USA

Friday June 26, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay – Friday June 26, 2020

‘Defund the police’ movement hits semantics roadblock

Activists calling to “defund the police” are encountering early opposition to their slogan, with some supporters saying it’s confusing and others worrying the overall goal could be misinterpreted.

June 10, 2020

The phrase, which has become a rallying cry among some advocates during the George Floyd protests, broadly refers to cutting funds for law enforcement and redirecting them toward social programs, particularly those focused on crime prevention and alternative forms of public safety.

The slogan became an easy target for President Trump and other Republicans who have seized on the wording in an attempt to paint Democrats as supporting lawless communities. However, top Democrats, including presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), quickly distanced themselves from the phrase.

“The slogan may be misleading without interpretation,” Rev. Al Sharpton said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this past week, adding that he understood the phrase to be more about deep-rooted reform efforts.

“I don’t think anyone other than the far extremes are saying we don’t want any kind of policing at all,” he said.

But the need to explain the meaning behind the wording comes with its own set of critics.

June 18, 2015

“If you’re explaining, you’re losing, and there’s a lot of explaining going on,” Meghan McCain, a right-leaning commentator said on ABC’s “The View.”

“If you mean reform, say reform. If you mean defund, say defund. People are confused,” she added.

Evan Nierman, the CEO and founder of crisis communications PR firm Red Banyan, said the message has its pros and cons.

“The plus for them is that it’s a phrase that’s a call to action, it’s something tangible that they can demand. Rather than just saying ‘equal rights for all’ or ‘justice for all,’ we want this concrete thing,” he said.

But long-term, Nierman said he didn’t think it was a good slogan.

“It may be good at prompting a conversation, but the language is so extreme that it alienates. If they came up with something that more accurately portrays the policy, it might get more public support,” he said.

Some prominent activists and political leaders have pushed back on the idea that a grassroots slogan should be changed so that it has broader appeal.

“Lots of DC insiders are criticizing frontline activists over political feasibility and saying they need a new slogan. But poll-tested slogans and electoral feasibility is not the activists’ job. Their job is to organize support and transform public opinion, which they are doing,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted.

“And by the way, the fact that ppl are scrambling to repackage this whole conversation to make it palatable for largely affluent, white suburban ‘swing’ voters again points to how much more electoral & structural power these communities have relative to others,” she added. (The Hill) 

 

Wednesday June 24, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday June 24, 2020

Bully Advocate

August 23, 2019

The United States has spoken out forcefully against China’s prosecution of two Canadian men for spying. 

In a statement Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington was “extremely concerned” about the decision to file espionage charges against Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who have been detained in China since 2018. 

“These charges are politically motivated and completely groundless,” Pompeo said. “The United States stands with Canada in calling on Beijing for the immediate release of the two men and rejects the use of these unjustified detentions to coerce Canada.”

Coronavirus cartoons

Kovrig and Spavor were detained in the weeks following the arrest in Vancouver of Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of the Chinese technology company Huawei in late 2018, on charges filed in the US. (CNN) 

Meanwhile, in a book released this week by former White House official, John Bolton, U.S. President Donald Trump does not like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and once personally instructed his staff to attack him in television interviews.

In his soon-to-be-released memoir, The Room Where It Happened, Bolton recounts the leaders’ notorious dustup at the G7 conference in Quebec in 2018.

June 4, 2020

The tension at the meeting was widely known at the time, given Trump’s move to impose broad tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, including products from allied countries like Canada.

Bolton, the former White House national security adviser, said the president had negative feelings about the leaders of Canada and France. In his book, he describes the unusual interpersonal dynamics of their meetings.

“Trump didn’t really like either Macron or Trudeau,” Bolton writes. “But he tolerated them, mockingly crossing swords with them in meetings, kidding on the straight.

“I assume they understood what he was doing, and they responded in kind, playing along because it suited their interests not to be in a permanent tiff with the U.S. president.”

December 4, 2019

Bolton offers an insider account of one well-known flareup at the end of that G7 meeting. 

The leaders were struggling to hammer out a closing communiqué at the conference.

At one point, Bolton writes, Trump’s then-chief of staff John Kelly called for Bolton to join the prolonged haggling session — where the problems in the meeting were quickly made clear.

Bolton writes the chief of staff walked out as he was walking in, saying, “This is a disaster.” 

Bolton quickly concurred — he says Trump seemed tired, yet Macron and Trudeau were aggressively pushing the president to accept policy provisions he disagreed with.

He says he couldn’t tell if Trump was playing hardball with them. But he did conclude the president had not prepared for the G7 meeting and didn’t understand the issues. (CBC) 

 

Tuesday June 16, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday June 16, 2020

Don’t be fooled into thinking Republicans are split over Trump

Breaking news: Republicans might finally be willing to break with President Donald Trump. Following the president’s performance with Covid-19 as well as his response to the Black Lives Matters protests there have been a number of stories speculating about whether the GOP will finally come undone.

April 23, 2020

The drama is greatly exaggerated. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski told reporters that she is “struggling” to figure out how to vote in November … When Colin Powell announced that he would support Joe Biden and former president George W. Bush revealed he would not support Trump, the New York Times reporters a “growing number” of Republicans were debating how far to go. 

The speculation about internal handwringing and possible “turning points” within the GOP never ends. It’s the drama that never happens, but one the press loves to keep following.

It needs to stop. The notion that there is a major fissure between the Republicans and President Trump simply masks the character of the modern party. Republicans nominated and elected Donald Trump to be President four years ago. They have stood by him, and done so even in the toughest of times. Nothing, even his “fine people” remarks after a 2017 white supremacist marchin Charlottesville or his recent hardline response to mass marches over George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police, shakes this. 

February 7, 2020

When we look at President Trump we see the modern party before our very eyes. Stories about internal division mask this basic reality and suggest that there are greater options outside the Democratic Party than actually exist.

When Trump decries those who want to bring down Confederate monuments and treats the job of governance as if it is a third rate reality show, he represents the party. When he invokes former president Richard Nixon and conservative Democrats George Wallace and Frank Rizzo while screaming about “law and order” as a response to civil rights protests, or tweets out “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” he speaks for the GOP.

The story of the Trump presidency has been a story about how comfortably he sits within his party. Throughout his term, polls have shown remarkably solid support for the President within the Republican electorate, regardless of his actions. By and large, congressional Republicans have stood by him at every turn, protecting him from investigations and continuing to vote the party line on most issues. Of course, some such as Maine Sen. Susan Collins hem and haw, but that’s the sum total of their profiles in courage. 

The saga of Sen. Mitt Romney captures where the party has gone. After launching the #nevertrump “movement” in 2016, Romney ended up going along with the President in the early years. Recently, he has received kudos for standing up to Trump that, while being well deserved, actually reveals how low the bar has moved. When Senator Romney was the only Republican to vote for conviction during the President’s impeachment trial for using foreign policy to help his re-election bid, it said more about what the rest of his party now considered to be acceptable than it did about Romney. When it was a headline to see Romney march with civil rights protesters against police brutality, the moment showed how far the GOP has distanced itself from this basic call for social justice.

The most realistic assessments of the President have come from George Conway, a genuine conservative married to the President’s adviser, Kellyanne Conway, knows Trump well. Conway has started the Lincoln Project, launching blistering ads about the President and the entire party. He has consistently blasted former colleagues who suggest that they can distance themselves from the person in the Oval Office.

These are platitudes meant to disguise the choice voters actually face in November, between a party that has gone all in with Trumpism and another that has not. Every American is free to decide which choice they prefer for the next four years, but nobody should be under the illusion that a different option is on the table. (CNN) 

Thank you Thomas Nast for your enduring symbol of the U.S. Republican Party or Grand Old Party

November 7, 1998
January 20, 1999
February 24, 2000
August 3, 2000
November 4, 2000
May 25, 2001
February 8, 2008
November 14, 2014
October 12, 2016
March 3, 2016
September 28, 2018

 

 

Thursday June 4, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 4, 2020

Trudeau’s 21-Second Pause Becomes the Story in Canada

November 12, 2018

When asked what he thought of President Trump’s call for military action against American protesters and the tear gassing of peaceful demonstrators to make way for a photo-op, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paused at his podium for 21 uncomfortable, televised seconds. He opened his mouth, then shut it — twice. He softly groaned.

Finally, in a scene on Tuesday that has now spread wildly around the internet, Mr. Trudeau said: “We all watch in horror and consternation what’s going on in the United States.”

From their perch above the United States, Canadians have been watching in shock as the country they’ve long considered their closest friend and protector now seems like a crazed, erratic and dangerous stranger.

April 18 2020

Most of the country’s horror has been focused  on President Trump. Even the country’s conservative newspapers were filled with columns like one by Gary Mason stating, “There couldn’t be a scarier person inhabiting the White House at this very moment.”

While politicians here have set aside their partisan differences to work together to protect Canadians from the coronavirus, Mr. Trump is viewed as politicizing the pandemic for his re-election effort.

“My view is one of profound sadness — sadness at watching communities we respect being so torn apart, and sadness at watching the loss of life in the pandemic,” said Frank McKenna, a former premier of New Brunswick and a former Canadian ambassador to the United States. “The United States is so polarized, the question of wearing a mask or not is fraught with political overtones. It’s excruciating to watch.”

Prime Minister Trudeau, however, dared not openly criticize President Trump in his response on Tuesday. Instead, like many other Canadian leaders, he chose to ruminate on racism against black Canadians and other minorities. (NYTimes) 


 

 

Wednesday June 3, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday June 3, 2020

The Protests Will Spread the Coronavirus

The wave of mass protests across the United States will almost certainly set off new chains of infection for the novel coronavirus, experts say.

May 29, 2020

The virus seems to spread the most when people yell (such as to chant a slogan), sneeze (to expel pepper spray), or cough (after inhaling tear gas). It is transmitted most efficiently in crowds and large gatherings, and research has found that just a few contagious people can infect hundreds of susceptible people around them. The virus can spread especially easily in small, cramped places, such as police vans and jails.

As such, for the past several days, the virus has found new environments in which to spread across the United States. At least 75 cities have seen widespread demonstrations and social unrest as Americans have gathered to protest systemic racism and the killing of George Floyd, the black man who died last week under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. Dozens of cities imposed curfews over the weekend amid widespread looting. It has been among the most turbulent moments of societal upheaval in the U.S. since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

The pandemic and unrest together have trapped the country in a bind. The demonstrations oppose police brutality. But peaceful, masked protesters—and the journalists covering them—have sometimes been met with an overly aggressive police response.

“I don’t think there’s a question of whether there will be spikes in cases in 10 to 14 days,” Mark Shrime, a public-health researcher at Harvard, told me. “With so many protests happening, that are getting so much bigger, I don’t think it’s a question of if, but when and where.”

Coronavirus cartoons

Maimuna Majumder, a computational epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, agrees. “All things considered, there’s little doubt that these protests will translate into increased risk of transmission for COVID-19,” she told me by email.

Yet that risk does not lead Majumder to oppose the protests. “I personally believe that these particular protests—which demand justice for black and brown bodies that have been brutalized by the police—are a necessary action,” she said. “Structural racism has been a public-health crisis for much longer than the pandemic has.” Even the COVID-19 pandemic has harmed black people disproportionately, Majumder told me. While about 13 percent of Americans are black, a quarter of all COVID-19 deaths where the victim’s race is known have befallen black people, according to the COVID Racial Data Tracker.

Alexandra Phelan, a professor of global-health law at Georgetown University, also told me she believed that the protests were justifiable, even amid the public-health crisis. She drew a difference between these protests, against police brutality, and the protests earlier this spring, which opposed mask mandates and social-distancing rules. At the very least, she said, many protesters this weekend were wearing masks, reducing the risk of transmission to the community. (The Atlantic)