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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?

Some random musings, mostly about morons apparently

Mar 3rd, 2024
by Craig.
Comments are off for this post

Some bonehead named trump

I’ve had a note for several weeks to address the moronic comment some idiot named donald trump made about NATO members who don’t spend 2% of their GDP on defence spending. He seems to think that NATO members can simply be evicted from the alliance like delinquent tenants in one of his run-down tenement buildings. One of those countries is Canada. I’m not defending Canada’s apparent lack of spending on defence, especially in this day and age of increased Russian aggression, but here’s the thing, don: If Russia attacks and takes over Canada — we’re the country that is largely between you and Russia — as you have explicitly encouraged them to do, your problems on your southern border would look like a walk in the park compared to the problems you will have on your northern border!

Fucking moron.

Twitter/X

I know, I’m the last to note this, but Twitter feeds used to feature regularly in the search results for various things I look up online on a daily basis. But since that no-name idiot — Musk I think he calls himself — took it over, said results are less and less useful. For starters, you only get the one tweet, and Twitter refuses to display any replies. Given how often in the past I’ve spent way more time on reading replies that I should have, in some ways this is a good thing. But I’m sure my buddy Elon wasn’t worried about how much time Craig is wasting on Twitter. I don’t know what Musk is worried about, but maybe it’s his bandwidth bill. Or maybe he’s actually doing what he seemed to be setting out to do, which is kill Twitter. I wish I had so much money that I could literally piss $44 billion down the drain.

I also note now that when you try to load a Twitter feed you are often/usually forced to log in. You can no longer simply go to a Twitter feed (e.g., twitter.com/ninernet) and peruse the posts. If you can, the posts are all in random order rather than chronologically. Yeah, that’s exactly how you generate interest in your service, by restricting people from even viewing it and confusing them!

Dilbert / Scott Adams

Speaking of Twitter and rich people who can piss away their wealth, Dilbert came back up on my radar recently. I used to read Dilbert daily, but one day it disappeared. Turns out it was unceremoniously dumped by its distributor after the author, Scott Adams, made what some people described as racist comments. Whatever. Now he continues his comic but you have to pay him US$7 a month for the privilege of reading it, or you can follow him on Twitter for US$3 a month. (I note that I can load his Twitter feed without being forced to log in! I don’t know why or how Twitter differentiates between one feed and another in that regard.)

But on his Twitter feed I note that he’s re-Tweeting Tucker Carlson and videos of teenagers fighting. Seriously? Teenagers fighting?! If that’s what this idiot considers to be “entertainment”, no thanks. I’ll pocket my hard-earned cash and not support some idiot who supports trump and considers teenagers beating each other up as entertainment.

Charities and their begging calls

I’ve just blocked the fourth number I’ve added to a list of Red Cross numbers that call us constantly. Why do they call us? Because we give them money every month! So we give them hundreds of dollars a year but they still want more! And they’re willing to call us many times a month/year for that purpose, and continue calling even though their calls don’t go through. I don’t get it. Maybe I should answer the next call and get them to cancel our monthly donation.

Android 12

I think I’ve made reference to Android 12 a couple of times on here. Actually, once. But goddammit, the idiots who made it are stupid. I know, I’m probably the only person in the world who plugs their phone in at night when they’re in bed, next to their bed (there are reasons), and I’m the only person in the world who crawls into bed with an already sleeping partner; so forgive me for thinking that I’m so special that developers should think of me. I’ve gone to great lengths to try and turn off just about every stupid, unnecessary bleep and bloop that my fucking phone makes, and yet, occasionally and for no obvious reason (but not every time!), my phone decides to let me, my sleeping partner and the fucking neighbours know that I’ve plugged in my phone! Hooray! Craig has plugged in his phone successfully! I can’t tell you how much my partner loves being woken up by this news. I have “Charging sounds and vibration” turned off, so I don’t know why Android ignores that directive … but only sometimes!

And while I’m on a rant about Android 12, let me give a special shout out to the 3CX app. For years I’ve had that running on this and previous phones and it never once “broke through” the do-not-disturb setting, but now it does. I don’t know whether or not I should blame Android or 3CX, but my money is on Android; after all, it’s the operating system, and that should control the installed apps, not the other way around. So now I have to remember to shut down that app so that it doesn’t wake me up in the middle of the night, as it did twice in one night a few nights ago!

RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) vaccine worth its weight in gold

In case any of you think that the communist government of Canada pays for all things medical, let me tell you that relatives, pensioners, just plonked down $540 for the two of them to each get the RSV vaccine. Wow! And I’m on the verge of plonking down $350 for the Shingrix shingles vaccine. One thing I can tell you though is that I won’t be getting the Shingrix vaccine at Shoppers Drug Mart. I have not been happy with the fact that they have virtually eliminated staffed check-out cash registers at their stores. I’m not a Luddite (says the guy writing a blog), but society needs to deal with the fact that we still have unemployment to deal with, and you don’t deal with it by bringing in machines to replace humans without a plan. They were also in the news recently for billing the Ontario government for unnecessary medical checks on patients.

In other news in Canada

Turkeys terrorize residents of small Quebec town. Sorry, apparently there was a serious aspect to this, as they were becoming aggressive and that was a danger to children, not to mention adults who don’t like to be scratched by sharp claws. But this video had me cracking up, as well as the woman shooting the video! 🙂

Brian Mulroney

Brian Mulroney died on Thursday, 29 February. As one would expect for a former Prime Minister, this was big news in Canada. It reminded me of the fact that he was the first and last Conservative Prime Minister for whom I voted, in the first election in which I could vote. As many people have said over the last few days, politics have changed since then and the Conservative Party itself has also changed since then. Now they have a leader who used to be known as a pit bull in Stephen Harper’s government, who caters to his “base” of anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers and anti everything! Now you couldn’t make me vote for that party even if you put a gun to my head. Sadly, as Canadian politics go, he will be Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre in 2025. 🙁

Updated, 2024-03-08: Added the fact that Twitter/X posts are now all in random order rather than chronological.