SpankyMcFarland

One silver lining in Navalny’s death. Trump and Co. will have a harder time blocking military aid for Ukraine now. Some Republicans will break ranks.

I wouldn’t consider myself particularly left wing. Chrétien and Mulroney were PMs close to my way of thinking. Government will bring its own problems we can’t foresee and Canadian voters are becoming more fractious. All parties are unstable coalitions and we’ve seen the right struggle in Canada with this on several occasions. Most people beyond the National Post crowd will forget about Trudeau in five seconds and want to know what PP has done for them lately.

The challenge will be managing his voters: centrist newbies, often former Liberals, who want lower rents and economic change generally and will have very little patience; traditional Tories; libertarians; the Christian crowd; and the obstreperous MAGA crew screaming about vaccines, convoys, QAnon etc. who’ll have to be kept as quiet as possible after the election so as not to frighten the rest.

There is very rarely one simple answer to a complex problem. If there was it would be solved. Gun control is one factor if it can be effectively implemented. I can see no reason for civilians to carry assault rifles. I also can’t see why any reasonable person would oppose rigorous background checks. The debate on what works in what country is an endless one. Don’t expect Western Europe to loosen its rules any time soon. Some believe Australia has made itself safer with stricter gun laws. https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback I wouldn’t want to see laxer laws in Canada.

There’s a great deal of energy devoted to differences in policy that can seem quite minor, like the fights between Christians on theology. Both sides are becoming more tribal. America is a deeply weird democracy in having only two ancient parties to choose from which is a lot better than a one party state but forces too many voters who have nothing to do with each other into unwieldy coalitions. Like companies, political parties should come and go. They have a shelf life. Some creative destruction is good for the system. On the subject of age, Biden and Trump are both too old. 75 should be the cut-off for presidents, congressmen, judges etc. There are lots of things old people can do very well, eg fighting on the Internet, but this kind of thing ain’t for them. For starters, they have no real stake in the future. They won’t live to see their decisions really take effect and have long-term consequences. Time to move aside, guys.

I wouldn’t say there is one answer - rather, cut the risk factors all along the causal chain of events which would include psychiatric treatment and gun control. Any person with a history of violence and psychosis should not have access to guns. The vast majority of Americans support background checks. On the mental health side, North America got rid of way too many of its psychiatric beds when anti-psychotic drugs appeared. At the very least we should have a more pro-active, and if necessary paternalistic, approach to young, paranoid schizophrenic men who are becoming violent. They are definitely at high risk. Which wouldn’t have helped here. Women commit these crimes much less frequently.

I’m not sure ‘answering the call’ in WWI did us any good and the Anglo-Boer War was simply an imperialist adventure. None of the six empires in WWI respected the rights of small nations.

It was a lot fewer than it could have been.

Large-scale military procurements offer all the hazards of civilian megaprojects with added political complications too. The unfolding warship disaster shows that the military top brass can’t be let change requirements again and again as new gadgets appear on the market. In addition, we shouldn’t have bought local because such people can always bring pressure to bear in Ottawa that foreigners can’t. I’ve never seen a country agonise so long over helicopters, submarines, fighter aircraft and boats. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/ivison-canadas-uncontrolled-military-program-plundering The trick is to ringfence enough funds to pay for the equipment required and protect it from political interference but have remorselessly strict oversight of cost overruns. Not an easy problem to solve.

Mental illness seems to have played a large role here: https://abc7.com/genesse-ivonne-moreno-mental-illness-lakewood-megachurch-shooter/14419218/

You need help.

One small step for Mann… https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00396-y

You’d think they’d be aware of the optics, though, and award the contract to a larger outfit that might do some of the work itself. They seem to have been in talks with these guys already. Could they not have hired them merely to find a larger company or companies that wasn’t theirs which could do the work?

It’s not really. Not any more. We’re not a little colony at this stage. Charles found time to visit multiple countries around the world in Europe, Asia and Africa before he got sick. But not us. Which should tell you something: this relationship is on the DNR list.

I thought Quebeckers were monarchists? At least not keen on what Napoleon represented?

It sounds like a major scandal, a really real one and a god awful look for Trudeau. The only smidgin of mitigation I can see is that the app was set up more hurriedly than usual under the pressure of the pandemic. Why on earth would they engage, and massively compensate, a two person firm of comical amateurishness to hand out the contracts instead of doing it themselves? Who are these characters and what’s their connection to the Liberal Party? What we have to wonder is how many more ArriveCans there are in the procurement system that we don’t know about yet. And why is JT so quiet? The ship of state seems rudderless at the moment.

So the government isn’t spending enough? That sounds rather lefty to me.

Our wildfires aren’t considered in many of these emission charts: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-wildfires-emissions-carbon-cop28/

So it’s more or less official. He ain’t coming this year: Note that our head of state already found time to visit countries where he isn’t the chief cook and bottle washer: Canadians don’t sound too pushed either way: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/king-charles-planned-visit-canada-170438685.html

Not only more likely to die but more likely to die of Covid 19? Have you got a link for that?

What a player Mahomes is. Once KC had solid defence the outcome was hard to avoid. Far closer than I expected though.

I am fully aware that we are just discussing stuff here. Nobody should take any of this seriously and very few will even read it. Where is the evidence that I am lying? That is such a childishly silly charge. I am telling you what I believe. Do I ever accuse you of lying? Of course not. I am sceptical of the article by McCullough firstly because I don’t believe many of his other claims about Covid. I am happy to look at any paper but unfortunately his come with a lot of baggage. As detailed in the review I included, one of the claims made about the persistence of spike protein in the article has already been denied by the actual author referenced. What is the reference to the other article? As with the first one I will first look to the authors to see what their expertise is and what their publishing history is. That matters in research, especially with claims that are controversial. Time is a wonderful judge of scientific claims. Of course, I have no idea how this will work out. We’ll see how it ages.

Anybody conducting a medical discussion who accuses those who disagree with them of lying is difficult to take seriously. For some reason you imagine you know what I think and claim I’m trying to conceal that truth. What I am saying here may well turn out to be inaccurate but I can assure you I believe it to be that case. You posted the article so let me first ask you, is that the same Peter McCullough whose wiki page I have posted? It sure looks like the same. Was Dr. McCullough correct in his claims about HCQ or invermectin? https://abcnews.go.com/US/group-physicians-combats-misinformation-unproven-covid-19-treatments/story?id=83097330 You should at least concede that the claims in the paper are already hotly disputed. https://healthfeedback.org/claimreview/claim-myocarditis-covid-vaccines-carries-serious-risk-death-flawed-study/ What is the reference for the second article you refer to there?

The claims made in this article are dramatic and have been in the public domain for weeks but we don’t see them on the news or in major medical publications like the NEJM, Lancet or BMJ. Why is that? I suspect there is scepticism about the methods used and the authors involved. One of them, Jessica Rose, is described as an independent researcher which could apply to all sorts of people outside the field and another, Peter A. McCullough, is associated with a foundation that bears his name - a peculiar situation for a researcher. I found this wiki entry on a person with the same name which I presume is him. It does not inspire confidence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_A._McCullough

I’m not getting a happy, contented vibe off most of the right-wingers here although I’m sure somebody will hotly object that they’re as serene as it’s humanly possible to be. There’s so much rage and doom-mongering with the right these days. It can’t be good for them.