The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - So, Who Is The Real Nasty?

Episode Date: August 12, 2020

The fallout from the Kamala Harris pick; some signs of hope on the Covid-19 front, and new questions about defunding the police. A virtual potpourri for "the bridge daily" today.

and hello there peter man's bridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily we're at hump day hump day of week 22 wednesday already, halfway through the week. And what a week it's been. All kinds of excitement through this week. And today as a result, we're going to try and play a little catch up on, I guess in a way, have another one of our kind of potpourri podcasts. And touch bases on a number of different fronts. I'll start off by mentioning that last night's The Race Next Door podcast within a podcast seemed to have touched some nice spots out there because a lot of people downloaded that podcast last night

and starting to get some nice reaction to it and once again you know if you have ideas too on things that Bruce Anderson and I can discuss when we're looking at the U.S. election over these next couple of months we'll do that podcast within a podcast the race next door at least once a week as we go through until early November. But, you know, I obviously spoke too soon at the end of that podcast yesterday when I talked about how, you know, it would probably be day two before the Republicans would go after the vice presidential pick of Joe Biden's Kamala Harris.

That they give that pick at least a little bit of room on day one. Act nice, act congratulatory, and then get into the fight. How stupid I was. And you know, maybe it's not just a Republican thing. Maybe it's not just a Trump thing. Maybe it's just the thing these days with the way our politics has kind of sunk to a level that, you know, we always knew there was hardball politics, but this isn't even hardball. This is just, in many cases, kind

of disgusting. Literally within minutes of the pick being announced, out in front of the White House press, lumbered the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, as he likes to call himself. Which I guess he can, that is his name after all. But there he was, and what were the first words of description he had for Kamala Harris? Senator Kamala Harris from California, former Attorney General of California, who has made her name in a number of ways, in a number of areas, in both politics and outside of politics, in her relatively short life so far.

How did Donald Trump react to her? Well, he dragged out that word he just loves to use all the time. He's describing somebody else, especially women. She's nasty. Nasty. She's a phony. She's horrible. She's disrespectful.

That's just four of the adjectives that Donald Trump put on Kamala Harris. Within minutes of her, the announcement by Joe Biden that she would be his vice presidential pick. Nasty. She's nasty. You ever notice how he uses that a lot when he's talking about women? nasty. She's nasty. Ever notice how he just, he uses that a lot when he's talking about women?

He calls a lot of the female reporters nasty. You're nasty. Nasty, phony, horrible, disrespectful. Well, I guess you gotta be one to know one, eh? I think of some of the things that he's done that he can go out of his way to use those kind of descriptions on other people.

But as I said, you know, if you want to look at this from a... to use those kind of descriptions on other people. But as I said, you know, if you want to look at this from a, I guess in a different way, it is kind of the sign of the times. Because for every politician that acts that way, they influence the way non-politicians, they influence the way non-politicians they influence the way we talk and describe others

you know I was horrified over the weekend I mean some of the attacks on politicians of both genders in the last few years by, you know, so-called ordinary people have really been quite something and step totally outside the bounds of kindness, goodness, common sense. I mean, I don't know whether you saw it on the weekend. It was on some television newscast. It was certainly active on social media.

Some guy in Ottawa went into the constituency office or tried to get into the constituency office of Catherine McKenna, the Minister of Infrastructure. She's an Ottawa area MP. And he was like swearing and cussing and swearing and cussing almost sounds nice when you consider what in fact fact, he was saying and doing and the descriptions he had for both McKenna and for Justin Trudeau, but mainly about McKenna.

And she's taken the brunt of a lot of this stuff over the last few months, last few years. But once again, she's not alone. The attacks on other female politicians you know i think of michelle rempel from the conservative party who's taken her share of abuse from others whether it's voters or partisans of one color or not. I mean, it's really been... It certainly bothers me to watch this happening.

And I'm assuming it bothers you too. And I don't know what's happened to the way we look at politics and politicians that leads to that especially i mean men are taking the brunt of this too but women in it just seems to me in a much more derogatory fashion than men. And I don't know how much of it is a result of watching people in positions of power head down that path as well, start to shade things in the way they color other politicians, especially women, has an impact on the way members of the public, some members of the public, deal with this as well.

And we've got to find a way to deal with this and end it. And you see, you know, especially on Twitter, you've seen many people in the last, I don't know, week, using the McKenna example to put the issue forward, saying, we've got to stop this. We have to find a way of stopping this. And we do. Anyway, that's a long way from the way I started this little portion of the podcast off in terms of Trump's use of a variety of words, including nasty. Well, you know what?

Sometimes nasty is good. And it'll be very interesting to see how Kamala Harris responds when given the opportunity to get into a kind of one-on-one debate with Mike Pence, the Republican vice presidential candidate, if Trump stays loyal to him, but who knows what may happen in the next two weeks before their convention. Is he going to toss Mike Pence to the wolves, figuring that's the reason he's losing,

if he believes the polls that suggest he's losing? Is he going to toss Mike Pence, find somebody else? Well, whoever he chooses to find, if it's not Mike Pence, they're in for a battle against Kamala Harris. She is no slouch when it comes to battling of the verbal nature. Okay, a little bit on COVID-19, on the coronavirus. You know, as we talked about briefly yesterday, the Russians claim they have a vaccine,

and it has been pummeled by researchers and scientists around the world suggesting they're moving far too fast and too early on something that is in no fashion being tested. And they're hoping that this doesn't destroy a lot of other people's work in the process because a disaster on the vaccine front would be a real major problem in the fight against COVID-19. Now, having said that, there were signs of progress today.

We've taken a lot of and given a lot of hits to the Americans over the last month as their numbers have cratered. Well, actually, the opposite of cratered. They've peaked on both cases, and now deaths are starting to go up with the normal backlog from cases, especially in the southern states. However, you know, there's some sense of hope on the horizon, and here's why. The number of cases in those southern states, which were up around 70,000, 75,000 a day

a week, 10 days ago, have started to slide down. And we're talking about in California, in Arizona, in Texas, in Florida. They have come down, the number of cases diagnosed on a daily basis. They're now less across the U.S. They're less than 50,000, which is a heck of a lot of cases. But it ain't 75,000. And it would suggest that there is some progress being made on that front in trying to contain the virus, in trying to enforce restrictions, and encourage people to socially distance, to wear masks, wash their hands, the whole bit. So we look at that, knowing full well that the death count is going up in the states

because there's a lag between cases and deaths. So the deaths you're looking at now are a result of where the cases were two weeks ago when it was up around 75,000. So the hope here is with cases dropping, the death count will start to drop in another week or so as well. We'll have to wait and see exactly how that works out. In Canada, you know, another day in Ontario, the largest province by population in the country,

where the number of cases was below 100, which has been kind of the norm for most of the last couple of weeks. It was, I think, 95 today. It was 33 yesterday, but there was some odd math in the way that worked out. 95 is kind of around where the rolling, seven-day rolling average is. Certain challenges in Alberta and BC remain, but overall, the number of new cases on a daily basis in Canada is well under 1,000. I think it was under 500 a couple of days ago. Overall, I think we're sitting around 120,000 cases since the pandemic hit Canada. 120,000. The Americans get that many cases in a couple of days.

The number of cases, around 120,000. Half of them in Quebec. Half. A third of them in Ontario. So that's why the numbers in other provinces, whether it's BC and Alberta who run third and fourth to Quebec and Ontario. Atlantic Canada, all of Atlantic Canada doing extremely well. The North doing well. Saskatchewan and Manitoba had been doing well. They've kind of taken some hits in the last little while. But everything's relative, right, on our numbers.

A lot of people would trade their situation for our numbers and you know what I mean by that now I did want to mention one other thing it's kind of tricky. The two biggest stories of this year have been COVID-19 and the George Floyd death in Minneapolis, murder in Minneapolis,

and what followed as a result, the riots, the protests, the Black Lives Matter movement. And a part of all that was the movement to defund the police. Now, I want to mention that today because there are a couple of interesting things happening on that front. You've got to start, though, with what does it actually mean? What does defund the police mean? Because if you just arrived on planet Earth

and heard the phrase defund the police, you would think what it meant was they're taking all the money away from the police. So it's the first step to abolishing police. That's not what it means. It may mean that to some people, but that's not generally what it means. It may mean that to some people, but that's not generally what it means. Defund the police means, most people agree, what it means is reallocating or redirecting funding away from

the police department in whatever community or whatever level of government to other government agencies funded by the local municipality. So it's shifting money around. Some, you take some of it away from police, put it into other areas, in social areas, in mental health areas. But that's it for most people when they use that term defunding the police it's it's really it is that simple and even some and there are some who say abolish

they do not necessarily mean do away with enforcement altogether they're looking at other means of enforcement. Anyway, that's kind of the accepted meaning, although, as I said, some people go further. But generally, that's what most people who were involved in this debate say, reallocating or redirecting the funding away from the police department to other agencies.

Now, here's why I bring that up today, because there is a... Backlash may be too strong a term, but there is a bit of a concern about what has happened as a result of this. And the latest example came yesterday in Seattle. Seattle has an African-American police chief, or had an African-American police chief, a woman.

Her name's Carmen Best. Well, she announced yesterday through the mayor, Jenny Durkan, Seattle, once again, we're talking about here. The mayor announced on the behalf of Chief Best that the chief is going to leave the city's police department. He's going to resign. And this happened just hours after the Seattle City Council voted to shrink its police force by 100 officers, thereby trimming the department's budget and lowering the salary of the chief. Now, both the mayor and the chief had, in the days leading up to the vote at city council,

they had cautioned against the reductions, arguing that they would jeopardize public safety in the city and reduce the diversity of the force by cutting the youngest and most diverse members. Okay. So that's one of the things that's happened. And there are indications of similar movements on the part of some African American police officials in other cities, including in New York City. That if you were going to slash our budget and cut the number of our

members, officers, the impact is not going to necessarily be the one you're looking for. When you shift the money away from us, and therefore we have to cut people, it means you're going to cut the most junior members, the most, in most cases, diverse members of the force, who you have put there to try and deal with some of these issues about race relations. So, I don't want to oversimplify this.

It is a complicated issue, and it is one that a lot of very good people are trying to find the solutions to. But in any kind of change, and I think we talked about this in the midst of the whole Black Lives Matter movement and the protests surrounding police brutality, riots in the streets. We talked about, or at least I mentioned I think a few times, that any time there is massive change in the way a society operates, there will be times when that change goes too far in an attempt to make the point and to make change happen, that it's necessary that it goes too far. And then you may have to pull back.

And in some cases, to affect change, people get hurt. We've seen this with other social change in our lives, in our times. And these moves in Seattle may be an indication of a similar kind of situation. It's worth thinking about. It's worth following. It's worth thinking about. It's worth following.

It's worth considering. And it may well be worth you writing a letter, sending me an email on your thoughts on this. I know it's a powerful issue. And at times it's complicated and emotional. But it is one we're all trying to deal with. Okay. We're moving beyond hump day, going into the end of the week.

And I kind of warned you or suggested to you in the last week or two that I might head back up to the lake again. Catch a few more days by the water. And I'm going to, I'm actually going to do that starting tonight. But I think I'll keep doing the podcast, or at least I will try to keep doing the podcast, both tomorrow and Friday from a remote location. And assuming that I can make the technology work,

it probably won't sound quite the same as it does now in the kind of studio quality sound that we have here. Maybe I'll try doing it on the dock with the loons in the background. Wow! Maybe I'll try doing it on the dock with the loons in the background. That's my loon imitation. Might try that. We'll see. So bear with me over the next few days. One way or the other, I'm going to be back here on Monday.

But I think we'll be able to get something out it may not be as long as normal but we'll try and get something out in both Thursday and Friday of this week 22 of our Bridge Daily specials. Alright right, so one last time, if you want to comment on anything you've heard on the podcast, especially if you want to comment on the race next door

and what you'd like to see us try to accomplish in that podcast, drop me a line at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Okay, that's it for this day on the Bridge Daily. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening.

We'll talk to you again, we hope, in 24 hours. Thank you.