Cathie from Canada: Round-up: just some political cartoons, plus some commentary about the week

Dali – Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War)

Just some cartoons and comments on the week – and the Dali painting seemed appropriate…

Canadian wildfires

The Toronto Star has an interactive wildfire map [gift link] showing where the smoke is expected for the next several days.

Probably more helpful to think of them not so much as “Canadian wildfires” but rather “climate change wildfires currently consuming Canada”
— Katie Mack (@astrokatie.com) July 17, 2026 at 8:23 AM

Meanwhile, people in the United States are losing their minds about the smoke, including Trump.

What MAGA thinks Canada is doing:

From Dean Blundell

What is actually happening:

Here’s the latest Iran Lego video about the wildfires:

A comment from the heart:

Not everyone reading today’s wildfire headlines will understand what northwestern Ontario is like.

I spent the first couple of decades of my life in Thunder Bay on the shores of Lake Superior. Every season was spent somewhere far beyond the city—camping, fishing, hiking, exploring the bush. Even now, every summer, my heart tugs at me to go back.

It is some of the most beautiful, peaceful and restorative country on earth. Vast stretches of true wilderness dotted with small towns and First Nations, often connected by a single highway. One road in. One road out.

When wildfire cuts those roads, people aren’t simply inconvenienced. They can be hundreds of kilometres from the next community, with very few options for escape. The same is true for the wildlife that has nowhere else to go.

That reality is hard to appreciate until you’ve stood in that landscape. The distances are immense. Help isn’t just around the corner.

Outside Thunder Bay itself, roughly 100,000 people are scattered across this immense region. Many are now living with evacuation orders, road closures, smoke, or the constant uncertainty of what tomorrow will bring.

My heart goes out to everyone forced to leave their homes. And my heart aches for the forests, lakes and quiet places I know so well. Boreal forests do recover, but they recover on nature’s timetable, not ours. Some places will take decades before they resemble the landscapes so many of us remember.

Thinking today of everyone in northwestern Ontario. Stay safe.

– Leni Spooner

Read on Substack

Iran War Quagmire

Some comments:
Phillips P O’Brien Midweek Update #19: What Do We Know?
O’Brien provides a list of the military actions for the last week. He concludes:

… [Trump] really seems to think that constant bombardment will lead the Iranian regime to give him something that they have not yet offered. Its an extraordinary gamble, as he is restarting the bombing in a weaker strategic position than he was when he ended military operations in April. It is now getting perilously close to the US midterm elections and this war remains unpopular. The most recent polls are pretty consistent—somewhere between 60-66% of Americans believe do not support the war and consider it a failure. Only the GOP/MAGA base still supports this unending war (ironically enough). Also, the Iranian regime has consolidated its hold on power and seems to have rebuilt some of its military assets. However that is an irrelevance in Donald Trump’s War. He will do anything not to accept defeat for now.

O’Brien also provides examples of how Trump and the Pentagon are grappling with consequences now. He continues:

…The US believed for too long that it was living in a consequence free world, where it could do what it wanted and was so powerful that other states would simply bow to its magnificence, accept all insults, and grovel for its friendship. Well guess what? Actions have consequences, and the US has deliberately chosen policies with pretty terrible ones.
Wake up and smell the roses America. You planted these ones.

On a side note, I also saw that Justin Ling has a opinion piece in the Toronto Star today – Ling thinks Mark Carney should be listening to Pentagon Under-Secretary of Defense Eldridge Colby, who is dissing the “middle powers alliance” policy that Carney initiated at Davos. Coincidentaly, in the post I quoted above, O’Brien also notes Colby’s opinions. But he isn’t as impressed with them as Ling is. (Colby, you may recall, was the jerk who reportedly threatened Pope Leo in January with an “Avignon Papacy” when Leo objected to Trump’s Donroe doctrine.) In fact, O’Brien says Colby is just in a panic now:

…It is hard not to laugh at this last thread. Europe never wanted to start moving towards strategic autonomy. It tried desperately to pretend that the US was still its friend, was still reliable and would still fight for it. However the administration, with Colby as a leading voice, has spent the last year and a half crapping on Europe from a great height. The result is that some European states are acting logically and beginning to plan for a strategic future that does not rely on America.
And now Colby panics and both insults Europeans and pleads with them because they are taking actions as a direct result of policies he support. He insults them in saying that they are too weak to do this, but then destroys his own case by threatening/pleading with them not to do it at the same time.
It obviously is finally dawning on him, as it did with Trump last week, that actions have consequences…

About Trump, his corruption, his election denial, and his stupid speech because its all one tangled ball of string now.

I found several good columns today about the speech and the documents posted from the White House:

-Wesley Wark The Trump Dump

The US President, as proclaimed in his July 16 address, has openly gone to war with his own intelligence community. It’s a war declared in the run-up to the US Congressional mid-term elections in November. The war is centred on his claims about a ‘deep state’ deliberately suppressing intelligence on interference in the 2020 Presidential election, which he lost but did his damnedest to over-turn and refuses to accept.
All wars are nasty. Trump’s conduct in this one is particularly so, and lacks all higher purpose beyond his own political survival. Honesty, truth-telling, are nowhere to be found.

-Aaron Parnas Trump’s Documents Disprove Election Claims, Trump Officials Lash Out After Speech Fails

…The White House reportedly went into damage-control mode after Trump’s primetime address received a harsh response. Trump had promised to reveal “really big news,” but the anticipated bombshell never materialized. Speaking from the East Room, he attempted to convince Americans that the country’s election system contains “shocking vulnerabilities.” Instead, the speech was widely criticized and quickly challenged by fact-checkers. The White House’s reaction suggested that the address had backfired rather than delivered the political victory Trump expected…

Paul Krugman Trump can’t get no respect

…Trump’s boasts about America’s international reputation are part of the case he is building for disrupting and/or rejecting the results of the midterm elections. Trump isn’t just insisting that everything is rigged against him. He’s also insisting that since he’s doing such an incredible job — presidenting like nobody has ever presidented before — nobody should get in his way or place any limits on his power.
It’s safe to say that at this point nobody who wasn’t already completely in the Trump tank is being persuaded by all this strutting, or indeed by anything Trump said in last night’s low-energy, boring rant. But remember: At this point, none of what Trump says is really about persuasion. It’s all about laying the groundwork for his attempt to destroy democracy.

Americans are disgusted with Trump’s ICE Gestapo