johnzo

Also this is pretty funny: https://www.thebeaverton.com/2022/03/conservatives-warn-liberal-ndp-deal-is-backdoor-socialism-handjob-democracy-and-salad-tossing-representation/ lol "over-the-jeans leftism"

reading the National Post about the power sharing deal, I see the repeated perpetual grievance that only a third of voters voted for the current government. NP always forgets the 15% of Canadians who voted for the NDP. The current Lib + NDP governing coalition received support from just a smidge over 50% of Canadians, which makes it more democratically "legitimate" than almost all Canadian majority governments of my lifetime -- the Chretien, Harper, and second Mulroney majorities were all at about 40% of the popular vote, and the only majority parliament in my lifetime that also had a voting majority was the 1984 Mulroney majority, which won 50.1%.

Related reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cable_Street (tldr: thousands of fascist blackshirts march under police escort in London in 1936 but are routed by a coalition of OG antifa. Great story.)

Tired: cancel culture Wired: divesting from companies whose values don't match your own.

man this guy did some great things for us. Comes back after being cut in 2016 and gets 100% dialed in with Nichols on that lethal endzone corner route in 2016 and 2017 -- for awhile those two were like Ricky Ray and Jason Tucker. Will always be a fan. He was a giant part of the 2016 breakthrough season that proved out the Canadian Mafia and gave them time to build the current juggernaut. Real pivotal player in a pivotal point in Bomber history. Wish we could've won him a ring. I think there's a dark timeline where we don't have Clarence Denmark waiting in the wings in 2016 ... Dressler can't do it alone ... the team doesn't break through ... Walters runs out of runway ... and now, in 2022 Mike O'Shea is back selling pharma and Jim Barker is the coach and GM of the Bombers.

ok, that's it Speedflex, you've lost me. Impossible Whoppers are delicious. being in the US now, I miss Harveys. I ate at Harveys all the time back in the nineties, it was the best chain hamburger in Canada by a mile. I had one a few years ago when I was visiting Ottawa and it wasn't as good as I remembered. but yeah, TB4E has it, mom and pop is where it's at when it comes to hamburgers.

I have read that the Nazis were greeted as liberators by Ukranians in 1941, and given how Stalin brutalized them, you can't really blame them. Alas, the warm welcome did not make the Nazis any less shitty -- the Ukranians were subhuman Slavs after all -- and Hitler's goons gleefully got down to the task of converting Ukraine into lebensraum and liquidating the population.

just to do some comparables, Canada spent $1B (< 1% of GDP) on its peacetime air force in 2020. In return for that we operate fewer than 100 CF-18s and about 300 other types (transport, helicopter, lift, patrol, training, etc. all things being equal (they're not, of course) you figure that if Putin is operating 10x the craft (3900 all types in a 2015 estimate) he's gotta be spending close to 10% of his GDP on his peacetime air force, before a single live bomb is dropped. And that's just his air force. And those planes rot if they're not kept up, you can't really defer maintenance on them, and aircrew require constant training.

yup. Ukraine was the graveyard for a lot of SS, Gestapo, and Wehrmacht. There's partisan warfare in the DNA there.

I wonder if they can even afford to fly their planes? Their GDP is smaller than Canada's but they're trying to operate a superpower-class military with hundreds / thousands of warplanes plus thousands of very expensive nukes (which need regular expensive maintenance or they become duds) plus a large fuel-hungry fleet of 1990s-vintage armored vehicles plus a two-ocean fleet. I wonder how long they will be able to sustain their invasion of Ukraine?

They are going to go on as they mean to, regardless of anything that happens at the UN. Why listen to them? What words could Russia offer that would justify their aggression, justify the Warsaw-style siege they're staging around Kyiv, the one that's going to be a ******* humanitarian catastrophe? **** them. they are speaking with guns. It seems extremely unlikely they will speak consequentially with their voices. never believe words, believe actions.

and yeah, the Ukranians are in very tough, on paper this is a blowout, but they're not fighting on paper. This is any given sunday territory, if the attackers don't execute well, they can underperform badly. I don't know if this is a realistic hope, but it's the only one we've got. Even the 2013 bombers won three games.

few things: 1. dictatorships are the opposite of meritocracies, because dictators hate and fear meritous subordinates. Mussolini was famous for hiring idiots and for arranging intrigues to test and occupy his more capable subordinates ... while appearing to be above the fray, the one man in Italy who could untangle the mess. Stalin killed anyone who looked like they had a clue, until World War II intervened and he had to back off a bit ... then he got back to the killing as soon as the crisis was over. Hitler sacked commander after commander until he'd sacked the entire reality-based leadership of the Wehrmacht. How capable is the Russian leadership structure, really? How loyal is it to Putin? When it hits reversals, will it stay loyal? Obviously the dude is capable of running a personality cult and herding the oligarchs, but he has never been tested publicly the way he's being tested now. 2. War fever makes leaders do dumb, dumb things. Look at Austria-Hungary and Italy in World War One. Japan in 1930-1945. Nazi Germany in 1941*. The USA in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Each of them started offensive wars they had no ability to win. 3. Putin has two massive strategic advantages: natural gas and nukes, but those are double-edged swords. His subordinates have interest in those things too. * Hitler managed to declare war on both the United States and the Soviet Union in 1941, which is the most hilarious self-own in the history of dictators.

the thought that I can't get out of my head right now is how many people are actively rooting for the apocalypse in the USA, so they can go home to Jesus, and how many of them have influence and power.

Assume that all stories are fake right now -- especially the ones that capture your attention, like the heroically dying "go **** yourself" snake islanders.

bear in mind that propaganda machines are in overdrive on all sides, so the facts will not get in the way of a good story at this point. Like, is there really a Ghost of Kyiv? Only the Ukrainian air force command knows.

thing about the Russian economy is that it's smaller than Canada's -- don't know how you maintain that massive offensive army and all those nukes with that tax base. Ukraine might be able to outlast Putin's economy...

cabinet shuffles always seem insane to me. how are a minister of justice and a minister of labour interchangeable? Wouldn't you want skills and backgrounds tailored for each role?

oh, just thought of one more: f) the truxxers were positioning themselves for a return to Ottawa with rural staging camps to the north, south, east, and west of Ottawa. Don't have the reports handy but I've read that those camps have largely evaporated. The end of that threat might be a factor in the timing here.

my guesses: a) It looks terrible for Trudeau if his cabinet declares an emergency and the elected government doesn't even review it. The vote gives legitimacy to a legitimately controversial thing and was conducted in accordance with the law, which may be important for future legal action related to the occupation. So Parliament has to vote. b) off-camera investigations / actions may have been facilitated by the Emergency Act -- remember the government is extremely interested in the financing of the occupation. Might have needed a couple of days to get those closed out. c) with the Q-trucker occupation banished and its leaders defanged, Trudeau is the main character of this storyline. "Ottawa calm but Trudeau Clings To Emergency Act" is not a headline the dude wants to own. Now the headline is "Trudeau ends Emergency Act" which is the outcome that most Canadians want, I think. Trudeau looks decisive; he rides to the rescue of the feckless Ottawa and Ontario authorities and then he dusts his hands, proclaims mission accomplished, and Canadians are free to tune out. For better or for worse, voters like decisiveness and clean endings. d) the wingers were pumping a fever dream of a Castroist Trudeau unleashing a cultural revolution backed by Bill Gates, grandma-trampling RCMP horses and genderqueer BLM vaxx squads. This is a hard storyline to work when your vile dictator has relinquished his emergency powers in accordance with the law. Lots of winger spin rooms getting a workout today; the one I see most frequently on twitter is how the ending of the Act is a profound diss to Jagmeet Singh. conservatives concern trolling about Singh is hilarious. e) Senate vote was a big opportunity for opportunist senators to grandstand and give the Liberals more headaches. This has been defused. I don't know if this was a credible threat given how sleepy the Senate is, but the right wing media was sure pumping the tires on this angle so maybe it had legs. You need characters to do a storyline like this and the cons don't have anyone good; Lich and King and the rest of them were swivel-eyed goons, Candice Bergen is clearly in over her head and has no idea how to manage a story of this magnitude, Ford in Toronto isn't going to rock any boats with an election coming, Randy Hillier has strong "jerks off to the Handmaids Tale" energy, etc, etc.

oh man the organ part is so beautiful in this song.

I remember the first time I drove from Sault Ste. Marie to T-Bay in the springtime. it was gorgeous, dramatic rock cuts, awesome lake views, little waterfalls everywhere. I've driven a lot of places and NWOnt is right up there with Utah and the Pacific Coast as the most beautiful places I've ever been.

moved out here to the west coast in 1999. previously, I lived in Ottawa which I believe is snowier than even Winnipeg. I loved the Seattle rain for the first decade just because I didn't have to shovel it. I had a loooong driveway in Ottawa. Now the rain gets me down just like everyone else. What people don't tell you about is that our summers in Seattle are glorious, warm and dry. The rain just shuts off and we get two months of gorgeous weather starting right around July 4th with manageable temps, tho lately the seasonal fires have been messing that up, and we got heatdomed hard last year. I do miss the very late sunsets, clean air, amazing star-watching, and dramatic thunderstorms of my birth home in NWO. They're nice things to visit.

this reads like shenanigans to me; the Post is attempting to moderate PP because they really like him. I suspect he's pro-abortion just like Barack Obama was anti gay marriage.

In other Pat King news: he claimed that Honeymoon Suite, Kim Mitchell, and Platinum Blonde were playing the occupation mainstage on the weekend. But alas... I would have been very sad if Kim Mitchell had played to the cracker barrel. the song is "go for soda", not "go for the imaginary grievance politics of the petit bourgeois." and hey Platinum Blonde is recording new material. Never been a big fan but at this point in my life it's just nice to hear a name I recognize...