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I took a break from the news

Apr 24th, 2025
by Craig.
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I was on holiday for three weeks in February and March. At home I have a routine of watching, listening to and reading the news, but when I’m on holiday (especially out of the province and country) that obviously goes out the window. The only item of international news that really came to my attention during that trip was the despicable way in which the leader of a country at war (and who had been invaded by a hostile foreign force, to be clear on how the war started) was treated by the leader of a country that isn’t, but was supposed to be an ally against a common foe, America’s traditional enemy of Russia. Those countries are Ukraine and the United States respectively, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy and donald trump respectively. It blew my mind. Shortly afterwards I was sent the following — obviously (and sadly) — doctored video of the meeting.

I say “sadly” because the dickhead trump deserves someone standing up to him forcefully like that, but I appreciate the situation Zelenskyy is in. I don’t envy him.

But besides that one issue, I had a great, relaxing holiday, with family (including new family) and friends, apart from the eerie feeling that I was missing something.

And I’m back, which means I’m back to blogging, after taking a break for several weeks after returning — apart from the emergency post I had to do a few days ago about how democracy was cast aside in Canada by the Leaders’ Debates Commission. I have a backlog of things about which to pontificate, so here we go.

How should I vote in the Canadian election?

After swearing that he was the guy to take on the Conservatives and Pierre Poilievre in the next election, Justin Trudeau finally read the writing on the wall and quit as leader of the Liberal Party. Until then I had predicted that the Tories would wipe the floor with the Liberals and win a majority government. In fact, I also predicted that the Liberals would be reduced to rump-party status. That was as obvious as the nose on my face, as anyone who has watched Canadian federal elections would note, so I’m not suggesting that I’m particularly astute. Trudeau, with all of his learning at the knee of his father, was unbelievably short-sighted to have ignored said writing on the wall but, even more importantly, he was derelict in not seeing the writing on the southern wall, that being that donald trump would be (and then was in November 2024) elected president of the United States and that we’d be in a trade war on day one! I mean, yes, how could any reasonable person have predicted the extent of it — especially considering we were and currently are in a free-trade agreement with the United States! — but with such a controversial president on the doorstep of the White House, we all knew well in advance of 20 January 2025 that Canada needed a new government with a new prime minister to take on the incoming bellicose American government, and Trudeau let down the country by not stepping aside weeks or months earlier.

And thanks to the fact that the new Liberal Party leader is a serious person — the former head of the banks of Canada and England, as opposed to a former drama teacher who always seemed as if he was competing in a speech-giving contest — the fortunes of the Liberal Party have done a U-turn! If they hold out until the election at the end of this month, that will be good for Canada. I don’t know how anyone can take seriously a career politician who sounds like donald trump’s clone — and I’m not just taking that opinion from the Liberal Party election advertising, I’m taking it from how Poilievre has always been known as the Conservative Party’s “pit bull” in the House of Commons — or who won’t take questions from anybody but hand-picked journalists who are fed questions by his handlers. (Have you seen how Poilievre so rudely handles journalists that step out of line and out of his cage?!) Canada would be in a world of hurt if he becomes prime minister.

And about his “pen” of hand-picked journalists at his press conferences, announcements, rallies, etc. We’ve seen at least one try to push the boundaries of their limits, and he branded her a “protestor”! There was anther time when journalist tried to shout out follow-up questions, and they were drowned out by their handlers who erupted into applause specifically to drown them out! These are people employed by the media to elicit information from people who want our votes! So they are effectively telling Canadians, “We don’t want to hear any questions from you. It’s just your job to do what we, the Conservative government/party, tell you to do. Without any questions, follow-up or not.” Even if I supported any of Pierre Poilievre’s policies, that behaviour right there would make me withdraw my vote. It’s arrogance in the extreme.

But back to my heading: How should I vote? Back before I grew a brain, I voted Conservative in my first election in 1988, when Brian Mulroney continued as prime minister, and the election issue was Free Trade with the United States. But since that election my knowledge of and thinking about Canadian elections have changed significantly. Let me fast-forward to 2015, when Justin Trudeau promised that the 2015 election that he won would be the last Canadian federal election run using the first-past-the-post method; that’s the foremost issue on my mind when I vote now, in both Federal and Provincial elections. As such, I now vote for underdog parties, simply as a statement of my dissatisfaction with our current electoral system. That means that I vote for the Green Party or the NDP. I know that neither will win the election, so in the current election, we won’t have either Prime Minister Jagmeet Singh or Prime Minister Elizabeth May (or that other Green guy whose name I can’t remember). I have no idea how many people vote as I do, but pretty much every vote of mine since 1988 has been a protest vote that is slightly more acceptable than spoiling my ballot. Do I really want the NDP or the Greens to govern this country? No, probably not to be honest, but I would like to cast my vote for a winning party for a change.

But Canada is in a trade war with the United States now. Thankfully it’s not — yet! — a military war of force, aggression, destruction, violence and death, but frankly I’m not convinced it won’t turn into one, given trump’s ridiculous rhetoric about making us the 51st state, and his generals’ apparent willingness to fall into line and follow “dear leader’s” orders. I have no desire to be dominated by the USA politically or militarily any more than we already are culturally, so I want to vote for the best candidate for the job of keeping us from becoming that way, whom I consider to be Carney. It’s certainly not Poilievre and, as I said, there is no way that Singh or May are going to become prime minister, so what do I do? There’s the old adage that one should vote for the best candidate in their riding — not the prime minister, for whom we don’t get to vote directly — but I’ve always had an issue with that suggestion because it’s ignoring the bigger picture — that will have a greater effect on our lives — for local issues; an MP or MLA is not a “governor” in any way. That’s why I won’t vote Conservative, because a local MP’s job will just be to provide excuses when I write to him or her with complaints about their government’s policies I won’t like.

So it means that I will likely vote Liberal for the first time in my life. Hopefully I’ll be able to go back to my protest votes in future elections, until someone with a pair of balls — male or female! — changes the federal electoral system to some form of proportional representation. But for now, we’re at war, and I believe we need to vote for a wartime government.

Who’s right? Right? Left? trump? The world?

In the last year or so, I have been in debate with an Irish school friend of mine, and a Canadian MAGA supporter friend of mine who lives in the States. My old Irish school friend seemed to be a level-headed person; I should have seen the writing on the wall, though, as he’s a gay guy who, if half of his fellow travellers had their way, would have him strung up! How a gay guy like him can be so far right I don’t know. But, you know, there’s more to him than his sexual orientation, so I figured it would be good to compare notes on issues as and when they came up.

Sadly, the guy can’t get past the platitudes and catchy sayings of the right. He doesn’t present any thoughtful defences of his political opinions.

The last straw came for me shortly after the American election in 2024. I wrote something brief about my unhappiness with the results, and that it blew me away that North Americans (including Canadians!) consistently vote against female leaders — as opposed to places like the UK, India, Israel, etc. — who have (among others) had female heads of state, and that we (in Canada) would have to live next door to “this piece of shit for another four years.” He wrote a short reply — it is SMS (short message service) after all — that included the observation, “And a cute VP as well!” I then sent him a lengthy six messages in reply that (I felt) focused on issues, except that I ended with, “And finally, it’s sad that your biggest positive statement about trump’s win is that you have a hard-on for the VP. FFS. I can guarantee it’s not mutual!” He replied with, “Not my biggest positive statement, just a bonus 😋”.

And that has been it! I can’t debate based on that crap.

I will probably look him up next time I am in Ireland and we’ll go for a pint, but I have to say that my opinion of him has dropped significantly after that exchange, sadly. 🙁

Similarly, with my MAGA friend. This is a person who, before she left Canada, went on about how the Liberal Party, the New Democrat Party (the NDP), the Bloc Québécois and the Green Party with their combined majority in Parliament used their power — as is defined and allowed by the Westminster System of government — to threaten to vote non-confidence in the minority Conservatives to topple the government. She described this as a “coup”, despite the fact that it was anything but considering the government was a minority government voted into power by a minority of voters! And this despite the fact that she was apparently a political science major in university! This “coup” bullshit was typical (at the time) of the crisis, peddled by both the Conservative Party and Stephen Harper (who would immediately lose power if the majority of parliament voted non-confidence in them), and the far-right minority fringe! I never called her out on this bullshit, because our friendship was worth more.

So recently I couldn’t avoid poking the sleeping bear; I had to ask her about this “51st state” crap, and about trump’s tariffs on Canada that go against the spirit, if not the letter of the free-trade agreement between Canada and the US.

This is what I asked:

I have a question for you. It’s a serious question; I’m not baiting you or anything else negative.

What do you — as a Canadian, an immigrant in the US, and someone who has made a conscious decision not to become an American — think of trump’s attacks on Canada and his wanting to make us the 51st state?!

This was her reply:

Uggg. So many ask me this. I absolutely HATE 51st State like ALL Canadians do. However, it is a fact Canada charges US exorbitant tariffs for dairy et al… See photo below. I don’t believe he wants to annex Canada, but the tariffs have to be equalized. No one publishes what Canada charges. You know I don’t want to become American. Never will. Trump has a point about Canada not paying ita [sic] fair share to Nato and the fact US defends Canada by location proxy.. [sic] I honestly don’t believe he wants to take over Canada like Hitler. I think he wants a FAIR partnership and right now it’s not fair. Love me or hate me.

So she’s against the 51st state crap; I completely disagree that he doesn’t “want to take over Canada like Hitler” (she brought up a Nazi, not me) but I know I can’t prove that. (Just before he invaded Ukraine, putin and his foreign minister went to great lengths to claim that Western conjecture that Russia was building up troops on Ukraine’s border was just that, provocative conjecture. And then he invaded.) After that she just copied and pasted a screenshot of some text message with a list of Canada’s existing tariffs on American goods and services, the first third of which are, admittedly, high because (as is not noted in the misinformation) they’re subject to supply management! As I noted in my reply, it’s no secret that trump doesn’t like supply management, but it in itself is not the issue, trump’s tariffs are the issue! So the screenshot relies on the fact that the first third of the list — five of fifteen products and services — look bad, despite the fact that their levels are due to an unrelated issue.

What followed were more copied and pasted trump talking points — most of them lies, or based on lies or his complete lack of understanding of history and economics — and links to Fox News. There wasn’t a single point made by her that actually argued a point in favour of trump’s actions that I could address. And if I did, she’d just send another trump talking point or a link to Fox News! It’s maddening, but this is the modus operandi of the right. They think it’s all “common sense”, and if you disagree you’re either a communist or you don’t have any of their vaunted “common sense”.

So, no joy there either. I’m starting to think that the people I know on the right are incapable of debate. I’ve certainly struck out on these two far-right friends. But here’s part of my point: I don’t know where, on the political spectrum, most of my friends lie, and I get along just fine with them without knowing! I believe that I can get along with anyone no matter where they are on the political spectrum, but if you want to talk politics you have to have a brain and be able to discuss the details of policies, not just repeat slogans and tell me you have a thing for one leader or another. And I don’t care if you’re left or right, but if you support a moron like trump who is single-handedly turning the world upside-down with no plan presented for his endgame — other than, laughably, to “Make America Great Again” — how can you seriously support his policies?! If you know his plan and you believe it can have whatever results he says they will achieve, then great! But please share that information with the rest of us, just not in the same manner as his blonde bimbo press secretary Karoline Leavitt who, like Sean Spicer, thinks that every question is hostile, and has to be answered as if she’s conducting an assault on enemy territory.

When I finally recognised that our “debate” — which clearly wasn’t a debate at all — was going nowhere, I suggested we end it:

I don’t see this discussion between us being resolved to the satisfaction of either of us, so I think it’s probably best we end it. As I said before, it’s not likely we’ll know the real outcome before 15 or 20 years from now.

(I had suggested earlier that it would take three or four presidential terms before we’d see whether or not trump’s actions were correct … which, I suppose, are only twelve to sixteen years, not fifteen to twenty.)

The last word from this friend, after I made numerous points and questioned the validity of trump’s actions based on his egregious lies and ignorance which she countered with trump sloganeering and links to Fox News, was, “We can agree to disagree.” Normally I would support that conclusion, but in order to “agree to disagree” both sides have to present reasoned arguments, not political slogans, lies, misinformation and disinformation. That really pissed me off, so much so that I just did not reply. If I do, the friendship will very quickly be over.

Last point on this MAGA friend: Apparently, because of her support for trump, she claims to have lost a number of friends. I don’t know if it’s two or two hundred, but the number does seem to be significant, at least in terms of percentage. One is significant in my mind, and I say that as someone who has lost a few friends and family members over the years, because of their stupidity. (And I say that based on neutral, third-party opinion, including the opinion of the court.) But if we’re both still alive in fifteen or twenty years, we’ll see who was right in 2025. The dickhead trump certainly won’t be alive in fifteen or twenty years, and hopefully the rest of the Republican Party will have grown balls by that time and come to their senses.

Travel to the United States

The last time I crossed the American border — which is only a few kilometres south of me — was on 19 January 2025, the day before trump was inaugurated for the second time. I and hundreds of thousands of Canadians won’t cross the border again until 20 January 2029 … assuming trump doesn’t break more laws and more parts of the US Constitution to give himself an unconstitutional third term. (Or does the same putin/medvedev switcheroo that they did.) I do this despite the fact that California Governor Gavin Newsom and Palm Springs Mayor Ron deHarte have begged and pleaded for Canadians to return. I can’t speak for other Canadians, but I am not forgoing travel to the United States because I am “punishing” America for trump’s tariffs, but because, as a foreigner in their country, I won’t feel safe! Even if I just cross the border for twenty minutes to top up my gas tank! I love travelling all over the world, and I’ve been to countries where I wasn’t sure I was welcome, but I’m not taking that chance in America right now. America and trump are even musing about deporting American citizens to foreign jails! If they are willing to deport citizens, why in god’s name would I take the chance of being a foreigner in their country?!

Well, I won’t. The States have already jailed an innocent Canadian while she was at a border crossing dealing with her existing work visa, so that’s all of the examples I need right there. I told my MAGA friend above when I went to visit her and her American husband over the 2024/2025 New Year, that I would not cross the border again until trump was gone. I have some business accounts down there, but I will, in due course, close them from Canada. There just isn’t a hope in hell I’ll cross that border again until Americans and their alleged commitment to democracy have secured their country from dictatorship. I also make this statement based on the number of foreigners who have tried to enter the country legally and have been barred because they expressed opinions contrary to trump, which I have done numerous times in the past on this very blog and will no doubt do numerous times in the future!

I’m sure I’m on a list somewhere; I just don’t also want to be on the six o’ clock news.

That’s enough for now. I need to post this before the election on Monday and I will need to cover my other points some other time.

This is why professionals with more than “common sense” are hired to do accident investigations

Feb 8th, 2025
by Craig.
Comments are off for this post

While perusing trump’s Bullshit Social (aka “Truth” Social) feed the other day when writing that gargantuan post about how and why he is so wrong on the subject of tariffs, I couldn’t help but notice two of his posts about the 2025 Potomac River mid-air collision between a US Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Eagle aeroplane. They are classic examples of why qualified, professional investigators are required to be allowed to do their work before any bullshit artists (aka, politicians) should say anything.

The first, posted on 29 January 2025, the very day of the crash:

donald trump, Bullshit Social post, 2025-01-29

donald trump, Bullshit Social post, 2025-01-29.

The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!

Where do you start with this one?!

  • “The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport.”: Wow, and he didn’t even know the race or gender of the pilot at that point when he described its approach as “perfect”.
  • “The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time.”: Yeah, you can see that on video after the crash with circles around the aircraft involved, but that wasn’t what either pilot saw.
  • “It is a CLEAR NIGHT”: Clearly trump is not a pilot. Not only does he not know the first thing about flying, he certainly doesn’t know anything about flying at night, so his focusing on it being a “clear night” is absolutely useless.
  • “… the lights on the plane were blazing …”: Of course they were … if the aircraft was flying towards you, or the camera that took the footage you saw. Clearly that’s not what the helicopter pilot saw.
  • “… why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn.”: (Questions generally call for a question mark.) But good question, don! I wonder if that might be the focus of a professional investigation! Thanks for giving us a reasonable list of the helicopter pilot’s options.
  • “Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane.”: (Again, question mark?) How do you know that anyone in the air traffic tower saw either aircraft and could tell, from their vantage point, that a collision was imminent? In air traffic control once a pilot tells a controller that he sees an aircraft he is supposed to avoid, the onus for their separation is taken away from the controller and assumed by the pilot. Oh, you didn’t know that? Then shut the fuck up! Professional investigators doing professional investigations and writing professional reports know this. Mere mortals sitting on the toilet in the White House do not, and so should not comment on things about which they are ignorant.
  • “This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!”: Thank-you Captain Obvious! What would we do without people like you so well-endowed with common sense?!

The second was posted two days later:

donald trump, Bullshit Social post, 2025-01-31

donald trump, Bullshit Social post, 2025-01-31.

The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot. It was far above the 200 foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???

  • “… by a lot.”: Your first grade English teacher could have done a gooder job teaching you English. Maybe he or she was a DEI hire.
  • “That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???”: First, congratulations on all of the extra question marks. They pretty much make up for your forgetting to use them in your previous post. So yes, good point, so we’ll immediately fire the professional investigator now since you have clearly cracked the case.

This is a textbook example of why crash investigators — like the ones at DCA after the crash appearing before the press — go to great lengths, as they always do, not to prejudge the investigation’s and the report’s conclusions.

This is also a textbook example of why you cannot trust anyone who claims they have common sense, and who also claims that he’s the “least racist person in the world”.

trump apparently doesn’t understand the free market

Feb 4th, 2025
by Craig.
Comments are off for this post

The initial title of this blog post was going to be, “trump is a moron”, but the problem with that is that I can write a post every day for the rest of my life (or trump’s life) with that title. But the new title became immediately apparent when I realised the fundamental issue.

I also considered, “If this is how trump treats his friends …”, but we all know that he’s in love with putin (both spelled with an initial lower-case letter, as you will note), leader of America’s traditional enemy, so it’s impossible to know who his friends and enemies really are.

And what about, “The Dumbest Trade War in History“? Oops, already taken.

The issue here is that trump is clearly ignorant. He does not understand economics, and I don’t believe he has ever attended a history class or read a history book in his life!

I’m not an economist either, but I’d like to make a few points:

  • If an American imports a Canadian (or Mexican or Chinese) product that the Canadian sells for $1 (we’ll ignore currencies and exchange rates), the American is going to have to pay $1.25 with a 25% tariff. That directly penalises the American, not the Canadian, and will result in inflation increasing in the United States. Of course, the whole world knows that Biden personally wanted inflation to increase (it had nothing to do with the fact that inflation grew worldwide after COVID), and trump campaigned on ending the Biden tyranny, so trump’s going to look incompetent when he directly increases inflation with his tariffs.
  • The knock-on effect is that the American might (and probably will) decide to buy a different product; that will then penalise the Canadian, but I’ll get to that in a moment when I take apart trump’s moronic post on the stupidly named “Truth Social”.
  • Clearly, as trump states in his incorrectly named “truth” — seriously, the fact that it’s a lie is why “Truth Social” is a misnomer — his goal is that Canadian and Mexican and Chinese manufacturers (and every manufacturer in the world!) will up sticks and move their businesses to America, all while he cracks down on immigration! (Seriously! His left hand doesn’t know what his right hand is doing!) I can’t tell you the number of times I have wished that everyone in the world would see the light and host their websites and email with my company (it would make dealing with spam much easier), but I live in the real world where I realise that competition is a reality and I can’t do everything; the world is too varied to want exactly what my company offers. And in the same vein, as “great” as America is (or is alleged to be), it can’t be all things to all people. God help us if we were all to become Americans! (I’ll get to that in a moment as well.)
  • But, most importantly, trump doesn’t seem to understand that, likewise, America can’t do everything. I grew up in a country (Rhodesia) that was sanctioned by almost the whole world, and we tried bloody hard to “reduce, reuse and recycle” decades before that became a “thing”. We did a damned good job too, but we still imported goods from abroad from people and companies that were willing to trade despite sanctions. He doesn’t understand that in the “free market” Americans are choosing every day to buy foreign-sourced goods from counties like Canada, Mexico and China, and now he is limiting the freedom of Americans to freely trade how they wish. It’s typical right-wing bullshit: we support freedom, only as long as it fits within our narrow definition of the word.

Can Americans make widgets as well as Canadians can? Of course! But the fact of the matter is that they apparently don’t! That’s why some enterprising Canadian started making widgets the way they thought they should be made, and now Americans are buying (and importing) Canadian widgets because they’re better!

Taking apart trump’s bullshit

The idiot trump has made a couple of posts (“truths”!) on his moronic “Truth Social” account which conveniently consolidate a number of points that I will now debunk:

The “Tariff Lobby,” headed by the Globalist, and always wrong, Wall Street Journal, is working hard to justify Countries like Canada, Mexico, China, and too many others to name, continue the decades long RIPOFF OF AMERICA, both with regard to TRADE, CRIME, AND POISONOUS DRUGS that are allowed to so freely flow into AMERICA. THOSE DAYS ARE OVER!

The “tariff lobby”? Who the fuck are the “tariff lobby”? (And while we’re at it, who are/is “the Globalist”?) The “always wrong” “Wall Street Journal”?! Look, buddy, “The Wall Street Journal” isn’t on my reading list, but (as you well know) they didn’t become the pre-eminent publisher of business and financial news because they were “always wrong”. However, this is your way of communicating, in black-and-white absolutisms. I get it. You’ve been so rich for so long that people are afraid to say, “Come on, Donald, they aren’t ‘always wrong’. Remember that time they reported X, Y and Z?” Nope, your lackey’s just nod their heads and scurry off to do your bidding. Now, due to all of the people in your country who apparently have no “common sense”, you’re their president, and so the whole world can see what a fool you are.

And, “RIPOFF OF AMERICA”? Are you saying/admitting that Americans (including yourself, who negotiated the last version of the North-American free-trade deal that you’re now violating) are easy pushovers? I would disagree with that in general. Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean that anybody is being “ripped off”. That’s like George H.W. Bush claiming that his parents forcing him to eat broccoli meant he was being “ripped off”. But like most humans, Bush took it in stride as just one of the many things there are in life that we don’t like. You, on the other hand, just whine and complain like a baby that this, that and everything else you complain about are “not fair”, like any tempestuous seven-year-old does when they’re upset at the unfairness of their world. You might as well punctuate your “not fairs” with a stomp of your foot.

You’ve stated that you want “fair trade”. Again, I’d like to point out that it was you who negotiated the current United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, often known as NAFTA 2.0 because of the other ridiculous acronyms by which it is known. Maybe you should go back in time and fire yourself since you apparently negotiated such a bad deal for America. But hey, don’t fret; NAFTA 2.0 is supposed to be renewed (and possibly renegotiated) in 2026, so can’t you wait a few weeks or months? It’s not as if negotiations will start on the day the agreement expires. But of course you can’t wait, because everything has to be done yesterday.

And as I keep telling people, if “CRIME, AND POISONOUS DRUGS that are allowed to so freely flow into AMERICA” by the American Border Patrol and CBP (Customs and Border Protection) are problems, then you Americans need to get off your arses and beef up your own agencies! We in Canada are likewise suffering from the same epidemics (as well as the epidemic of American guns coming into Canada that are being used by criminals here) so we are not the source of the problem! Justin Trudeau himself (love him or hate him) is not the Vito Corleone of an operation that he personally oversees where he is feeding the insatiable American appetite for drugs! The moron that is currently President of the United States of America is blaming the wrong people! And let’s not forget that a grand total of about twenty kilogrammes (44 pounds for you Americans) of fentanyl have crossed the Canadian border into the United States in the year to October 2024, versus about five hundred times that amount from Mexico! (Illegal Immigration and Fentanyl at the U.S. Northern and Southwest Borders.) Where’s your fucking sense of proportion?!

As Forbes magazine says, the “Tariff On Canada Not Justified By U.S. Immigration And Drug Claims“, but you never let facts get in the way of your emotional tirades.

THOSE DAYS ARE OVER!

Yeah right.

The USA has major deficits with Canada, Mexico, and China (and almost all countries!), owes 36 Trillion Dollars, and we’re not going to be the “Stupid Country” any longer.

Who called you “stupid”? Sure, it’s an overused word, and certain people and certain actions (like your tariffs) certainly are stupid but, again, you’re coming to an unsupportable conclusion that you and your fellow Americans are all, well, stupid pushovers. How do you or can you come to that ridiculous (stupid?) conclusion? You can’t. Your office is supposed to be better than petty remarks like this that are only worthy of repeating in front of your similarly drunk mates at the bar.

As for “deficits”, yes, you’re technically correct, but it’s not a deficit that you (America) has to pay, and despite your claiming that, “They [Canada and Mexico] owe us a lot of money, I’m sure they’re gonna pay,” we don’t owe you any money either! (Mexico still owes you for the wall you built that you said they’d pay for!) Let’s just say that Bob and Jane own two different businesses; it just so happens that Bob produces some products that Jane’s business needs, and Jane similarly makes products that Bob’s business needs. Remarkably, Bob spends more on Jane’s products than Jane spends on Bob’s. Does that mean that Jane somehow then owes Bob some money? Of course not! I’m not going to get into comparing Bob and Jane’s products and prices, but the economy generated over many generations between Canada and the United States has seen the free market decide that apparently (according to you) your free citizens need more Canadian products than our free citizens need from you! Does anybody — including your free citizens — need to be punished over this supposed imbalance? No! If you want to “solve” this imbalance then do it naturally, but that doesn’t sound as sexy to you or your “base” or happen as quickly as they’d like than spitting out the best word in the world, “tariff”.

MAKE YOUR PRODUCT IN THE USA AND THERE ARE NO TARIFFS!

As I said above, most of us do not live in that fantasy world.

Why should the United States lose TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN SUBSIDIZING OTHER COUNTRIES, and why should these other countries pay a small fraction of the cost of what USA citizens pay for Drugs and Pharmaceuticals, as an example?

Who is losing anything here? Jim in the USA is paying a dollar to a Canadian (or Mexican) and in return he gets a dollar’s worth of goods. Nobody is losing! And how is Jim subsidising anyone, the Canadian or the Mexican? You’re obviously an idiot who hasn’t thought this through. And why are your citizens paying so much for drugs and pharmaceuticals? What the hell does that have to do with trade imbalances? Nothing, that’s what. It has everything to do with how you Americans run your fucked up society, bankrupting your citizens because they broke their leg.

THIS WILL BE THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICA!

Yeah, yeah, whatever.

WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!). BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID.

Oh, so someone actually managed to whisper something in your ear in the last five minutes suggesting that tariffs are maybe not the best thing since sliced bread? You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about and this is as close as you will come to admitting it. I’m also thinking that you won’t pay much of a price, given your penchant for obtaining financing from the banks you bullshit, but Joe Schmoe way down the line will be expected to “subsidise” the American economy in a way that will cause him pain.

WE ARE A COUNTRY THAT IS NOW BEING RUN WITH COMMON SENSE — AND THE RESULTS WILL BE SPECTACULAR!!!

Typical marketing (i.e., lying) bullshit. I also love how you re-define “common sense” to be whatever bullshit comes out of your mouth. Please look up the definition.

We pay hundreds of Billions of Dollars to SUBSIDIZE Canada. Why? There is no reason.

You do? There’s another word you should look up: subsidise (or however you Americans choose to spell it), Here, let me help you:

subsidize (also subsidise)
v. support (an organization or activity) financially. pay part of the cost of producing (something) to reduce its price.
DERIVATIVES subsidization n. subsidizer n.

What, exactly, are you subsidising? And who is “we”? It’s certainly not the government of the United States of America; it’s certainly not you personally; and it’s certainly not any of the American citizens who engage freely in the free-trade market between our two countries! You are delusional and don’t understand what a subsidy is.

Since you’ve never attended a history class or read a history book, you might not realise that Canada and the United States (as modern countries) both started out as colonies of the United Kingdom, France and Spain in about the fifteenth century. (That’s the 1400s, in case you didn’t know. And I’m not mentioning Russia’s peripheral role that is not really visible outside of Alaska.) Through periods of war and other upheaval, the two countries developed into two separate nations. Canada (as it later became) and its settlers remained loyal to the Crown of Great Britain, whereas you guys (the Americans) fought a war of independence against Great Britain. Since then you and the UK have kissed and made up, and now you have what is generally known as a/the “Special Relationship” (although I suspect that, under you, that relationship is becoming less special every day), and you and we have also developed the kind of close relationship one would expect two neighbours to develop. (This is pretty typical around the world. Viz. Ireland and the UK, Australia and New Zealand, Rhodesia and South Africa, etc.)

So, as close as we now are (or were until a few days ago), we are two different and independent countries, nations and cultures. Like you guys, we have an economy, one good enough to be included in the G7 Group of Seven advanced economies. Contrary to your barroom braggadocio bullshit, we would not “cease to exist as a viable Country [sic]”. Would we be changed if the United States “built a wall” and shut itself off from us? Yes, of course, as would you, but we would not sink into the sea; that’s just moronic to assume. But to sum up this extremely brief history lesson, America as one independent, sovereign nation is not subsidising Canada, a separate, independent and sovereign nation.

End of lesson. You are wrong.

We don’t need anything they have. We have unlimited Energy, should make our own Cars, and have more Lumber than we can ever use.

Ha ha. You should probably consult a few of your citizens on that matter, the ones who are buying and importing our goods and services. Whether it’s need or want, Americans import billions of dollars worth of our goods, just as we import billions of dollars worth of yours. That’s how the free market works. No American president, under your current democracy (which I realise is in jeopardy at the moment), has any absolute power or sway over all of your people to change that. And anyone who uses the word “unlimited” is obviously someone who has spent too much time in sales and marketing, believing his own bullshit. And as for the cars, again, check with the CEOs of Ford, General Motors and Stellantis; they are not Canadian cars, they are North American cars made by the same “big three” on both sides of the border. Again, this is when reading a little bit of history would come in handy for you.

Without this massive subsidy, Canada ceases to exist as a viable Country. Harsh but true!

Harsh and completely UNtrue! Please see above.

Therefore, Canada should become our Cherished 51st State. Much lower taxes, and far better military protection for the people of Canada — AND NO TARIFFS!

Ah, you’ve saved the best for last! This bullshit “51st state” crap, although, as a Canadian, I’m not feeling especially “cherished” by America right now. As clearly shown in my mini history lesson above, Canadians are not Americans, Americans in waiting, America’s “little brother” (although, since you are size obsessed, I hate to point out to you the we are bigger) or anything else along those lines. We don’t even want you guys as our 11th province, or even out 4th territory! That would be far more hassle than we’d be willing to tolerate. As a Canadian I wonder to myself, “What would the advantage to us be?”, and I can come up with nothing. I think that Americans should be proud to be American, and we Canadians are similarly proud to be Canadian; why should either of us confuse our identities? (And why would you want to become communists, as we clearly are?) No thanks. I kinda like our higher taxes and that they fund a government able to take care of its citizens in the way that governments are supposed to. And in fact, one of the ways our government protects its citizens is by not being so belligerent, ignorant and self-centred on the world stage, so as long as we don’t become the 51st state of the belligerent country of the United States of America, we don’t need your supposedly “far better military protection”, thanks very much. Hey, I’m not saying we’re perfect and have everything figured out, but neither are you and neither do you.

That’s why together as friends and allies and with our highly integrated economies that are not subsidising or taking advantage of one another — and in the other innumerable ways that other editorialists have enumerated in recent days, from world wars to your Iran hostage crisis to Iraq to Afghanistan to 9/11 — we are stronger.

donald trump, Bullshit Social post, 2025-02-02, "Tariff lobby."

donald trump, Bullshit Social post, 2025-02-02, “Tariff lobby.”

 

donald trump, Bullshit Social post, 2025-02-02, "Subsidize Canada."

donald trump, Bullshit Social post, 2025-02-02, “Subsidize Canada.”

Updated, 2025-02-08: Added screenshots of trump’s post on a site I have renamed “Bullshit Social” because that’s more accurate than “Truth Social”.

War in Ukraine not over

Jan 21st, 2025
by Craig.
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It has been more than 24 hours since trump was sworn in as president of the USA, and he has still not ended Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

First promise broken, a million more promises to break. What a joke.

I think Pete Hegseth reads my blog

Jan 15th, 2025
by Craig.
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It’s almost as if Pete Hegseth read my post “America and communism” in November and decided to prove I’m right. Seriously. Is there any other way to explain how he claimed, as reported by CNN on 12 December 2025 (when I initially started to write this piece), that “policies allowing gay people to serve openly in the US military [are] part of a ‘Marxist’ agenda to prioritize social justice over combat readiness.” I mean … wow!

Look, I couldn’t give a flying fandango (from a professional point of view) who someone decides to have sex with, as long as they show up for their job and do it well. And, as I admitted in the “America and communism” post, I’m not intimately familiar with all of the writings of Karl Marx — on whose writings Marxism is based, in case that’s not obvious — but I have access to things called “search engines”. So I searched for “marxism homosexuality” and I was led to a number of articles. (You will be too, if you follow that link.) One of them was a “Washington Post” article entitled “Communist states have sometimes been havens for LGBTQ rights” where the author (Samuel Huneke) states:

Sexuality was not a preoccupation of communism’s earliest theorists. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who penned “The Communist Manifesto” in 1848, had little to say on the topic. What they did was contemptuous.

I suppose it’s possible that Marxist thinkers since Marx and Engels have modified Marxist thought since the mid-1800s, so I shouldn’t be too hard on Mr. Hegseth, but what evidence do I have that Hegseth even knows who Karl Marx is, never mind that he knows anything about Marxist thought?! None, that’s how much.

And further opportunity to evaluate Hegseth’s thought process, and the thought process of trump and his transition team, comes in the CNN article:

In a comment to CNN, a Trump transition spokesperson declined to say what specific policies Hegseth might pursue as secretary of defense, including whether he would reinstate “don’t ask, don’t tell” or implement changes to current standards.

Of course not. It’s not as if taking over the leadership of the US Department of Defence requires much forethought and planning. That’s for amateurs.

Like President Trump, Pete wants to see the U.S. military focus on being the world’s strongest fighting force – not on cultural and social issues. Bottom line: If you can meet the standards, you can serve,” the spokesperson said. “But given the threats we face, our priorities shouldn’t be lowering standards and wasting taxpayer money to meet arbitrary social quotas – our priorities should be readiness and lethality.

Right, one’s readiness should be compromised by changing everything the previous administration changed to change the previous administration’s changes. Wha…?

The policy [the ban on transgender individuals serving openly in the military] was reversed under Trump, with then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis implementing a 2018 policy barring those diagnosed with gender dysphoria from serving, except in limited cases. President Joe Biden repealed the Trump-era ban in 2021.

Again, it’s time for musical policies. The music is playing, now everybody switch policies!

Speaking on “the Ben Shapiro Show” in June, Hegseth criticized a military ad campaign featuring a soldier with two lesbian mothers, calling it emblematic of a larger shift toward individualism in military culture.

Yes, we don’t want to encourage individualism in American culture, it just doesn’t exist out in the wild. Hey, I do get that individualism within the military is not necessarily desirable — unless, of course, it’s some individual carrying out some heroic act like storming a machine gun nest — but I suspect that the “military ad campaign featuring a soldier with two lesbian mothers” was for recruiting purposes, not purely military purposes. Coincidentally, recently I was looking up something about pedantry and I came across this definition or explanation:

Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry … To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery. –George Polya, mathematician (13 Dec 1887-1985).

Further, from Hegseth:

It was stuff like, ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ which was their immediate target, right? Right out the gate, we need to change that and – say what you want about what about that, people are passionate on that issue. But it was most centrally, uh, demonstrated with women in combat this idea that there’ll be gender neutrality and selection.

Again, there’s a new sheriff in town, and this sheriff will be targeting “woke”. Anyone with their eyes open and tuned into the world will be shot. We don’t need that shit.

Idiots.

Karl Marx and Pete Hegseth.

Karl Marx (John Jabez Edwin Mayall, PD) and Pete Hegseth (cropped, [Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0])

OMG, the entire continent of North America is a joke!

Dec 21st, 2024
by Craig.
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(OK, sorry, I had to start two blog posts with “OMG” just to show that Canada isn’t the only basket case on the continent. And I apologise for excluding Greenland, Mexico and the Caribbean from the definition, but I’m sure that in this case they won’t complain!)

USA

All I’m going to say about the USA though is that their “experiment with democracy” isn’t going so well. I’m not even referring to their electing an admirer of dictators and “strongmen” who is expected to turn his back on the rule of law; I’m referring to their inability to manage to govern their country without facing a government shutdown, seemingly every few weeks but in reality it seems to be every couple of years. I mean, I understand that the legislative side of the government needs to vote money for the administrative side of the government to be able to do the jobs defined by the legislative side of government, but really? I suppose the United States does have a record of slavery — which is the only way to describe being forced to show up to work for no pay cheque (“check” to you Americans) — so what’s the big deal with bringing it back temporarily every few years? I don’t get it.

And after 248 years — almost a quarter of a millennium — why not “experiment” with the executive side of government? This notion of a president and a vice president is so old-fashioned, so the administration-elect is experimenting with a new triumvirate: I’m not sure how to characterise it, as it seems to be rather unofficial at the moment, but it looks like it goes something like this:

  • Super (unelected) president: Elon Musk
  • President: donald trump
  • Vice president: JD Vance

Or maybe it’s like this:

  • Unelected president: Musk
  • Vice president: trump
  • Tea boy: Vance

(South Africans [including Musk] and southern Americans will nod their heads sagely at my thinly veiled racist term for Vance, which is entirely appropriate for the take-over of America by the citizen of the Third World country to which I’m referring. [And yes, you can quibble with me on my definition of the “Third World” here too, but since 1994 South Africa has been clamouring at the door of the club.])

So cute! He thinks he's steering!..

So cute! He thinks he’s steering!.. (Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I went to their website to try to find appropriate licensing and attribution information, but they blocked me.)

Canada

The turmoil in Canada continues as well!

  • First of all, the antiquated electoral system of this country means that I will *GUARANTEE* that next year we will be bowing and scraping to Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre. Anyone — including Justin Trudeau! — who thinks otherwise is clearly smoking something very potent. I was talking to someone today who suggested that if the Liberals get a new leader they might do a little better than if Trudeau was leading them, but in my mind that may mean three seats instead of two. The coming defeat of the Liberals will rival or perhaps even outshine John Turner’s in 1984.
  • I have no doubt that perhaps, back in the day, Trudeau may have had a vision for where he wanted to lead the country, but it’s as plain as the nose on my face that today he is only thinking of himself. If he is indeed “reflecting” on his future as has been suggested, somebody also needs to suggest he give Joe Biden a call to get a lesson on humility and thinking of his country first. Of course, that didn’t work out too well for Biden and his party, so I suspect that Biden is the last person Trudeau will call for advice. Or maybe Trudeau is hoping for a snow storm this Christmas or over the New Year, and he will take a walk in said snow storm in the same way that his daddy did in 1984.
  • I rarely agree with anything Poilievre says, but how can one disagree with his current characterisation of the Trudeau government as a “chaotic clown show”? Someone on the CBC’s “At Issue” panel (probably Andrew Coyne) described the new cabinet, shuffled yesterday, as “Fanatics, loyalists and members of the prime minister’s wedding party.” Of course, the deliverer of the “clown show” remark then made it clear that the clown show will continue when he becomes prime minister because he also suggested that if he writes a letter to Santa Claus (or the governor general) he could get his Christmas wish of becoming prime minister sooner! God help us all.
  • To me the Trudeau government has become like that old, second-hand car you used to own. It’s completely unreliable, you know that the chances of it failing to get you to work tomorrow morning are far greater than 50%, but you somehow think that you can will it to get you there! Sound familiar?!

But the main issue I want to get to that has been bothering me for months now is all of the idiots who keep uttering the name Christy Clark as a possible successor to Trudeau! What are you people smoking?! (Sorry for all the marijuana references, but we’re talking about politics after all!) Yes, she was the leader of the BC Liberal Party, but the BC Liberal Party was a liberal party in name only! I distinctly remember Raef Mair questioning Gordon Campbell on this issue during an interview on Mair’s CKNW talk-radio programme many years ago, when Campbell became the leader of the BC Liberals, or was running to be. Mair asked Campbell to define “liberalism” with reference to the name of his party, and Campbell simply couldn’t do it! Mair may have been a bit of a pedant in that moment, and perhaps the definition of liberalism has changed over the centuries — or maybe it comes down to the different definitions of “freedom” that those on the left and right sides of the political spectrum use — but the fact of the matter is that in the years since Campbell became the premier (followed by Clark) up until the party folded earlier this year, the BC Liberals were — as described in the Wikipedia article on the party that replaced it, BC United:

conservative, neoliberal, … occupying a centre-right position on the left–right political spectrum … a “free enterprise coalition” [drawing] support from members of both the federal Liberal and Conservative parties … the main centre-right opposition to the centre-left New Democratic Party …. Once affiliated with the Liberal Party of Canada, the British Columbia Liberal Party became independent in 1987.

Their name reminds me of something my Grade Seven teacher (Mr. Cuttel) told the class one day, that he found it ironic that countries in the world that were widely known as being anything but democratic seemed to like using the word in their names to cover up their lack of democracy, e.g., German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), etc. Perhaps the BC Liberal Party was using that logic!

If you don’t live in BC and just can’t quite grasp the nomenclature, I strongly recommend you read the CBC article “Why the B.C. Liberals are sometimes liberal and sometimes not“, with a video with excellent (i.e., corny) sound effects by Richard Zussman, who now reports for Global BC. It’s really not that difficult; as illustrated above, people can call their countries whatever they want, and those countries are named by political leaders who lie just as much as political leaders everywhere on the spectrum.

If Clark even runs in an expected leadership race I’ll be surprised, but if she does and wins, I’ll be handing in my licence to run this blog.

BC's Liberal Party does not equal Canada's Liberal Party.

BC’s Liberal Party does not equal Canada’s Liberal Party (CBC)

Updated, 2024-12-22: Some minor changes (mostly formatting), plus added the screenshot of the CBC video to which I link. Also, apparently this is the third post title I’ve started with “OMG” recently! All because of politicians!

Updated, 2024-12-26: Added Mike Luckovich’s very appropriate cartoon from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, along with an explanation of how I tried to access their website to obtain appropriate licensing and attribution information, but that their website blocked my computer’s configuration. Kinda defeats the purpose of having a website, but what can I do?

The hilarity (not!) of donald trump’s childish remarks

Dec 18th, 2024
by Craig.
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One thing I have noted for years is the habit of many people on the right to make every argument personal and to resort to name calling. This is particularly illustrated by the juvenile known as donald trump, whose name I refuse to spell with initial capital letters because he doesn’t deserve even that much grammatical respect.

His latest tact of referring to the country of Canada as the “great state of Canada” — as Americans are wont to do when referring to their states grandiloquently — was mildly amusing the first time if only because we ourselves often refer to ourselves as the 51st state, but with the second and subsequent repetitions it just became moronic. Hey don, you might have got a chuckle the first time (and the second time when you placed a Swiss mountain in Canada), but we’re all yawning now.

But with respect to calling people names, your moronic reaction to the resignation of Canada’s finance minister is beyond the pale. First of all, I realise that you have absolutely zero respect for any woman other than for her purpose of having a pussy to grab, but characterising her (and even having an opinion on her domestic actions) as “totally toxic” because she did an excellent job of representing her country (not sub-national state) of Canada in trade negotiations with your country just rings of your being a well-documented poor loser. Non-Americans are often told by you and your acolytes to STFU and keep our opinions of America and American politics to ourselves, so I suggest you take your own advice.

The Great State of Canada is stunned as the Finance Minister resigns, or was fired, from her position by Governor Justin Trudeau. Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada. She will not be missed!!!

The Great State of Canada is stunned as the Finance Minister resigns, or was fired, from her position by Governor Justin Trudeau. Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada. She will not be missed!!!

Fuck you, you piece of shit. I can guarantee that this citizen of Canada is very happy that we are not governed by the likes of idiots like you.

trump this, tariff that

Dec 12th, 2024
by Craig.
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I’m not a big fan of Ontario premier Doug Ford, and I realise I’m just one of the peanut gallery baying for blood that will cost everyone on both sides of the border, but yeah, fuck trump and his tariffs, so cut off the Americans sponging off of Canada for their electricity!

Story: “Ford threatens to cut off Ontario’s energy supply to U.S. if Trump follows through on tariffs“.

Borders work both ways; if trump is whining about drugs and illegal aliens getting into his country, it’s not Canada that is letting them in, it’s America’s own bloody Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection! Duh!

Breakdown of the Rule of Law in the United States of America

Dec 3rd, 2024
by Craig.
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Tattered American flag.

Tattered American flag

What we’re seeing down in the good ol’ U.S. of A., with Joe Biden pardoning his son, is a classic example of unintended consequences and the down side of the reason that all of trump’s supporters love him: his inability to think before he opens his big yap. Many people seem to consider it somehow endearing that a politician can talk just as freely and openly as a drunkard down at the pub, but anyone with a brain knows that just about anything they say “after a few” down at the pub cannot and should not be counted on in the morning.

And yet, trump can barrack out the word “tariff” and all of his acolytes cheer as if they even know what the word means, never mind how tariffs would affect their grocery bills, making the inflation they blame on Biden (but which is worldwide) look like child’s play.

This is what I see as having happened in this case:

  • 2020: trump pardons (among other people) the convicted felon (Charles Kushner), pardon my redundancy, who is the father-in-law of his daughter, Ivanka, as well as a bunch of his other supporters who have broken the law to support him.
  • 2021: trump sets his private army of ne’er-do-wells on the US Congress in attempts to hijack the counting of votes of the Electoral College and (seemingly) have his Vice President (Mike Pence) and Speaker of the House (Nancy Pelosi) assassinated. They fail.
  • 2024: The United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) rules that the President of the United States (POTUS) is immune from prosecution, which means the action to try and convict trump of treason in the case of the January 6th self-coup attempt essentially comes to a grinding halt. (How an attempt at a coup can be considered an “official act” is beyond the understanding of my miniscule intellect.)
  • 2024: trump is elected President of the United States, again, to the dismay of over 50% of the population of the United States.
  • 2024: trump nominates Kash Patel — who has made far-ranging promises that echo trump’s promises of revenge and retribution, completely contrary to the ethos of the Rule of Law — for the post of Director of the FBI. Oh, and he also nominates said convicted felon, Charles Kushner, to the post of Ambassador to France.
  • 2024: Biden sees what is coming down the pike and, despite previous assurances that he would not pardon Hunter Biden, decides to do so because it has become clear to him that there’s no way Hunter will be treated according to the Rule of Law under which Joe previously promised not to pardon him. So what we have here is one President flouting the Rule of Law (even if pardons are, technically, legal) to combat the entirely predictable flouting of the Rule of Law of an incoming president.
  • 2024: Predictably, trump and his cry-baby supporters cry foul.

And, of course, as about a million other people have noted, now that a convicted felon has been allowed to run for and win the office of President of the United States, why should there be fetters on the activities and freedoms of other felons? Why incarcerate them? Why prevent them from holding certain jobs, like ambassadorships? Why prevent them from voting? And why conform to various other laws and norms and follow the Rule of Law?!

As I said to someone recently, the maxim that “crime doesn’t pay” is sure taking a hit these days, especially from the “royalty” that are running the United States!

America and communism

Nov 15th, 2024
by Craig.
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United Socialist States of America flag.

United Socialist States of America flag (Samdir3 CC BY-SA 3.0).

The way that Americans seem to have a penchant for labelling anyone they disagree with — particularly Republicans labelling Democrats — as “communist” has always troubled me. The problem is ignorance. A good friend of mine — a former resident of the United States — who is well educated in this area says that he won’t talk to anyone about communism unless they have read all of a reading list by authors such as Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, etc. I don’t remember the full list, but I myself have not met the prerequisite. Among them I vaguely recall “Das Kapital” by Karl Marx. At best I have read a number of excerpts of a few of the texts in my friend’s list from text books from a college political science course.

But today, in 2024, I am stunned by the extent to which right-leaning American politicians are siding with former communists, particularly one vladimir putin. You may have heard of him: he started the first war in Europe since the end of World War II in 1945 by sending Russian troops to invade Ukraine, troops that were immediately defeated in their push for Kyiv. The current American president-elect — donald trump — and his nominee for the cabinet position of Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, both (by all accounts) support putin, and trump claims that he plans to end the war within 24 hours of taking office, if not before! It is widely expected that he will do this by denying any further military assistance to Ukraine and twisting the arm of Volodymyr Zelenskyy (president of Ukraine) into ceding Ukrainian territory to putin.

To someone whose country’s west-leaning government was abandoned by the United States of America to the communist terrorists — supported by the Soviet Union and China — against which we fought in the 1970s, this actually shouldn’t be surprising. So welcome to the club, Mr. Zelenskyy, the club of people that have been fighting on the side of America and to bring the freedom of the West to your country, but in whose faces America has spat.

But is this really surprising behaviour by a president-elect who has nominated an anti-vaxxer as the Secretary of Health, and a suspected criminal as the Attorney General?!

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