I am Groot

I suspect the Liberals are working hard behind the scenes, offering pledges of all kinds of government money for them if they announce (closer to election time) that the Liberals are the best friends they could possibly get and the conservatives are like Trump and will deport all Muslims.

Nope. It's people who have Canadian citizenship but whose political motivations in trying to influence the Canadian government lie half a world away. Their priorities are their homelands, not what's in Canada's interest. This is why, last time I checked, the majority of Muslims voted Liberal, even though the Liberals' very leftist attitude toward women equality, gay rights, transgenderism, and other such matters should cause them to vote for the most conservative party they can find. But their primary voting interest is in their homelands and the politics, disputes, and hatreds of their homelands.

The National Council of Muslims and the 300 mosques and other Muslim organizations they represent say no MP will be welcome in their mosques or on their sites without them promising to restore funding to UNRWA funding, to call for an immediate ceasefire in the only place where Muslims are being killed by Jews (but not the ones where they're being killed by Muslims) and must condemn Israel's 'war crimes', (but not those committed by any of the other nations in the middle east). What they are demonstrating is they're not Canadians. Whatever is on their passports. They're not Canadians in spirit. They're still foreigners with foreign cultures and values. Foremost among them is hatred for Jews and Israel. And the more of these people we bring to Canada the more antisemitism there will be. Muslim groups say MPs won’t be welcome in mosques until they call for Gaza ceasefire | Radio-Canada.ca

How come I can get answers on Bing and DDG?

He doesn't respect short men. Putin is short and by all rights Trump ought to have been heard or recorded mocking him at one point or another. But nothing. I'm sure Putin has dirt on him. As I've said before, Trump spent decades as a crooked real estate guy. And in the end he was broke - according to himself. And according to Don Jr it was the Russians that saved their company. How? By investing/lending money, of course. And how much of it came from shady sources? How much was sanctions-busting or money-laundering? Trump wouldn't have thought twice about doing that if he thought he'd get away with it.

Of what, you loon?

Just over the last few days I've noticed that instead of giving me answers it presents me with a list of news items or aticles that are either openly or not so openly sponsored. Not just one or two but pages of them, and I can't get what I'm looking for at all. I forget what I was searching for the other day but I finally got frustrated and instead searched for duckduckgo. Once on their site I typed in the same identical thing and the response was number one on the list. Very quick and easy. Today I was looking for 'concussion'. Instead of getting any information on concussions I got a bunch of articles on sports figures who had suffered from them. Not just one page but multiple pages. I typed in 'duckduckgo' instead and this time instead of getting their site I could a list of articles about duckduckgo. Since I had MS Edge open at the same time I opened that up and typed in 'concussion' instead and right off got all kinds of medical stuff on it. I typed in 'duckduckgo' and the site was number one on the returns list. Has Google just gone into full-out prostitute mode or what? I mean they always took money to return certain sites first, but now they've really gone overboard.

No. You can deter an enemy by making it too costly to make you worth attacking. This is why Switzerland sat out WW2. Could the Germans have taken them? Sure. But the cost wouldn't have been worth the price. Russia and most of the rest of the world thought it'd all be over in a weekend. The US offered Zelensky a plane ride out the next day because they figured it would be all over in no time. If the Russians had had any idea what this would cost they never would have invaded in the first place.

The US has been busy building up its bases around China, esp in northern Philipines and Okinawa in preparation for interceding if the Chinese attack Taiwan. They've made it clear to China that they will do so, not just by words but by actions. The US was never going to confront Russia directly over Ukraine. Unlike with China and Taiwan, Russian occupation of Ukraine doesn't directly impact or threaten the US. The helped arm and train the Ukrainian military, though, which made an obvious difference. Standing up to the bully how? They weren't doing anything to provoke the bully in the first place.

NO ONE has ever accused Trump of being a master strategist at anything whatsoever. But is he afraid of Putin? Clearly. It shows in how he's never, ever even slightly insulted the man, but has insulted just about every other world leader, not to mention every congressional and senate leader, every governor and every celebrity. It shows in how he acted when around him, like a child trying to please daddy, or afraid of daddy's disapproval. Even when this was not politically wise, when it caused consternation among Republicans, never mind the public at large. Trump's history is he does nothing whatever except for personal advantage. Why would he act like that around Putin otherwise?

I doubt more than a handful of people in that crowd had any either. But you know very well it attracted a bunch of malcontents as it headed east, people who were angry at not just government policy but everything about government. Most of them were just blue-collar dudes. And hasn't it been your enunciated belief that you can't judge all members of a group by the actions of a few? Only if they don't speak English well enough to know what the word 'racist' means. Islam is not a race. Islam is a list of moral and legal requirements the faithful must obey that were literally written in medieval times and have never changed. Of course they can be insulted, mocked and ridiculed. A dog touches you and you need to undergo a ritual bath? WTH? You can beat your wife but keep the stick small and don't hit her face? Huh? Don't ever make friends with anyone not a Muslim, but you can pretend to as part of Islam's plan to take over. Seriously? And let's not even get into cutting the hands off thieves, stoning adulterers or executing apostates. All religions have ridiculous things in them but as Sam Harris has said the others have modernized considerably and figured out how to reconcile the more barbaric and 1diotic things in their holy books with modern times. Islam never has. If we hadn't been able to start questioning the wisdom of the priests and what they preached, if we hadn't seen centuries of jokes, mockery and then outright open disagreement with the Catholic Church we wouldn't have Western society. It led to the Reformation, and the rise of science and technology, and pulled us into a more secular society. Mostly agree. As I said, all sorts of people tagged along and the leadership was never set, nor their demands so it all became a grab bag of angry nonsense. I was not a supporter and wanted them out after a single day. That they were allowed to stay as long as they were was symbolic of weak leadership among police and politicians at all levels. The Ottawa Police Chief, the Ottawa police services board, and the mayor were all gone soon after.

Prove what?

Come on, what is military planning all about if not 'what if'? Military planners don't just plan for what they think will happen, but what might happen, not what they think an enemy will do but what they could do. I'm saying that the ultimate purpose of having a military is to deter the enemy from attacking in the first place. Are we going to station F18s or eventually F35s up north? Nope. It's over 2000km between Cold Lake and Whitehorse. Further if you want to get all the way to the northern edge of Canada. I'm pretty sure the Russians know just how long it takes for one to get up there. Hell, if they really wanted to taunt us they could fly bears over Whitehorse and be long gone before an F18 could make it up there. A few Patriot batteries sitting around here and there would end that scenario. Of course, it would be nice if we had a military base or two up north aside from Alert to actually demonstrate our sovereignty over the far north. And no, I don't expect Russia to try to take over Whitehorse. I think the Americans would have to react to that as a threat to them, no matter what Trump thought. But the further north fringes of our territory, especially the areas we claim as our waters and Russia claims as theirs - that could cause some bumping and pushing. And we've got nothing whatsoever to bump or push back with.

I was just a kid. I remember FLQ graffiti in the walls and chalked on the sidewalk in front of our English school, though. And watching TV showing soldiers downtown (where I was too young to ever go anyway). I asked my father if there were going to be any tanks on our street because I really wanted to climb up and look inside but alas there was no real action on the South Shore. My father was working at the base in Longueuil, though. The gates sprouted armed guards.

Like Donald Trump? Well, something Trump is good at. Like uh - *giggle* - Donald Trump? All of which I write because you're a Trump supporter.

They seemed to me to be a bunch of blue-collar guys, for the most part. Blue-collar guys have a lot of opinions that would offend those who work in offices and are used to an environment where all opinions and views are very, very heavily self-censored upon threat of the doom of HR coming down upon them. Their views are considered even more outrageous by university academics and those who have passed through their hands. Nothing wrong with denigrating Islam. Would you consider it wrong to denigrate Christianity? Catholicism? Given the insults and demands they'd made no leader would have met with them. There's no polite discourse possible with people who scream "F*ck Trudeau" on a daily basis.

Me Living in Montreal at the time.

Suppose Trump is elected next year and announces that since we couldn't be bothered paying more than 1% to defend ourselves then clearly we're not worth defending so he's not going to do it. Then Russia, which, you might note, does not like us much, starts sending its buzz bombers much deeper into our northern territories, daring us to do something about it. Putin pushes wherever he sees an open door. And we're a screen door hanging by one hinge.

Why?

My action plan gets them off the streets and out of the parks and tents. Which, I wager, is what the vast majority of "Canada's middle class" wants, right now.

It's a very real problem. And it absolutely needs to be dealt with. But the way the Left has insisted on 'dealing' with it is to provide safe places and help for addicts to get their fix, try to keep them from overdosing, and perhaps gently suggest they might like rehab. Not to mention shielding them from police actions, including letting them turn local parks into tent cities full of crime and drugs so kids have nowhere to play. My conservative view is that they should ALL be scooped up, assessed, and the addicts forced into rehab. I know we don't have enough rehab facilities. That needs to be changed. Those with severe mental issues need to be detained in a facility. Anyone who thinks that's more cruel than letting them sleep on a subway grate should be ignored. But the Left (or strong elements of it) would howl if that was done.

There are non Trumptard conservatives down south, but they get less press because they're less outrageous. And the Trumptard voters are strong enough to deter public statements on the part of most politicians. In Canada, we don't see much Trumptard influence on the Conservative party. There is some, because Poilievre is pandering to them to some extent because he wants them to support him and not the PPC.

Click on your name at the top right hand corner of the page. A dropdown list should have 'ignored users' on it. Mine does. But then, I actually have ignored users. If it's not there click on account settings. There's a box over on the right side of the screen with 'other settings'. Ignored users should be one of them.

If you think someone is contributing nothing of value worth discussing then stop responding to them, or put them on your ignore list. Your likely problem is they say something you very much disagree with and can't help challenging it. But arguing with some of these guys is like arguing with a 911 truther. Nothing you say is going to have any impact.