Dictatorships gonna dictate.
Not related in any way whatsoever. I’m not even sure myself why I’m including it here: Chinese film director Chang Kai and family die from coronavirus: Four members of same family die during self-quarantine at centre of outbreak in Wuhan.
It’s a “people’s assembly,” you see; but with very few people. Apparently, it’s hard to do radical ecomentalism, denouncing modern life and the use of fossil fuels, when it’s cold and you have no heating.
Knowing what we know now…
Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has been released from federal prison after Pres. Trump commuted his 14-year sentence.
"I've made a whole bunch of mistakes, but I didn’t break any laws," Blagojevich told reporters at Denver International Airport. https://t.co/JA4nWHQFJv pic.twitter.com/UG7iQdF6V9
— ABC News (@ABC) February 19, 2020
He probably has a point.
In 2008, then-FBI Director Mueller authorized a totally unnecessary and ruthless predawn raid on then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois. Blagojevich, a Democrat, was arrested in front of his two terrified young daughters. He supposedly conspired pay-to-play schemes to fill then-President Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat. The arrest and subsequent trial made national headlines. The fame-hungry federal prosecutor in the case? None other than Comey’s best friend, Fitzgerald.
[…]
As Blagojevich’s lawyers wrote in their appeal to the Supreme Court, in McCormick v. United States, it was decided that “extortion based on soliciting campaign contributions requires a quid pro quo in the explicit promise or undertaking by a public official.” In Evans v. United States, the Supreme Court “blurred the relative clarity of the McCormick ruling.” And because of these two rulings, there is confusion at the lower courts.
Former Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, once a rising star in the Republican Party, was found guilty of accepting more than $130,000 in gifts from a donor-friend who needed the governor’s office and influence to help to save his struggling company. The gifts made national headlines, with pictures of McDonnell driving around in a Ferrari, a $20,000 shopping spree in New York, and a $6,000 Rolex. In the end, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction.
Time spent in prison? Zero days.
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., accepted donations and gifts from his wealthy friend Salomon Melgen in exchange for political influence. Melgen provided Menendez with trips on private jets, hotel rooms, and contributed nearly $75,000 to his political campaign. In the end, his trial concluded with a hung jury, and the Justice Department then filed to dismiss all remaining charges. And last Thursday, the Senate Ethics Committee “severely admonished” the senator for accepting gifts over a six-year period.
Time spent in prison? Zero days.
Unlike the cases of McDonnell and Menendez, Blagojevich never accepted lavish gifts, flew on private jets, took luxurious vacations, drove around in a Ferrari, or wore Rolexes in exchange for his political influence. And yet he is serving 14 years in prison as a first-time offender.
I wonder what the hell he knew about Obama.
We live in a century that criminalizes the sale of plastic straws and grocery bags as Elon Musk shotguns thousands of satellites into orbit and nobody seemingly gives a damn: …after he has control of the entire planet’s WiFi, we guess that Musk will probably use that power to ban access to anyone who makes a snide remark or offers criticism about any of his companies on the web.
I see an end to bike lanes.
Showdown At Big Sky – Robbie Robertson.
Thread’s up.
Let’s play Catch A Leaker1.
1 Just a wild guess.
Mark Gerretsen represents the Ontario riding of Kingston and the Islands. It’s a long way from Fort McMurray but that isn’t stopping the Liberal MP from not only opposing the project but spending money, perhaps your money, to shut it down.
Gerretsen has posted on Facebook about a petition put forward by the Queen’s University Liberals, and sponsored in the House by Gerretsen, to reject the proposal.
“We, the undersigned, citizens of Canada, call upon the Government of Canada to reject the proposal to build the Teck Resources Frontier Oilsands Mine in Alberta as it is not in the best interest of Canadians,” the petition reads.
Isn’t this the equivalent of an Alberta MP asking the federal government to shut down Ontario’s manufacturing sector? Or calling for a stop to all the tax breaks to Toronto’s film productions? That wouldn’t go over too well in Ontario and this won’t go over well in Alberta.
I’ve been in a paint booth all day, so instead of trying to play catch up on today’s Trudeau debacle and his open shunning of Western Canada, this is an open thread for those topics, plus anything else that makes you want to yell at Scott Moe to stop wasting our time and interests on this neverending shit show.
It’s not going to get better. A Conservative government in Ottawa won’t make it better. Move on. Get the ball rolling on a decoupling strategy now, lest the SaskParty find itself competing with a third option in the next provincial election.
Related.
I have worked as both a police officer & in civilian oversight of policing. Police don’t stand down when crimes are being committed unless they’re instructed to. @JustinTrudeau is selective with police independence, just like he was selective about independence of Prosecutions.
— Jamie Mask (@jmask) February 19, 2020
In the pages of Salon, where our progressive betters ruminate, Nicole Karlis ponders the latest fashionable anxiety. Specifically, “Stories of heartache, tears, stress and dehydration that people experienced after a forced separation from their water bottles.”
Old Crow Medicine Show – I Hear Them All
It’s likely to be a slow posting day, so here’s a chance to entertain yourselves.
The Bloc Quebecois will introduce a motion in Parliament Tuesday calling on the government to kill the proposed Frontier Teck mine in northern Alberta, the Western Standard has learned. Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet will introduce a motion: “That the House call on the government to not authorize the Teck Frontier mine development, as this project can not be reconciled with the Paris Agreement targets.”
Sorry, link fixed.
Protesters have blocked access to the Thousand Islands Bridge as families return home after the Family Day long weekend.
The Thousand Islands Bridge Authority says traffic restrictions to Canada are in effect due to protesters on the Canadian span of the bridge crossing.
In a message on Twitter, Ontario Provincial Police announced Highway 137 is closed in the Lansdowne area, including access from Highway 401 eastbound and westbound and access to the United States.
How thoughtful of the OPP to step up to the plate with volunteer traffic control. Mighty neighborly.
Fire in the hole!
Watch Churchill’s Northern Lights, live.
Comments are open for your tips.
It was the best I could come up with.
Vegan @BernieSanders supporters rushed the stage at campaign rally in Nevada, stole the mic, stripped down, and poured red "milk" all over themselves.
“Bernie, I’m your biggest supporter and I’m here to ask you to stop propping up the dairy industry…”pic.twitter.com/jqInyugpMq
— trutherdot.gov❌ (@yruidjits) February 17, 2020
From the deepest, darkest corner of the conspiracy net;
When Professor Xu published his essay, he warned that he was likely to be punished; he said he had already been suspended from work, lost his position as a professor, and had “freedoms curtailed” over critiques published nearly a year earlier.
“I can now all too easily predict that I will be subjected to new punishments; indeed, this may well even be the last piece I write,” he wrote at the end of his latest essay.
Friends say that, since publication, Xu’s account has been suspended on WeChat, a Chinese messaging app, and they have been unable to get in touch with him for days. Most believe he has not been detained, and is at home in Beijing, but his name has been scrubbed from Weibo, and only a few articles from several years ago showing up on the country’s biggest search engine, Baidu. Calls to his mobile phone went unanswered on Friday.
In a further reminder of the government’s strict controls, two citizen journalists who were reporting from the epicentre of China’s coronavirus outbreak have vanished this week, apparently detained.
Just like the flu.
Updated with a new report at the New York Times;
The cruise ship had been shunned at port after port for fear it might carry the coronavirus, but when the Westerdam arrived in Cambodia on Thursday, the prime minister greeted its passengers with flowers.
Amid assurances that the ship was disease free, hundreds of elated passengers disembarked. Some went sightseeing, visiting beaches and restaurants and getting massages. Others traveled on to destinations around the world.
One, however, did not make it much farther than the thermal scanners at the Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia. The passenger, an American, was stopped on Saturday, and later tested positive for the coronavirus.
On Sunday, with passengers already headed for destinations on at least three continents, health officials were scrambling to determine how a big a problem they now have — and how to stop it from getting bigger.
“We anticipated glitches, but I have to tell you I didn’t anticipate one of this magnitude,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
With more than a thousand passengers from the Westerdam headed for home, Dr. Schaffner said, it may be harder than ever to keep the coronavirus outbreak contained to China. […]
More than 140 passengers from the ship flew to Malaysia, and all but the American woman who tested positive and her husband were eventually allowed to continue on to their destinations, including the United States, the Netherlands and Australia, officials said. Over 1,000 other passengers took charter flights to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, and were in various stages of transit home, the cruise line said.
Pour yourself a drink.
