MAGA

Saturday October 31, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday October 31, 2020

Biden’s Call for ‘National Mask Mandate’ Gains Traction in Public Health Circles

October 10, 2020

As the nation heads into what public health experts are calling a “dark winter” of coronavirus illness and death, public health experts are coalescing around Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s call for a “national mask mandate,” even as they concede such an effort would require much more than the stroke of a presidential pen.

Over the past week, a string of prominent public health experts — notably Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease specialist, and Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration under President Trump — have said it is time to seriously consider a national mandate to curb the spread of the virus.

Overseas this week, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia became the latest foreign leader to impose a national mandate for citizens to wear masks. Mr. Trump is opposed to a mandate, and Mr. Biden has conceded that a presidential order for all Americans to wear masks would almost certainly face — and most likely fall to — a legal challenge.

March 6, 2020

Mr. Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, echoed the “dark winter” language during the most recent presidential debate, and he is already using his bully pulpit to promote and reinforce a culture of mask wearing. If elected, he will almost certainly do more.

Mr. Biden has already said that, as president, he would mandate masks on all federal property, an executive order that could have wide reach. He could use his authority under federal transit law to require masks on public transportation. He could also prod governors who are resisting mask mandates to at least require masks in public buildings in their states.

But that is delicate terrain in the United States, where Mr. Trump has turned the act of wearing or not wearing a mask into a political statement. Public health and legal experts say it would be far better for Mr. Biden — or Mr. Trump, for that matter — to use his powers of persuasion to convince Americans that covering one’s face to curb the spread of the virus is a patriotic or civic-minded action.

“Instead of making it about the president’s coercive authority under law it should be about whether the president can support a norm that supports public health, which is in people’s self interest,” said Harold Hongju Koh, a law professor at Yale University and an expert in national security and human rights.

Mr. Trump, however, has shown little interest in supporting such norms. At a rally on Wednesday in Arizona, he mocked California’s mask mandate, saying, “You have to eat through the mask.” (New York Times) 

 

Thursday September 24, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday September 24, 2020

Covid: US death toll passes 200,000

More than 6.8 million people are known to have been infected in the US, more than in any other country. 

September 15, 2020

The milestone comes amid an increase in cases in a number of states, including North Dakota and Utah. 

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the new death toll was a “horrible thing” and claimed China “should have stopped” the virus. 

He also defended his record, claiming that had the US not taken action, “you could have two million, 2.5 or three million” dead. 

JHU reported the new death toll of 200,005 on Tuesday. The university has been collecting US and global coronavirus data since the outbreak began late last year in China. The first case in the US was confirmed in January.

President Trump’s administration has been repeatedly criticised over its handling of the outbreak. 

August 26, 2020

“Due to Donald Trump’s lies and incompetence in the past six months, [we] have seen one of the greatest losses of American life in history,” Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said on Monday. 

“With this crisis, a real crisis, a crisis that required serious presidential leadership, he just wasn’t up to it. He froze. He failed to act. He panicked. And America has paid the worst price of any nation in the world.”

But on the same day, Mr Trump said he and his administration had done “a phenomenal job” and gave himself an “A+” for his handling of the pandemic. 

He said the US was “rounding the corner on the pandemic, with or without a vaccine”. (BBC) 

 

Tuesday June 23, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday June 23, 2020

Tory Leadership Debates Spotlights Bad French, Social Conservative Issues

The contenders for the federal Conservative leadership traded fewer pointed barbs during the English-language debate in Toronto on Thursday, appealing for more party unity to defeat Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government.

April 28, 2020

After the presumed front-runners, Peter MacKay and Erin O’Toole, had several heated exchanges during a bumpy debate in French the night earlier, neither showed the same chippiness on stage Thursday, making only the odd jab.

The two-hour debate also gave the social conservatives in the race, Ontario MP Derek Sloan and Toronto lawyer Leslyn Lewis, plenty of runway to share their perspectives. (I(n the French debate, Ontario MP Derek Sloan and Toronto lawyer Leslyn Lewis were left to watch on the sidelines, especially during the open debate format. Both were hampered by their inability to speak French. MacKay and O’Toole’s abilities are passable but would likely be deemed inadmissible if they were debating in English.)

The candidates criticized the Trudeau government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis and its unsuccessful bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council — something both MacKay and O’Toole called a “vanity project” for the prime minister.

June 3, 2020

But they were also asked to weigh in on another issue that is top of mind for many Canadians: systemic racism.

Here are some of the highlights from the last official debate of the race, which will wrap up in August.

Although MacKay repeatedly challenged O’Toole during Wednesday’s French debate to state whether he is pro-choice or anti-abortion — a throwback to the pressure outgoing Tory Leader Andrew Scheer faced during the fall election campaign — there were no such fireworks Thursday. 

Likewise, the two men did not debate each other’s record on LGBTQ issues, including support for same-sex marriage and transgender rights.

May 25, 2019

At one point, Sloan said MacKay and O’Toole would agree with him that it’s “not right Canada doesn’t have any laws when it comes to abortion.” Sloan asserted that Canada’s position is “out of whack with most of the developed world.” Neither man responded to that charge.

Although MacKay and O’Toole have said they oppose conversion therapy, neither objected when Sloan said the Liberals are “radically far to the left” for seeking to ban the practice.

Sloan, who has accused the Liberal government of “effectively putting into law child abuse” with its proposed legislation to ban conversion therapy, said he would repeal such a law as prime minister. Both he and Lewis have also pledged to repeal the transgender rights law enacted by the Liberals in 2016. That law added new rights protections to prevent discrimination based on a person’s gender identity or expression.

October 25, 2016

MacKay and O’Toole may have had strategic imperatives for not challenging Sloan or Lewis on social issues. The next leader of the Conservatives will be chosen according to a ranked ballot, where members list candidates by order of preference. The support of the last place candidate in each round will be redistributed to the second choices of their supporters.

In the 2017 Tory leadership race, support from social conservatives was seen as crucial in helping Scheer best front-runner Maxime Bernier.

Derek Sloan predicted Donald Trump will be re-elected for a second term: “Under this next government, which will be a Conservative government, I know our relationship with the United States will be restored. And I’ll go so far as to say, I am confident that Donald Trump will defy the odds again and be the next administration and when I am leader of the Conservative party, I will give him a call and congratulate him.” (Huffington Post)

 

The monolingual, monotone cast of wannabe Prime Ministers of Canada offer nothing of enlightenment & vision for the difficult times ahead. from r/canadapoliticshumour

 

Thursday July 18, 2019

July 18, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday July 18, 2019

‘Send Her Back’: The Bigoted Rallying Cry of Trump 2020

December 9, 2015

On Wednesday night in North Carolina, Donald Trump agitated rally-goers with inflammatory rhetoric about Representative Ilhan Omar, a naturalized American born in Somalia, until his supporters began chanting “send her back”––as if a legal immigrant who became a U.S. citizen can or should be denied equal treatment under the law and extra-constitutionally deported by the president.

Burning a copy of the U.S. Constitution would show no more contempt for it than the crowd’s bigoted, nativist reverie about tyrannically deposing an elected member of Congress. No opinion expressed by the congresswoman, no matter how wrongheaded, could excuse the un-American mob.

The crowd’s authoritarian outburst and the purposefully divisive, irresponsible presidential rhetoric that prompted it portends an ugly Trump campaign for reelection. Like “lock her up,” the chant that Trump rally-goers directed at Hillary Clinton in 2016, “send her back” is poised to travel the country with the president.

January 13, 2018

Already, the civic poison of the chant has been televised and celebrated on social media by Trump supporters. Naturalized immigrants must have heard it and felt anxious. Racists must have heard it and felt glad. Children must have heard it, too, and felt uncomfortable, knowing in their gut that the chant is wrong. Some kids are surely being malignly influenced by its repudiation of the American creed.

Republicans know that more of the same is coming. Wednesday’s rally put them on notice: Trump intends to run a reelection campaign that stokes the ugliest impulses of his base, no matter how much damage it does to the civic fabric of America and no matter how much hatred it stirs up against immigrant populations. The overwhelming majority of the GOP and its electorate are sticking by Trump anyway, even though they could be working for a contested primary election.

That is shameful.

How many times between now and Election Day 2020 will Trump whip up a crowd of his supporters into a new frenzy of bigoted, unconstitutional nativism? Four more years of this would be devastating for America. (The Atlantic) 

MacKay’s Sci-Fi Gallery

February 26, 2008
April 30, 2009
July 20, 2009
May 9, 2012
February 21, 2013
March 19, 2013
January 31, 2014
May 7, 2014
November 13, 2014
January 16, 2015
August 19, 2016
May 31, 2018
November 14, 2018
November 18, 2017
July 18, 2019
July 17, 2019
September 22, 2012

 

Tuesday January 22, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday January 22, 2019

Indigenous veteran mocked by students in video says he tried to ease tensions at National Mall

Students at a Kentucky Catholic school who were involved in a video showing them mocking Indigenous people outside the Lincoln Memorial after a Washington rally could potentially face expulsion, according to the diocese.

June 6, 2018

In a joint statement, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic High School apologized and said they are investigating and will take “appropriate action, up to and including expulsion.”

The Indigenous Peoples March in Washington on Friday coincided with the March for Life, which drew thousands of anti-abortion protesters, including a group from Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky.

Videos circulating online show a youth staring at and standing extremely close to Nathan Phillips, a 64-year-old Indigenous veteran singing and playing a drum. Other students, some wearing Covington clothing and many wearing “Make America Great Again” hats and sweat shirts, surrounded them, chanting, laughing and jeering.

November 3, 2017

“We extend our deepest apologies to Mr. Phillips,” the diocese statement read. “This behaviour is opposed to the Church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person.”

According to the “Indian Country Today” website, Phillips is an Omaha elder and Vietnam veteran who holds an annual ceremony honouring Indigenous veterans at Arlington National Cemetery.

Marcus Frejo, a member of the Pawnee and Seminole tribes who is also known as Chief Quese Imc, said he had been a part of the march and was among a small group of people remaining after the rally when the boisterous students began chanting slogans such as “make America great” and then began doing the haka, a traditional Maori dance. In a phone interview, Frejo told The Associated Press he felt they were mocking the dance.

April 20, 2018

One 11-minute video of the confrontation shows the Haka dance and students loudly chanting before Phillips and Frejo approached them.

Frejo said he joined Phillips to defuse the situation, singing the anthem from the American Indian Movement with both men beating out the tempo on hand drums.

Although he feared a mob mentality that could turn ugly, Frejo said he was at peace singing despite the scorn. He briefly felt something special happen as they repeatedly sang the tune.

“They went from mocking us and laughing at us to singing with us. I heard it three times,” Frejo said. “That spirit moved through us, that drum, and it slowly started to move through some of those youths.” (Source: Hamilton Spectator)