SpankyMcFarland

Did Fidel Castro have any other blue-eyed children? I don’t know the answer to that.

From what I’ve read in the National Post, the dates don’t match up. Margaret Trudeau was the most scrutinized woman in Canada. Her every moment was monitored by a hungry press.

But do you think he looks like a typical 100% Irishman of his age?

Regarding the Castro business, impossible because they couldn’t have met at the time, look at photos of Castro and PT as young men. There’s definitely a resemblance. Maybe the father was a Castro? That would be harder to disprove.

It matters because all things matter in politics. For better or worse, style is content and people want to know these details. In no way would it be an opportunity to blame the guy. On the contrary, I think it would humanize him. Looking at Poilievre’s excellent black hair, dark eyes and skin that’s ageing well, I would be surprised if the father was of British or Irish origin. It could be a story that reflects modern Canada.

The EU can see these ‘platforms’ for what they are - the world’s biggest publishers who relentlessly spy on their readers, spread lies and destabilize democratic governments. Thank goodness somebody is demanding a smidgin of accountability from them

There’s lots of blame to go round. The drug and alcohol problems on some reserves are absolutely horrendous and local people have to take responsibility for that or it will never improve. We’ve also seen deficiencies in the investigations of missing women, no matter who killed them.

In Erdogan’s Turkey, the trend is broadly away from secularism and towards an Islamic state. Other aspects haven’t changed that much. Relations with the neighbours, many of whom were once imperial subjects, remain strained. Russia is a major foreign policy problem; even after the Ukraine fiasco, it looms large in the Turkish imagination. The Kurds and Armenians are still bitter enemies and relations with Greece are difficult. When asked by a German journalist why Greek military spending was so high despite an economy in the ICU, the prime minister explained that it was because Turkey rather than Denmark was next door. Israel is an outlier. On occasion, Erdogan stirs up hostility towards that country but Turkish and Israeli drones recently worked well together to slaughter Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, an event largely ignored in the West. Both Turkey and Israel (and Britain) are very palsy-walsy with the tyrant in Baku who desires a greater Azerbaijan with large chunks of Iran and Armenia thrown in. Yes, it would be nice to ditch Erdogan from NATO but his location is so sweet. His goons beat up protesters in Washington DC for crying out loud and nothing was done. I fear he may be keeping his membership card for a good while yet.

Like most dictators, Stalin was preoccupied by the threat of enemies within the state; bizarrely, his purge of the army even continued after war broke out! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1941_Red_Army_Purge#:~:text=On 29 January 1942%2C forty,were sentenced to death by Warnings from Britain of an impending German invasion would have carried little weight with him - desperate for allies, they would say that, wouldn’t they? - but abundant evidence of a much stronger variety was closer at hand: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-13862135 Why did he deny all this to himself? He must have known that his own actions had weakened the army. Facing the reality that he had weakened his country at such a critical moment may have been too painful to contemplate. When Hitler did invade, Stalin eventually fled to his dacha and thought a deputation that included General Zhukov had arrived to depose him rather than bring him back to Moscow.

Well, offhand even I can think of a few things to do if an attack was feared that would not involve arresting anybody: sending extra troops to the border; improving the barrier, giving it more utility facing towards Israel if breached; building in greater redundancy in the communications system. Millions of Muslims were imprisoned and tortured by a totalitarian state, you mean. Have no doubt they’ll do the same in Canada to all of us if they get the chance.

Better than most? Whom are you comparing his record with? If he had cared more, he might have gotten off his butt and saved more lives.

I don’t find this claim plausible at all. If they knew they would have done something about it. Bear in mind Hamas doesn’t have aircraft carriers to hide. These land, air and sea assaults were decidedly low tech. What it does have is an extraordinary network of tunnels.

Looking back at 9/11, one might say there was a failure of imagination by the Americans. Bin Laden had made his intentions clear but they just couldn’t see how he could carry out attacks in the US. On the other hand, there’s only so much a free society is prepared to do to surveil the population and that’s a good thing.

Again, Hamas understand this. They’re not stupid. They know Israel has compromised thousands of Gazans one way or another. Apparently, many of the Hamas political leadership were not informed of these plans until they were happening. Nobody is fully trustworthy. Obviously, the 9/11 hijackers were supported by a much larger number of people than that abroad and quite a few in the US as well. Surprise attacks of this type have happened throughout history.

Organizations adapt. Hamas absorbed their own previous failings with informers and kept the big picture knowledge of this operation among as few as possible. Most of those involved would have had no idea what they were training for or when. They also went to great pains to portray a passive posture to the Israelis, giving them the impression they weren’t in a position to launch a large assault. As with 9/11, there’s no need to propose a bizarre conspiracy to explain an intelligence failure against a resourceful enemy with nothing else to think about. The IRA put it this way after the Brighton bombing that almost killed Margaret Thatcher: “You have to be lucky all the time. We only have to be lucky once.”

Most of us aren’t equipped to lead countries but Trump had the opposite qualifications. Like many narcissists he just can’t empathize with other people, a serious shortcoming in a plague.

He did not manage Covid well at all and set a terrible example by promoting treatments with no validity. One thing the US certainly doesn’t need is more tax breaks for the very rich. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-middle-class-needs-a-tax-cut-trump-didnt-give-it-to-them/

I guess my point is that the issue of absent fathers involves two adult actors rather than one. I’m not disputing what Charles Murray and Co. have said about contemporary male fecklessness but that’s not the whole story. If a man doesn’t bring a big surplus to the family table, his long-term position in that household will be uncertain. Something I didn’t take on board until quite late in life, thankfully not from personal experience: women often draw a clear distinction between fatherhood and cohabitation these days. They are still attracted to the hunter-type for sexual encounters but when considering a live-in partner a lot of calculation, much of it unconscious, is involved to figure out who is really worth the trouble. A guy may think he is leaving entirely of his own accord and may not see for quite a while afterwards (or ever) that there wasn’t exactly much protest or grief about his departure. While men often see themselves as the CEOs of a family, women own the company.

If re-elected Trump has made it very clear he will destroy American democracy. Incredibly, there are millions who go along with this.

Do you deny anything I have said there?

What sort of person is fooled by Trump? While not remotely convincing as a Republican, he is a completely genuine perv. And yet some Christians manage to ignore all that.

And you desire leadership from a vulgar fraudster like Trump: disastrous businessman, perhaps the worst in US history for anyone who lent him money or did work for him; accomplished salesman, given what an absolute loser he was; brilliant criminal, still at large despite a lifetime of offences in plain sight.

Is that a type of calorie-free bread?

Slavering hordes? I never meet anybody who talks like that. Actually, as a foreigner myself I like to think we don’t have a particular problem with excess saliva. If Trump wins we’ll all have far bigger worries than whether Canada stays in NATO or not. The US as we know it may be doomed and with it freedom here, there and everywhere. In the near future, please God Trumpless, I’d say Americans will be a lot more interested in our ability to better control wildfires and the smoke therefrom than in GDP percentages on military spending. I see all humans as innately savage. Each generation must struggle against the beast within, which is why liberal democracy is such a fragile, rare and unlikely phenomenon in human history. To paraphrase, it is ours if we can keep it. Yes, there’s an enemy or two coming over the hill but he’s also inside the house already.

As has been pointed out above, it’s a complex matter to understand in terms of cause and effect. It’s probably both. Richer women with children tend to have partners. In addition, I notice many writers on the right seem to underestimate the role of female agency in this matter and the mercenary side to the female psyche, so well captured in the opening lines of Pride and Prejudice and in the whole of Austen’s fiction for that matter: Humorous songs often contain serious truths: It’s more obvious than ever that many women don’t like living with men and now they have a choice. Beyond all the fuzzy romantic stuff, what really matters in a prospective male partner is how much time and money he will commit to a family in the future. If he hasn’t got a steady job with clear prospects, is he really worth putting up with? There’s an extensive literature on how the status of chronically unemployed married men falls within the family unit. As female income rises, the proportion of men who make a lot more than women declines. I’m afraid the percentage of bachelors considered eligible by this criterion will continue to shrink.