Prime Minister Carney and President Sheinbaum proudly sport each other’s friendship gifts.(In an unexpected last minute move the PM switched out an Edmonton Oilers jersey for a Toronto Blue Jays jersey after checking the latest sports news.)

MEXICO CITY — Canada and Mexico have signed a pact to deepen economic and security ties ahead of what is expected to be a challenging round of negotiations with the United States on a trilateral trade deal.

The agreement — billed as a comprehensive strategic partnership — was signed by Prime Minister Mark Carney and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico City Thursday September 18/25.

It includes a plan to build infrastructure such as ports, rail and energy corridors while tackling crime and protecting the environment.

Source: CTV News

Court Painter with “The Two Amigos” painting.

Meanwhile back in Canada

Halifax — The U.S. ambassador to Canada took aim at those who use the term “trade war” to describe economic tension between the two countries at an event in Halifax Thursday, saying he was frustrated by the “elbows up” rhetoric.

Pete “Blow Hard” Hoekstra made the remarks at a luncheon hosted by the Halifax Chamber of Commerce in the city’s downtown.

“I’m disappointed that I came to Canada, a Canada that (where) it is very, very difficult to find Canadians who are passionate about the American-Canadian relationship. You ran a campaign where it was anti-American. ‘Elbows up.’ … It was an anti-American campaign. That has continued. That’s disappointing,” Ambassador Blow Hard said as he huffed and puffed while sporting a jaunty band aid : confident to catch the attention of his boss The MAGAMonarch.

Who rocks it better?

Click link for Axios article

https://www.axios.com/2025/09/18/trump-maga-media-cnn-cbs-ellison-tiktok

Seems ABC, FCC chair Brendan Carr and The Orange Menace can’t take a joke, so ABC gives comedian Jimmy Kimmel the hook!

In an authoritarian setup, humour isn’t free play; it’s policed. What you’re allowed to laugh at is decided by authority. Jokes become loyalty tests.

Driving the news: ABC  pulled Jimmy Kimmel off air “indefinitely” on Wednesday in response to the late-night host’s comments about Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

The extraordinary move came after Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr warned ABC that it could face fines or license revocations if it did not “operate in the public interest.”

Trump celebrated Kimmel’s removal — just as he did CBS’s decision to cancel Stephen Colbert’s show — and called for NBC to take action against remaining late-night hosts Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon.

America drowning…is not a joke!

Court Painter seen puzzling over recent action by Canadian Members of Parliament

Rachel Gilmore post September 16/25

Canada’s MPs are back on Parliament Hill — and they’re already being ridiculous. Following the disturbing murder of Charlie Kirk, Canada’s MPs took it upon themselves to pay tribute to the man in the House of Commons. Not only did they attempt to rewrite history and paint him as a man entirely dedicated to faith and family, but the remarks from Conservative MP Rachael Thomas received a standing ovation on both sides of the political aisle. You can oppose political violence without rewriting the legacy of a man who did a lot of harm to vulnerable and marginalized communities. But Canada’s politicians, some media and many employers don’t seem to entirely understand that.

Click for video

Liberal government members joined in the standing ovation.

America on the event horizon of a black hole.

Playing through

‘Political violence is not random’

Appeared in  POLITICO MAGAZINE 09/12/2025 05:00 AM EDT

BY BARBARA WALTER 

Barbara Walter is the Rohr Professor of International Affairs at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego. Her most recent book is How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them

Political violence is not random.

Research shows it becomes far more likely under four conditions: when democracy is declining rapidly, when societies are divided by race, religion or ethnicity, when political leaders tolerate or encourage violence, and when citizens have easy access to guns.

The United States checks all four boxes and none of them are getting better. Violence also tends to spike around elections, which means the coming contests in 2026 and 2028 are poised to be flashpoint

The avenues for prevention look bleak. Democrats haven’t had the votes — or the courage — to strengthen democratic institutions. Republicans benefit from the current pseudo-democratic system and have no incentive to reform it. The racial divide has narrowed somewhat, but not enough to defuse conflict. Trump and other MAGA leaders rely on threats and violence to stoke fear, and Congress remains paralyzed on gun control. All of this points toward things getting worse, not better.

The radicalization pipeline runs through a handful of American tech companies that remain almost entirely unregulated.

But there is one place where real progress is still possible. Most acts of political violence in America over the past two decades have been carried out by lone actors — young men radicalized online. The radicalization pipeline runs through a handful of American tech companies that remain almost entirely unregulated.

curb the algorithms

If lawmakers were willing to curb the algorithms that amplify conspiracy theories, disinformation and hate, they could weaken the pipeline feeding violent extremism. After Charlie Kirk’s assassination, that may be the single most immediate lever left to pull.

The question is whether America has the will to pull it before the violence grows worse.

Musk loses crown as the world’s richest person to Larry Ellison and then snatches it back

Court Painter with portrait of Elon Musk

Click link for article

https://apnews.com/article/richest-billionaires-musk-ellison-oracle-tesla-bloomberg-forbes-e90a3cab2a0b256923ca55814893f9fe?utm_source=copy&utm_medium=share

Court Painter with portrait of Larry Ellison

NEW YORK (AP) — The battle among billionaires for bragging rights as the world’s richest person got heated Wednesday with the surprising surge of an old contender: Larry Ellison.

In a stunning few minutes after markets opened, stock in Ellison’s Oracle Corp. rocketed more than a third, enough for him to temporarily wrest the title from its longtime holder Elon Musk and hand it to the software giant’s co-founder.

But the stock market is fickle, and Musk was back on top by the end of the day, at least according to Bloomberg, as Oracle gave up a bit of its earlier gains.

For those keeping score, the difference now is a billion, which isn’t much given the size of the figures: Musk’s $384.2 billion versus $383.2 billion for Ellison.

The dueling fortunes are so big each could fund the lifestyles of 5 million typical American families for a year, about the entire population of Florida, allowing them to all quit their jobs. Or they could just tell all of South Africa to take a vacation for year and produce nothing, based on its gross domestic product.

And then there is this:

Oh by the way ..just in...248 million: Going once, going twice. The famed auction house Sotheby’s annual losses have doubled to $248 million, as the global art market continues to collapse due to uncertainty about the US economy and a tapering-off of interest from high-end Asian buyers

Court Painter typically makes the big bucks painting portraits of the powerful and infernal, however he has undertaken for your viewing pleasure- pro bono!, the Herculean task of rendering the leading AI Tech Giant CEO’s responsible for all this AI rigmarole boom and disruption boom.

Editors note: The images have not been generated by AI prompts. Just so you know!

Mark Zuckerberg (Meta)

The top circle of AI tech giant CEOs in 2025 looks like this: dispersed tastefully throughout this posting.

• Sundar Pichai (Alphabet/Google)
• Satya Nadella (Microsoft)
• Sam Altman (OpenAI)
• Mark Zuckerberg (Meta)
• Andy Jassy (Amazon)
• Jensen Huang (NVIDIA)
• Dario Amodei (Anthropic)
• Tim Cook (Apple)
• Elon Musk (Tesla/xAI)
• Arvind Krishna (IBM)

Sam Altman (OpenAI)

Click link for article

https://www.axios.com/2025/09/09/data-centers-ai-spending-boom

Selected excerpts from September 9/25 Axios Technology article What AI’s spending boom is really buying by Scott Rosenberg

Tech giants’ astronomical spending on AI infrastructure comes with a colossal hedge: In a crucial way, it’s not really spending on AI at all.

Why it matters: Most of the hundreds of billions of dollars in AI-related capital investment today is going into computing power, hardware and buildings — assets that will retain real value even if AI itself never pays off.

Elon Musk (Tesla/xAI)

The bottom line: On the financial landscape as seen from the Big Tech boardroom, a data center project looks like just another useful way to park some billions.

• If AI keeps booming, the companies will have capacity to keep up.
• If it goes bust, they have computing assets they can retool to support whatever comes after AI.

Sundar Pichai (Alphabet/Google)

Our thought bubble: Data center projects can spike construction jobs but they’re lousy at creating long-term job growth. As the well-known investor Nancy Tengler wrote Friday, “We believe companies are investing in technology instead of human capital.

• If only AI infrastructure spending were as effective at goosing employment as it is in training models, the U.S. economy might really benefit.

Tim Cook (Apple)

Satya Nadella (Microsoft)

Dario Amodei (Anthropic)

Arvind Krishna (IBM)

Andy Jassy (Amazon)

Jensen Huang (NVIDIA)

Premier Danielle Smith reportedly seen saying oops/sorry ! to Margaret Atwood author of The Handmaid’s Tale

Disclaimer: Premier Smith did not say oops/sorry. Court Painter made it up!

Alberta pauses book ban after schools remove The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984 and other classics

The province says it will review its controversial policy after outcry over removing beloved novels from classrooms

Among those books to be banned were dystopian classics such as The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. The Color Purple by Alice Walker and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou were also targeted, as were Jaws by Peter Benchley and It by Stephen King.

The Alberta government is set to release September 5 its revised school library book ban.

The new version would come three days after the government directed school boards to pause their work in complying with the original ministerial order.

School boards initially had until the end of the month to remove books containing what the province deemed sexually explicit content, including images, illustrations and written descriptions.

That led Edmonton Public Schools to compile a list of over 200 books it needed to remove, including literary classics such as Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Premier Danielle Smith has said the Edmonton school division was being heavy handed and derided it as “vicious compliance” and purposely misunderstood the intent of the order.

She said the government’s main concern was images of sexual content and that the policy was being revised so classics like Atwood’s would stay in schools.

News Sources: The Guardian,Canadian Press

By the way, Premier Smith has a book recommendation ; Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

“I didn’t read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged until I was 22. Maybe we should make it mandatory reading in high school, because it is a pretty influential book and I think it does really articulate how important it is that that we value our entrepreneurs and we value a free-enterprise economy.” Moreover, she added, it is “absolutely appropriate for school children of that age.”

Prime Minister Carney describes once again as having a “good conversation” with the Orange Menace south of the Great Dominion.

Yeesh!

Who is going to tell him?

COURT PAINTER is having a rest before mustering the strength to have a one to one!

Under deep cover, Court Painter shadowed Pierre Poilievre, Conservative opposition leader and freshly minted MP for Battle River–Crowfoot, as he worked the phones and plotted his return to the House of Commons as the anti-statesman slash-and-burn political street-fighter.

Alongside Pierre Poilievre, Court Painter has included conservative power brokers and supporters such as former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Reform Party of Canada founder Preston Manning .(plus one American congresswoman, a Canadian media personality and a few extras)

Excepts from: Poilievre is Back…With More of the Same: Lori Turnbull August 28, 2025 Policy Magazine

‘As Labour Day looms, the imminent return of the House of Commons on September 15th means Canadians will see a new political dynamic: the question period face-off between Prime Minister Mark Carney and a Pierre Poilievre fighting for his political life.

That Poilievre is a polarizing figure is not news. The 46-year-old career politician made his reputation as a slash-and-burn political streetfighter whose tactics have always upstaged his policy prescriptions.

But the widespread assumption was that, following both the national election results and Poilievre’s loss of his own riding in April, he would reassess that approach. Instead, Poilievre’s public outings since his expected byelection win in the safe Alberta Tory seat of Battle-River Crowfoot last week have revealed the opposite. Indeed, in one news conference, Poilievre called the Prime Minister a “walking talking broken promise” and said that he was “worse than Trudeau.” Expect a slew of attack ads with a similar refrain.

Though he won the leadership of the Conservative Party handily in 2022, capturing 68% of the vote on the first ballot, Poilievre has not been as successful in connecting broadly with the Canadian public (and with women voters in particular).

Again, if Poilievre largely agrees with what the government is doing, he is more likely to attack Carney on integrity, competence, and effectiveness.

And, even if his negativity burns bridges with some people, Pierre Poilievre will do his level best to convince voters to give Carney a failing grade.’

Click link for Guardian August 29th Marina Hyde article

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/29/gaza-boycott-tweet-world-donald-trump?CMP=share_btn_url

‘At operational level, however, things don’t change. The path to peace still goes through politicians with power. Many of them are still terrible people. They will still have to have unpleasant and even “toxic” conversations in which horse-trading and moral compromise are inevitable. And yet these things are still desirable, because this is the way it has always ended.

This is the way the bombs go silent, the way the children stop starving, the way the hideous carnage ends. It is a long, perilous and precarious path – but history has made it familiar, because it is the only one that actually gets anywhere near where we need to go.’