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Sales calls from Telus and Rogers

Feb 5th, 2025
by Craig.
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Telus logo.

Telus logo

A couple of days ago I received sales calls from Telus Communications Inc. (on my business line) and a few minutes later from Rogers Communications Inc. (on my personal line). A coincidence, I assume, that two of my arch enemies would call on the same day within literally a few minutes.

I haven’t done business with Telus in over twenty years, and I never will in the next thousand years! Among other reasons is that Telus ripped off (or stole) money from an older relative of mine for years, and then refused to return the stolen money. When I realised what had been going on after looking at bank statements, I cancelled one of the automated debits (which I almost never use myself) and they refused to return more than 90 days worth of debits in line with Interac rules. This was despite the fact that they were charging for a dial-up Internet account for years that had been cancelled years previously when it was replaced with broadband from another company!

Shortly after that I replaced the Telus phone line with VoIP from another provider, whom I will not name because I wouldn’t recommend them at this time. (That said, I’ve been using them [VoIP.ms] for sixteen years, so their service is at least acceptable, even if their support department seems to be hell bent on getting rid of their clients as fast as possible!) And not a cent has been paid to Telus since. Telus returned the favour by reporting me to the credit bureau.

I gave the Telus representative the concise rundown after they asked for details and gave the disingenuous impression that “maybe they could help”, and then I told them there was no way I’d ever again do business with Telus when he demurred.

Rogers logo

Rogers logo.

In the case of Rogers, after their negative option billing fiasco in 1995 that affected my father, I swore I’d never do business with them. And then the government of Canada completely gave up on fostering competition in the cable television market, and allowed Rogers to buy Shaw, which I was using for TV and Internet. So when that happened and I had no other option, I was doing business with the reviled Rogers. That happened four years ago now, so I’m ashamed to admit that I still haven’t executed a departure from Rogers, but it will happen the next time I move.

Anyway, in that phone call I told the Rogers representative that I would not be buying anything else from them and would be cancelling my account with them at my earliest opportunity.

Just another day in the life of someone who likes to complicate his life by boycotting companies (and now countries!) with no scruples. I’ve had an article in the works since about October 2024 that explains why I’ve been boycotting Cadbury, Nestlé and Mars Inc. (and probably a few others) since I realised that they support Russia’s war effort against Ukraine and the killing of their civilians.

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 a 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”.

Christy Clark pulls the plug

Jan 15th, 2025
by Craig.
Comments are off for this post

In a previous post I stated that Justin Trudeau had finally seen the writing on the wall and decided it was time he scurried away. It only took him a decade, although I suppose to be truthful it was really only the last year of that decade when he tried to cling to power. (I know anti-vaxxers will disagree with my timeline, but they’re idiots.)

So I suppose I should be charitable to Christy Clark for following the example of one of her successors in the BC Liberal Party (now BC United), Kevin Falcon (who folded under pressure) and give her credit for taking only a few months to come to the conclusion that her running for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada was a non-starter. Thank the gods. I wasn’t looking forward to taking on her supposed upcoming leadership race.

However, to reiterate points I’ve already made, anyone so stupid as to think that she could pull the wool over Canadian’s eyes to make them believe that she was a Liberal and not a Conservative does not deserve to be trusted with the leadership of this (or any other) country. She is, to say it again, a bullshit artist, and she only pulled the plug once her claims not to have joined the Conservative Party were found to have been false. Oops, “I misspoke. Sh*t happens. Lesson learned 🤦‍♀️ …”.

Yes, 🤦‍♀️ indeed! Your “sticking with the status quo” — i.e., misleading voters — is definitely a losing strategy! Thankfully you won’t be leading Canadians down that path!

Finally! The CBC calls out Christy Clark

Jan 11th, 2025
by Craig.
1 comment

On the CBC National last night (10 January 2025), the CBC finally called out Clark on her claim to being a “registered [federal] Liberal” and not (“never”) a Conservative. The Conservative Party apparently provided a screenshot (not shown by the CBC) from their system showing that Clark misspoke … to put it extremely politely and generously. She posted something on her Twitter/X feed trying to take back her remarks/comments in some recent (previous) interview with respect to running for leader of the federal Liberal Party. (Video in link below.) Unfortunately, as I’ve commented before, Elon Musk is trying to make X unusable and so I cannot see her recent posts on her X feed (but it was shown on the screen by the CBC), but it was full of bullshit and Clark trying to cover up her l**s — a word I believe I can’t use without risk of a lawsuit. But I believe I can safely use the phrase “bullshit artist” to describe her. (Actually, thanks to the written article on the CBC website, I now have the link to and the text from her post below.)

Well, I misspoke.
Sh*t happens.
Lesson learned 🤦‍♀️ …

I have always been clear that I supported Jean Charest to stop Pierre Poilievre. Not backing away from that. He’s the most divisive politician we’ve seen in years and I felt it was my duty as a Cdn [sic] to stop him in his tracks. I’m thinking carefully about running because he still needs to be stopped. But if we want to do that, our party has to accept change.

Sticking with the status quo is a losing strategy.

My god, if a seasoned politician has to excuse her stupidity and economy with the truth with the vulgar phrase, “shit happens” (and claims she suddenly learned a lesson that is taught in Politics 101 and Honesty 101), then she is quite clearly unqualified to be prime minister of the country. It’s not that I think that politicians can’t be “vulgar” (remember the “[Pierre] Trudeau salute” and “fuddle duddle”?), but she’s covering up her so-called economy with the truth by claiming “shit happens” for fuck’s sake! (Oops, sorry, I was vulgar.) This is a person who can simply not be counted on for anything even remotely approximating truthfulness and trustworthiness!

Listen, Canadians, and especially federal Liberal Party members: Christy Clark is *NOT* a Liberal! She’s a conservative in thought and practice! Sure, she’s saying all sorts of nasty things about Pierre Poilievre the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, but saying that she is against someone or something doesn’t automatically imply that she is for someone or something, specifically the Liberal Party of Canada!

And don’t even get me started on her bastardising the French language, which she was clearly reading off of a teleprompter, and probably didn’t even understand because she got it off Google Translate. I’m not a big fan of the fact that Canadian prime ministers have to speak French, but if someone is going to claim that they speak it then they do actually need to speak it, understand it and converse in it, at least to some extent! Reading (and badly pronouncing) a script does not make you suddenly bilingual!

But seriously, I started my tirades against Clark (with respect to the Liberal leadership) only last month, but it’s beyond preposterous that anyone can seriously consider her a contender. She hasn’t even actually entered the race, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to take her herself seriously! She’s falling apart before she even positions herself at the starting line. I can’t seriously consider the possibility that she will even embarrass herself to have a go.

Christy Clark Twitter/X post: "Sh*it happens."

Christy Clark Twitter/X post: “Sh*it happens.”

Christy Clark is NOT a Liberal!

Jan 6th, 2025
by Craig.
1 comment
Christy Clark.

Christy Clark

I should let the title stand on its own, especially after the comments I made at the end of “OMG, the entire continent of North America is a joke!“, but I really don’t know what the pundits in the media are smoking when they keep suggesting that Christy Clark is a contender for the leadership of the FEDERAL Liberal Party! I’d sure love to know whether or not she has ever been a card-carrying member of the federal Liberal party, but her politics are very clearly Conservative! Among other reasons she’s not qualified for the leadership of anything bigger than the neighbourhood cookie club is the fact that she put the Province of British Columbia in the position of defending itself for her and the BC Liberal Party’s anti-democratic and unconstitutional decision to ban collective bargaining (or parts of it) by teachers in BC; this resulted in millions of dollars being spent on lawyers and court time that could have been spent on BC citizens and their children, which was lost when the Supreme Court of Canada handed Clark and her government their asses on a silver platter when they decided against the government (and therefore Clark) in the case!

Any suggestion that Christy Clark is qualified for the position of the leader of the federal Liberal Party is ill-informed, apparently by people (political pundits on TV and radio) who have never been to British Columbia and are probably still of the opinion that BC is still some political backwater.

Trudeau finally reads the writing on the wall

We’re talking about Christy Clark because Justin Trudeau has finally (and predictably) seen the light and set a time for his resigning as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and as the Prime Minister of Canada. I don’t “hate” Justin Trudeau as the weirdos with their “F🍁CK TRUDEAU” flags and bumper stickers that have infected this country like a virus do; I just strongly disagree with his virtue signalling and the extent to which he is a hypocrite, as is evident in how he treated Jody Wilson-Raybould and a number of other female ministers in his so-called gender-balanced cabinet.

The coming federal general election

In previous posts I have predicted a majority win for the Conservative Party in the next election. Although I used to be a conservative, I no longer recognise the current Conservative party and am never likely to vote for it or one of their candidates. That doesn’t make me a liberal, or a communist.

The only reason I predict their forthcoming sweeping majority is because that is how elections in Canada have worked for decades, if not for their entire existence. For as long as I have lived in Canada, power has swayed back and forth between the Liberals and the Conservatives. And usually power switches simply because whoever today’s prime minister is falls out of favour with the electorate, as Justin Trudeau and Stephen Harper before him have done. It’s not because I fervently desire for Justin Trudeau and the Liberal party to be consigned to the dustbin of history.

What I do fervently desire is a new electoral system that actually makes the outcome reasonably unpredictable! And that brings me to one of the main reasons I so fervently dislike (but not hate) Justin Trudeau, and that is his electoral promise in 2015 that the general election that year would be “the last FPTP election in Canadian history”! And yet here we are, a decade later, with two more general elections under our belts (both of which Trudeau won using the system he swore to end), and we’re still using the antiquated system from the Middle Ages!

Updated, 2025-01-06: Minutes after posting this I ended up on Clark’s Twitter/X feed where she stated on 21 October 2024, “I am a proud Liberal voter, registered Liberal, and former Liberal Premier.” Hmm, so there you go, I am supposedly wrong. And yet, I stand behind every word I wrote above (and have written in the past) that her politics are conservative, despite her calling Pierre Poilievre (Conservative Party leader and future Prime Minister) “divisive” and making other negative statements about him … which I completely agree with! As for her claim of being a “Liberal Premier”, I take issue with her understanding of liberalism.

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

Dec 21st, 2024
by Craig.
Comments are off for this post

(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.

OMG, the Canadian government is in a completely PREDICTABLE shambolic shambles!

Dec 16th, 2024
by Craig.
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Justin Trudeau.

Justin Trudeau

In 2015, Justin Trudeau blithely and mockingly informed us that it was 2015. Among other things — the most noticeable and consequential to me and to Canadians in general — he put on his pink “I’m a feminist” T-shirt and promised that the election he had just won would be the last first-part-the-post (FPTP) election.

Within about six months he had conjured up some lame excuses for why he was completely and incontrovertibly going back on the completely fake promise that he would change the electoral system. Next!

As for the world’s biggest feminist label he assumed without the consent of any actual feminist on the planet — except, perhaps and laughably, his now ex-wife — he has long exposed the truth, that he is anything but. This was clear in the way in which he cast Jody Wilson-Raybould aside like yesterday’s trash, and now, how he has done exactly the same with the last female cabinet minister of any consequence, Chrystia Freeland (see below).

But I’ve been mulling this blog post over in my mind for weeks. The crux of it is that, with reference to Trudeau’s going back on his promise to replace the FPTP electoral system, he has an electoral system in which his defeat is pretty much guaranteed. Guaranteed! The rats are abandoning ship, and those that are too stupid to jump are rearranging the deck chairs! Trudeau could (and should!) have resigned the leadership of the Liberal Party a year or months ago to allow a successor the ability to have a chance to maintain a reasonable Liberal presence in the House of Commons, instead of being left with the same two seats with which the Progressive Conservative Party were left after the 1993 election.

In her letter of resignation, Freeland referred to “costly political gimmicks”. This has to be, possibly among other things, the “GST holiday” that came into effect on 14 December. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) referred to it as a “gong show”, and it is. It has forced businesses to invest an inordinate amount of time and energy — during the busiest time of the year — in reconfiguring their point-of-sales systems to zero the tax rate on the limited number of goods on which the tax has been removed. It’s a joke! It shows a complete ignorance of the part of Trudeau and his government of how business works. It’s a sad, sad situation in which Canada finds itself.

The plans I had for this post were pushed up and significantly truncated as I thought I had more time. I find it bizarre that the Government of Canada finds itself in almost the exact same situation today as the governments of Syria, Germany, and South Korea! We’re a joke!

Here’s Chrystia Freeland’s resignation letter:

Chrystia Freeland

Chrystia Freeland. (Brian Ferraro/NPR)

Dear Prime Minister,

It has been the honour of my life to serve in government, working for Canada and Canadians. We have accomplished a lot together.

On Friday, you told me you no longer want me to serve as your Finance Minister and offered me another position in the cabinet.

Upon reflection, I have concluded that the only honest and viable path is for me to resign from the cabinet.

To be effective, a Minister must speak on behalf of the Prime Minister and with his full confidence. In making your decision, you made clear that I no longer credibly enjoy that confidence and possess the authority that comes with it.

For the past number of weeks, you and I have found ourselves at odds about the best path forward for Canada.

Our country today faces a grave challenge. The incoming administration in the United States is pursuing a policy of aggressive economic nationalism, including a threat of 25 per cent tariffs.

We need to take that threat extremely seriously. That means keeping our fiscal powder dry today, so we have the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war. That means eschewing costly political gimmicks, which we can ill afford and which make Canadians doubt that we recognize the gravity of the moment.

That means pushing back against ‘America First’ economic nationalism with a determined effort to fight for capital and investment and the jobs they bring. That means working in good faith and humility with the premiers of the provinces and territories of our great and diverse country, and building a true Team Canada response.

I know Canadians would recognize and respect such an approach. They know when we are working for them, and they equally know when we are focused on ourselves. Inevitably, our time in government will come to an end. But how we deal with the threat our country currently faces will define us for a generation, and perhaps longer. Canada will win if we are strong, smart, and united.

It is this conviction which has driven my strenuous efforts this fall to manage our spending in ways that will give us the flexibility we will need to meet the serious challenges presented by the United States.

I will always be grateful for the chance to have served in government and I will always be proud of our government’s work for Canada and Canadians.

I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues as a Liberal Member of Parliament, and I am committed to running again for my seat in Toronto in the next federal election.

With gratitude,

The Honourable Chrystia Freeland, P.C., M.P.

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!

BC General Election 2024: Official results

Oct 29th, 2024
by Craig.
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Vote with an x.

Vote (cropped, Alan Cleaver CC BY 2.0).

The final results of the 19 October 2024 BC General Election are in, and the losers are the voters of British Columbia. Congratulations!

Wait, what? Oh, you were expecting that I was going to celebrate the winner?! Nope, with every election we have I become more and more convinced that the electoral system we use in this province and country was designed by morons. I mean, on the face of it, winner takes all just makes sense, right? You and your friends are deciding where to go for dinner. It has long been my contention that the bigger the group, the more likely it is that you’re all going to end up at White Spot in this part of the world. (Probably Wetherspoons in the UK.) White Spot is a good, run-of-the-mill, middle-of-the-road restaurant, with something to please just about everyone so, just as I said, the bigger the group the more likely it is that there are going to be people who reject a pizza place, a steak place, an “ethnic” place of one stripe or another, or whatever someone in the group will vote against. So someone in the group says, “What about White Spot?” “Yeah, OK, I guess,” grumbles just about everyone. The steak guy can get a half decent (but overdone) steak, the pizza guy can probably get a flatbread thing, the person who wanted something “ethnic” can probably get something resembling a curry or that has had some curry powder waved in its general direction, people can get burgers, and off you go. Ain’t majority rule great?!

Final 2024 BC general election voting results.

Final 2024 BC general election voting results

And so here in British Columbia the NDP have just squeaked by with a 47-seat majority, an absolute bare minimum majority required in a 93-seat house. (And already the Conservatives are promising to bring down the government! Way to read the room guys!) The 46 seats they had until the recounts were completed over the weekend — actually, they weren’t really recounts, they were the counting of mail-in, out-of-district and other miscellaneous ballots — was one seat short of the majority, and they would have required at least one MLA from another party to pass legislation.

Of course, the NDP are happy! Phew! We can get our agenda done! But the fact is that 55.13% of the province voted against the NDP, the majority of voters! (Sound familiar?! 56.73% voted against the Conservatives.) Don’t get me wrong, of the two main parties in the contest I’d far prefer the NDP to win over the Conservatives who, as I said in my earlier post, are led by a mentally and socially deficient anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist who would be premier of the province had the Conservatives won! So thank the gods that they didn’t win, but the issue I have is that everyone seems to think that a minority government is “bad”, when in actual fact a minority government is the absolute best we can possibly hope for in a first-past-the-post system, where it’s usually one dictatorship after another! If you’re using a system where the majority of voters do not get what they voted for, how can you possibly think that that’s the best possible voting system?!

But I’m farting into the wind, because BC voters have twice (or maybe it’s three times, I’ve lost count) rejected some kind of proportional representation system because the maths were “too hard”!

Initial 2024 BC general election voting results.

Initial 2024 BC general election voting results

Let me go back to my White Spot example. Based on my own experience I’m not a big fan of the various food-delivery services out there, but here’s a possible variation on the example I gave: The majority of the group would probably vote against White Spot, not because White Spot is crap (I do love some of their dishes, so I don’t want you to think I have a hate on for them), but because the steak guy would kill for a good steak, and the pizza guy really wants a meat-lover’s pizza right now, and someone really wants a good goat curry. So head for some venue where you can have fun and that will allow you to call in a food delivery, and order from the places that specialise in those foods and eat what you actually want! Maybe it sounds a bit too “pie in the sky”, but you all get to vote on what you want to eat and you all get what you want! In PR, if 40% vote for the NDP, 40% vote for the Conservatives, 10% vote for the Greens, and 10% vote for the Rhinoceros Party, that’s exactly how the seats are divvied up in the legislature (or parliament).

If a group of friends can come up with an arrangement that suits all of them for dinner for the evening, how can a province or country not come up with an electoral system that actually pleases all of the voters all of the time?! I’m not so stupid that I think I know better than Abraham Lincoln but, my god, just about anything has to be better than this farcical first-past-the-post system in which we find ourselves every election cycle where (in this case) 55.13% of the electorate get told to suck it up for another four years. That won’t end well when the revolution happens.

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