SpankyMcFarland

Best not to underestimate this guy. https://www.yahoo.com/news/maga-bizarrely-claims-trump-never-163358186.html

I think he should have found a riding closer to home. It’s not a great look for a potential PM.

The two sides define victory or even a desirable outcome in a very different way. For Ukraine, survival is the goal, preferably with its territory intact. For Russia, the conquest of Ukraine is the aim. So Ukraine wins by surviving which I think it will but perhaps with not all of its eastern territory - I can’t see Russia taking the whole country any more. And Russian resolve is inherently more fragile. If one particular individual follows the multitudes he has sent into the meat grinder, peace would be much easier to find.

I presume we have seen the same evidence - Trump’s behaviour with females over a lifetime - and have apparently come to radically different conclusions about it. The details have been extensively debated here already. A dreary iteration of yes it is, no it isn’t won’t solve anything.

We clearly have more issues to discuss here. Same time next week.

Awkward questions arise for the collective MAGA voter squirming uncomfortably on the therapist’s couch. Trump’s perviness was an unknown known to them, something perceived at a certain level but not confronted. Indeed, his willingness to transgress moral boundaries was an attractive attribute in an increasingly partisan climate. A man who could not be shamed was in a far better position to own the Libs and in the end that was what counted.

Events, dear boy, events. Politics is more akin to golf than tennis. The sun was bright for the players who scored low in the morning but you miss the cut in an afternoon deluge. Trump was the asteroid hitting the Canadian political world. Suddenly, the mighty snarkosaurs were obsolete and nimble mammalian bankers fitter for purpose. Like life and a good walk spoiled it’s an activity that isn’t fair.

Nothing we have heard of late is in any way surprising. Trump’s relationship with Epstein was well documented and yet the MAGA faithful are disturbed by having to acknowledge facts long hiding in plain sight.

There’s racism of every sort in our classrooms, there always has been and I fear there always will be. They are a reflection of society. Imagine what First Nations kids have had to hear over the years. This is part of a larger problem.

But the thread should surely have gone with a better title? That was copying and pasting a clickbait allegation which the article did nothing to substantiate.

A more accurate title would have been, Ontario teacher allegedly calls 6-year-old Jewish student half human

I deplore racism and bigotry in all their forms but they are persistent beasts because of human nature being what it is; we are tribal creatures who naturally prefer people like ourselves. If we start with that perspective and look at this as a perennial problem each generation must face we might do a better job of managing it.

That article contains no details of the alleged incident which seems to have been reported by a six year old to their parents. For a start, the possibility of a misunderstanding there cannot be ruled out.

Cutting down on the relentless torrent of falsehoods might be a start in the Christian direction. For example, Trump now claims he doesn’t draw and thus couldn’t have penned that letter or, well, ‘written’ that picture: And again if we didn’t get the message the first time: But our talented artist is being too modest here. For example, I rather like a sketch he did in 2006: It’s one of many. https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-sketchy-epstein-lie-instantly-exposed/

It still baffles me that anybody obsessed with Epstein could have voted for Trump, ignoring the many glaring commonalities and connections between the two. Now that fragile carapace of denial is abruptly disintegrating; their perv-fighting hero turns out to have been in league with the enemy all along, shock, horror. It’s an extraordinary moment of political drama. Whether it lasts is another matter. I suspect most QAnoners will soon move on to the next hyped-up shiny scandal.

Banking has to be strictly regulated. We know what happens when they run out of money - you and I foot the bill. Any business like that can’t be allowed to simply do its own thing. They are making fair chunk of change already. On telecom we have been royally rogered for decades by a handful of well-placed families but I feel the differential on cell phone prices with otherwise expensive European countries isn’t as outrageous as it used to be? I’d like to see more competition in our airline sector. It would be interesting to see what Ryanair could do here.

My uncle was a milkman but he delivered in the afternoon. Demand was never great.

For all practical purposes, tariffs are taxes. The government makes imports more expensive and pockets the difference. It is quite something that a Republican businessman harbours such a fanatical faith in the power of these particular taxes to turbo-charge the American economy despite centuries of evidence to the contrary.

Time was when red state cities were easy to build in. That seems to be changing as new NIMBYs flex their muscles. https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/06/zoning-sun-belt-housing-shortage/683352/ Anyway, who would want to live in the Sun Belt now?

The problem with tariff taxes is that they will make things more expensive for American voters. Is Trump really going to jack up the price of coffee from Brazil? I’d like to see him going after India and China on Russian oil imports but that would feed into his economy too. Tariffs have a bad habit of biting you in the backside.

On the Unabomber rant, most politicians would stop and think, have I misremembered this, is it plausible or even possible? A cursory google would have shown that Kazcynski did not even attend MIT. And not content with a simple false factual claim, he had his own uncle saying preposterous things about Kazcynski. There’s no error control there which is kinda worrying in a guy with his job description.

Imagine picking Trump again after the Biden fiasco. Republicans had two perfectly competent middle-aged candidates in DeSantis and Haley but they chose yet another elderly guy whose grasp on reality is tenuous at best.

Conservatives are supposed to be, well, conservative, cautious, prudent, frugal. Trump is none of those things although he has been more careful with his own money than the stuff from banks. He’s so reckless and unrestrained.

It does not apply here directly but it was considered settled law before he arrived. Nobody imagined a president would question it until he did. David French would disagree. He was a right-wing lawyer who debated with Liberals and fought them in the courts all his life. But when he criticized Trump’s candidacy his family’s life changed utterly. Past presidents were more careful about what they said because they knew it carried so much weight.

The number of falsehoods Trump managed to cram into a yarn about his uncle John Trump and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski is impressive even by his lofty standards. What a bizarre ramble, the sort of thing you might half hear from grandad in the nursing home. Nearly all politicians make factual errors but he’s talking about a close relative and has manufactured a conversation that could never have happened. Something that may have triggered this nonsense - the false allegation that Epstein and Kazcynski were at camp together. Jeff is on the Trump noggin a lot these days. Now he finds himself in the arena facing America’s Id, a monster he nurtured for years.