Mark Igglesden on the pandemic
A #coronavirus cartoon by my old Calgary punk rock brother Mark Igglesden. Brilliant.
The dark despair of the Covid winter
From today’s New York Times. Amazing writing and perspective, here and some below:
For generations, as the days darkened and the blizzards came, the Anishinaabe people warned of the Windigo.
He is the monster of winter, dripping with ice and white with snow, and he is starving, said Robin Wall Kimmerer, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, as she remembered the story of her ancestors. He is a human turned cannibal. His hunger is never satiated, and it endangers everyone around him. He thinks only of himself.
In winter, a time of scarcity, she went on, he is a cautionary tale to remember the good of the community, beyond the self. Winter is known as the hungry time, the dangerous time, she said, and people counted their age not by years but by how many winters they have survived — that man has 70 winters, this woman has 16. They wintered in small family groups, not villages, to spread out the demand on the land.
This winter, as the coronavirus pandemic consumes the country, it is as though we are reliving the unbuffered winters of our ancestors, she said.
“In wintertime, all life is on that knife edge between life and death,” said Dr. Kimmerer, the director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. “Winter is a teacher of vulnerability.”
This year a raw and unbridled winter has descended. Its darkness is literal, with the coming of the solstice on Monday, and it is metaphorical, with the catastrophic toll of Covid-19, as each day the number of dead grows steadily. Across countries, the arrival of winter has filled people with fear and dread for what is to come.
Me on AntiCulture
Residential schools: key dates
• 1883: residential schools set up to “kill the Indian in the child”
• 1920: law forcing internment of all Indigenous children, ages 7-15
• 1996: last residential school closes, 6,000 children have died in them
• 2020: Erin O’Toole says the schools “provided education”
Sun Media hit: where are the Conservatives? And what do they need to be doing differently?
Shot this one before O’Toole blew off several toes with his insensitive and idiotic Residential Schools statement. But the comments herein still apply.
Joe Biden will be POTUS!
WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden clears 270-vote threshold in Electoral College count, formalizing his victory.
— Julie Pace (@jpaceDC) December 14, 2020
Sun Media hit: the three big problems Trudeau needs to fix
KINSELLACAST 137: Adler, Mraz, celebrities, China and clout! Plus echo-y tunes!
This week’s Sparky: vaccine, vaccine, who’s for the vaccine?
It’s over. Trump has lost – in court, and with the people.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday rejected an audacious lawsuit by Texas that had asked the court to throw out the presidential election results in four battleground states captured by President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The court, in a brief unsigned order, said Texas lacked standing to pursue the case, saying it “has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections.”
The move, coupled with a one-sentence order on Tuesday turning away a similar request from Pennsylvania Republicans, signaled that the court refused to be drawn into President Trump’s losing campaign to overturn the results of the election last month.
There will continue to be scattered litigation brush fires around the nation from Mr. Trump’s allies, but as a practical matter the Supreme Court’s action puts an end to any prospect that Mr. Trump will win in court what he lost at the polls.