Men's Lifestyle July 17, 2026 0 Comments

Senator’s Shocking Proposal to Fine Canada Over Wildfires — What This Means for Global Accountability and Your Future

Ever glanced outside and wondered if the sky was putting on a surreal art show just for you? Well, last Wednesday, mine didn’t just blush amber—it bled yellow, seeping into the streets, trees, even the Charles River, as if the world had dipped itself in a wildfire’s smoky palette. Yes, Canada’s wildfires have once again turned our horizons into a grim reminder that climate chaos is not some distant headline but a breathing, choking reality drawing smoky lines from Ontario right into our lungs. With heat domes aligning like some cosmic joke, cooking us under a convection oven lid from Chicago to the Atlantic, aren’t we all left wondering—how long before “extreme” turns into “every summer”?

Meanwhile, political antics unfold faster than you can breathe in this murky air, with proposals to fine a neighbor for sending smoke our way and homeland security chiefs declaring war on brownies at polling stations—really, does anyone else find that as bizarre as me? So, while our skies flare with smoke and our TV screens with chaos, maybe it’s time to ask: what’s the cost of all this madness on our health, our senses, and sanity?

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8 min read

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)

Along about noon on Wednesday, I looked out of my window and the entire sky was yellow. And the truly weird thing was that the yellow in the sky seemed to leach down into the streets and the trees and even the Charles River. Canadian wildfires, make me wanna holler, way they do my mind. From CNN:

In Canada, 3,500 fires have burned more than 6 million acres this summer, with a dozen blazes flaring up in Ontario in recent weeks, filling the skies with smoke drifting south, like it did in an extreme way in 2023. Canadian wildfire activity this year is nowhere near the hyperactivity of 2023 but the combination of wildfires in Ontario and a heat dome in the central US spells smoky trouble for millions. Planet-heating fossil fuel pollution is increasing the chance of prolonged smoke seasons as it tips the odds that extreme wildfire seasons like 2023’s—Canada’s worst season on record—won’t remain an outlier for long.

The traveling smoke plumes have wrecked the air quality in most of the major cities from Chicago to the Atlantic, an area that’s been a convection oven since the heat dome descended a couple of weeks ago.

So far there have been several heat domes—large, slow-moving high pressure systems—this year from the West Coast to the Northeast. Air flows clockwise around these domes, but until now, none of them have been in quite the right spot to drag Canadian smoke south. The northern edge of this week’s heat dome is perfectly placed over northern Minnesota and southern Ontario, where wildfires rage. This placement means smoke will flow east and south, right into parts of the Midwest and Northeast.

Ah, the well-placed heat dome, a fine addition to any suburban home.

Of course, the current situation caused the spark gaps to flare in the brains all over the Kingdom of Wingnuttia. Senator Bernie Mareno, for whom the voters of Ohio traded Sherrod Brown in the worst deal involving someone named Brown until the Celtics traded Jaylen Brown for a bucket of fish earlier this month. Anyway, Mareno wants us to fine Canada for burning up without asking our permission. From the Columbus Dispatch:

“Thanks to Canada’s failed leadership, Ohio’s skies are seeing the worst pollution on record and Ohioans across the state are being subjected to hazardous conditions,” Moreno said in a statement. “We will not tolerate this incompetence.” Moreno’s bill would require the Trump administration to determine whether the wildfires harmed U.S. air quality. If yes, the United States would impose sanctions on Canada and certain officials deemed complicit, such as the prime minister and heads of forestry and land management. The bill would also revoke their visas and block them from entering the United States.

Goddamn, Canada just makes them crazy. Granted, that doesn’t take much, but still…

I suppose I should spare come words about the president’s maunderings on TV Wednesday night. First impression: my god, this is a physical wreck of a man. Somewhere out there is a 200-year old British dandy whose sins have all landed on our president. He’s the Human Being of Dorian Grey.

Second impression: OK, taking him at his word, what is he planning to do about all that Chinese election meddling? Sanctions? A stern talking to for his good buddy, Xi? The establishment of Trump Plaza: Quemoy and Matsu? A baffled nation wants to know.

Third impression: his brain is full of poison toads.

“The Chinese government focused on undermining domestic confidence. They wanted to just want you sound like your president wasn’t so hot, when actually your president has done a great job.”

Fourth impression: who was running the government back in 2020, when all the rats were doing this alleged fcking here and in Beijing? Who appointed these manifest incompetents anyway? Who dealt this mess?

Fifth impression: I was glad I slept through the last 20 minutes.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “Small Town Talk” (Shannon McNally): Yeah, I still pretty much love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathé Archives: Here, from 1938, is the Emotion Machine, where some dude is wired up so that a bunch of autopens can record…something. The predecessor, I believe, of the Orgasmatron, made famous in the movie Sleeper. History is so cool.

On Friday, new Director of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, the only man ever named after a ricochet, gave a press conference and it was something to see. He declared himself in essence to be Master Of All Elections—and you better watch out, all you nice retired ladies working at the polling stations, because the Master of All Elections is watching and he’ll be sampling all the brownies to make sure Chinese spies have not spiked them to cause an outbreak of explosive diarrhea on election day. Among other things, he’s going to issue “mandatory” regulations, which, of course, is not within his power to do, and if state officials don’t follow his instructions, he’s going to throw them in the clink, which is also not within his power to do. It’s filtered down to all of them now. They think the Constitution is merely a nice bit of calligraphy that you can hang on the wall above the head of the eight-point buck you hit with your truck when you were drunk one night, but that the Electoral College gave them all supernatural powers. He’s not playing, elderly pollworkers. He means bidness. At least, I think that’s what he means. It’s hard to say.

You must be a US citizen and you must be eligible to vote. Before and after the election, we will scrub all election records looking for illegal aliens and those who are ineligible to vote, including those that somehow voted yet they were deceased. If you’re illegal and attempted to vote or you tried to vote illegally for someone else, we will find you and we will charge you. Illegal voter registration and illegal voting both carry penalties up to 5 years in prison. And up to $250,000 in fines. We will pursue maximum pressure on this. To let you know we will be proactively looking at, uh, um, early voting. And then after post-election we will continue to scrub all those that did vote, those states that don’t participate with us, they have public records of those that voted, which is where we found the 250,000 from the four states that don’t participate with us. We will go through those records. One by one, and we will pursue everybody. We will make sure that people know they can trust our elections. If states want the grant funding to recap, they must secure the, the, the elections.

How many judges have to tell these clowns that the states run the elections? The first time this guy and his goons interfere with the electoral prospect, a judge is going to kick them into the nearest body of water.

Discovery Corner: Hey, look what we found! From Popular Mechanics:

The first find offers an expansive look at what was once a key city in Egypt’s western desert under the Byzantine empire. Uncovered in an area that’s now known as the Dakhla Oasis, the residential city featured a highly organized urban plan with main streets running north to south, occasionally intersecting with east-west streets. Two open squares provided public spaces. A basilica-style church overlooking the main street was arguably the most prominent find, but teams also located two watchtowers (on the outskirts of the city) and a thick-walled fortress.

The announcement of the lost city comes alongside the revelation of the discovery of 18 ancient tombs from the Marina el-Alamein archaeological site (roughly 60 miles west of Alexandria), including 24 thin gold pieces placed inside the mouths of the deceased. Known as “golden tongues,” these objects were part of a funeral rite meant to symbolize the gift of speech in the next life. One of the gold pieces depicted the Eye of Horus, an Egyptian symbol signifying prosperity and protection.

Thought of everything, those Egyptians. What’s the point of an afterlife if you can’t argue?

Hey, Science Daily. Is it a good day for dinosaur news? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news.

A fossilized Edmontosaurus skull with a Tyrannosaurus tooth still embedded in its face has given scientists rare evidence of a dramatic predator-prey encounter. The discovery suggests the giant carnivore delivered an incredibly powerful face-to-face bite, offering new clues about how Tyrannosaurus hunted…The skull is currently displayed in the museum’s Hall of Horns and Teeth and became the centerpiece of a collaborative investigation led by University of Alberta doctoral student Taia Wyenberg-Henzler and Museum of the Rockies Curator of Paleontology John Scannella. Their findings were published in the scientific journal PeerJ.

Do I want to visit the Hall of Horns And Teeth one day? Oh, hell, yeah.

I’ll be back on Monday for whatever fresh hell awaits. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line and wear the damn masks, and take the damn shots, especially the boosters and any New One. In your spare time, spare a thought for the Iranian people, and the Lebanese people and all the other people downrange in our newest war, and all the people in ICE detention, and the Epstein victims, whose trauma is back in the news again, and Eric Swalwell’s victims, and the victims of the Canadian wildfires, and also the ones in Spain, and the victims of the floods in Missouri, and the victims of the heat domes, and the victims and their families in the Tumbler Ridge school shooting in Canada, and for the shooting victims in Austin, and for the families of the victims of the mosque shooting in San Diego, and in Michigan, and in Virginia, and in Louisiana, and for the victims and their families of the shootings in Wilmington, Delaware and Kansas City, and for the families and victims of the mass shooting in Midland, Texas, and for the brilliant journalists of the Washington Post, and for the citizens of the occupied city of Minneapolis and South Burlington, Vermont, and for all the people and the people in the flooded areas of southern Africa, and in the flooded areas in Ireland, and in the flooded areas of Brazil, and for the storm-clobbered, flooded areas of the upper Midwest, including my alma mater, and in Georgia, and for the people affected by the tornados in Mississippi, and for people suffering from the hantavirus outbreak on the Hondius, the outbreaks of measles, the Hegseth Flu down in Texas, the explosive diarrhea bug, and the Legionnaire’s disease outbreak in Harlem, and the victims of the heat wave in Europe, and for our LGBTQ+ citizens, who deserve so much more from this country than they’re getting.