Singh fears that the existing carbon levy is so tainted by the fact that it was introduced by the Trudeau government that the only way to avoid being associated with the Liberals is to reflexively oppose it.

- The Toronto International Film Festival has cancelled the screening of Russians at War, a documentary by Russian-Canadian filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova. The film profiles frontline Russian soldiers, some of whom express doubts about the war, and its official description as submitted to TIFF describes the war as "unjust", but nonetheless some Ukrainian groups denounced the film as "propaganda" (perhaps because it humanizes the Russians too much for their liking).

- The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has proposed new rules that would limit the sizes of vehicles for the consumer market. A good move on both safety and environmental grounds; unfortunately there's a good chance that auto industry lobbyists will kill it.

- A division of Cox Media Group has pitched the idea of having smartphones do what many have suspected for years that they already do - namely listen to ambient conversations and direct advertising to their users based on the content of said conversations. Notably, the pitch mentioned that Apple, Google, and Meta are all clients of CMG; all those companies have denied that they make use of this capability, but meanwhile Ford has filed a patent for something similar that would direct ads towards their cars' users.

- Following the sudden death of Cathy Merrick, the Grand Chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, at a public event, the Winnipeg Free Press published a photo of Merrick lying on the ground. The AMC was outraged at the publication of the photo and called for a boycott of the newspaper. The paper is apologizing for their handling of the incident.

- Peter Nygard has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for five sexual assaults committed in his company's Toronto office. Including credit for time served he'll be out in 7 years if he's still alive (a big if, that).

- A few thousand years ago the Sinai Peninsula was a much greener place than it is now. A Dutch engineer has a scheme to make the desert bloom, though some environmentalists fear that there could be serious unintended consequences, assuming that the scheme works at all.

News roundup, 10 Sept 2024

- Ukraine has upped the ante in the war, sending numerous drones into the Moscow area. At least one person was killed and dozens of flights were forced to divert. Russia accuses Ukraine of targeting residential neighbourhoods, which even if true is a wee bit hypocritical.

- With the NDP and Conservatives essentially tied in the polls following the Conservatives' de facto absorption of BC United, one political scientist thinks that the Cons are seeking to present a moderate image by getting former BC United candidates to represent them in the suburbs. He think the NDP still has a slight edge, though, due to their votes being more "efficient" (one of those quirks of the first-past-the-post electoral system). Meanwhile, despite their leader's move to merge with the Cons, some candidates will apparently still be running under the BC United banner, which is also potentially good news for the government.

- Federally, the byelection being held next week in the Quebec riding of Lasalle—Émard—Verdun is turning out to be a much bigger fight for the Liberals than they've generally faced there. The Bloc Québécois is within striking distance of winning. Meanwhile the NDP faces a similar fight in Elmwood-Transcona.

- A plan to open an addiction rehabilitation home in Winnipeg's suburban Lindenwoods neighbourhood is getting a lot of pushback from locals, who expressed concern that it will attract drug dealers and violence. The neighbourhood is one of the wealthier and more socially conservative ones in the city, so that's to be expected. Hopefully good sense will prevail, but you can never be sure.

- A 65 year old man has been sentenced to 7 years in prison for the death of a 38 year old man in Hartland, Wisconsin. He had apparently confronted the younger man about his tattoos, saying that "marking up God's work is a sin", then punched him, causing him to fall and strike his head on the sidewalk. Now I'm no expert on religious matters, but I'm pretty sure that killing someone because you don't like his looks would be considered a sin by most faiths.

- A Delta Air Lines A350 got a little too close to a CRJ owned by a subsidiary of the same airline, and knocked off the entire empennage. Nobody was hurt, but I suspect that at least one of the captains is going to have some 'splainin to do.

News roundup, 5 Sept 2024

- Following the incident on Monday night when a woman was run over and killed by a police car driving through a park, numerous protesters blocked the intersection of Portage and Main yesterday. One vehicle attempted to plow into the protesters, hitting one of them (though not seriously injuring her); other protesters then attacked the vehicle and driver in retaliation. Video of the incident can be seen here.

- The decision by federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh to scrap the supply and confidence accord with the Liberals may lead to an earlier election than planned - but not necessarily. Singh is keeping mum about whether he intends to bring down the government; he likely wants to delay an election long enough to benefit from being less closely tied to the Liberals, and even more important he probably wants to ensure that enough people see the benefits of the dental care plan to make scrapping it unpalatable to the Conservatives (who are virtually certain to win the election when it comes). Interestingly, recent polling suggests that the accord was supported by a slight majority of Canadians.

- A 14 year old in the Atlanta suburb of Winder has been charged with fatally shooting two students and two teachers at a local high school. The suspect had been interviewed by the FBI as recently as last year regarding alleged online threats to commit a mass shooting, but was not charged due to lack of evidence. Fun fact - guns are the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 18.

- Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is threatening legal action against two counties if they proceed with mailing out registration forms to enable voters to vote by mail. Not surprisingly, the two counties in question are both urban and have a large Latino population; can't make it too easy for those people to vote, you know.

- The far-right AfD has won a plurality of seats in the German state of Thuringia with over 32% of the vote; they may find it difficult to cobble together a coalition though, especially with party leader Björn Höcke hurling insults at prospective coalition partners including the Christian Democrats. Some think his real plan is to tolerate a minority government by one of the other parties until he can vote to bring it down at a convenient time.

- James Gaddis, a cartographer in Florida's state parks authority, was fired after he blew the whistle on a secretive plan to convert several environmentally sensitive areas into golf courses and the like. The plan was withdrawn after an uproar when it became public, but Gaddis was nonetheless sacked for "conduct unbecoming a public employee".

- A zoo in Toledo, Ohio had been maintaining natural prairie grass on the median of a nearby street. Unfortunately the city decided to mow it all down, apparently because the wild look upset some loudmouthed citizens' suburban sensibilities.

News roundup, 4 Sept 2024

- Jagmeet Singh and the federal NDP has evidently lost their patience with the Liberal government, saying that several of the promises made by the Liberals in making the confidence and supply accord have not been fulfilled. Accordingly, they have torn up the agreement, potentially meaning that the government could fall at any time.

- Kamala Harris has a solid lead against Donald Trump in the nationwide popular vote, but remains statistically tied with him in key swing states. So somewhat promising but a sane outcome remains far from assured thanks to the peculiarities of the Electoral College. A big concern is the possibility of something analogous to the "shy Tory" factor in British politics.

- Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is trying to get his name removed from the ballot in several states following his endorsement of Donald Trump - but in Michigan and in North Carolina this request has been denied. Yet strangely, he is still trying to get reinstated to the ballot in New York after having been previously removed for misrepresenting his residency.

- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he plans to hold onto the seized Russian territories indefinitely, not because he wants to annex them but as a bargaining chip.

- Doug Ford has severely restricted safe injection sites, banning them within 200 metres of a school among other things. Yet he's more than willing to allow stores near schools to sell one of the most socially damaging drugs. He doesn't like it when this is pointed out, though.

- A list of donors to the so-called "Freedom Convoy" in 2022 includes several of the BC Conservative Party's candidates in the upcoming provincial election.

- The TTC has introduced a feature to its transit app that will show unplanned reroutes in real time. Seems to me that something like that is needed in Winnipeg (and elsewhere).

- While leaded gasoline has been banned for automotive use in most places for decades, it is still widely used in aviation. California is moving to change that, and plans on a full ban by 2031.

News roundup, 3 Sept 2024

 - The National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA) has cited the infamous Dred Scott case as an argument for keeping Kamala Harris off the presidential ballot. Of course the ruling hasn't had legal standing since the Thirteenth Amendment was passed in  1865, but evidently the Republican base isn't fully on board with that fact.

- Donald Trump gave a limited defense of abortion rights in a recent interview with NBC News, presumably in the hope of winning some urban and suburban votes. Predictably, though, his base is apoplectic; the whole thing paints a picture of a candidate who is desperately flailing in the hope of winning in the fall.

- The Alberta government has severely limited municipalities' abilty to use photo radar to enforce speed limits and other traffic laws. 88% of fatal traffic accidents in Alberta in the last year have occurred on roads impacted by the new rule, but the UCP has to please the truck folks I guess.

- A new Angus Reid poll has the BC NDP and Conservative parties in a statistical tie as the fall election looms, following the merger between the Conservatives and BC United.

- A woman was hit by a police car and killed in Winnipeg's Fort Rouge Park. The park is the site of a large homeless encampment, and the involved officers were apparently driving someone back to the encampment when the accident occurred. In tangentially related news, protesters blocked the Harry Lazarenko Bridge on Friday, following an incident earlier last month when a woman named Doris Porter was fatally run over while lying on the bridge; imagery associated with MMIWG2S was used in the protest. From an outsider's point of view it seems a bit odd to link this case with actual murders, but it's inevitable that a community that undeniably has legitimate grievances in the big picture will try to pigeonhole marginal or dubious cases. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

- A robotic window washer is being tested in New York City. This has the potential to eliminate one of the more dangerous jobs out there; while the current model still has to be operated remotely (which is presumably the best of both worlds from a safety and employment point of view) the manufacturer has plans to develop an autonomous version in the future.