SpankyMcFarland

In America, for example, the fiercest debates have become cultural rather than economic and this has created contradictions within both major parties. Republicans still have many major donors who are focused on getting their taxes down and governments neutered but their voters are increasingly blue collar with no interest in cutting back entitlements. Democrats have also journeyed far from their union roots (in the North) and now find themselves supported by a fractious coalition that includes nearly anyone except those white union guys.

AI would appear to have the potential to change many industries, including education. One type of education anyone with an illness needs relates to managing their health better and AI offers huge potential here. At the moment, patients get to see their GP (if they have one) for a few hours per year. That’s not nearly enough to know all the specific details of how they in particular are doing on, say, the ‘golf course’ of diabetes - it’s more like a country, really - and where exactly they are failing. Is it exercise, diet, medication or monitoring that’s letting them down or other things? Where can they improve? With AI there’s the potential to carry a little healer around with you 24/7 who never stops thinking about how to make you better. Helping older people with cognitive etc. issues stay in their homes longer is another obvious opportunity for improvement with this technology. Such guardian angels will have a dark side, of course, but for those with chronic diseases such a bargain will probably be worth it.

I’m talking Normandy and thereafter. Definitions differ on what the Western Front was. That’s how I’m defining it. For example, few would include the Tyrol in the Western Front of WWI. I’m also excluding US assistance to the Soviet Union which was vital. The allied land assault on Germany through France was a relatively small part of the war, dwarfed by the slaughter in the East. At the end, it represented salvation for Germans in the western part of the country. In that sense, it did really matter and in the best way possible. Just my random opinion. I’ve zero knowledge of the subject.

Very few wealthy countries have abandoned the welfare state completely. Redistribution of income and a social safety net are fairly ubiquitous. In that limited sense, most states are ‘leftist’ these days.

What is ‘leftism’? Let’s sort that out first. On sites like this it seems to include everything people don’t like.

I think Russia would have won without a Western Front. The Germans were crumbling in the East by then and knew they had lost. It was always a minor part of the war for Germany and the progress made was slow. The best thing about it was that Western Europe wasn’t overrun by Russia.

The GTA should have another team to keep the Leafs honest. As things are they can be terrible and still rake in millions. I gave up following ice hockey when Canadian teams gave up - in the Nineties.

There’s nothing especially pacific about us. In Canada, the European invaders were once a long way from trouble and we could tell ourselves nice stories. Now we aren’t. Russia and China are no longer faraway countries that we can ignore. Russia directly threatens our northern border and no Canadian should require lessons about the PRC’s intentions at this stage.

Chrétien kept us from invading a country. You want to stop us supporting a country that has been invaded.

Hanson is from California. Does he really believe there’s a war on merit in Silicon Valley? The PR people may say all sorts of nice touchy-feely things about inclusion but it’s fairly ruthless out there at the job end of things. Let’s face it, the Asian peninsula of Europe and its North American extension comprise a small segment of the world’s population. We’ve had a bit of luck of late since 1500 but we’re hardly going to dominate the global economy forever. And on India, well, it was always ambivalent, let’s say, about the West and for good reason. Under Modi it seems to be moving further away, both from us and our notions of democracy.

Yes, of course it does. If not, Putin would simply continue his war of aggression farther into Europe (by more devious means) and the global forces of authoritarianism would receive another boost they don’t need at the moment. This is not at all like World War One. A closer analogy would be to imagine Austria attempting to take back Czechoslovakia in the Twenties. We in the West must believe that freedom, national self-determination, is worth preserving. Otherwise, we should just give up and let the thugs take over.

Does VDH apologize for backing Trump? Whatever about the big picture, he made an appalling personal misjudgement there that was well chronicled in the pages of the extremely conservative publication, National Review. A man who wrote beautiful books on Ancient Greece turned out be highly unreliable on other subjects, including America’s present. We shouldn’t be surprised - experts are often like that outside their chosen field.

An elected GG would take care of such malarkey about foreign princes or the whims of PMs. Her authority would then derive from a truly legitimate source - the people of Canada.

That’s as it should be. Canada has a weird phobia about coalitions but parties who share many policies should consider them in minority parliaments as they do in other countries. Perhaps a few years of PP will change minds on this?

Many countries are facing the same problem in their major cities. Even Germany - which has taken a much more sceptical view of the property ‘boom’ than the Anglosphere - is seeing sharply rising rents in Berlin.

Trudeau should be easy to beat at this stage - he’s very old news and the scandals have mounted up as they do in any administration. The question is whether Poilievre can do a Harper and curb his instincts for rightward movement out of the Canadian mainstream. If he indulges himself he’ll be a one-term act.

Climate change isn’t a globalist fantasy. We’re all going to have to deal with its local consequences no matter where we live. As too much how sacrifice each individual, sector or country is called upon to make, there will always be squawking, but that’s in the nature of things.

If you don’t turn up for your own case, what do you expect?

The thing is that every country is pondering how to deal with a rising China and it’s not going to get easier.

I think cold weather tempers individualism. On top of that, Pearson and Trudeau père had a profound influence on our political culture that still endures. We have four left-wing parties and two right-wing ones, one of those being beyond the Pale. So the Tories have an uphill fight, as we know. JT’s success has always surprised me but that’s probably a generational thing. I can’t see him winning next time.

Whatever about anything else, Trudeau wins on age and I say that as a decrepit geezer myself. Rishi Sunak is 42. That’s more like the right age for the job. There’s something very wrong with a system that can even consider a rematch of Biden and Trump.

The bigger risk was always China, a civilization that dazzled the world for millennia about to regain its position of dominance. In the 19’th century Great Game, Russia was one of the players: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Game Now it’s the prize and China is laps ahead. A virtually uninhabited Siberia must be a very tempting target for a superpower right next door that happens to be short of water. Thanks, Vlad. You may turn out to be one of the most useful dotards in history, looking constantly in the wrong direction.

I think your correspondent is a little older than that.

It was just some harmless fireworks over Moscow. Why would any nation want to commit something so trivial?

A very small number of soldiers were risked, thank God. With Harper in charge we’d have seen lots of body bags coming back.