ghosting: the practice of Premier Jason Kenney ending the leadership responsibility with the Province of Alberta by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication.
Premier Jason Kenney and Dr. Deena Hinshaw haven’t spoken publicly in weeks!
The last time Kenney addressed Albertans was on Aug. 9 at a press conference to announce the expansion of an Edmonton brewery that promised to create 25 jobs.
Where has the premier been since?
His office said in a statement on August 26 that Kenney is on vacation for two weeks, but he is “still able to fully communicate with his cabinet and senior officials as required” and has “participated in numerous briefings on important subjects — including on COVID-19.”
The statement did not say where Kenney is, only that he will be back at work when things improve…er…when he feels like it….ok maybe this week sometime…maybe…
Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw hasn’t spoken publicly since Aug. 13, when she delayed the province’s plans to lift testing, tracing and isolation measures until at least Sept. 27.
Alberta’s active cases are increasing. The province currently has 11,426 active cases of COVID-19 — the most in the country and the most the province has seen since May 24.
Court Painter, after receiving his prognosticator fee, explained to all clients that in the spirit of fairness it would be unseemly to reveal his election prognostications and become known as a spoiler.It is rumoured among the chattering class, Court Painter might have been bought off by the multitude of pollsters who depend on revenue from media to reveal daily mixed poll results to anxious citizens !
GW Bush former US president & presently a self-described”simple painter”, recently discovered new dramatic subjects to add to his celebrity portrait collection .
Five of the top defense companies in the US , Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman, spent a combined $34.2 million in lobbying in the first half of 2021 compared to about $33 million in the same period of 2020
From a paper written by Heidi Peltier as part of an ongoing project sponsored by Brown’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Its 35 scholars, physicians, legal experts and human-rights advocates began their work in 2011.
The project has pegged the costs of the war on terror at US $6.4 trillion through fiscal 2020.
US “Defense spending now accounts for more than half of all discretionary spending, a category that also includes education, transportation, and healthcare—virtually everything the government does other than Medicare and Social Security,” Peltier writes.
“Most of these inflated costs are due to payments to overly expensive military contractors.”
A Canadian perspective :Excepted from Legion Magazine article: July 8,2020 Rise in military contracting hides human, monetary costsby Stephen J. Thorne
Canada’s military contracting is generally limited to food and technical services, consultants and translators, though it hired private security firms to conduct perimeter security on its forward operating bases during latter deployments to Afghanistan, and at its embassy in Kabul.
Vice News reported in 2018 that Canadian government payments to private security firms—mercenaries, essentially—had doubled under the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, numbering in the millions of dollars.
Many are ex-Canadian soldiers working for defence contractors providing security for high-profile executives or government officials in foreign countries.
GardaWorld, a multimillion-dollar company based in Montreal, has thousands of security contractors globally, protecting everything from embassies to businesses in hostile areas and peaceful nations alike
A 2007 report by David Perry of Dalhousie University in Halifax said the Canadian military pursued private logistics services for many of the same reasons that the American military has come to increasingly rely on private military providers, namely “manpower shortages and a desire to maintain troop ceilings.”
“These shortages have been exacerbated by repeated deployments to Afghanistan [and] the scope of services contracting under the CANCAP program has expanded significantly,” Perry wrote.
Proponents of military contracting contend that what Heidi Peltier calls “commercialization” of government services decreases costs and increases quality of goods and services, thereby benefitting the public purse.
But Peltier’s paper asserts that military contracting is at least as expensive, and often more expensive, than if the military were to perform the same services in-house.
“This is because contractors lack competitive pressures to reduce the prices they charge to the government,” says the document. “This lack of competition is due, first, to the nature of the contracts themselves.”
May 8 /23 (Reuters) – The man Texas authorities say killed eight people in a barrage of gunfire at a Dallas-area shopping mall over the weekend left behind a social media profile filled with white supremacist and neo-Nazi ideology, multiple news outlets reported on Monday.
White supremacists commit the greatest number of domestic extremist-related murders in most years, but in 2022 the percentage was unusually high: 21 of the 25 murders were linked to white supremacists. Again, this is primarily due to mass shootings
Wishful thinking!
Proud Boys near Freedom Plaza
COMING UP: MAY 12/13 .2023
The Trump National Doral resort will host two antisemites who have promoted pro-Adolf Hitler propaganda and spread virulently antisemitic conspiracy theories. They will be speaking at an event in Miami May 12/13 alongside numerous Team Trump personalities, including Eric Trump, Lara Trump, and Devin Nunes.
Trump Doral speaker Scott McKay, who has a streaming show on Rumble, has claimed that Jewish people orchestrated 9/11 and were responsible for the assassinations of Presidents Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and William McKinley. He has also said that Jewish people routinely torture children and eat their hearts.
He has praised Hitler for supposedly trying to take down a Jewish banking system and said, “Hitler was actually fighting the same people that we’re trying to take down today.”
Trump Doral speaker Charlie Ward, who also streams a show on Rumble, has shared posts praising Hitler for supposedly “warning us” about Judaism; claiming that “VIRUSES are Man (JEW) made”; and attacking the alleged Jewish media for supposedly lying about the Holocaust.
The two are featured speakers in the “ReAwaken America” tour, which is set to stop at Trump’s Miami hotel on May 12 and 13. Scheduledtospeak alongside McKay and Ward are numerous members of Trump’s orbit, including: Eric Trump, Lara Trump, former Trump economic adviser Peter Navarro, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former senior Department of Defense official Kash Patel, former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes, and Trump ally Roger Stone.
UPDATE : July 14/22 from August 21/21 post
Jan 6 Hearing Tied Trump to “America’s Biggest Threat:” The White Power Mvmt | Amanpour and Company
To explore the evolution of right-wing extremist groups in America and their connection to Trump, author and historian Kathleen Belew joins Walter Isaacson. Originally aired on July 13, 2022
Sometimes, Court Painter gets bored and puts down the brush! Seeking inspiration he browses through the archive ,occasionally looking up wistfully to stare out the window till the eyelids become heavy and he is seized by a nap!
Halifax Regional Police have just offered the latest premium merchandise items on their E-STORE to memorialize the 2021 Halifax Homeless Clearances. Since most politicians were absent from the occasion ,it is expected they will be the first to make souvenir purchases for family & friends!
Court Painter with two paintings depicting police action during the August 19/21 homeless clearances.
Mehdi Hasan: August 15,2021 I also wish everyone had listened to @RepBarbaraLee back in September 2001 – the only member of Congress to vote against the invasion of Afghanistan.
Click for video
September 14,2001
Only one member of the US congress voted against the invasion of Afghanistan, beseeching restraint “As we act, let us not become the evil we deplore”
The vast majority of us aren’t using paper maps to chart our course across the ocean anymore, so critics of the Mercator projection argue that the continued use of this style of map gives users a warped sense of the true size of countries—particularly in the case of the African continent.
Mercator’s map inadvertently also pumps up the sizes of Europe and North America. Visually speaking, Canada and Russia appear to take up approximately 25% of the Earth’s surface, when in reality they occupy a mere5%.
As the animated GIF below—created by Reddit user, neilrkaye – demonstrates, northern nations such as Canada and Russia have been artificially “pumped up” in the minds of many people around the world.
Source: Visual Capitalist
In reaction to Canada’s true geographical size being brought to light, PM Trudeau called an election hoping the citizens will not notice the Great Dominion’s geographical diminution in the eyes of the world, counting on the distraction over why a federal election was called in the first place.
