The shortest flight path from Russia to the United States would take an enemy bomber over the North Pole and across Canadian airspace. During the Cold War, that simple fact was the impetus for the creation of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, which forged an integrated radar network across the two countries, effectively treating North American airspace as a single defensive zone.
Link fixed! h/t BT
Another fake polling scandal has hit less than two weeks before the midterm elections, ripping open old wounds about the Michigan Democratic Senate primary and renewing skepticism about pollsters as they increasingly forecast a blue wave on Nov. 3.
An outfit called Wedgewood Polls released a statement on social media Tuesday acknowledging most of its results were not legitimate, but rather some kind of experiment designed to show serious problems with how polls are conducted and then reported on by the media.
h/t XC
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ontario Premier Doug Ford both disputed the suggestion of Canadian interference in the U.S. midterms, after the U.S. embassy in Canada released a list of quotes from Canadian politicians which it claims indicate “plans to influence American politics.”
Industry Minister Mélanie Joly is quoted five times in the list the embassy released Wednesday.
The U.S. Embassy in Ottawa has just issued a fact sheet accusing Canadian politicians of trying to influence American politics. It ends with a rather pointed warning: “Americans decide America’s elections.” https://t.co/q5Y72MJMiP
— Rupa Subramanya (@rupasubramanya) October 21, 2026
I think the USA is just yanking Joly’s chain.
United States Special Envoy Steve Witkoff said that there will soon be trilateral conversations between Russia, Ukraine, and the U.S. in hopes of getting the war to end.
Witkoff and Special Envoy Jared Kushner have been holding conversations with both Ukrainian and Russian representatives, including Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, even though tensions have recently strained between Trump and Zelensky in light of a recent U.S.-Russia diesel agreement.
No Country for Free Money:
The Begging Stops Here https://t.co/9xNJbeZo04— The United Spot (@TheUnitedSpot__) October 20, 2026
Alongside Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced an $8.7-billion support package for steel, critical mineral and auto sectors on Wednesday.
The partnership with the Ontario government earmarks $2.5 billion over two years for the province’s auto industry to build the “connected and electric vehicles of the future.”
Ottawa is providing $1.5 billion of the auto funding with Ontario providing the remaining $1 billion.
The British police are causing me a great deal of anxiety and distress
Could someone please arrest them ?
— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) October 20, 2026
In Revolutionary France, the guillotine was a privilege reserved for the nobility, though the nobles themselves would surely have preferred a different sort of privilege. Before the Revolution, commoners were simply hanged. But when equality was extended to criminal law, decapitation became the fate of everyone, neatly encapsulating the peculiar humanitarian sensibility of the revolutionaries in their determined pursuit of equality. But beheading people is an expensive business, especially when you are unleashing the Terror and planning to remove the heads of more than a thousand citizens every week. Consider that executioners were paid around $700, and that the axes of the time, as has been documented, lost their edge far too quickly. Whether this was due to the executioners’ incompetence or the stubborn resilience of their victims’ necks, I cannot say. The revolutionaries therefore turned to the famous invention of Joseph-Ignace Guillotin: the guillotine, which P. G. Wodehouse described as the only remedy for grey hair.
🇫🇷 Looters and rioters are presented as heroes by far-left media and politicians https://t.co/5aqXxPnrVR
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 21, 2026
Hezbollah supporters in Lebanon force Syrian ‘Al-Sharaa supporter’ to strip and belly-dance after he posted himself stepping on picture of Hassan Nasrallah — Beirut Wire https://t.co/1bpmaBRHQC
— RT (@RT_com) October 20, 2026
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is rewriting the rules of its economic immigration system to favour foreign workers in well-paid occupations, allowing employers to bypass looking at the Canadian talent pool first. Returning to a merit-based point system for high-skilled immigrants is a shift economists have long urged after years of high-volume, low-wage intake, but the latest policy change could cause controversy with Canadians given current polling trends.
What Carney tells reporters in French "We want to arrive at sustainable immigration levels. Well, we’ll see"
"Quebec is distinct, it’s unique because of its culture, its language and other aspects of its nature. So it’s appropriate in the case of Quebec." @MarkJCarney https://t.co/OHmJtP1Rai
— cbcwatcher (@cbcwatcher) October 21, 2026
In 2008, California voters approved funding for a high-speed rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles. A group of contractors donated tens of thousands of dollars to support the ballot measure. A state program manager projected that the initiative would create more than 100,000 construction jobs.
Eighteen years and more than $15 billion later, not a single mile of high-speed track has been laid. The state hasn’t even laid track on the rump Merced-Bakersfield line that it wants to open in the 2030s. In a recently resurfaced video from his time as lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom said the full project was unlikely to “materialize in our lifetime.”
Canada’s Alto boondoggle will follow this plan.
A new report from Food Banks Canada says the number of Canadians struggling with food insecurity continues to grow, as food bank visits hit a new record of more than 2.3 million in March.
The non-profit organization’s latest HungerCount report, released Wednesday, says the cost-of-living crisis and economic pressures are weighing heavily on nearly 10 million Canadians experiencing food insecurity.
China’s officials this year proposed to the Trump administration reciprocal visits to nuclear sites.
Specifically, the Chinese discussed visits to U.S. Department of Energy national labs. The U.S., a source told CNN, “would be open to discussing visits to nuclear testing sites.”
Unfortunately, China’s initiative looks suspect, and talks should not proceed until Beijing is ready to engage the United States meaningfully.
The woman who accused bestselling author and former University of British Columbia (UBC) professor Steven Galloway of rape was sexting with her (now) ex-husband throughout the night of one of the alleged assaults.
Galloway’s accuser and former affair partner, known only as A.B. due to a publication ban, claimed to have been assaulted in Galloway’s office at UBC on May 5, 2011. Her ex-husband testified in B.C. Supreme Court Monday, that he and A.B. messaged back and forth the whole night. Several of these text messages, which were shown in court, were sexual in nature.
This is brutal.
An environmental group facing scrutiny for its ties to China honored a leader of a major left-leaning grantmaking foundation that has given millions of dollars to China-connected entities.
The Environmental Law Institute on Tuesday honored Julie Packard, vice chair of the board of trustees for the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, with its 2026 Environmental Achievement Award. Packard’s group has funded a range of Chinese institutions including universities scrutinized by Congress, a public foundation, and a research institute.
They’re everwhere.
Make of this what you will: In Monday’s unity referendum the separatist option received an almost identical share of the popular vote in Alberta as Justin Trudeau did the first time he won election in 2015.
