Liberals win in Canada election

As expected, the Liberals have won in Canada’s general elections, winning 168 ridings, just short of the 172 needed to get an absolute majorities. Hence they will need the support of smaller parties to govern. Those parties got 31 seats.

The Conservatives won just 144 seats, more than they had in the outgoing parliament but still a huge disappointment since in January of this year they were expected to win big. But that was before Trump decided to make inflammatory and demeaning statements about Canada. Not only did they lose, their leader Paul Poilievre lost the own seat, one that he had held since 2004. The New Democratic Party faired very poorly and their leader Jagmeet Singh also lost his seat.

Until the end of 2024, internal discussions within the Liberal party were grim: under their most optimistic scenarios, they could only hope of holding the Conservatives to a minority government. Outright victory was nowhere on the party’s radar.
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Trump’s threats to annex the country to make it the 51st state, his belittling of Trudeau as “governor” and threats of economic coercion have all contributed to a sharp feeling of anger and betrayal towards Canada’s southern neighbour.

“The shift in polls was absolutely without precedent,” said David Coletto, the head of the polling firm Abacus. “But to see the honeymoon that followed – and the way that support held, is also unprecedented. I can’t think of other jurisdictions around the world where we’ve seen this complete reset. And this turns on two factors: how unpopular Justin Trudeau was, and how much of a threat and gamechanger Donald Trump has meant to Canada.”

Carney’s come-from-behind win was fueled by by his strong stance against Trump’s arrogant and condescending attitude towards Canada. The UK’s Keir Starmer and other world leaders should take note.

Carney should send Trump a thank you card.

Welcome to America? Not so much

David Lindorff has done many trips abroad to Asia and Europe and describes his experience on returning to the US after having been in Europe since October 1, 2024. He says that these returns are always unpleasant, with a long flight followed by long lines at US immigration with other grumpy fliers anxious to get to a comfortable bed.

But this time it was different. The arrival hall at Newark was nearly empty and there were no lines at any of the three sections for US passport holders, permanent resident green card holders, or other foreign passport holders. Of course, while highly unusual, this may have been partly due to a statistical fluke. Sometimes several planes arrive close together creating massive crowds, at other times just a single plane may arrive, though that is unlikely at a major airport like Newark. But he says that the statistics show that the number of people coming to the US is dropping due to worldwide coverage of the alarming way that people are being treated by ICE at US entry ports.
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UK’s Keir Starmer tries to placate Trump

Reports are emerging that the UK government, responding to repeated requests from Trump, is putting pressure on the organization that runs the British Open golf championship to assign the 2028 tournament to Trump’s golf course in Scotland.

One source described the talks as direct lobbying from the government, although others said officials had asked about hypothetical problems with the idea, rather than insisting that it happen.

One person with knowledge of the discussions said: “The government is doing everything it can to get close to Trump. One concrete thing is that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) have been involved in pushing for the Open to return to Trump-owned Turnberry.”

Both the DCMS and Trump Turnberry declined to comment.

Two other people briefed on conversations between the US president and Keir Starmer said Trump had asked the prime minister multiple times about hosting the Open at Turnberry, which the Trump Organization has owned since 2014.
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Hosting the Open could provide a welcome financial boost for SLC Turnberry, the course’s operating company, which is run by the president’s sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. Last year the company lost £1.7m, having made £571,000 in the previous year – its only profit in 10 years.

Trump of course has no shame in using his office to advance his personal business nterests.

The UK has a long, long history of their governments being servile to the US, and this is even when they have Labour governments like they have now. This is not as big a deal as Tony Blair being obscenely obsequious to George W. Bush and giving him cover for the invasion of Iraq. But it does indicate a subservient attitude that seeks to ingratiate themselves with US presidents.

It is not clear that they get anything worthwhile in return for their cravenness. Trump seems to only respect governments that respond with firmness, like China and Russia. Trying to please him only makes him worse.

Here come the quackpots

Remember when, during the Covid-19 epidemic, Trump startled people in the medical community by suggesting that ingesting disinfectants could kill the virus? This was even more horrifying than his suggestions of using Ivermectin (the horse dewormer) and laser light as cures. It was not clear at that time where he got this crackpot idea but since he is full of crackpot ideas, people presumably did not think it worth tracking down the source.

But now it appears we know. The idea of using bleach was suggested by someone named Andreas Kalcker who markets chlorine dioxide, described as “a potentially life-threatening form of industrial bleach that is claimed without evidence to be a cure for cancer, Covid and autism.”

Andreas Kalcker is among 50 listed speakers at the “Truth Seekers Conference”, a two-day event opening on Thursday at the US president’s resort, Trump National Doral Miami. The event features several anti-vaxxers and other conspiracy theorists who have been brought together by the far-right commentator Charlie Ward.

Kalcker, a German national thought to be living in Switzerland, markets the bleach under the brand name “CDS”, for chlorine dioxide solution. His online brochures claim that the toxic chemical, which he admits is a disinfectant, can “eliminate pathogens” that cause disease.

He boasts it is “possibly the greatest medical discovery of the last 100 years”.

Government health authorities in the US and Spain have denounced the remedy as fraudulent, saying it is no different from drinking bleach. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned that it can cause serious and even life-threatening side-effects, including dehydration, diarrhoea and kidney injury.

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Trump becoming increasingly pathetic

We are witnessing the transition from Trump being bold and bombastic to becoming weak and pathetic as his aggressive actions are turning out to be ineffective, resulting in him having to lie and plead.

We see that most clearly in his actions with China. He must have thought that the high tariffs he slapped on imports from that country would swiftly cause them to buckle. But they have hung tough and reciprocated with high tariffs of their own and the stock markets cratered. So now he is reduced to essentially pleading with them to call him and promising them that he will be “very nice” to them if they call. He claims that the two countries have been in talks but the Chinese dismissed that.
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George Santos sentenced to 87 months in prison

One of the most spectacular cases of fraud by a member of the US Congress came to an end today when George Santos was sentenced to 87 months in prison for all the crimes he had committed. The brazenness of both his frauds and the way he responded when he was found out were truly breathtaking. The judge was not convinced by his last-minute expressions of contrition.

He lied extensively about his life story both before and after entering the US Congress, where he was the first openly LGBTQ+ Republican elected to the body. He was ultimately convicted of defrauding donors.
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He admitted to deceiving donors and stealing the identities of nearly a dozen people, including his family members, to fund his winning campaign. He also made up strings of fantastical stories about his life, identity and experiences.

During his court case he frequently held press gatherings and mocked the media and his detractors, saying he was being smeared.

Santos was shown to have spent donor money on vacations, luxury goods, Botox treatment and the website OnlyFans.
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Santos’s sentencing was not without controversy. Before his Friday court appearance, he referred to himself as a “scapegoat” on social media, in reference to prosecutors accusing him of organizing the fraudulent conspiracy.

Santos also alleged that the justice department was a “cabal of pedophiles”, in posts made to X. Prosecutors highlighted Santos’s comments in a filing after Santos’s defense team requested a two-year prison sentence.
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As part of the plea agreement, Santos was forced to pay a restitution of $373,749.97 and forfeiture of $205,002.97.

A list of his lies is something to behold. And yet, for a while, his Republican colleagues in Congress were willing stand by him until the scandal got so bad that they booted him out. It was a local newspaper the North Shore Leader that first accused him of fabricating his resume shortly before his election but the story did not gain traction in the major media.

Since he was convicted in federal court, he could appeal to Trump to pardon him. It would not be at all surprising to me if Trump did that.

Lawrence Krauss taken down by Rebecca Watson

Via Pharyngula, I saw an excellent analysis by Rebecca Watson (see below) about a new book coming out that is edited by Lawrence Krauss that has the title The War on Science.

She takes apart Krauss, describing his abominable behavior towards women over the years. Krauss was the chair of the physics department at Case Western Reserve University from 1993 until 2005, when I was also in the department. Because he was the chair, I had plenty of interactions with him though we were not friends and did not socialize outside of official functions. While I did not have any problems with him personally or professionally (except on one occasion when I felt that he behaved ungraciously), I had seen and heard things that made me have misgivings about his judgment and ethics, and so found the charges made against him by so many women to be utterly plausible.

While the book is not yet out, Watson’s description about the blurbs about it sounded to me like it was written by Republican MAGA types, claiming that the enemies of science are wokeness, DEI, transgender women, war on free speech, cancel culture, and all the other usual suspects that are trotted out by the MAGA-adjacent for all society’s ills. (It is curious that most of the people who shout loudest about their right to free speech being denied are rich, famous, and (mostly) white men who seem to have no difficulty finding publishers and other media outlets for their views. It seems like what they really want is that, despite their obnoxious views, to be loved by those who were their allies before their ugly sides were revealed.)

Watson talks about other contributors to the book like Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, and Steven Pinker, all of whom have a marked anti-trans bias. She did not discuss other dubious contributors such as Niall Ferguson, Jordan Peterson, and Peter Boghossian. Some of them are not even scientists and so I was surprised that they could not sign on another famous transphobe J. K. Rowling to boost the sales.

California is now the world’s fourth largest economy

It has just surpassed Japan.

California’s economy has surpassed Japan’s, making the Golden state the fourth largest economy in the world, Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Thursday.

The state’s nominal GDP reached $4.1tn, according to data from the International Monetary Fund and the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, edging out Japan’s $4.02tn nominal GDP. California now ranks behind the US at $29.18tn, China at $18.74tn and Germany at $4.65tn.

This took me by surprise. I knew that California had a large economy but did not realize that it was this large, and because of its high growth rate, maybe on track to become even larger than Germany and be third.

The state has outperformed the world’s top economies with a growth rate in 2024 of 6% compared with the US’s 5.3%, China’s 2.6% and Germany’s 2.9%. This week’s new rankings come six years after California surpassed the United Kingdom and became the world’s fifth largest economy.

The state’s population is just under 40 million, which places it at #39 in rankings of population by country, just below Canada. The per capita GDP of California is $102,500 while that of the rest of the US is $73,529.

Like many other Democratic states, it sends more to the federal government than it receives from them, whereas most Republican states receive more than they send. So Republicans, who love to whine about how ‘their’ money goes to the undeserving, are in reality the ones who are living off the wealth of others.

California is a major contributor to economic growth nationally, with the money it sends to the federal government outpacing what it receives in federal funding by $83bn, according to a statement from Newsom’s office.

Despite an enormous shortage of affordable housing that has fueled a homelessness crisis in the state, the population has grown in recent years. Meanwhile, last year the state reported its tourism spending had hit an all-time high – though California has seen a drop in some areas.

Canadian tourism in California was down 12% in February compared with the same month last year amid Trump’s tariff war. In response, the state has announced a new campaign to draw Canadians back, while one city has put up pro-Canada signs across its downtown.

But the governor Gavin Newsom warns that California’s economy could be hurt by Trump’s actions.

Trump must be looking like a paper tiger to China

It seems to be the conventional wisdom that the tariff war between the US and China is not good for anybody, least of all the two countries concerned. And yet, here we are with China having tariffs of 125% on US goods and the US having tariffs of 145% on Chinese goods, rates that would have been thought utterly preposterous before this trade war started. Trump must have thought that China would quickly come to him seeking to make a deal, but they have not, even though the tariffs will undoubtedly hurt their economy and their long range plans, according to Yasheng Huang, an expert on China who teaches at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management.

I think it’s clear they [China] don’t want a trade war. Their economy is struggling, and the export sector has been one of its few bright spots. Last year, they had almost a trillion-dollar trade surplus. The property sector is not doing well. The technology sector is doing well, but it’s not really adding that much to G.D.P. growth. So this was purely a trade war that was initiated by the United States, and not by China.

I don’t think they want to cave in. That would make the Chinese leadership look very bad. And, moreover, I don’t think they trust the Trump Administration. Even if they were to give concessions this time around, I don’t think they believe that the concessions would hold. So there are multiple motivations on their part not to quickly come to an agreement if that agreement requires significant concessions.
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I think, if I had to place a bet, my bet is that they still want to continue with the current model. They don’t trust Trump. They don’t believe that his tariffs are credible. And I have to say I agree with them. And they think that he is going to make concessions. If he is going to make concessions, then I think they prefer to stay with the current model, which is a lot of investments, a lot of production, and then relying on the export markets. I think that’s their preferred option.

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Larry David skewers Bill Maher for normalizing Trump

Bill Maher was invited by Trump to have dinner with him at the White House and afterwards said that privately Trump was different from the way he presented himself in public, that he was ‘gracious and measured’ and had a sense of humor.

Comedian and talk show host Bill Maher praised President Trump after their late March meeting at the White House, describing him as “gracious and measured.” 
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The talk show host emphasized that he did not turn “MAGA” and “to the President’s credit, there was no pressure to” do so during their March 31 meeting.   

“Just for starters, he laughs. I’ve never seen him laugh in public, but he does, including to himself, and it’s not fake, believe me. As a comedian of 40 years, I know a fake laugh when I hear it,” Maher said.
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The longtime comedian said he felt like he did not need to walk on “eggshells” while speaking to Trump, something, in his view, would be unlikely around former Democratic Presidents Obama and Clinton.

“I feel it’s emblematic of why the Democrats are so unpopular these days,” Maher said, later telling his viewers that Trump is different in public compared to his persona in a private setting.
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“Trump was gracious and measured. And why he isn’t that in other settings, I don’t know, and I can’t answer, and it’s not my place to answer.”

Maher is of course one of those people who calls himself a liberal even as he increasingly moves rightward, claiming smugly that he is being sensible and has not changed but that it is liberals and Democrats who have moved too far to the left and are going crazy.

Larry David was having none of this. In a hilarious New York Times op-ed titled My Dinner With Adolf, he skewers Maher without mentioning him by name.

I will not quote from David’s piece because one should really read the whole thing.