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Capitol

Thursday January 21, 2021

January 28, 2021 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday January 21, 2021

Ford appeals to U.S. president-elect Biden for help securing more COVID-19 vaccines

Ontario’s premier appealed directly to U.S. president-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday for help securing more COVID-19 vaccines, a request that came as the province learned it would receive none of the doses expected next week.

April 28, 2020

Premier Doug Ford expressed frustration about a delivery slowdown of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot that means Ontario will receive thousands fewer doses over the next month. 

The province said that could mean its goal of immunizing all long-term care residents in the province by Feb. 15 won’t be achieved.

“My American friends … you have a new president, no more excuses, we need your support” Ford said. “That’s a direct message to President Biden. Help out your neighbour. You want us all to get along, hunky-dory, kumbaya – help us.”

Canada’s doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine are coming from a factory in Belgium that is being upgraded to ramp up production in the coming months.

Pfizer, however, also makes the COVID-19 vaccine at a facility in Michigan.

Ford appealed to Biden, who will be sworn in as president Wednesday, to share a million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot from that plant.

June 15, 2018

“We’re the third largest trading partner (to the United States),” he said. “The least you could do in Kalamazoo where the Pfizer plant is, great relationship-building, give us a million vaccines.”

Ford also expressed frustration with Pfizer executives about the vaccine delays and urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to ramp up pressure on the company to deliver more of the shots to Canada.

“If I was in (Trudeau’s) shoes … I’d be on that phone call every single day. I’d be up that guy’s yin-yang so far with a firecracker he wouldn’t know what hit him,” he said of Pfizer’s executives. “I would not stop until we get these vaccines.”

January 20, 2017

The federal government said shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine are expected to get back to normal levels in late February and early March. 

Canada was to get more than 417,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine this week and next, but will now get just 171,093 doses this week and nothing the next week.

Trudeau said earlier Tuesday that his procurement minister, Anita Anand, has been on the phone with the company every day, a fact she confirmed in a briefing later. (Toronto Star) 

 

Posted in: Ontario, USA Tagged: 2021-03, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Capitol, Doug Ford, George W. Bush, inauguration, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Ontario, USA, Vaccine

Wednesday January 20, 2021

January 27, 2021 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday January 20, 2021

US historians on what Donald Trump’s legacy will be

‘His relationship with alt-right’

August 15, 2017

Donald Trump will be remembered as the first president to be impeached twice. He fed the myth that the election was stolen, summoned his supporters to Washington to protest the certification of the Electoral College vote, told them that only through strength could they take back their country, and stood by as they stormed the US Capitol and interfered in the operation of constitutional government. 

When historians write about his presidency, they will do so through the lens of the riot.

 They will focus on Trump’s tortured relationship with the alt-right, his atrocious handling of the deadly Charlottesville protest in 2017, the rise in violent right-wing extremism during his tenure in office, and the viral spread of malevolent conspiracy theories that he encouraged.

If Donald Trump had followed the example of his predecessors and conceded power graciously and peacefully, he would have been remembered as a disruptive but consequential populist leader. – Matthew Continetti is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, focusing on the development of the Republican Party and the American conservative movement.

‘A surrender of global leadership’

November 14, 2017

His attempt to surrender global leadership and replace it with a more inward-looking, fortress-like mentality. I don’t think it succeeded, but the question is how profound has the damage to America’s international reputation been – and that remains to be seen.

The moment I found jaw-dropping was the press conference he had with Vladimir Putin in 2018 in Helsinki, where he took Putin’s side over US intelligence in regard to Russian interference in the election.

I can’t think of another episode of a president siding full force with a non-democratic society adversary. 

It’s also very emblematic of a larger assault on any number of multilateral institutions and treaties and frameworks that Trump has unleashed, like the withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, the withdrawal of the Iranian nuclear framework.

Trump’s applauding Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, really turning himself inside out to align the US with regimes that are the antithesis of values that the US says it wants to promote. That is something that I think was really quite distinctive.

Another aspect is extricating the US from any really assertive role in promoting human rights throughout the world, and changing the content of the annual human rights reports from the State Department and not including many topics, like LGBT equality, for instance. – Laura Belmonte is a history professor and dean of the Virginia Tech College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. She is a foreign relations specialist and author of books on cultural diplomacy.

‘Putting democracy to the test’

January 8, 2021

Broadly speaking: Donald Trump, and his enablers in the Republican Party and conservative media, have put American democracy to the test in an unprecedented way. As a historian who studies the intersection of media and the presidency, it is truly striking the ways in which he has convinced millions of people that his fabricated version of events is true. 

What happened on 6 January at the US Capitol is a culmination of over four years during which President Trump actively advanced misinformation. 

Just as Watergate and the impeachment inquiry dominated historical interpretations of Richard Nixon’s legacy for decades, I do think that this particular post-election moment will be at the forefront of historical assessments of his presidency.

Kellyanne Conway’s first introduction of the notion of “alternative facts” just days into the Trump administration when disputing the size of the inaugural crowds between Trump and Barack Obama. 

Presidents across the 20th Century have increasingly used sophisticated measures to spin interpretation of policies and events in favourable ways and to control the media narrative of their administrations. But the assertion that the administration had a right to its own alternative facts went far beyond spin, ultimately foreshadowing the ways in which the Trump administration would govern by misinformation.

Trump harnessed the power of social media and blurred the lines between entertainment and politics in ways that allowed him to bypass critics and connect directly to his supporters in an unfiltered way. 

Franklin Roosevelt, John F Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan also used new media and a celebrity style to connect directly to the people in this unfiltered way, ultimately transforming expectations and operations of the presidency that paved the path for Trump. – Kathryn Brownell is a history professor at Purdue University, focusing on the relationships between media, politics, and popular culture, with an emphasis on the American presidency.

‘Reshaping the judiciary’

October 23, 2020

In what he did with judges, Trump has made a long lasting change over the next 20 years, 30 years in how policies will stand up to legal tests and how they’re able to be implemented – no matter what any particular president or administration proposes. 

The courts are controlled by the Republican appointees. Sometimes judges surprise us, but for the most part, the historical evidence is that they pretty much do what their politics and their backgrounds say they will do.

When he supported that package of measures that helped particular people in the black community, like First Step, pardoning people at the same time that he supported an amendment in the appropriations bill that gave a whole bunch of money to historically black colleges and universities for the first time. 

He put all of these things together, as well as having the first stimulus programme making sure that black businessman and entrepreneurs get some of those loans they’ve had trouble getting before.

The effect of all of that, which we will see over time, was in the midterms, a lot more young black men voted for Trump than before. And if that’s a trend, it may help the Republican party.

Trump also made egregious comments about black people and other people of colour, tried to have protests against police abuse disrupted and in other ways appealed to his white supremacist base.

His lasting impact on race relations depends on what the Biden administration does on policy, and on healing and how long the pandemic and economic downturn lasts. – Mary Frances Berry is a professor of American history and social thought at the University of Pennsylvania, focusing on legal history and social policy. From 1980 to 2004, she was a member of the US Commission on Civil Rights.

‘Contesting the 2020 election’

December 16, 2020

Contesting a very constitutionally and numerically clear election victory by Joe Biden. 

We’ve had plenty of really unpleasant transitions. Herbert Hoover was incredibly unpleasant about his loss, but he still rode in that car down Pennsylvania Avenue at inauguration. He didn’t talk to Franklin Roosevelt the whole time, but there still was a peaceful transfer of power.

Trump is a manifestation of political forces that have been in motion for a half century or more. A culmination of what was not only going on in the Republican party, but also the Democratic party and more broadly in American politics – a kind of disillusionment with government and institutions and expertise.

Trump is exceptional in many ways, but one of the things that really makes him stand out is that he is one of the rare presidents who was elected without having held any elected office before. 

Trump may go away, but there is this great frustration with the establishment, broadly defined. When you feel powerless, you vote for someone who’s promising to do everything differently and Trump indeed did that. 

A presidency is also made by the people that the president appoints, and a great deal of experienced Republican hands were not invited to join the administration the first go round. 

Over time, his administration has diminished to a band of loyalists who are really not very experienced and are ideologically uninterested in wise governance of the bureaucracy. What has happened within the bowels of the bureaucracy is going to be a slow slog to rebuild. – Margaret O’Mara is history professor at the University of Washington, focusing on the political, economic, and metropolitan history of the modern US.

‘Standing up to China’

May 11, 2019

The last gasps of his administration are the most consequential, as he exerts a control over his most devoted followers and he’s talking about running again.

He forced people to consider what the presidency has become in a way that wasn’t true I think either during the Bush or Obama administrations. Issues like the 25th Amendment and impeachment hasn’t been thought of since Bill Clinton, really.

It’s possible that people now when they think of the presidency are perhaps going to adopt a different stance going forward, knowing that someone like Trump could come along.

It’s possible that Congress will delegate less to the president and take away some authority.

The president has demonstrated that there’s a constituency who’s opposed to a lot of these trade deals and that there are people willing to vote for those who will either extricate us from these trade deals or “make them fairer”. 

The president has also suggested that China has been taking advantage of the United States in ways that are deleterious to our economic and national security – and I think there’s a consensus behind this view. No one wants to be accused of being soft on China, whereas no one cares if you’re “soft” on Canada, right? 

I think people are going to fall all over themselves to be tougher or at least say they’re tougher on China.

Domestically the president had a populous tone to him. It wasn’t ever fully realised in his policies, but we see more Republicans adopting populist ideas. – Saikrishna Prakash is a University of Virginia Law School professor focusing on constitutional law, foreign relations law and presidential powers. (BBC)

Posted in: USA Tagged: 2021-03, Capitol, Donald Trump, Lady Liberty, legacy, Presidency, pulling the rug, statue, USA

Tuesday January 12, 2021

January 19, 2021 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday January 12, 2021

White House moving day packed with taxpayer-funded Covid-19 cleanings and shifting sports equipment

A thorough cleaning is part of the every-four-years tradition that comes with the outgoing president and his family swapping White House living with the incoming president and family. 

December 12, 2020

The delicate and highly choreographed event of packing up and moving out, and unpacking and moving in, done by dozens of prepped and trained staff and movers, typically occurs in the six-hour window when both the exiting and entering presidents and their spouses attend Inauguration Day ceremonies on Capitol Hill. By the time the new president and first lady return to the White House, all of their stuff will have been moved in and ready to go — down to a refrigerator stocked with their favorite foods and the master bathroom equipped with their preferred shampoo. 

But, like most things Trump administration, this January 20 won’t be very traditional.

Before the Bidens move in, the White House will first undergo a Covid-19 cleansing, top to bottom, from East Wing to West Wing. According to federal contract data reviewed by CNN, the total for the amplified White House inauguration deep clean right now hovers near a half-million dollars. 

This includes $127,000 for what one government order refers to as “2021 Inaugural Cleaning,” bid out to Didlake, a Virginia-based business that employs people with disabilities for jobs including janitorial and housekeeping services. That’s separate from a $44,000 order for carpet cleaning and the $115,000 purchase agreement for “2021 Presidential Inauguration and Transition Carpet Replacement and Installation to correct the current floor condition of selected interior floors for various offices,” within the East Wing, West Wing and Executive Office Building, according to the description.

November 24, 2020

In traditional administration-swaps, the bulk of the cleaning, while thorough, is done predominantly by White House staff — housekeepers, butlers, ushers — and upkeep such as electrical fixes and small maintenance jobs completed by White House workers, of which there are typically 90 to 100 in roles that range from pastry cooks to florists to plumbers. 

However, this time around, the incoming Biden administration wanted to ensure that 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, which has been a hot spot of at least three Covid-19 breakouts, gets the sort of scrub-down a pandemic deserves, according to a White House official who spoke with CNN on the condition of anonymity. 

“The idea that they would just move in seems unlikely,” said the official, who was not aware of the specific contract numbers but was aware there were additional measures being taken after the Trumps leave the White House. (CNN) 

 

Posted in: USA Tagged: 2021-01, 25th amendment, Capitol, cleanser, covid-19, Donald Trump, impeachment, insurrection, Oval Office, removal, sedition, USA, White House

Saturday November 16, 2019

November 23, 2019 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday November 16, 2019

Trump impeachment: Stunning scenes as witness applauded after seeing off real-time ‘intimidation’ by president

Career diplomat Marie Yovanovitch received a rare, emotional standing ovation after she testified about Donald Trump’s threatening intimidation over Ukraine, and fended off in real time a stunning Twitter attack from the president.

November 2, 2019

As Ms Yovanovitch delivered her testimony on Capitol Hill, providing a damning portrait of a “smear campaign” against her led by Rudy Giuliani, Mr Trump’s personal lawyer, Democrats accused the president of seeking to intimidate witnesses, and said his words could be included in any articles of impeachment.

At the conclusion of Ms Yovanovitch’s evidence, congressman Adam Schiff, the Democratic chair of the House intelligence committee underscored the historic nature of the day. He said Mr Trump’s attack on the diplomat had been “just appalling”.

“But as we have observed so often, appalling in this administration is not the least bit surprising,” he added. “Nonetheless, she endured the attack and went on. We are grateful for that.”

April 13, 2018

Asked about suggestions from several members of his party that the president’s tweet could form part of an article of impeachment, he said they were “part of a pattern to intimidate witnesses. It’s also part of a pattern to obstruct the investigation”.

For her part, Ms Yovanovitch received loud applause from many of those watching, when she concluded almost five hours of testimony. In unusual scenes, spectators spontaneously started clapping when Mr Schiff gavelled the hearing closed, then stood and cheered for her as she left the room.

Ms Yovanovitch, 61, was not considered the Democrats’ star witness. As Republicans pointed out, the party first chose to call William Taylor and George Kent to deliver the opening public testimony on Wednesday.

The two men, like Ms Yovanovitch long-time career professionals who had served presidents of both parties, detailed how Mr Trump apparently placed his own political needs ahead of the security of Ukraine, by making military aid and a state visit to Washington dependent on Kiev announcing an investigation into Joe Biden and his son. Republicans have long accused the Democratic former vice president of improperly using his position to oust a prosecutor who threatened the business interests of his son, though there is no evidence to support the claims.

January 20, 2017

Ms Yovanovitch’s manner and demeanour were similar to those of her colleagues – methodical, logical and stressing service of country over partisan politics. She reminded her audience that diplomacy was not just about cocktail parties, and that US diplomats had died while working to represent the nation, most recently in the 2012 attack on a compound in the Libyan city of Benghazi.

Yet, the words of Ms Yovanovitch, who was recalled in May from her position as the US ambassador to Ukraine at the behest of Mr Trump and Mr Giuliani, carried more power for several reasons. Firstly, in her prepared remarks, she referred to discovering the president had been using been discussing her removal. (The Independent) 

 

Posted in: USA Tagged: 2019-40, architecture, bomb, Capitol, Donald Trump, social media, twitter, USA

Friday March 31, 2017

March 30, 2017 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday March 31, 2017

US President Donald Trump keeps getting tripped by checks & balances

Will Donald Trump transform the US in his first 100 days through executive orders and new laws? Will he wreak protectionist, anti-immigrant and anti-minority havoc? Relax. The US Constitution is designed to hobble presidents. It divides power between the president, US Congress and the judiciary, giving no branch an overriding authority. Each is subject to checks and balances.

Neither legislators not judges feel inferior to or obliged to kowtow to the president. He has to negotiate with even minor Congressmen for legislative support. If instead he tries to bludgeon his way forward, he suffers humiliating setbacks. Trump has proved that repeatedly. Again and again he has charged forward with high-volume rhetoric and been tripped up. With every trip, he looks less fearsome, and sometimes comical.

His latest humiliation has been the forced postponement of his Bill repealing Obama’s healthcare scheme, something central to his platform. His own Republican Party’s right wing refused to go along, saying Trump’s changes were not radical enough. Trump says Obamacare will implode anyway. But the world now knows that the Republican majority in Congress has a mind of its own — as was true of Democratic majorities when Democratic presidents were in power. Trump will have to wheedle and cajole, not bludgeon. He may have to dilute or abandon many proposals. (Source: Times of India) 

 

Posted in: USA Tagged: balance, Capitol, checks, Congress, courts, Donald Trump, justice, scale, USA
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This website contains satirical commentaries of current events going back several decades. Some readers may not share this sense of humour nor the opinions expressed by the artist. To understand editorial cartoons it is important to understand their effectiveness as a counterweight to power. It is presumed readers approach satire with a broad minded foundation and healthy knowledge of objective facts of the subjects depicted.

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