Perhaps it’s not a topic of conversation here, but among the normies with whom I sometimes discuss politics, the point that even a slightly better than mediocre response to COVID would have gotten Trump re-elected is one that I often hear. Obviously, we have examples of absolute gross right-wing incompetence in Brazil, and whatever-wing incompetence from AMLO in Mexico, but what would an OK-but-not-great “conservative” have done? Strangely enough, we might have a bit of a clue in the Canadian province of Ontario.
You might remember Rob Ford, the drug-addled and fairly crazy Tory who was mayor of Toronto for a hot minute. If not, here’s a refresher. Well, his brother Doug, who was the brains behind the Ford operation all along (to the extent that it had brains) is now the Premier of Ontario. Ontario politics are strange — Rob and Doug Ford rose to power in formerly more liberal Toronto because of a 1998 amalgamation that added in their banjo-on-the-porch suburb to the city. And, like everywhere else, the rural parts of Ontario are red while the urban parts are blue (in US coloring, Canadian party coloring is the opposite). Note that the current mayor of Toronto is a Tory named John Tory, the most on-brand politician in the world.
Anyway, after doing fairly well for the first two waves, Ontario’s third wave is terrible. Children’s hospitals are admitting adults, and they’re building field hospitals and asking nurses from other provinces to come help out. Ford issued a one-month stay-at-home order earlier this month (later than requested by physicians, but he did it). Yesterday, he gave police the power to stop drivers and pedestrians to ask their reason for being out, risking a $C750 fine for non-compliance. He’s also creating checkpoints on the Quebec and Manitoba borders to make sure all travel into the province is essential. So, overall, he’s taking it somewhat seriously.
Still, though, he’s a fucking “conservative” at heart:
Recent data from Ontario’s Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences has shown that while the virus has devastated members of low-income, racialized communities – many of whom are essential workers – vaccines have been slow to roll out to those same communities.
But Ford again resisted calls for paid sick leave, which policy experts say would benefit essential workers.
The bottom line is that under “conservative” rule around the world you might be better or worse depending on who’s in charge, but you’re fucked if you’re an out group.
(Canadians in the audience should chime in, because the Canadian newspapers that I used to read are all paywalled to ensure that Facebook gets even more eyeballs.)
sab
I am sitting in Ohio, with my entire family still alive thanks to Gov DeWine (and DrActon) and my office still alive (thanks to DeWine/ Acton) and I watch our legislature, and without those two we could be Texas or Florida or even Brazil. They gave sensible business owners in Ohio the space to be sensible.
John S.
@sab: It’s not all that bad here in Florida other than the fact that we were all left to our own devices. But then, I live in liberal South Florida so I’m not surrounded by conservative douchebags like the rest of “real” Florida.
The vaccination effort has been very good recently, but that is despite Deathsantis and his typical bullshit.
Shit in Toronto is REALLY bad. I have two very close friends who live there, and the head of my division lives there — and from their accounts, it’s fucking BAD.
Ohio Mom
Sab:
Another good call by DeWine was including people with disability in one of the first levels of vaccination eligibility.
Some disabilities, including Down Syndrome, put individuals at very high risk. DeWine no doubt saved lives, as did the small handful of other governors who also prioritized the disabled (I should have copied that list when I saw it because I have forgotten who those other governors are).
I’m glad to give DeWine this credit but in almost everything else, he’s a standard Republican, with everything that implies.
brantl
My brother lives in Thunder Bay, Ontario and hasn’t had his vaccine yet (he’s 73) and staying home, as they have recommended. His younger wife does the shopping.
John S.
@Ohio Mom: Did that extend to people with autism, like our kids?
I still have to wait for approval because my son is only 13, so it would not have helped me anyway. But I know your son is an adult and able to get vaccinated.
sab
@Ohio Mom: I agree totally with your comment.
germy
Mike Adamson
I’m 60 in Ontario and I just got a vaccination date of May 3. The reluctance of government to go big with a response but rather do enough to think maybe it might work has predictably led to a.brutal third wave and much hand wringing. Half measures just don’t work.
MattF
There’s several phases to pandemic response that need to be managed differently. E.g, ‘startup’ is generally messy, but fixable if you throw enough people and money at it. But ‘long-haul’, ‘equity’ and ‘recovery’ appear to be more Pass/Fail. Problem is that the tests are multiple and separate, and you have to pass all of them. TFG failed every test, so theorizing about how he could have done better misses the point.
Cameron
@John S.: It really does depend on where you live in Florida, since the guv basically dumped most of the work on the individual counties (as his hero in Mar-a-Lago did with individual states). I tried for several months to get on the list for the county’s site, Publix, and Winn-Dixie. No luck. Two days after CVS announced it was in the game, I was signed up there and have had both Pfizer shots. I think Florida will dig itself out, but no thanks to DeSantis.
sab
@Mike Adamson: Government wasn’t reluctant. Government did not have access to vaccines. US makes them. Canada doesn’t.
p.a.
Posted this Cole tweet on fbook:
@Johngcole
the funniest thing about the MTG group to promote anglo-saxon values is that the WASPIEST bitches in this country are in New England and they hate your white trash scots-irish racist asses more than they hate spicy food and not having a package store on every corner
fbook: “Your post goes against our Community Standards on hate speech.
No one else can see your post.”
?
Cameron
@germy: Probably should have led with “Ralph Warnock and….” or “Elizabeth Warren and….” Sanders is a trigger for antibernactic shock in a lot of people.
JPL
@p.a.: It was a perfectly fine post.
Doug R
That’s why you’ve got to go to the CBC. Ironically owned by the federal government as a crown corporation, it has the straightest coverage of any outlet.
https://www.cbc.ca/news
JPL
Starting Monday Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta is allowing walk ins for the vaccine. Although this might appear to be good news, the reason is requests for appointments has slowed. There are a lot of folks refusing the vaccine.
brendancalling
I have a child in Montreal and several friends in Ontario including American expats (recent and not-so-recent.
My son—17 and highly politically aware—has nothing good to say about Ford, who he calls an idiot. I think a good word to describe my Ontario friends’ state of mind is “murderous.” They’re livid.
Also important to understand is that under the previous Conservative majority, Canada offshored vaccine production (shrinking government, cutting spending). Now that that decision put Canada in a deadly pickle, the Conservatives are trying to blame Trudeau for their fuckup.
germy
@Cameron:
You’re right.
Doug R
BC opened up the Astra Zeneca vaccine to 55+, so last Thursday:
https://twitter.com/DRedecopp/status/1382850100301471745
Nina
I’ve been binging a lot of Time Team lately so I feel like I know a little about actual Anglo-Saxon culture. I don’t, but I can pretend that I do.
So my question is, which Anglo-Saxon traditions are they planning to save? Paying the Danes increasing amounts of money to leave them alone? Destroying the remnants of older civilizations? Being unable to make anything nice except for weapons and jewelry? Losing to the French?
Will nobody think of the Jutes?
Also note that there’s pretty strong evidence in Anglo-Saxon burial customs that they had no problem with people wearing the clothes and performing roles that didn’t line up with their biological sex. We have male skeletons wearing ‘women’s’ jewelry and holding pots, female skeletons carrying shields and swords. Pairs of male/male and female/female skeletons buried together, sometimes together with small children.
Timill
@Nina: Also, what about reparations for the Harrying of the North?
Ksmiami
So I’ve been thinking a lot about how Dems can focus a message for 2022 and beyond and basically it comes down to The Republican Party is at odds with Truth, Justice and the American way… flip the script because they’ve chosen the path to fascism. And then beat the crap out of them because they offer nothing to the American people and leave our country in ruins
Ksmiami
@Nina: I want my William the Conqueror doll set okthxbai
Cameron
@Nina: When these creatures refer to “Anglo-Saxon” traditions and “European” culture, they think they’re making some sort of clever dog whistle. They’re not.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Doug R: I keep forgetting that. I did find one good article that I linked above after remembering again that my usual go-to, The Star, is locked down tight.
Joe Falco
In my mind, a “reasonable” response by US conservatives, were it not for the intentional sabotage by TFG and company, would have been more or less the same as it happened: elected officials reluctant to place any restrictions on businesses, targeted and limited government assistance to individuals, families and businesses, government funding of vaccine R&D. The “upside” might have been less vaccine hesitancy and less conspiratorial thinking injected in the mainstream. I don’t expect much of Republicans and have been proven right to think so.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@brendancalling:
Harper sure left a trail, didn’t he?
rikyrah
COVID
Science
And Right Wingers
Just don’t mix
Baud
@Nina:
Baud! 20XX!: Only He Wields Excalibur!
Brachiator
Sigh. It’s always something with some right wing idiots. Early on I was relieved that religious crackpots were not hawking the “God’s will” nonsense, or “God’s punishment for allowing football on the Sabbath.” Instead we got the rise of conservative ideology as religion, the insistence that personal responsibility, the First or Second Amendment or other deeply held mystical political values could destroy the virus. Oh, and a dash of Business Uber Alles, we can’t shut down the economy, and don’t worry, “only the wrong sort of people will get sick, and who needs old people anyway, amirite?”
Until recently, I did not realize how bad it was in parts of Canada. I also did not know that Ontario is the largest province. The central government can’t step in and assert any authority?
A recent story from BBC News:
There is also this worrying little tidbit:
smith
Florida currently has about same weekly average number of new cases per capita as Ontario does, 29.2 per 100K vs 29.6 per 100K.
different-church-lady
@Cameron: What is it about click-bait you don’t understand?
Brachiator
@brendancalling:
I don’t think that this is all that important. Countries did not all try to develop the vaccine independently of each other. And about 60 percent of the world supply of the vaccine is manufactured in India.
debbie
@sab:
God help us if (when?) the legislature awards all those powers it’s currently grabbing for.
debbie
@Ohio Mom:
Yesterday, he spoke in support of organ transplants and shared the story about donating his daughter’s organs after her sudden death. I’d bet the evangelicals haven’t yet recovered from their fits of vapors.
debbie
@Mike Adamson:
I think “Half measures don’t work” is something Fauci should be saying at every opportunity.
Kim Walker
I’m over the river from Ottawa and not excited about another lockdown as it will likely last for a very long time. Political folks here tend to react to situations, having waffled and polled and tough-talked all they can. Trudeau did well to start buying up every vaccine option, but as mentioned, Canada does not produce vaccines (globalization is good for you!). The former premier of Ontario gave workers 2 paid sick days, which were rolled back under Ford. The feds provide 4 weeks of paid sick leave under unemployment for those who need to quarantine or who are sick. People may think they have been exposed and need to be tested and then wait for the test results – so 2-3 days. Unless they take the whole week off (at 55% of their wages), they can’t qualify for benefits. Even if they are sick and do quarantine, the benefits will take a month or so to receive. So low-and modest income workers will try very hard to tough it out in order to keep working and make the rent (stinking high!) Ford says the EI program is good enough and poor job-creators should not be inconvenienced by having to pay sick days to sick workers. And then the more prosperous areas, populated more heavily by WFH types, are getting vaccinated at much higher rates. Working class folks in lower income areas are that are high density, who are not able to isolate away from their families, maybe lack internet to make vaccination appointments, use public transport (still crowded), are younger and mostly working in public facing jobs have much, much lower vaccination rates. This is very much a class based society, in which most of the good things go to those who already have a lot. Everybody else – not so much and much, much later.
Mary G
I’m not sure how or why, but I follow a set of people on Twitter from Alberta, where they have their own wingnut premiere, Jason Kenney, who wants the Keystone Pipeline put in ASAP, and has been gradually starving the health care we Americans long for just like a Republican. It’s a worrying trend; I’ve always thought that if things are too bad, I can illegally immigrate up there, and now that comforting fantasy is lost.
Noncarborundum
@Baud: Arthur, if he existed, was a Celt fighting against the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain.
James E Powell
@Baud:
Wait, wasn’t Arthur fighting against the Anglo-Saxons?
ETA: As usual, too slow.
Frankensteinbeck
Trump didn’t even need a competent response. All he had to do was tell the truth, and maybe sound concerned about it. That’s it. When he started his Covid pressers, his approval rating bumped up for the first time. It took mere days for that to crater as it became clear to everyone that he was lying. Hell, if he’d even had subtle, deniable lies he might have had a good popularity increase, like Cuomo. Trump just had to go out and praise himself and declare to the nation outlandish gaslighting bullshit about how everyone could get a test, when everyone knew damn well they couldn’t. When you promise and don’t deliver in such a direct, life-threatening way, people become grumpy about it.
trollhattan
My standard comparison for Covid responses on either end of the spectrum–California v. Texas–shows a gap growing wider after a period of becoming narrower, e.g., the Texas one-week positivity rate is six times higher. Texas has more new cases despite a smaller population.
They’re not doing badly with vaccinations, which will eventually bail them out assuming they don’t have a large group of holdouts. That’s currently a problem in a clump of other Southern states plus, seemingly improbably, Utah. Have the Mormons decided vaccines are the devil’s work or something? They have relatively good healthcare, is my understanding.
Mike in NC
@Nina: Jutes will not replace us!
James E Powell
@Frankensteinbeck:
TFG didn’t need to do anything but put competent people in charge and let them do the job. Then spend ten minutes each day pretending to give a shit.
But, among his other pathologies, he could never allow anyone but himself to appear to be running anything.
Doug R
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/ontario-covid-crisis-warnings-1.5991418
Barbara
@Cameron: Not to mention the millions of hyphenated European Americans who don’t trace their roots ack to any Anglo-Saxon tradition, like Italians, Germans and, oh yeah, the Irish.
trollhattan
@Frankensteinbeck:
He sat on his…hands a full two months before doing a damn thing, two months that could have prepared us to stave off the initial infection gallop that swept over key parts of the country. His incompetence took over once that denial period was over.
I honestly can’t imagine how he could have done worse.
James E Powell
Does England have an Anglo-Saxon “lost cause” industry like our confederate version? Do they endlessly replay Hastings, imagining Harold the winner?
sab
@Barbara: Pat Buchanan is Catholic and Scots Irish. In their deluded world anything is possible,
Another Scott
@James E Powell: “Only I can fix it!!” – TFG
TFG was incapable of doing anything different because his brain is broken. Just like the parable of the scorpion and the frog, it’s his nature.
BBC:
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Noncarborundum:
@James E Powell:
Oh. So maybe Dems should respond by creating a Celtic caucus. We must go
deeperfurther back in time.sab
@James E Powell: Their (English) civil war was Catholic v Evangelical. The Anglicans (non-participants) won.
Mary G
@Ohio Mom: California initially said they would do that, then changed their minds. Some younger disabled people I know are just now getting appointments. I feel horribly guilty because I got mine early because I turned 65 in December. If I was six months younger, I would probably finagled it by now, but lots of people don’t have the support I do. I won’t vote to recall Gov. Gav, but he screwed the pooch several times trying to placate conservatives. You’d think he’d have noticed by now that nothing placates conservatives.
Mike in NC
@Frankensteinbeck: We all knew from the time the Orange Clown rode down his golden escalator (surrounded by people paid to applaud him) that he was pathologically incapable of telling the truth. He would stand there at the press conferences, smirking and with his head bent, utterly unaware of what the scientists were talking about.
Yet his most grotesque lie was to say that these same scientists would approach him with tears in their eyes, asking him how he knew so much, just because his fucking dead uncle once taught at MIT.
smith
@James E Powell: They certainly have some extreme nativist groups that assert that England should be reserved for some privileged variety of “white” people (I guess approximately Anglo-Saxon/Norse/Norman/Celt-but-not-Irish), and the Others (Eastern European, Asian, Caribbean) should be expelled.
Jeffro
OT but here’s Susan Rice on being (gasp) sanctioned and being barred from travel to Russia:
“Oh no there go my family’s spring break plans to our favorite AirBnb in Siberia”, complete with pic of beat-up Russian hovel
LOLOLOLOLOL
sab
@Baud: Everyone should read Dorothy Dunnett’s “King Hereafter”. Scotland and northern England just before the Norman Conquest. MacBeth retold with historical accuracy. What a complicated island Great Britain was. So many different ethnic groups all jostling around and marrying each other.
John S.
@smith: And I’m sure you understand why Ontario is suffering worse than Florida as a whole given population densities, access to primary care, availability and distribution of vaccines, etc.
Simply pointing to the similarities in per capita new cases completely sidesteps all the other circumstances that make the two not really all that similar.
Cameron
@Baud: The Cro-Magnon Caucus.
Suzanne
@trollhattan:
Many of my LDS friends have been very excited about their vaccines.
I would be more likely to think it’s an age thing: many of them have big families starting from a relatively young age, so I would bet that many of them are just now becoming eligible.
Miss Bianca
@p.a.: Funny thing about FB…I keep forgetting that salty language regarding liberals is apparently AOK, but salty language regarding conservatives – or worse, comparing white “progressive” racism to white conservative racism – is a “violation of community standards”.
Just another reminder of the ways which Balloon Juice has ruined me for interactions with the rest of the world…
sab
@Baud: Being of Scottish and Irish descent, and knowing these folks, I think that is a very bad idea.
Brachiator
@James E Powell:
There are some historians and others who insist on referring to “William the Bastard.” And there are a few souls who note that Princess Diana had a more direct line of descent to the Anglo Saxon kings than Prince Charles and his German-derived clan.
And Harold of course also was descended from Scandinavians and so was not “pure” Anglo-Saxon.
Also, the idea of the English as mainly Anglo-Saxon was an invention of Victorians and Edwardians. They just arbitrarily clamped onto one part of the country’s history and made it pre-eminent.
But British culture has always incorporated the mongrel nature of their history into their sense of who they are. King Arthur was a Briton fighting the Anglo-Saxon menace. Robin Hood was loyal to Richard Lionheart, who was really a French speaking Anglo-Norman.
zhena gogolia
Other people are having trouble accessing twitter, right?
Steeplejack
@Mike in NC:
Well played.
Ramiah Ariya
This kind of “analysis” where there is a red and blue in every country; there is a liberal and a conservative party; that there is a right and a left – and that the policy splits between them are identical – Americans have to stop doing this. It is misleading and forces your country and its people into irrational policy positions. People get killed by sanctions and bombs due to this kind of interpretation.
In the regions where the majority of the world’s population lives, such as India, China, Africa – there are NO mainstream anti-government parties or positions. In India, for example, NO political party, other than the ultra-left (banned) Maoists(who want to destroy govt altogether) have positions against government actions for saving the economy, or protecting from covid. These are all pathologies in mainly western countries.
The red state blue state split that is common in the US does not exist in most countries around the world.
Miss Bianca
@Mary G:
This lack of awareness on the part of otherwise with-it Democrats (looking at *you*, Gov Polis!) is something that continues to boggle me. I’m glad that the Biden Administration appears to be finally done with that nonsense.
Brachiator
@sab:
The Scots Irish were mainly Protestant. Buchanan’s mother was of Germanic descent and he had a great grandfather who fought for the Confederacy. Apparently he was a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and chose to be a racist asswipe.
Baud
@Cameron:
Heh.
“We’re homo erectus and you should elect us!”
Another Scott
@Ramiah Ariya: Eh??
DeccanHerald
That’s the first link I found in a very quick Google search.
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
Twitter has been having problems since last night. The Verge.
Joe Falco
Nobody is talking about the lost cause of Cnut the Great’s North Sea Empire…sigh
There go two miscreants
@zhena gogolia: trouble accessing twitter
I have not had a problem seeing tweets at twitter itself, but in the BJ threads, only the text and links are showing up today on my system (Win10, Firefox).
Jay
Some good things have come out of the Ontario/Quebec shitshow.
Corporate, due to stores being shut down, has finally gotten semi-serious about PPE.
Corporate has introduced “don’t come to work, unlimited sick time, no questions asked, just phone in, you will get paid”, policies.
Cameron
@Ramiah Ariya: We don’t have a parliamentary system here, which I think is the biggest reason for the red/blue split. Possibly if we had approval or ranked-choice voting, we might be able to get a more diverse set of politicians, which in turn would lead (hopefully) to more coalition-building and less trench warfare. I don’t know, though – I’m not a political scientist.
Ken
@Joe Falco: In retrospect, siting the capitol at Doggerland was a mistake.
scav
@James E Powell: There’s the dreaded Norman Yoke flag to rally around when the Saxons care to ignore their own Johnny Foreigner status.
Ramiah Ariya
@Another Scott: Exactly. If you thought there are only two political parties in India – one is red; and the other is blue, you would be entirely mistaken. That is not how politics works in India at all – it is a country with barely functioning institutions, weakened by decades of dynastic misrule and by corruption. The states are run by chieftains who all have personality cults.
The political parties are all not only alike, they have mostly the SAME people going from party to party!
There is not a single policy of the present government that has not been expressed support for by the previous Congress govt – Indian politics and economy is not run by politicians mostly. Since the liberalisation in 1991, it is run by a set of technocrats.
What you see in that article is politics as usual – not some fundamental political difference you have discovered with a google search.
What is going on presently is simply the attempt by partisans in India to convince Americans that our politics is the same as yours – something they have had substantial success with.
Kathleen
@debbie: I remember when he said his definition of pro life in included life after birth.
Ken
@scav: If the prophecies are to be believed, someday the true indigenes of the British Isles will make their comeback.
(What, you don’t use Weird Tales for all your prophetic needs?)
Mary G
@zhena gogolia:
ETA: from 15 hours ago!
Another Scott
@Ramiah Ariya: You’re moving the goalposts. You said:
Congress has positions against the Modi government.
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Ramiah Ariya:
And yet it apparently exists in Canada. And the UK. And Australia. Where they share FPTP voting, even though they have a parliamentary system. And sorry if I’m not exactly impressed with authoritarian regimes (which India is btw). Thanks for the patronizing lecture though!
debbie
@Kathleen:
Does it concern you that his wife is constantly by his side?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Ramiah Ariya:
Oh boy, scrondinger’s cat would have a field day with you
The Moar You Know
Last time I was in BC (2019) will probably be the last time I’ll be in Canada; they’re just trying way too hard to be America-lite.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
in BC, we have “opposite” red and blue areas, plus brown/orange and green.
and the maps differ depending on if it is federal, or provincial.
germy
Excellent interview:
https://www.thecut.com/2021/04/senator-mazie-hirono-interview-heart-of-fire.html#_ga=2.50018470.1275789586.1618676514-1142531745.1618676513
Jay
@The Moar You Know:
come visit, the “Liberals” arn’t in charge anymore.
post covid of course, and still stay 6 fucking feet away from me,
but I will share a couple of real beers from my 2/4 with you.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jay:
Well sure, I’m aware you have opposite colors for your parties and have viable smaller political parties, but it’s still true because of FPTP that there are two main political parties, a conservative party and left/liberal party that’s always the one in power entering into coalition with the smaller parties at the national level
trollhattan
@Jay:
Don’t you mean “two fucking metres”? :-P
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I was forced this morning to watch SKY News coverage of Prince Phil’s vanity superspreader. It is safe to say I was prohibited shitty, revolutionary or IRA positive commentary in pretty short order, as I was “ruining” the moment.
OBSERVATIONS:
1. SKY was ridiculously effusive in praise for his a.) much embellished military career as a genius hero warrior, b.) the lifetime of deep “service” of he and the family to the nation.
2. Prince Chuckles wore more medals than a Bolivian admiral.
3. There appeared to be a complete absence of any representatives from the Government which facilitates and pays for these charades, much less the PM.
4. What’s with the awards and decorations on the scores of the household staff dudes in suits who tell the queen how to queen? Do they really think that we believe that there are high honors they’re owed?
5. Prince Andrew got really fat. And old.
6. Considering that Liz had a bit of reserve power that could have derailed BREXIT, but chose to be coldly aloof as usual, if I was a BREXIT-wracked individual or had a business that got hammered, I’d resent every farthing that got spent on the farce instead of being directed to BREXIT/COVID relief.
7. Nice for the family to have its own church to have a lavish funeral in. Probably lots of people still haven’t been able to have memorial services for COVID deaths.
8. It’s a shame that Marx was wrong about Britain being where the Revolution would start.
Brachiator
@germy:
I love this.
The media keeps asking Democrats, “When are you going to be bipartisan?”
The answer should be, “When the Republicans decide to honestly represent the interests of all of the American people.”
NorthLeft12
Lifetime resident of Ontario here. Ford started poorly [encouraging people to enjoy travelling out of the country in March 2020], got serious for awhile [to about mid summer], and since then has been pretty much trying to cut back public health measures and has been complaining about the federal government response non-stop.
His last press conference on Friday was an embarrassment for the people of Ontario. The whining, blaming, and complaining about the lack of vaccines and begging to be saved from the mess that he enabled was incredibly painful and weak.
Did I mention that he ended the last stay at home order against most medical advice when we still had around a thousand new cases a day, a rate that we have already demonstrated was not manageable?
He moved me to go back on Facebook for my first post in over two years to rant and rave.
He has actually had the gall to say that no one knew this would happen and is still talking up his government’s decisive actions.
Most Ontarians are following the public health guidelines, but Ford and his fellow Cons are squandering that by their ineptitude.
This is what happens when you elect a government of people that don’t believe in public anything, who are led by a buffoon.
Brachiator
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I don’t think that this is true.
Even if BREXIT ends up with Scotland and Wales leaving Great Britain, and Northern Ireland being absorbed into the Republic, there ain’t a lot that the monarch could do about it.
Liked the rest of your rant.
sab
@Cameron: My husband is supposedly CroMagnon, and his people were German speaking Swiss, except for the Irish ones.
germy
@Brachiator:
I like the interview. I didn’t know some of the details of her life story.
So many of our Democrats do the hard work and rise. So many of the Republicans are trust fund brats or shitty business owners with family money.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@NorthLeft12:
Western notions of intellectual property protection are going to kill us all. They stymie advancement and deprive the public of many pharmaceuticals due to patent trolling.
terry chay
@sab: you are correct but OTOH US Government released a huge supply to Canada and Mexico (I think 2.5m doses), the largest vaccine donation yet. Reason is because Astra-Zeneca doesn’t have emergency use authorization in the US. I imagine now that the uptake rate is slowing down in the red parts of the US we should expect us to start exporting more, starting with Canada.
You could be worse. You could be Europe which produced a whole bunch of Astra-Zeneca but was too cheap to buy the doses and have ended up exporting the bulk of your doses to other countries:
JoyceCB
@NorthLeft12: I am in Toronto, and I agree with every word you say. My hate for Doug Ford knows no bounds.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
1. Weren’t/aren’t the IRA terrorists?
2. If the Queen had tried to use her “power” to stop Brexit, it would’ve been instantly revoked or something. Bottom line, it wouldn’t have worked and politicized the BRF. She’s powerless
3. I’m not exactly someone who likes monarchy either, but cut Prince Phillip some slack, he never choose this life; it was forced on him. Expected of him. Imagine having to serve as some bullshit symbol all your life with people constantly watching to see if you fuck up.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Brachiator:
Parliament was getting a serious push to either stall it or turn it off, but Johnson prorogued it. She actually had the power to intervene on that one and save her people, but followed her carefully nurtured habit of doing nothing to ever help anybody.
As to the Celtic breakaway, my dream is of a Celtic Union that widely uses the parts of the Royal treasury and such military materiel as it is entitled to, as the rump English state deals with disgruntled, impoverished Midlands Tory voters who have angry questions for their elected Tories.
Cameron
@sab: I’m Neanderthal or nothing at all.
Kent
Wait, what? I thought he actually did choose it. Or was he the victim of some sort of forced marriage to the future Queen?
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
In BC, the Provincial Liberals are cons, the Federal Liberals are center-left, and our “center” is abooot where AOC resides.
@trollhattan:
I prefer 2 fucking meters,
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
The IRA is the reason why the Republic exists. They were freedom fighters who saw to doing violent resistance to an occupying power. Northern Ireland is the last vestige of a shameful British legacy, with a demographic mix (3/2) that actually would work well in a union with the Republic, the modern IRA is merely seeking to facilitate that and is the continuing legacy of that revolt.
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Story of my life.
2liberal
I did a spreadsheet of state populations and us senators. 18% of the US population elects 52 senators, with a distribution of 31 R and 21 D.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kent:
I admit I’m not 100% familiar with the history. Perhaps he wasn’t forced, but still had to face all the bullshit that came with what he was born into, since he was from the Greek and Dutch royal familie
Edit: he wasn’t. My mistake
SiubhanDuinne
My cousin and his wife live in Owen Sound, Ontario, and got their vaccinations on Thursday. He sent me this:
wvng
Given that Bush II had the first Pandemic Response Plan developed because he clearly saw the need I think he would have done just fine. Most Presidents in my 67 years would have done reasonably well, except Trump.
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
Any explanation as to waiting four weeks rather than the 21 to 28 over here?
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
That is a really long gap. The recommended spacing for Pfizer shots is 3-6 weeks.
Brachiator
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
This is both wrong and inaccurate as to what Parliament intended.
The monarch cannot intervene or even formally advise Parliament or the government on any matter.
Boris Johnson was trying to wield control over the Parliament, but they were stupidly divided over what they wanted with respect to BREXIT. Johnson ultimately got a Tory majority and then cold ram through his policies based on lies and bad faith.
Miss Bianca
@SiubhanDuinne: Wait…*four months* for the follow-up shot?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Perhaps in the beginning with the establishment of the Irish Free State and later the Republic, but the Troubles were something else. Innocent civilians on both sides were killed.. I don’t think the Protestants who live there want to be in union with Ireland. It would just become Ireland’s headache
Just One More Canuck
@NorthLeft12: Completely agree – I think that everything that Ford has done has been with an eye to the election next year. He’s been sitting on a big pile of cash in order to give us a bunch of pre-election goodies next spring. He thought things would be under control by now without his having to actually do anything
And what JoyceCB at 100 said
Obvious Russian Troll
Doug Ford is about my age, and I have a certain amount of sympathy for the man because I too had to deal with a younger brother who was an addict. I watched the Rob Ford fiasco closely; I’ve been in Canada for over ten years, and until recently I worked near the Ford’s power base in Etobicoke.
Doug Ford has also completely squandered that sympathy, both by enabling his brother at every turn and by thoroughly fucking up his government’s response to COVID. He’s opened things up too soon (particularly schools), he’s let some things stay open when he shouldn’t have, he’s ignored basic common sense measures like letting people have a goddamn sick day and he’s an embarrassment.
I am personally annoyed because it looks like I am going to need my gall bladder out (I find out on Tuesday), and of course if the hospitals are full and people are waiting on surgery that’s going to push it out. Apparently I’m starting to see kidney stone symptoms as well; I pushed off my appointment with a specialist last year because it didn’t seem like a great idea and I wasn’t showing any symptoms at the time. (Can you get heart stones? Stones in any other organs? I’m pretty sure I have those too.)
On the bright side, I did get the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine. My wife, who is just under the age cutoff, is unhappy; she’s thinking of going to the US to get the vaccine (and visit her mother, who is in the memory care unit of a nursing home in rural Kentucky). Neither of us have been impressed with the rollout, which is an all-around clusterfuck both by the province and the individual pharmacies, clinics and hospitals that are actually doing the work.
Also, as a dual citizen as of a few years ago I can vote Liberal or NDP. My riding tends to vote NDP; our MP seems good at community outreach.
SiubhanDuinne
@debbie:
@Steeplejack:
@Miss Bianca:
I agree, and was both puzzled and rather appalled when he told me. Actually, it was several weeks ago that they were given the dates for both appointments. I questioned the long wait between first and second jabs. I was glad to see that they may get the second dose a good bit earlier.
JoyceH
I just don’t understand this conventional wisdom that Trump would have been re-elected if not for the pandemic. What’s the basis for that? He wasn’t just an unpopular president, he set the record for unpopularity. His policies weren’t popular, his supporters were raging maniacs, his stupidity was embarrassing and his administration’s corruption was right out in the open. So against Biden, why do people think he would have won?
Jay
@debbie:
they are trying to stretch out the vaccine inventory towards more first shots, as opposed to full vaccination.
depending on what happens, here in BC I’ll get my second Moderna in 3 months, two weeks. If it goes really well, sooner.
First shots knock all the serious aspects of Covid down, so, in an absence of enough,…. more shots in arms
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
LOL! You carry that burden for all Balloon Juicians, Baud : )
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
But we aren’t talking about vaccine development/invention here — we’re talking about production of already invented vaccines for a nation that is way, way short on supply.
Because of stupid and evil decisions made by a right wing government. To save money. Now people are dying, thanks to reactionary governing.
evodevo
@p.a.: Yep…been FaceBanned several times, for what I couldn’t figure out till later was “white trash” LOL – if you use trailer trash it’ll pass. Their AI evidently is not up on some slang…I haven’t tried “honky” yet…
debbie
@Jay:
I trust they’ve confirmed that a longer gap doesn’t compromise the vaccine’s effectiveness?
J R in WV
@Ramiah Ariya:
Yes, but this is because many governments make substantive disagreement with the government illegal, as in China and Russia.
In Australia, France, Germany, Canada, Brazil, Italy, (Not Russia) etc, disagreement with the government is the duty and role of political parties not in power.
And the US.
We have a valued contributor here who is totally opposed to the current government of India, which is viewed as racist and overtly authoritarian.
NYCMT
@evodevo: I was exploring the contours of the ai a couple of weeks ago. The k-word for Jews slips through, while the phrase “Christians *r* n*sty” triggers the bot.
I wonder which texts the ai was trained on?
Soprano2
Missouri was like the federal government under TFG – I think the statewide shut downs lasted less than a month. Lucky for us here they haven’t yet messed with the ability of cities and counties to have their own orders, so it’s been better in my city. Smaller towns around here are all getting rid of their measures, though – Branson elected a new council that got rid of the mask mandate as of yesterday. Lots of people in MAGA country have decided they’re done worrying about COVID. Sigh…..
J R in WV
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Well said. I successfully attempted to sleep through the prince’s funeral. I did set a timer so that ai could tell Wife it was time, if she wanted to watch. She too decided sleep was the better choice.
I despise the British upper class, murders of millions of Irish, Indian farmers, drawing out the wealth of those nations for their own profit, while ignoring the famine they caused. The higher the class, the more hatred they deserve! Princes and dukes and such at the pinnacle of the hate pyramid.
They also killed Alan Touring, who by himself was worth more than all the German royals. Because he was a pervert, don’t you see. Gay. Yet they admire their pedophiles somehow. A Sick Society for generations.
Miss Bianca
@JoyceH: The other problem with the hypthothetical “even a slightly better than mediocre response to COVID would have gotten Trump re-elected” scenario is that…in order to even *imagine* such a thing, you have to be able to imagine a Trump that wasn’t so in thrall to his various personality disorders and substandard intellect that he’d even be *capable* of a different response. I mean, this isn’t some guy who might have meant well but was just the victim of circumstance or bad advice…this is DONALD TRUMP. This is a guy who is constitutionally *incapable* of a different response because of his inability to respond to external stimuli EXCEPT through the filters of his narcissism, greed, arrogance, and mind-boggling mental deficiencies. Period.
I could just as soon, and as profitably, start arguing that “Hey, maybe WWII wouldn’t have happened if some more people had just bought Hitler’s shitty paintings.”
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
Production of the vaccine would be an issue for the national government, right? You cannot put responsibility for this on a single province.
It’s more complicated than every country producing their own vaccines.
wvng
@JoyceH: I think Trump would have re-elected BECAUSE of the pandemic -if he had nominally led a robust and science based response, and stepped back and let experts take the lead. But of course that was impossible for him because of his pathologies.
dww44
@JoyceH: Unfortunately I think he would have been. I’ve too many not exactly MAGA types relatives and friends who’d vote for an orangutan if it had an R after its name. These are mostly educated types who have been conditioned, seriously conditioned, by 2 1/2 decades of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh to believe that any Democratic candidate is the spawn of the devil.
I am not joking. People I thought who would have seen the dictatorial aspirations of TFG early on and observed his dismantling of so many of the norms and practices of our democratic republic, still voted for him again in 2020. Many of them have opted into the Big Lie in this red and southern state. It’s my long held and anecdotal observation that it takes very little to get these voters, not all of them white, to vote for the R guy. About the only time they don’t is if and when the economy is truly in the tank.
evodevo
@NYCMT: I’ve not been penalized for “Christo-fascist” or “right wing nutjob” or “talibangelical” yet…we’ll see how their AI does in the future lol
debbie
@Miss Bianca:
Seconded. It’s just not in his nature to be of help to anyone but himself. And maybe Ivanka now and then.
NorthLeft12
@terry chay: The vaccines we got from the US were a loan, not a gift. The US is holding over 20 million AZ doses even though you have not approved AZ for use.
We would gladly use those doses that we have paid for, but honestly I would rather these doses go to other countries that have not even vaccinated their medical personnel.
NorthLeft12
@Steeplejack: In Canada our Science advisory committee has reviewed and approved stretching out the timing of the second shot to four months in order to vaccinate more people.
The UK has also lengthened the time to the second shot to three months.
My understanding is that Phizer and Moderna are not really on board with what Canada is doing, but they agreed that the timing could be increased.
I believe most Canadians support this strategy…..not that we have any choice in the matter.
Brachiator
@wvng:
That’s just it. I don’t think there is a hypothetical in which Trump would have been re-elected because he could never rise above his weaknesses and the people he surrounded himself with were as bad as he was.
Further, he felt emboldened by the protection he got from GOP leadership. He has never grown as a human being, never learned anything from his successes and always denied his failures.
Someone like that was always going to fail when faced with a difficult challenge.
We are so lucky that we were able to dump his sorry ass.
Steeplejack
@NorthLeft12:
I can sort of see this, based on the idea that the first shot cuts your exposure (to death or serious illness) way down. But it seems to be based on the premise of limited vaccine supplies, which I guess is the reality for Canada.
ed_finnerty
live in toronto
best place to follow ontarìo politics are bruce arthur and warren kinsella
Jay
@debbie:
it’s not known. They believe that the worst case, is that the second shot will just confer the same protections as the first shot,
The idea is 50% more first shots, 50% less CovidZombies walking around, 50% fewer seriously sick, 50% fewer dead.
As all Governments in Canada have done, (except the Maritime Bubble, Indigenous groups, the Yukon, NWT and Nunavut), since Covid started, they all all in short term reaction mode.
They are still talking about reopening the schools in September.
Ohio Mom
John S @5:
Ohio Family has been out on a series of errands this afternoon (including, finally, haircuts for all three of us) so this thread is over and you may not see this: Son’s SSA (caseworker) at DDS (disability board) called *us* and asked if Son wanted to come in and get a shot— What great service we receive here in Hamilton County!
They turned a room in one of their day centers into a vaccine center, and put many of their administrators into the role of check-in clerks — I don’t know where the people giving the shots were called in from — I saw two administrators I’d had dealings with over the years and it was fun to catch up.
The sad part was seeing all the 80 y.o. parents escorting their 60 y.o. adult children — that generation did not have the resources or supports to set up their children in more independent lives. A sort of Ghost from Christmas future-type warning if we are too passive.
I know a few other families with teens and I see how agonizing it is not to be able to get them vaccinated — yet.
hrprogressive
I only buy the “Trump could have gotten re-elected if he had managed COVID better” line if Trump had, essentially, done what the Biden Admin is doing now.
Which is to say, literally the exact opposite.
“Could” it have happened? Sure, If Donald Trump showed up in January and say “Hey everyone, yuge bigly news, this China Virus is coming for America, and we’re not going to let the Kung Flu take over, we’re America damn it, and I am the President of the United States, and we’re going to do everything we can to keep you and your families safe. Vote Trump!!!”
Like. Literally, like that. And then marshalled resources to do this.
But the thing is, aside from the racism I conjured up to channel Trump, the fascist ID does not allow for them to behave or govern this way.
That’s the salient point I’d make here:
Even when there was a plausible case to be made to do “literally the opposite of what the GQP would do today will cause you to cruise to re-election, Mr. President” – they chose not to do it.
They chose “Let the virus kill all the poors and blacks and liberals and if a hundred thousand Trump voters die in the process, well, MAGA, you know”
And thank all that is holy, they lost.
Gvg
@smith: Florida’s medical system is not at all overwhelmed. From what I hear Ontario’s is. So you must be missing some key facts. Cases have stopped going down, but we aren’t in red alert or anything. Most places are not even requiring appointments for vaccination anymore. You just walk up. My University has been holding mass vaccinations in the stadium 4 days a week and got 17,000 done last week in a county with a population around 220,000. Students say the want a shot before going home for the summer. We did not have spring break. I think most of the state schools chose likewise this year, so oddly enough, it’s not us at the beaches. We had many quarantine dorms and hotels paid for and set aside that we never needed to use. A lot of people are being aggravating, but it hasn’t ever been as bad as I feared. I think we got lucky.
Thor Heyerdahl
@ed_finnerty:
I’d agree about Bruce Arthur, but Warren Kinsella – he’s got some pretty shady recent political collaborations with the federal Conservatives that neither he nor the Conservatives want to talk about.
‘Seek and destroy’ contract against PPC came with strings, Kinsella says
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
Yes, exactly. Harper (RWNJ Prime Minister of Canada) sold Canada’s vaccine production capability to some other country, years ago, and so Canada now has NO vaccine production ability at all. Nothing to do with a single province.
Thor Heyerdahl
@J R in WV: It started long before Harper. It was put in Public Private Partnership by Trudeau (father) in the 1970s, then privatized and sold off by Mulroney (Conservative) in the 1980s. Harper hollowed out whatever corpse was left.
Jonathan in BC
For non-paywalled Canadian news, try the CBC: https://www.cbc.ca/news
Richard
@Kent: It was true love at first sight.
Penn
As an Ontarian, Ford started by meeting the bare minimum response to the pandemic: he admitted it was a thing and took steps. This looked great in comparison to the US at the time. The problem is he hasn’t ever gone past that bare minimum response, and hasn’t done anything to make things better long term.
This is after he cut healthcare funding before the pandemic, and as far as I know hasn’t restored it. Given that the Provincial government is also our entire healthcare system, this is very very bad.