- The polls in today's election remain extremely close. The margin of error is big enough that either candidate could win a healthy majority of electoral votes. Notably, Harris needs to win the popular vote by 2.1 points in order to have a realistic chance of actually winning the Electoral College - and she'd need to beat Trump by 4.5 points in order to have a landslide. One of the things to worry about is that if Harris' margin of victory is narrow enough that a single state could make the difference, Trump's pawns in the Supreme Court could decide to award the election to him.
- Besides the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, numerous other American newspapers have declared that they will not be endorsing any candidate. More interestingly, there seems to have been a precipitous drop in endorsements since 2016. Admittedly, there were signs of a downward trend before then (and in and of itself it might not even a bad thing), but it's really taken off since Trump first rose to the presidency. Now some of this might come down to newspaper owners preferring to avoid paying taxes, and so papers that might previously have endorsed the Republican candidate might just avoid an endorsement since endorsing Trump looks so darned bad. But it's noteworthy that among papers that have stopped endorsing candidates, a disproportionate number of them were papers based in states that Trump won and which had endorsed Clinton in that election. It sure looks like the papers are downright scared of Trump... or rather of his supporters. Which makes sense given that Trump recently said at a rally that he wouldn't mind if a few journalists got shot...
- Murray Sinclair, groundbreaking judge and senator, has died at the age of 73. A member of Peguis First Nation, he became Manitoba's first indigenous judge (and the second in Canada) in 1988, presiding over the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry in 1988 and later the Truth and Reconciliation commission before being appointed to the Senate in 2016.
- The newly elected BC legislature now faces the task of selecting a speaker. This is a tricky matter, as the speaker does not vote on bills except to break a tie, and they are constrained by convention on how to vote on such matters (essentially, they vote to preserve the status quo, so on first and second readings they vote yes to preserve debate, while on the third reading they vote no unless it is a confidence matter, in which case they vote yes). And if an NDP MLA is chosen as speaker, the NDP will have a minority government in all but name; they'll need the support of the Greens (or the Cons) to pass anything beyond a budget. Meanwhile the Cons are fulminating over an apparent error that resulted in a box containing 861 ballots not being counted on election night. It should be noted that this occurred in the constituency of Prince George-Mackenzie, a riding that the Cons won by over 5,000 votes. A smaller, yet potentially more consequential error occurred in Surrey-Guildford, in which 14 votes were initially overlooked in a constituency that the NDP held by only 27 votes. Of course the Cons will continue to scream malfeasance regardless of what any future inquiries reveal, because that's what they do.
- There's been another violent carjacking in Winnipeg, in which the driver was hit by his own vehicle after being bear-sprayed. The vehicle was later recovered but the suspect remains at large.
- Manitoba's Independent Investigation Unit, which is supposed to investigate potential criminal activity by police officers, has recommended no criminal charges for a Winnipeg cop who failed an alcohol screening after being uncooperative with RCMP officers who pulled him over near Rennie. I guess most of the members of the IIU still have to drive to work and thus are vulnerable to police harassment...
- A man who ran his truck into a march for residential school survivors after making racist threats towards the marchers has avoided jail, instead receiving a 9-month conditional sentence and a 12-month driving prohibition.
- I can't say I've ever seen a Hallmark movie (some of which are made right here in Winnipeg, incidentally). Those whose judgment I trust generally seem to think that they constitute a high crime against the cinematic arts. Others might disagree, but I think even those people could agree that overtly ageist casting policies are worthy of disapproval.
No comments:
Post a Comment