Four links make a post

[sabotabby]

Like most of the country (or at least the part of the country that's been snowed in and thus reading the news as it updates), I'm pretty fascinated by the Puglaas-Trudeau-SNC Lavalin story. It's...complicated. Puglaas, a.k.a. Jody Wilson-Raybould, the former federal Justice Minister who Trudeau booted down to Veterans' Affairs a few weeks ago, resigned from cabinet today after a rather strong implication that she was being pressured by the PMO to abandon a prosecution against SNC-Lavalin. SNC Lavalin gets a lot of government contracts, employs 8,500 Canadians, and the RCMP is charging them with corruption and fraud after they (cough*allegedly*cough) tried to bribe officials in Libya, including Gadhafi. If convicted, the company can't bid on federal contracts for ten years, and current projects might be jeopardized, so it makes sense that Trudeau might want to quietly make those charges against his buddies go away.

Oh, except that's horribly corrupt, WTF. And as the attorney-general, Wilson-Raybould seems to not have felt comfortable doing this and said so, and thus was demoted to a less prestigious portfolio.

Then she resigned with this masterfully loaded letter, signing it with her indigenous name, Puglaas. There's quite a bit of nuance there and no one is really sure what she's up to, but it does not seem as though the bombshells are going to stop dropping any time soon.

It should be said that she is not some noble whistleblower and a number of indigenous activists have spoken out about various shitty things she did in Justice. And this could go very badly, since as bad as Prince Justin is, Scheer is infinitely worse and Singh just doesn't seem to want to be PM enough to actually fight for it.

Anyway. Popcorn. Also soliciting opinions and theories.

*

Closer to home, Drug Fraud managed to do another sneaky in education. The EQAO is our massively fucked up series of standardized tests, given in grades 3,6, 9, and 10. These tests are a massive waste of teachers' and students' time, don't measure what they are supposed to measure, are riddled with errors, and are a needless expense when school boards are strapped for cash. 

The EQAO is a weird balance, because like all standardized tests, it has no pedagogical value, but it has immense political value. See, the test scores must not be too low, or Ontario students are underachieving. But it cannot be too high, or the test is too easy. Students must score approximately 75% to pass (contrary to what Ford believes), but the actual score to pass changes every year and no one gets told what it is until after the test. But to prove that our school system is improving, average test scores must rise over time. If you understand math better than a politician, you'll see the numerical constraint at work.

Traditionally, visuals such as posters, anchor charts, word walls, formulas, and so on, have to get taken down when the kids write the test so that they can't "cheat." But this year, they've changed it, allowing a lot of material that would be helpful to a student writing the test. I wonder why?

Well, I am against having the test at all. And if kids do need to write the test, having helpful material on the walls is probably a good thing, since in the real world you can look stuff up, as this isn't the bloody 19th century. But it's obvious that students writing under the new conditions, with classroom visual aids, have an advantage over students writing under last year's conditions, with no classroom visual aids. So everything else being equal, students this year should score, on average, higher than students last year.

LOOK, THE TORIES FIXED EDUCATION.

Head. Desk.

*

Finally, as proof that we live in the strangest possible timeline, I offer you two more links to consider.

The first is that FOX News guy who says that he never washes his hands because "germs aren't real." Now, I know that "FOX News host says something stupid" isn't exactly headline news, but you have to marvel at someone being so backwards that the germ theory of disease, initially proposed in the 1500s and proven conclusively in the 1800s, made absolutely no impact on his worldview. I'm actually boggling that this guy is walking around, not having somehow given himself cholera from eating his own poo.

These are the kinds of people who have the ear of the giant toddler with his finger on the big red button.

He doesn't. Wash. His. Hands.

Da fuck.

But I'll leave you on a happier note, because the strangest timeline isn't always one completely lacking in hope. Comrade Cher has called for a general strike on Twitter. Lead us, O Goddess of Pop, to the new world built from the ashes of the old! I believe (in life after love).

Comments

[dewline]

Well, you've since seen my weird and vague excuse for a theory about this SNC-Lavalin mess. I've posted a friends-locked version of it on Facebook asking my friendlisters working in the news services to take it apart.

[sabotabby]

Your theory is intriguing. I wouldn't discount it. This is the weirdest possible timeline.

Let me know what your news friends say. I'm fascinated.

[minoanmiss]

Wow. Um, I guess we should stock up on smores ingredients so we can toast marshmallows over the ashy embers of society?

[sabotabby]

Pretty much. Unless Cher can save us.

[dragonlady7]

I should look this up but it's worth mentioning the Fox News guy in question was not just a news anchor but until recently was IN THE RUNNING TO TAKE OVER OUR VETERANS' ADMINISTRATION HEALTHCARE SERVICE.
LITERALLY
WAS
UNDER
CONSIDERATION
FOR
VA SECRETARY
!!!

AnD HE DOesN"T BELIEVE IN GERM THEORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YOU COULD NOT WRITE THIS IN A NOVEL THEY WOULD LAUGH AT YOU
IT IS INCREDIBLE
I HAVE BURNT OUT MY OUTRAGE METERS

he doesn't believe in germ theory
he was in the running to be in charge of one of the largest healthcare networks in the country

[sara]

But just think of how much they'd save on hand sanitizer alone!

(Please note, I am 100% not serious, members of my immediate family get healthcare from the VA. About the only thing that could make the VA shittier -- apparently literally! -- is having it run by the caliber of people Trump appoints to public office.)

[sabotabby]

My best friend works for the VA and I get a lot of horrifying stories from her. They...do not need this. At. All.

[sara]

Not even a little.

(I just want Dad to get his fucking hearing aids. He has a service-related disability and he's seventy years old and I think it's time the government bought him a goddamn hearing aid. Yes he could find the money elsewhere but he shouldn't have to, and also all the people who CAN'T find the money elsewhere deserve THEIR hearing aids. Sheesh.)

[dragonlady7]

Awhile back I started following the Stars and Stripes on Twitter. They're the semi-official newspaper of the armed forces, I think? I knew them from a book of Bill Mauldin cartoons my dad had from that late great's time in WWII. (He's the one that did the cartoon, famous for a while, of the old cavalryman tearfully holding a pistol to the hood of his broken-axled Jeep.)
They were so carefully neutral about Trump from the beginning, it's been quite interesting-- because of course, even in neutrality, the things they choose to quote, the way they choose to present the headlines, were anything but, and at times had my teeth on edge.

But they have been relentless about the ongoing decrepitude of the VA, and there has been an absolutely spot-on ongoing series about the corruption of asking Mar-A-Lago members what they wanted the VA to do, and offering the spot to them, and so on-- there's no overt partisanship there but there's no careful framing either, it's just a bare recital of the outrageous facts.

[sara]

He campaigns on patriotism while kicking vets, active duty, and the entire civil service in the face. It's vile.

[dragonlady7]

It is ABSOLUTELY vile. But very much in the tradition of GWB before him, so why change now! It's just that they say the quiet part loud, now.

[sabotabby]

Like this is the thing I am TRYING to write a political novel that, granted, is urban fantasy but is supposed to have realistic characters, and I can't write realistic characters because people are like this.

[dragonlady7]

NO ONE WILL BELIEVE IT
If you just tell the truth NO ONE WILL BELIEVE IT
I also follow a lot of novelists on Twitter and there has been now two years of -- well, highkey outrage and screaming and such, but underneath it all, this deep exhausted incredulous groundswell of despair: we cannot mine current events for inspiration because none of this is well-written and no one would believe any of it.

[sabotabby]

I used to feel for Charlie Brooker and Armando Iannucci but things have gone so far past that now. What are they going to do for careers? Brooker wrote a telly episode about the PM fucking a pig; whoever thought something like that would happen?

[dragonlady7]

Just today I saw William Gibson (his twitter is fire, btw) answer a fan's question about why a particular book has been so long delayed with the confession that he had to scrap it and revert to a pre-Trump manuscript to write it, in the process transforming it into a sequel to an earlier work.
(His Twitter account is fire, by the way.)

[notasupervillain]

I see the SNC case much as you laid it out. The Liberals assumed that, as the natural party of government, they can conduct politics as they always have. Such is not the mood of the times. Usually they wait until their second term to pull stunts like this, but Trudeau is precocious.

And if you're gonna be forced out for being a bit of a shit, might as well tell a story about how you're a martyr.

[sabotabby]

I utterly can't believe that he's managed to turn a landslide victory into such a shitshow in such a short period of time. It's kind of amazing. Horrifying, because Scheer is lurking behind the curtains, ready to fuck up the country, but also kind of amazing because of how hard a task it must have been.

[notasupervillain]

I'm not surprised.

As I've said before, I am the moderate you were warned about by your hippie friends. But I'm not stupid. I looked at Justin and I saw a guy obsessed with his own image who calls himself a feminist because he thinks it plays well with the ladies. I desperately wanted to vote for Mulcair, who seemed like the sort of person who would accomplish things rather than spending twice as long talking about how much he planned to get done.

But then the citizenship outfit happened and Quebec happened and I looked at the numbers and I figured I could vote for Justin's party over Harper's party and my local Liberal MP was good on net neutrality and fuck it Justin couldn't be worse than Harper.

He's not worse than Harper. But nothing that's gone wrong in his government has surprised me.

I'm shocked that Jagmeet can't made a dent in this environment, though. And I'm not looking forward to Maxime pulling Andrew to the racist side of the right.

[dewline]

One thing that might help us avoid going right into the ditch is exactly that "Scheer vs. Bernier" stuff also going on.

[notasupervillain]

Counterpoint: I thought Doug Ford running in Ontario gave the NDP their best chance of beating the Conservatives and saving the carbon tax. Instead, Ontario is governed by Doug Ford.

[sabotabby]

You have to bungle pretty hard to not seize the situation Jagmeet's been handed. I mean, he's smart, he's charismatic, he ought to be popular, but he seems to be doing everything wrong in ways no one can quite pinpoint.

I was relieved when Trudeau got in (after my initial disgust because I do think he's quite the sleaze) because at least he's not Harper. But at a certain level—that 2-degree threshold that we keep talking about, specifically, very little else in politics matters.

[rdi]

I'm actually boggling that this guy is walking around, not having somehow given himself cholera from eating his own poo.

I mean, there's still time. Unless he's built up an immunity? (Which would mean germ theory is working...for him, anyway)

[sabotabby]

LOOOOL

This coupled with the Theresa May thing...I can't even.

[rdi]

She’s called the Maybot for a reason.

That mild thing reminds me of one of Harris’s minions suggesting that people ask for a discount on dented tins. And the Trump apparatchik who suggested people ask their grocery stores for credit. Our ruling classes, as usual, have no clue how ordinary people actually live.

[sabotabby]

I once camped out on his lawn with a bunch of my high school friends with empty tuna cans hanging from placards. It was his fault for living down the street from a high school.