I am Groot

Not untruthful, however. Trump set the timeline. It was Trump who announced the US was leaving and thus encouraged the Taliban. And at least Biden, unlike Trump, doesn't pucker up and get on his knees every time some dictator smiles at him. You aren't even that high if you don't understand the years long process for things like inflation and wars to start. Hey, maybe if free-spending Trump hadn't blasted out such huge deficits inflation wouldn't be so bad. This is a ridiculous suggestion. There will be no age limits on congress. Despite how popular that would be. The US isn't exactly a democracy, you know.

Trump doesn't give a damn about CRT. He did ditch it - six months before the election. After someone told him it would be good publicity. And obviously I don't approve of CRT or any of that other woke crap. Which ought to make me more approving of Republicans than I am. And would, if Trump wasn't an incompetent twat and his party wasn't fixated on abortion and making sure every cradle had an AK-47 in it.

Biden definitely has issues. But from what I've seen he's a better president on his worst day than Trump ever was on his best.

Trump ignored his staff and fired them whenever they disagreed with him. The only reason the country didn't fall apart is because he spent most of his time as president watching TV and engaging in twitter wars with celebrities. He was uninterested in briefing notes, uninterested in meetings, and uninterested in any of the day to day decision making that a president normally takes part in. Pence ran the country. Trump was more of a figurehead who gave speeches and met with foreign leaders. The problem was he was a figurehead who could actually give orders whenever he saw something on TV or whenever some foreigner or lobbyist or grifter got a word in his ear. All this according to his own staff. Virtually no one has a good word for his abilities as president. They either write books about what an incompetent, dishonest Ahole he was or keep silent entirely. If Trump was driving and saw a big truck in his backup camera he'd say "My gut tells me there's nothing there" and just floor it. Trump doesn't pay any attention to evidence or advice. He goes by his 'gut'.

Trump, if you look at old videos, used to be a pretty sharp operator. But that was long ago. Now he's a drooling, demented old man bewildered by the world around him and given to rambling semi-coherently at the drop of a hat. He has no understanding or knowledge of any of the requirements of a President, and no interest in learning them. Yes, Biden is definitely suffering signs of his age, but for you to pretend that Trump was "sharp as a tac' is so laugh-out-loud ridiculous it causes me to question your own possible dementia. And no, he never took a test for dementia. Nor does he need to. You can see it just by watching him for five minutes.

It is not remotely as bad in the UK, where there is a ton of internal sniping and even open criticism of party leaders by MPs. And how many times have there been internal putsches in Australian party politics that replaced leaders, even prime ministers? Such things are unthinkable here.

In case anyone new was wondering why there is no topic on Trudeau's ginormous cabinet shuffle - it's because nobody cares. Because it doesn't matter. Because none of his ministers have any power and they don't matter in deciding or implementing government policy. Their purpose is to serve as community representatives from whomever they're chosen o represent, and be mouthpieces for the policies developed by the PMO and passed over their heads to their deputy ministers - who are selected by the PMO. Kinsella said it right. With the exception of weirdos like media political columnists and Ottawa-based bureaucrats, Joe and Jane Frontporch generally don’t know who is in cabinet, and they mostly don’t care, either. Apart from Chrystia Freeland and Dominic LeBlanc — perhaps — most voters couldn’t pick a Trudeau government minister out of a police lineup (where not a few voters think they belong, but that’s a column for another day). The majority of Trudeau’s ministers are distinguished by being indistinguishable. They are remarkably unremarkable. https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/07/07/el-nino-is-back-heres-what-it-means-for-extreme-weather Or Coyne What does the appointment of Mark Holland as Minister of Health mean to anyone but Mr. Holland? What changes in policy would Pascale St-Onge make at Heritage? How would Randy Boissonnault do things differently from his predecessor at Employment, or Kamal Khera at Diversity and Inclusion? There is no point even trying to answer these questions, because for the most part it does not matter. It does not matter which minister occupies which portfolio. Outside of the top dozen or so, the portfolios themselves do not matter. They are made-up jobs for make-work purposes. The point is not to fulfill some urgent public responsibility but to give their recipients something to do, for which the requisite qualification is neither their views nor their experience, but their membership in whatever region or demographic group the government is most anxious to court. https://archive.li/b3vku

Or... not. Anand was working hard to convince cabinet to re-equip the military. Blair is a Trudeau loyalist who will do and say precisely what he is told. And in Public Safety he showed very little interest in... public safety. And certainly not in anything remotely related to China.

My sense of the problem is that business is drowning in red tape. Every regulation the government passes not only hems them in but results in a cost. That cost often includes the cost of not only doing what the government wants, but documenting it and filling out forms for the government to prove it. And the forms and regulations keep multiplying. The regulations on natural resources industries are enormous, complicated and expensive. And adding in the mess of climate change has only made it worse. Often much rose. A big chunk of the costs and delays in building BC's LNG plant, for example, is that BC insisted the power it used must be 'green'. So they had to build a dam first to power the LNG plant. The ever-increasing costs of satisfying the government's climate reduction demands are scattered and hard to assess, probably deliberately. It's not just the increased cost of energy. And even the tax breaks offered by the government for carbon remission is still a cost added to the economy because it comes from taxes, which are too high. The government giving billions to foreign countries to help them with their climate education is another cost to the economy, because again, it comes from taxes. Or, in the case of the Trudeau government, from borrowing. And, of course, the furious pace of government borrowing has a cost on its own, in increasing interest rates. Not to mention increasing debt servicing costs, which are going to suck going forward. Why would anyone invest in Canada's resource industry when the same resources are available elsewhere, including in the US, with cheaper labour, fewer laws and regulations, and lower taxes? The answer, of course, is they don't. As for Canadian business, it has come to learn that it doesn't have to invest in new technology. Unless, of course, the government provides subsidies for it. The government will protect inefficient oligopolies like our terrible airlines and worlds-most-expensive internet companies. It will make sure badly run companies like Bombardier never go out of business, and maintain high profits for our big banks - higher than American banks that have much more competition. Immigration is not the boon to the economy the government keeps suggesting. It brings in raw numbers but not the people who would really help boost our economy. Every poor immigrant means lower GDP per person, and we have a lot of them. We don't validate their credentials or skills nor their claims to language abilities. They submit forms which we accept unless they look too obviously fake. It's not a coincidence that the countries whose immigrants here have the most economic success are those who come from nations with a tradition of English knowledge like India, the Philipines, and of course, much of Europe. But we've made no effort to prioritize applicants from these areas nor discourage them from areas that produce the least economically successful immigrants. To put it bluntly, if all the people coming in were skilled Europeans or Americans we'd be a helluva lot richer than we are now. Why not the Filipinos and Indians? Because a substantial chunk of them don't plan to stay here. They are not committed to this country. And they plan to take the money they make "home" once they've accrued enough of it. They also have a habit of sending money home, billions of dollars every year, rather than spending it here.

If you go on the Globe and Mail site and look up some publicly traded companies you find their return on investment is sometimes in the low single digits. Loblaws, for example, who everyone loves to hate, has a 3.38% profit margin. It does have an 8.85% return on investments, but heck, you could just fire everyone, put that money into buying and selling expensive condos, and almost certainly make more.

Based on what? Cars were cheap. Houses were cheap. Food was cheap. Education was cheap. You don't need to be as wealthy when so much stuff costs so little. There were no homeless encampments, healthcare worked really well, street crime seemed way lower, practically unnoticeable. There were no drive-bys, no swarmings. Life was pretty good.

Is it? Our quality of life isn't.

Agreed. And I honestly put the blame on Doug Ford and his education minister. Ultimately, they control the school boards and can impose whatever curriculum and rules they want. They have chosen to go hands off and let the education ministry, populated by zealously progressive graduates of teaching schools do what they want. The irony is that foremost in those 'wants' is teaching children that they never want to be, much less vote for anyone who's conservative.

Then the next time there's a municipal election they should stir their asses and get to know who the school board candidates are in their area and what kind of people they are. Hint: Most of them are shrill woke lunatics.

Clearly

PP could have the most incredible plan for economic recovery and expansion the world has ever known and it wouldn't matter to you. Be honest enough to admit it. Nothing would ever cause you to vote for him.

Wrong country, dude.

It is very unlikely she was the one who came up with the price. The realtor probably did. And this house would easily sell for twice that in Toronto.

Not a bad little place. I grew up in worse. But your perspective does change when you live in different kinds of places. When I was twenty or thirty I would have thought this place was great. Now, given where I live, and my previous house, it's kind of small and old and needs some TLC. But it ain't no shack. But I suppose if you compare it to an eight-bedroom mini-mansion (Stornaway), it does look pretty cheap. Of course, that would be a pretty foolish point of comparison... https://revelrealty.ca/listing/3047-saint-patrick-avenue-niagara-falls-ontario-l2j-2m7-25843894/

If we'd wanted to kill off the natives we would have. We didn't. This is demonstrably and undeniable fact. There is no evidence to support any widespread attempt to infect natives with anything. In fact, the Canadian government worked rather hard to vaccinate the natives AGAINST smallpox. The only bounties put on their heads were during wartime and I believe it was in response to their own actions. For example, the much-whined-about offer of a bounty in Nova Scotia by the British general Cownwallis put a bounty on Mi'kmaq scalps is generally well-known. What the media put much less effort into talking about was the bounty the French had on British scalps which they were paying the Mi'kmaq for. And which caused the British response. Death marches? Never heard of them. Dragging them to school? The native elders wanted their kids to be educated. They even put it in treaties that the government was required to do so. Your incessant guilt-ridden left-wing sniveling about how we treated the natives also, as usual with your type, ignores their own behavior toward anyone they conquered, which was many times worse.

I'm not actually calling for a white heritage moment or whatever. Though recognition of European heritage and its accomplishments might be a thing to push back against all the academic leftists spitting on it and its accomplishments, and dismissing its philosophers, writers and poets as 'dead white men'. Our black people aren't the descendants of slaves. At least, not in this country. Now, maybe their descendants were slaves at some point where they came come. There were a lot of slaves in Africa, after all, until the Europeans colonized the place and put an end to it. And yeah, I'm being purposefully ironic there, but also truthful. Neither am I. But the way the media, academics and government have been acting over the past decade or more is making me feel like 'whites' are a group, because they're constantly being targeted for various abrasive descriptions and accusations as well as actively and purposefully discriminated against in hiring and promotion by government and institutions. It's also been my experience that whites in general are the least racist people in Canada, and that our immigrants (as a group) tend to be extremely racist and bigoted toward other groups. Not that they EVER get called on it by government, media, academics, or society, of course.

Maybe I'm just respecting their culture more than you are. After all, THEY never operated by the rules you cite above When they took something they didn't share it. Although to be fair, they might have offered some to the dead spirits of the people they took the land from.