SpankyMcFarland

We have free speech here. Nobody fears our head of government unlike your country these days.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness versus peace, order and good government. I see some big differences in values there and I feel them in the people too. America is struggling to maintain its liberal democratic order at the moment. It has a sclerotic two party system unable to reform itself, clearly inferior to the British model and riddled with gerrymandering. The last thing it needs is a doubling in size.

A very woke argument.

The Catholic Church has had diplomatic relations with Israel for thirty years. The policy of a two state solution is supported by the vast majority of countries in the world.

There a lot of killing in the streets over there at the moment and not all of it from the Palestinian side.

That seems to be the intent of many in the current administration. They don’t seem to fear ever being subjected to the same arbitrary abuse of power they have subjected others to because they expect their party to be permanently in charge from now on.

I’d say both Duceppe and Bouchard could easily have honed their accents in English if it had suited their purposes. They were so fluent as to be entirely comfortable in the English language election debates and lob a few zingers too. Blanchet isn’t quite at that level but he’s good enough.

China’s crucial ally in the effort to welcome Siberia into a new and utterly harmonious co-prosperity sphere is none other than Mr. Putin himself. The new czar is well on his way to destroying the country he barks on about. Glory to Ukraine.

The British media presented a fuller account of the behaviour of a minority of Maccabi fans. Which doesn’t excuse what happened afterwards of course: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/11/what-happened-amsterdam-israeli-football-fans

I’m afraid China may gobble up quite a bit of Russia, thanks to brilliant Mr. Putin and his very special military operation. The Asiatic part of the Russian Empire was on thin ice anyway. Nobody wanted to move there from Europe. China needs the land, water and resources and may well take them from a decrepit state weakened by war. More bad news for the rest of the world.

In China, a pig liver transplant survived 38 days in a patient who went on to survive 171 days after the transplant with part of their own liver. Such transplants may be used to support people alongside their own organ. https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/09/health/pig-liver-transplant-china

Justin is gorgeous, let’s face it, starting with those flowing locks. I don’t think Trump will ever get over his hair envy.

I’d hate to see what not getting along looks like for you.

PT was happy enough to keep a French flavour to his spoken English and not become too blandly anglophone. I wouldn’t even think about his fluency. For good and ill he towers above the rest. One of a kind. But I have heard francophones complain about JT’s French in that it doesn't sound genuinely local.

There’s already talk of NL’s debt being downgraded. We don’t have the luxury of lots of time to sort this out.

There should be proper enforcement there. All it means is that the rest of us have to pay more. My inner fascist would like to see properties confiscated under such circumstances.

Carney speaks a bit of French. He’s better at it than I am so I shouldn’t be too critical. 5/10 perhaps? Maybe 6. This would be on a fluency scale where Jean Charest in English is a 10. Has any anglophone politician ever reached Charest’s level in English when they are speaking French? Don’t ask me.

Ukraine is striking back hard in the aerial war, hitting Russia’s refineries. Nowhere west of Siberia is safe anymore and the effects are plain to see at gas stations across the country. What is odd is that Putin seems genuinely blind to the existential risk to his weakened country posed by ally du jour, China. Millions of Chinese already work in Asian Russia without visas, preparing the way for outright annexation. It would be ironic if this special military operation led to the breakup of Russia, and would serve Moscow right, but such a calamity would also greatly increase China’s power in Eurasia.

Look at the three candidates in the debate. Two, really. Mamdani is young, charismatic and full of ideas whereas Cuomo is looking at his notes and would love to phone the donors to find out what ideas he should have this week. This is all about Mamdani. I’m sceptical of his plans but he dominates the conversation. As Trump does. It’s theatre and a product of giving a voice to those who feel they've been shut out. What he makes clear is that youth is an important quality in and of itself. In the Senate the Dems need to replace Schumer with someone closer to Mamdani’s vintage pronto, a person with an actual stake in the future who can tell jokes without making everybody around him cringe. I’m afraid, dear readers of this forum, that more ageism is urgently needed in such matters - 65 should be the cut-off for any major post. America is way too tolerant of political geezers and suffers the consequences. Many developing countries are in that boat too but the US should know better. Lastly, bear in mind that this is a municipal election. The winner will have no influence on foreign policy. New Yorkers are wise to the malarkey from Cuomo and his billionaire backers about that.

My town does a great job with snow-clearing and the rest. Property taxes are my favourite taxes or maybe least unfavourite ones. They work and they don’t come with sinister follow-up letters years later threatening fines and imprisonment on some matter not previously discussed. Leave them alone.

I’m not the only one who sees potential trouble ahead: https://vocm.com/2025/10/16/la-presse-reporter-believes-renegotiation-of-hydro-deal-could-have-to-wait-until-2041-if-current-mou-falls-through/ And we were told this already: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/churchill-deal-waiting-1.7424285

When you read the history of the negotiations, the impression is that the NL side basically disintegrated. By the end there was no money or fight left. It was all a bit reminiscent of the German surrender in 1918. Smallwood was told about the rate the province was going to receive and didn’t seem to fully understand its horrible significance or the contract within the contract that would extend our nightmare for another 25 years. Danny Williams personified the rage we felt and almost ruined us as he put every megawatt of it into the Muskrat Falls debacle, a tragedy on a Greek scale. Of course, beyond the province few noticed our tribulations at all.

Quoting myself now, a sure sign of madness…to clarify, when I say ‘here’ there I mean my province. The guy who rejected the MOU won the election. So the people have spoken but people and provinces don’t always work in their own self-interest. It could take ten years to get a deal again if we don’t seize this opportunity. If I’m lucky I’ll be in the nursing home to hear the good news.

I am blaming Trump for his actions. Look at what I just wrote in the previous sentence. And, yes, I am speaking as a Canadian and make no apology for that. Is this place filled with badly programmed bots or something?

I have argued this from the other side in other forums. For me, this isn’t genocide but I grew up with a different understanding of the word than the one often used today. It really depends on what proportion of a population needs to be targeted to qualify as genocide. Few genocides have killed everybody.