SpankyMcFarland

The European empires were no longer fit for purpose. That’s the short answer.

Be that as it may, China is building the next generation of cars for the world, and they are electric. If the US chooses to stay with internal combustion it will be become a Cuban museum for such vehicles.

Canadian MPs need to learn to speak up for themselves. Previous PMs have also overstayed their welcome - power is difficult to relinquish - but rarely as badly as this. In Britain, Australia or Ireland, Trudeau would be gone by now.

In any negotiation between Hamas and Israel, America should be viewed as being on the Israeli side. That’s the reality of it. Biden and his hapless spokespersons have bleated about the devastation in Gaza right through the war but they have meekly continued to supply Israel with everything it wants. Trump will abandon the pretence of mediation completely which will be worse for Palestinians but perhaps less irritating for the rest of the world.

They don’t really find common ground here. For Palestinians, Biden is too pro-Israel. For Netanyahu and the like, he’s not pro-Israel enough, incredibly .

America supplies a lot of the bombs for Israel’s campaign in Gaza. It has leverage if it chose to use it.

So is it defence or defense? I think the former is preferred in Canada.

Coalitions will help keep the system going for a while. We’ve just got to get over our fear of them. They’re the only way a government will have the backing a majority of voters, after a fashion, these days. Of course it would mean immediately rowing back on some of these election promises which is no bad thing.

In general that is true but the Churchill Falls negotiation involved one of the dominant Laurentian provinces and a colony effectively abandoned by Britain trying desperately to make ends meet. It was like doing a deal with Mauritania. The power differential was absolutely colossal. Anyway, let’s hope such morbid ruminations are behind us and have not is truly no more rather than a bizarre consequence of the damnable equalization formula.

The PMs after PT were under no obligation to follow his lead, so why did they? I would argue that Canadians did not want to spend on the military. No matter how necessary it is, ramping it up is still going to be a tough sell that will probably cost seats. However, as the only NATO country to border the US, we can offer special contributions beyond tanks and guns, eg more infrastructure in the Arctic, making it easier to defend, and more effective wildfire control which will help the inhabitants of American cities breathe more easily.

The US has provided zero leadership on Gaza and that looks set to continue. Netanyahu can do what he likes.

What is inaccurate in what I put there? Trump is a sociopath. There’s a lifetime of evidence to that effect and we’re about to get a whole lot more.

Real bunch of legal eagle hair splitters here when Trump’s rights are at stake. The jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll. Any decent man would have retired from public life right there.

Why do some people attract such allegations throughout their lives and others barely ever get accused? Is it just malice on the part of the media that Bill Clinton, for example, suffered more accusations of various types of impropriety and actual crimes than Mitt Romney? I don’t think so.

How dare you, Sir! He should sue you too because the jury determined he committed ‘sexual abuse’ rather than ‘sexual assault’. Once more a good man is being defamed.

The jury certainly did not conclude this ‘sexual encounter’ was consensual.

This is largely a semantic debate that I’m surprised ABC didn’t pursue given the numerous completely false QAnon-style allegations made against public figures in the US every day. Strictly speaking, Trump wasn’t convicted of anything in a civil lawsuit but the jury agreed he did commit ‘sexual abuse’ rather than ‘rape’ in the peculiar legal definitions used by New York State. In common parlance, most people would agree that the jury considered him to have committed at least what one would call sexual assault here, very serious misconduct that one would not expect from a presidential candidate. It’s not like they thought he was completely innocent - in their opinion, he committed a serious act of misconduct.

I think it’s the difference between NL surviving as a province or not. The cynic in me thought Quebec would let NL run into insolvency and get a fire sale deal for the next century after that. Before this deal is formally ratified I fear there will be some voices in Quebec who will suggest just that very move. Given that the federal givernment has remained studiously neutral for the last fifty years, I can’t see NL getting a better deal than this.

From the article quoted above: Hardly a ringing endorsement of any citizen, yet alone a person standing for the highest office in the land.

Hangovers are a lot less painful in NL, at least per unit of alcohol consumed. Low humidity and high altitude are a toxic combination as I found to my cost in Calgary.

NL just got a lot more sustainable if this deal with Quebec gets ratified. ‘People are saying’ it’s the best day for the province since Confederation. Finally, the wealth of the Churchill River will be shared by the two provinces in an equitable manner and Newfoundlanders won’t risk apoplexy discussing it. The next megaproject on the river will probably be in the hands of Quebec companies rather than outsiders whose ignorance of local conditions was cruelly exposed in the Muskrat boondoggle. https://globalnews.ca/news/10917828/quebec-newfoundland-labrador-churchill-falls-deal-politics/ https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/churchill-falls-new-deal-economics-1.7410094

It’s a regular problem in parliamentary democracies at the end of a mandate. I suspect dumping Trudeau would be better for the party in some ridings - he can’t campaign his way out of this - but it’s a tough way for a new leader to start. They should look on the bright side - they will do better than Kim Campbell and it will be up from there unless PP can change his tone considerably.

Neither side will listen to us if we try to get involved so why bother? The Chrétien method seems sensible: say something incomprehensible and leave it at that.

Is there a BC election thread here that actually tries to report what’s going on, including details that wouldn’t necessarily be more widely known beyond the province?

Most developed countries experienced peak inflation during Covid and are recovering but prices are still up, of course. Go to Europe and you’ll hear people complaining about the price of everything there as well. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/g20-inflation-rates-feb-2024-vs-covid-peak/