Cohen, Trump's Personal Lawyer, Under Criminal Investigation, Court Filing Shows

Trump went particularly Trump over the raid on Conehead's offices. Per the Times, Trump Sees Inquiry Into Cohen as Greater Threat Than Mueller. The criminal investigation into Cohen includes so many things but one that caused Trump to go Full Trump Monday is a report in McClatchy that "Mueller has evidence Cohen was in Prague in 2016, confirming part of dossier." The Steele Dossier. The one Conehead tweeted about “The #Russian dossier is WRONG!”The one Trump has repeatedly called "fake." Prague, about which Conehead tweeted January 11, 2017 “I have never been to Prague in my life. #fakenews.” Which he repeated in sworn testimony before Congress. Which is a crime, lying to Congress. Which is a little peepy crime compared to the others Conehead is under investigation for. But which is a big deal to Trump because:

Michael Carpenter
@mikercarpenter
Follow Follow @mikercarpenter
More Michael Carpenter Retweeted McClatchyDC

Huge development. If Michael Cohen is confirmed meeting Konstantin Kosachev in Prague, then collusion happened. As I [was quoted as saying] in the piece, “everyone knows Kosachev speaks for the Kremlin.” Another tantalizing fact: Russian hacker Yevgeniy Nikulin was also in Prague at this time.

Or as the authors of the McClatchy report put it:

If Cohen met with Russians and hackers in Prague as described in the dossier, it would provide perhaps the most compelling evidence to date that the Russians and Trump campaign aides were collaborating.

And Conehead his own self has ties, as did one time Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, to Ukraine, part of which now is Russian:

A millionaire with his own New York real estate holdings, Cohen has long had family and business ties to Ukraine. His wife is Ukrainian, and he has had ties to Ukrainian ethanol company. 

The Law is Coming, Trumpie. Don't know how it can git ya, don't think it can, but it gonna try.

Mass Protests Planned If Trump Fires Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein

-HuffPost

If...Trump fires Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein or any other officials involved in the Russia investigation, he faces the prospect of hundreds of thousands of activists immediately turning out to protest all over the country.

We're coming, Trump.

Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein tells confidants he is prepared to be fired
NBC

One source who spoke to Rosenstein said he seemed fully aware he may soon lose his job and was at peace with the possibility...

Go ahead Trump, do it. He's ready for you. We're ready for you.

I do one fucking post on women soldiers a hundred years ago and it floats to the surface like a gaseous turd.

Oh my God.

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девушки на параде

Oh yeah like I know what девушки на параде means.

It's Friday the 13th, Trump. 

Humboldt Tragedy Death Toll Now at 16

Dayna Brons, the trainer and only woman on the bus passed away today from her injuries. Put 16 crosses now at the southeast corner of the intersection of Hwy 35 and 335, the corner that on which a gas station used to sit until it was removed for obscuring vision. The 16 new crosses will provide a symmetry, albeit an unbalanced one, with the six crosses on the northwest corner where the Fiddler family was immolated when their car blew through the intersection and hit a truck. Three children were among the Fiddler casualties. And let there be no more simple right-angled Christian crosses at Armley Corner. Especially the big one, the cross of the intersection itself. Put in a roundabout. Turn the intersection's Christian cross into a Celtic Cross and you'll have no more plain white crosses sticking out of the ground haunting it

A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership, James B. Comey

“This president is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values.” Trump gave him "flashbacks to my earlier career as a prosecutor against the mob...[resulting in] the forest fire that is the Trump presidency. The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and above the truth."-

Trump's Freudian Slip

As if to reinforce two of Charles Blow's "correct" points, that Republicans are in lockstep with Trump and he and they will bring down America 2.0 if they have to, there is this article by CNN that Republicans are countering former FBI director James Comey's publicity book tour with a website (which is already up)...

...and with talking points for their Goebbels':

Republicans hope to remind Democrats why they disliked Comey by assailing his credibility, shining a new light on his conduct and pointing out his contradictions -- or the three Cs.

"Comey is a liar and a leaker and his misconduct led both Republicans and Democrats to call for his firing," Republican chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement to CNN. "If Comey wants the spotlight back on him, we'll make sure the American people understand why he has no one but himself to blame for his complete lack of credibility."

I read just the other day an aside in an article that the White House is "satisfied" that their attacks on the FBI have succeeded. Imagine that. A president "satisfied" that he has discredited his own law enforcement agency. Don't have to imagine it:

The exhaustive plan to attack Comey illustrates how seriously Trump's allies are taking the memoir and a round of television interviews Comey is set to give, including on CNN starting next week followed by a town hall April 25.

The Republican plan against Comey is built around several aggressive arguments, according to the plan obtained by CNN, including these:

1) "Comey has a long history of misstatements and misconduct," including damage caused to the FBI because of "bizarre decisions, contradictory statements and acting against Department of Justice and FBI protocol."


2) "Attempts to smear the Trump administration are nothing more than retaliation by a disgraced former official."

3) "Comey isn't credible -- just ask Democrats." The digital ads will show several Democrats calling for Comey's resignation after he injected himself into the 2016 presidential race, including House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who is shown saying: "All I can tell you is the FBI Director has no credibility."

All of the above is right out of the Russian playbook, in the chapter titled "Whataboutism."

Comey...once enjoyed wide bipartisan support in Washington...

And here's the Freudian slip:

The RNC plan, which was approved by the White House, attempts to portray Comey as a man simply out for himself.

:)

Charles Blow is correct here when he writes,

Donald Trump can feel the breath on the back of his neck.
...
There is clearly something there that he doesn’t want America to know, something damning and catastrophic. He will do anything to keep it from view, including bringing the government to its knees.
...
Trump’s worlds may well be about to collide and he will move heaven and earth to prevent that.
..
That truth, the part that he has kept shoved into the shadows, is his vulnerability. Trump clearly views full knowledge of whatever that truth is as mortally injurious to his own sense of repute and renown.
...

Charles Blow is wrong here:

If Trump has lied to the people who still support him about the most central parts of his character, not just months or years ago, but on a consistent basis, and if those lies can be proved by actual documentary evidence of some sort, the whole house of cards crumbles.

There is nothing Trump can ever say or do that will shake his support with his base base. Just ask them! Not too long ago I read that one of his supporters said if Trump admitted being in bed with the Russians he would not believe it.

Charles Blow is wrong here:

What happens from here will truly test this country. It will test the Constitution, our protocols and our conventions.

The country was tested on 11/8/16 and failed. The country formerly known as the United States ended that day.

Charles Blow is correct here:

Maybe the founders and the hundreds of years of politicians following them should have predicted that a person like Trump could ascend to the presidency, but they didn’t, so they didn’t build in sufficient constraints and strictures.

Correct:

Trump has spent a lifetime probing the regulations for weaknesses, testing the theory that under sufficient weight any bureaucracy can be broken.


He will not hesitate to apply what he has learned to his present predicament. If America must be damaged for him to escape unscathed, he will take that bargain without batting an eye.

And it is by no means clear that his cowardly Republican accomplices in Congress would do anything to prevent or punish him.

The country is in a perilous position. 

Well, you know what I would say about that.

Correct here.

It is in the hands and under the thumb of a man now motivated by a primal survival instinct, a consuming egotism and a petrifying fear of ignominy.

At this point, nothing is beyond the possible, no matter how ill advised and how ultimately destructive. In Trump’s mind, I can only imagine, he has settled on a strategy in the case of his own administration’s Armageddon: If he’s going down, the whole system is going down with him.

Trump is like the electrified third rail in a subway: touch him and you die politically. Have you noticed that? Everybody who has worked for him or with him (like Private Ryan) and who leaves or is fired is worse off for the association. No one comes away looking good. Working for a POTUS used to make resume. Working for or with the president of the American Oblast unmakes a resume.

"Saving Paul Ryan"

Oh, well done NYT with that lede! He is more Private Ryan than SPEAKER RYAN.

This is a blistering, sarcastic editorial by the editorial board written in the first person directly to Ryan. Well done, formerly Quasi Official New York Times!
Saving_Private_Ryan

Words that make sounds in our heads.

The Law Is Coming,

Mr. Trump

Law_Is_Coming

                                                                    Excuse me,

Pardon me, excuse me,

Cumming through.

Mr. Trump has spent his career in the company of developers and celebrities, and also of grifters, cons, sharks, goons and crooks [his voters]. He cuts corners, he lies, he cheats, he brags about it, and for the most part, he’s gotten away with it, protected by threats of litigation, hush money and his own bravado. Those methods may be proving to have their limits when they are applied from the Oval Office...

Mr. Trump now has real reason to be afraid. A raid on a lawyer’s office doesn’t happen every day; it means that multiple government officials, and a federal judge, had reason to believe they’d find evidence of a crime there and that they didn’t trust the lawyer not to destroy that evidence.
...
...the raids on the premises used by Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, were conducted by the public corruption unit of the federal attorney’s office in Manhattan, and at the request not of the special counsel’s team, but under a search warrant that investigators in New York obtained following a referral by Mr. Mueller, who first consulted with the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. To sum up, a Republican-appointed former F.B.I. director consulted with a Republican-appointed deputy attorney general, who then authorized a referral to an F.B.I. field office not known for its anti-Trump bias. Deep state, indeed.

Anyway, one might ask, if this is all a big witch hunt and Mr. Trump has nothing illegal or untoward to hide, why does he care about the privilege in the first place?

The answer, of course, is that he has a lot to hide.

Another one...

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is retiring in January. Good riddance. "Big hearted Paul Ryan" I read somebody write one time. Big hearted Paul Ryan? Who's that? "I'm not there yet," Ryan said about endorsing Trump in the summer of '16. He got there. And he cannot save his obituary by saying "I had moral compunctions about it" and "I resigned rather than go along further."

History will show only contempt for these Resigning Republicans who in a great moral crisis maintained neutrality, endorsed lukewarmly, resigned prematurely and did not say Never Trump immediately and unequivocally. 

Trump Sought to Fire Mueller in December

Here is another Times story co-authored by Maggie Haberman.Wake up Maggie I think I got something to say to you. The lede is new and is, of course, supported by the reporting. But Maggie does the same thing she has done before, she is goading Trump into firing Mueller and in the same weasley way. Here's the lead up, on the December almost firing:

Trump...told advisers in no uncertain terms that Mr. Mueller’s investigation had to be shut down.

[Trump's] anger was fueled by reports that the subpoenas were for obtaining information about his business dealings with Deutsche Bank, according to interviews with eight White House officials, people close to the president and others familiar with the episode. 

The last sentence in that paragraph, which I have seperated for emphasis is the lead in to the goading:

To Mr. Trump, the subpoenas suggested that Mr. Mueller had expanded the investigation in a way that crossed the “red line” he had set last year in an interview with The New York Times.

When she does this, goad Trump, she ALWAYS refers back to that interview. I read it at the time and have always remembered it as the Times reporters giving that line "red line" to Trump; that "red line" wasn't Trump's term--to warrant the quotation marks around it in today's article. So I just checked it and I was right. Here's the exchange:

SCHMIDT: Last thing, if Mueller was looking at your finances and your family finances, unrelated to Russia — is that a red line?

HABERMAN: Would that be a breach of what his actual charge is?

TRUMP: I would say yeah. I would say yes...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/us/politics/trump-interview-transcript.html

That was the Times' line, not Trump's. That Michael S. Schmidt's line. They, Schmidt (co-author of today's article) Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman, put that term in Trump's head, something that had not been there before! Otherwise, his response would not have been "I would say yeah...yes." If Trump had thought it before he would have said "Absolutely." "Absolutely, and I've talked to my personal lawyer Michael Cohen about it and absolutely, it was Michael, by the way, who said 'Mr. President, that would be crossing a red line.'"

It has always irked me that the Times created the "red line," fed it to Trump who then, of course, is going to adopt it as his own. "I've said since July 19, 2017, going into my personal finances is a red line!" And then having created the red line they constantly throw it up to Trump as red meat.

Now, here is the money shot paragraph from today's article:

The December episode, which has never been publicly reported, has new resonance following the disclosure on Monday that F.B.I. agents had carried out search warrants at the office and hotel room of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen. In that action, the Justice Department seems to have walked directly up to — if not crossed — Mr. Trump’s red line by examining something that seems unrelated to Russia.

You see the weasley words: Justice "seems to," IN HABER-SCHMIDT'S OPINION Justice has "walked directly up to--if not crossed--Mr. Trump's red line"..Which "red line" line was not Trump's to begin with but Haber-Schmidt's. They are signaling. They are signaling Trump that firing Robert Mueller is, in their opinion, now justified. And they have done this before. 

Incidentally, read, or skim the July 19, 2017 interview. Maggie, what I got to say to you is you are a total suck up. 

HABERMAN: [In Paris], I don’t think I’ve seen you look like you were enjoying yourself that much since the convention, really.

...

HABERMAN: [Macron] was very deferential to you. Very.

TRUMP: He’s a great guy. Smart. Strong. Loves holding my hand.

HABERMAN: I’ve noticed.

TRUMP: People don’t realize he loves holding my hand. And that’s good, as far as that goes.

......

TRUMP: But the Bastille Day parade was — now that was a super-duper — 

HABERMAN: It was beautiful.

...

TRUMP: We had dinner at the Eiffel Tower, and the bottom of the Eiffel Tower looked like they could have never had a bigger celebration ever in the history of the Eiffel Tower...

HABERMAN: You must have been so tired at, by that point.

Maggie, you must have been so wet in that interview. TIMES, WATCH HER! THIS IS NOT NORMAL! OR IF IT IS NORMAL IT'S FUCK-ED UP-ED NORMAL! Fingernails on blackboard, I can't take anymore. Read it and squirm.

CNN Reports Trump Considering Firing Rosenstein

Humboldt crash: How to design a safe highway intersection

Jason Young, an engineer with consulting firm Advantage Forensics, on safety standards, rural crossroads and the upside of roundabouts (emphasis added by Publocc)

http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/humboldt-crash-how-to-design-a-safe-highway-intersection/

Q by Macleans. What does your firm do?

A. We consult as expert witness engineers for insurance companies, plaintiffs and defendants and investigate collisions. We do the civil litigation reports.

Q by Publocc. Do you make money doing this?

A. Yes.

Q by Macleans. Do your investigations include how a highway is constructed?...Q by Publocc. How much? Tons right?

A. Absolutely. A plaintiff may try to show there is a road design defect or design issue. They must prove two things, that the road doesn’t meet standards and that the deficiency had something to do with the accident. The road authority is often brought in as a defendant and has to show there is nothing wrong with the road.
...
Q by Macleans. Are there any new developments making rural crossings safer?

A. Roundabouts have become popular in rural Ontario after a trial study was done at major traffic crossroads between cities. And collisions have gone down. These are not small roundabouts, they are larger than your typical intersection. Typical speeds are about 30 km per hour, but it’s better than a stop.

Q by Publocc. Roundabouts are those circle things, am I right? No "right angles," if that is the proper term? Roundabouts are "new"? Whenabouts were roundabouts invented?

C'mon man.

Humboldt Tragedy

“I just remember sitting there on my phone and all of a sudden our bus driver screamed ‘woah!’ and a semi-truck pulled up in front of us.”
-Ryan Straschnitzki, Humboldt "Broncos" defenseman and crash survivor. news1130.com

The bus hit the truck, okay? The bus hit the truck. Beyond-beyond a reasonable doubt the bus hit the truck.

The bus hit the truck which the bus driver never saw until "Whoa!" because the trees obscured both drivers' vision when the truck driver blew through the stop sign/flashing light. Okay?

RCMP will so conclude months from now after needless investigation.

Roma--ROMA!--Overcomes 4-1 First Leg Deficit, Knocks Barca OUT of UCL, 3-0

Whimper: Liverpool Sends Manchester City to Third Straight LOSS, Out of Champions League

Manchester City 1 Liverpool 0 HT

Gabriel Jesus in the 2' could not have been a more promising start to a match that must needs end in a rout but over the other 43 minutes there was no more. That is not going to get it done.

Another One Bites...

Trumpie's Homeland Security Adviser...Oh yeah, you tell me, who is Trumpie's Homeland Security Adviser? "Tom" "Bossert." Well, he resigned. "Unexpectedly." Which, since we didn't know who he was to begin with, is not unexpected.

A Fortnight in Hell

After two weeks off it began April 4 with the comprehensive defeat to Liverpool in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-finals. Three days later, Saturday, it continued with the exquisitely painful loss to Manchester United at Etihad Stadium when we could have officially wrapped up the Premier League title. As a fan of this team it was my most painful loss ever. I could not follow it after Paul Pogba tied it at two and I have not read anything about it.

It resumes today, also at home, with the second leg of the Liverpool tie. God's Righteous Team of Angels are in an 0-3 Champions League hole. They must win today 4-0 or if Liverpool score an away goal, 5-1. Otherwise, City's European campaign will end with a whimper.

It will conclude this Saturday at fourth place Tottenham.

Although I have not watched or read anything on those results it seems to me that teams and managers have figured out how to beat Pep Guardiola's tiki-taka. Attack! Attack! Attack! It was obvious to me, but I am a soccer ignoramus, when I first saw Pep's tiki-taka in England, that attacking, pressuring the ball, was the...obvious way to beat tiki-taka. One could not lay back in a shell, "park the bus," as United did in the earlier league match at Old Trafford and as Chelsea did, appallingly, at Etihad. I felt vindicated, painfully, by the write-ups on City's league match at Anfield. Jurgen Klopp had pressed, attacked, and City lost its first league match. Without really knowing, I know what happened Saturday against United. Jose Mourinho stayed in his shell in the first half. At half-time, down 2-0, he told his players, "We're gonna try what ol' Klopp did." The result: the two quick second half goals by Pogba and in the 60's the third, the match winner.

It has been so painfully commonsensical, so obvious that I am shocked it has taken so long. Painful vindication. Painful.

MUELLER RAIDS OFFICE OF MICHAEL COHEN, TRUMP'S LONG-TIME LAWYER

"A bomb on Trump's front porch" is how one legal analyst termed it. And IllegiTrump viewed it similarly, lashing out at the "unfairness." This strikes closer to the heart of Trump than anything previously. Cohen arranged the Stormy Daniels payments, does Trump's legal dirty work. He knows where (some of) the bodies are buried. Subject Trump may still be and target he may still not be but the target is narrowing and it is now close to Trump's own heart.

Crosses Are For Crucifixions

The implication--"Everybody blows that stop sign;" "You get into a trance."--is that the truck driver blew that stop sign.

Thus, the undersigned non-expert, because really, you don't need to be an expert, offers--unbidden, I hasten to add--the following advice to the Royal Canadian Road Builders:

Just say no to crosses. Do not construct highways to intersect at right angles.

Look at that photograph up there. When I first saw that as a thumbnail I thought Highway 35 was a church steeple! it was so straight and rigid Those highways are straight as an arrow over terrain as flat as a pancake. Those are highways built for high speed over long distance, in the U.S. we call them "interstates." Americans, how are entry and exit to an interstate designed? Curves, "clover leafs." Americans, have you ever seen two interstates intersect at right angles?

C'mon man.

A stop sign with flashing light is not going to stop drivers from blowing through that intersection. "Rumble strips" will get drivers out of their "trance," they will slow them down too, but they can't see at that intersection, the trees obscure them...

...and they are just going to rumble slower right on through.

Curve the damn highways at the approaches to intersections. Give drivers no alternative but to slow down and look before crossing--they have to follow the damn road!

C'mon man. Crosses are for crucifixions.

*UPDATE Humboldt Tragedy

In its latest report the BBC notes, "Details have been slow to trickle out." I know that's right. The Toronto Star alludes to one detail, "tons of steel — slamming into them at a rural intersection," but is that detail correct? Is it the semi trailer that slammed into the bus?

The bus is at bottom right, it's front end sheared off or accordioned out of recognition. Consistent with being the slammer. The driver's side of the bus is undamaged. Ditto.

In this photo one can better see the front of the tractor trailer:

            Appears undamaged.

A closeup of the front of the bus:

Here is a forensically excellent wide aerial shot:

All of the energy and motion implied in this photograph is from upper right starting with the skid marks, then the bus, through to center, the tractor trailer (which you can clearly see here has NO damage AT ALL to its front end), and continuing through center left to near bottom left. The debris field is right around the impact site on the semi, which appears bowed in addition, and away from the tractor trailer. Those blue containers at center and lower left got knocked there.

No. Based just upon these four photographs, Toronto Star, you owe a correction: The bus was the slammer, the semi, the slammee. But there is more.

The driver of the bus was killed. The driver of the tractor trailer was unhurt, questioned by police and released. Both consistent with the bus being the slammer. 

One of the players on the bus was told that they had taken a side impact. "I felt it from the front."

Details indeed have been slow to trickle out but this much has and they, especially the photos, are, to me (no crash expert), conclusive. The Humboldt "Broncos" bus slammed into the tractor trailer.

*UPDATE. Does that mean the deceased driver of the bus was at fault? NOT according to details (and photographs) provided by the National Post:

According to RCMP, the accident happened when the tractor trailer going west on Highway 335 collided with the Broncos team bus, which was going north on Highway 35.
...
At the intersection, stop signs are in place for traffic going east and west [truck] across Highway 35, the bigger artery. The stop signs include flashing lights above them. The image below is a street view of Highway 335, facing east.

A farmhouse is located on the southeast quadrant of the crossing. There are trees lining the southeast corner of the intersection, limiting visibility on both approaches to the intersection.

                                                             Looking southeast.

Oh my God, they didn't see each other.

That farm and those trees could not be more perfectly positioned as a hellish double blind for both the bus and the truck...

                                                            Looking due north.

...Which makes the stop sign and flashing light that the truck had at the intersection KEY. It is apparent to me anyway that the truck did not stop at the stop sign, he just motored right on through it. The stop sign and flashing light are UNOBSTRUCTED. The truck driver had to have seen them. And if he had stopped at the stop sign/flashing light his vision to his left, the bus, would have been UNOBSTRUCTED, he would have seen the bus. The bus would have seen him. He didn't stop, I don't know what other conclusion can be drawn from these photographs. If NP is accurate (and they are well respected), and there is a stop sign and flashing light right there where I have circled, then the truck driver is at fault, he ran the stop sign/flashing light, the bus driver never saw him until it was too late, the bus would have "slammed" into the truck right there where the black skid marks begin.

But what gives me tremendous pause with NP's account is that the Mounties let the truck driver go. It's not even a criminal investigation! Now, I know we are different countries, BUT, we share the identical common law heritage from Merry Ol' and a few miles south of Humboldt where I call home if I run a stop sign with flashing light and a crash occurs I have caused the crash. And if 15 people die in the crash I caused by running the stop sign I am hauled off to the Royal Canadian Grey Bar Hotel and charged with 15 counts of vehicular manslaughter. 

Ribbons of highway that bind a vast country.

Passion for a sport, hockey, that makes us us.

It should not end in tears and such immeasurable grief when they transect.

It should not end with a poignant epitaph from a surrogate mom who gave billet shelter to a trio of young men: “Goodbye my sweet sons.”

It should not be seared into a nation’s soul — we weep...

Sons who’d clambered onto a bus, headed for a Game 5 playoff match some 200 kilometres away across the flat Saskatchewan landscape, all excited and probably goofy in that boy-man way.

Fun, you know?

Lives cut abruptly and brutally short amid the twisted wreckage on Highway 35, broken bodies transported to hospital, first responders frantically sorting the dead from the maimed, the deceased to be identified by next of kin.
...
Just about half of a hockey team dead, the pride of their families, their own lost generation now. Fate — tons of steel — slamming into them at a rural intersection.
...
From a hospital employee, describing the Code Orange bloody scramble: “Last night can only be described as the longest, worst and most tragic night of my career. The images can’t be unseen or forgotten, the stories can’t be unheard or ignored. Meeting each family and explaining the extent of each injury was nothing short of a painful exercise of cruelty…”
...
A parent’s worst nightmare. Only the details are different. Yet these details — hockey, a road trip — resonate deeply across Canada, a country stitched together for now in grief. A knife to the heart.
...
Those of us who grew up in big cities don’t really know what a hockey team means to hamlets and towns, how their communities’ hearts throb in tandem with their fortunes, how wrenching such a disaster to a spot on the map like Humboldt, population 5,000. They are sons — and daughters — taken to the breast, many of them billeting with local families. Because, in Canada — as in the U.S. or Sweden or Russia — it is normal to send young athletes away in pursuit of a dream. Or just to play at a skilled level.
...
What the team means to the community, “you can’t even … understand. Going around and playing in small towns, being able to be a part of one of those teams, is extremely special. That community and the other small communities around Saskatchewan live for hockey. They drive that team and players love living there. I speak from experience. The values that you learn playing in those communities stick with you for a long time.”
...
Patrick Marleau, raised on a family farm in the tiny speck of Aneroid (population: 40), near Swift Current.

“Hockey is everything in Canada. But in Saskatchewan every community is fairly small so everybody knows everybody. You try to look out for each other and take care of each other. It’s very tight-knit.”

https://www.thestar.com/sports/hockey/opinion/2018/04/07/what-makes-us-us-is-hockey-and-our-unity-at-times-of-grief.html