I am Groot

Does it? Maybe in the extreme. The political class throughout Europe has ignored the will of the people for the last decade. Much of it still does. This has meant people have had to turn away from the regular parties to new parties or those called 'fringe'. Even today most mainstream parties in Europe stand shoulder to shoulder against the will of the people on the subject of immigration/migration. The only good thing about proportional rep is it more easily allows the people to pull down those parties and replace them with new ones.

Who said anything about brown people, you illiterate twat? People in the UK got resentful of Poles flooding in while Poles have gotten resentful of Ukrainians. You get any large mass of people coming in and causing issues with housing, prices, etc., you're going to have people complaining. There was one interesting poll I recall where people said too many brown people were coming in. But the funny thing about that poll was that the brown people polled felt that more than the white people did. I took this to mean they thought too many unskilled people with unpopular values were coming in from the 3rd world. Which is certainly true.

They voted for him for a variety of reasons. Voting is always a compromise. I've never voted for anyone I liked. I just try to pick the least worst choice. And that says our political choices are poor. As Larry Lessig pointed out in his TED talk on the lack of democracy down south, if you get to pick those who run, then it doesn't really matter who the voters choose. I said in 2015 that that no one who thinks budgets balance themselves would ever manage to have one. But most people go about their busy, complicated lives and have no time to spend on politics. They're not on forums like this, don't read the paper much, and spend little time thinking about what the politicians are doing. In no small part because they don't feel they have influence over them anyway -because they don't. Maybe what we need is a constitutional amendment that says the leader of a party who campaigns on certain major issues has to make a good-faith effort to adhere to those promises once elected or resign. He never said he was going to quintuple foreign workers. He never said he was going to flood the country with foreign workers disguised as students. He never said he was going to turn the refugee determination system into an open border. He never told us what all these climate change rules, regulations, and laws were going to cost our economy, and for what little result. He never said he was going to turn our already limp-wristed criminal justice system into a farce. He said his independent boards would be unbiased and appoint the best people as judges and senators. Now, should the voters have found out? How? It's not like the media were going to tell us. The media shy away from giving the public information that might sway the viewers/readers into going against policies the media support. So they'll pump out lots of stories on the need for climate change policies. But zero stories on the costs to the economy and society. Lots of stories on say police abuse of blacks and indigenous people. Zero coverage on the level of criminality in the Black and Indigenous communities. Lots of stories on happy, grateful refugees. Virtually zero coverage on refugees who commit crimes or stay on welfare for the rest of their lives, or on the overall cost of the refugee system. Again, this is due to the media. Canadians support carbon taxes because the media have been virtually unanimous in telling them how good they are and how necessary they are. Mostly it's people like me who have more time on their hands than is good for us who can pry beneath the cheery statements and look for other sources online. Because the media told them they were effective and necessary. Only the occasional crank said otherwise. The media also shied away from telling us almost all the fatalities were people with serious, underlying diseases, or that those in what they almost humorously call "Long Term Care Homes" are so sick and frail they rarely ever live more than two years. What we got instead were stories of healthy people dying horribly of this new disease. Which did happen, albeit rarely. And btw, had the original covid not mutated the original shot would have been dramatically more effective. Vaccines do work. No. The ones leading the charge on trans rights are pretty over there to the left. Ordinary women have always been dubious about it. And conservatives, of course, know it's all bullshit. But again, the media were on-side with the far left and castigating anyone who argued as an evil, bigoted, hateful person who wanted children to die. You could also, btw, use the strange popularity of the Palestine cause among young, college-age women as another example of how information sources pervert popular choices. Day after day of sob stories in the media of children dying is what's responsible for that. No context is ever really given, no comparison to other wars and how many children died in them, no questioning what stopping would even mean other than more attacks on Israel. <shrug> I'm a law and order guy. I go by the rules and expect others to. I didn't like the masks but I wore them. Watching people get into screaming, violent fights over it, even on airliners just made me dismiss them as crazy. We live in a society and you either abide by the rules of that society or leave. Once again, look to the mainstream media. They pushed the residential school slaughter/genocide for all they were worth. And no one who questioned it even slightly survived. Same with the BLM and 'systemic racism' nonsense. Remember Stockwell Day? He was a regular on those political panels until someone asked him if he believed Canada was systemically racist. He said no and he hasn't been seen or heard from since. Any media person, any academic who challenged the genocide narrative got disappeared. With you on that one. Been banned from any number of groups on reddit for daring to question immigration in even the most careful terms focused almost exclusively on economics. And arguing demographics was a non-starter until lately. The university post-modernists have successfully pushed the idea of cultural relativism until it's become something of a religion to the Left, and spread throughout the mainstream media. What? You want to test immigration applicants to see if their cultural values line up with ours!? RACIST! XENOPHOBE!" The very idea that our culture might be better than some other countries, like say Pakistan, was considered blaspheme, the stuff of white nationalists. Those young women out screaming angrily on behalf of Palestine being 'free' are actually championing another Islamic state. That's what Hamas intends to put in place, and what people there voted for. An Islamic state that would brutalize or even execute those same women if they dared to open their mouths to complain about anything, or dared show their hair. Big cities attract artists, alphabet people, and immigrants. They're also places of big government because they provide public transit, huge public housing estates, shelters, welfare, etc. And so they tend to have a lot of people who want government to take care of them. People who live further out need to be a lot more self-sufficient. Try living in a rural area without a car, for example. Good luck with that. But overall, I still believe the main problem is the media, and a political system that forgives lies and broken promises but comes down brutally hard on anyone who steps even slightly out of line in offending people. Our politicians are bland people with few accomplishments because accomplished, aggressive people who strive for better don't tend to be shy and mild-mannered, and tend to be a lot more blunt - and the media will crush them for it.

For minor transgressions with minor punishments. But making their decisions largely court proof allowed them to push the envelope. One would if we had one. Yes, this makes more sense. I think I found roughly the same numbers but took it as 5.1k million I don't care about ideology and bad words. I care about actions. His so-called conservative government seems to be neither fiscally nor socially conservative. And neither he nor Chow will do a thing about these moronic Hamas supporters crowding our streets and harassing people. Chow has always been a culture warrior. She just doesn't need to give speeches about it now that she's in power. She can carry it out quietly. Ford likes beer, money and football That's the entirety of his interest in life. He's not going to fight a culture war when he doesn't have any culture beyond burping contests at the cottage.

If he was a conservative what he'd do is abolish the Ontario Human Rights Commission and save five billion dollars a year. Such a decision would be applauded by the Right and many in the Middle. The only people who would be angry would be those on the Left who hate his guts. But Ford only rises from his sofa over questions about beer and alcohol. And occasionally to say "Folks" without doing anything about what the 'folks' are upset about.

Doug Ford has never been right-wing. I call his PC party the Pretend Conservatives. It's hard to find a single thing this government has done, fiscally or socially, that would be considered right-wing. They are actually outspending the Wynne Liberals. And they have fully embraced the whole woke panoply of diversity, equity and inclusion, anti-racism lectures and critical race theory in all government institutions, as well as in grade schools and universities.

They should have been removed years ago. They might once have served a purpose. They no longer do except to allow activists and cranks to harass individuals and businesses without any personal cost. The only people who have to pay anything are those who need to hire lawyers to defend themselves. There are individuals who have lodged dozens of complaints against a variety of institutions and individuals in hopes of garnering money. Or just out of a sanctimonious desire to punish them. In this case, as they say, the process is the punishment. The Ontario government funds the Ontario Human Rights Commission to the tune of five BILLION dollars a year. It's an absurd waste of money. On the other hand, wasting money is kind of Doug Ford's thing. That and beer. If he has any other interests I have not noticed them.

There is no intention that the 'judge' in the case be unbiased. The complainant gets assistance and legal advice while the group being sued gets nothing. And the case can't be appealed to the courts except in a case where (and I believe this should be considered so) the decision is 'patently unreasonable'. Of course, the problem is appealing the $10k fine will likely cost you $50k or more in legal fees...

At the time I had zero sympathy for these people. As a law and order conservative I wanted them moved on after the first weekend. I found the abrogation of responsibility on the part of local police to be infuriating. And eventually, as I always expected, once the police actually made a move on them they left without putting up much of a fight. But over the past few years I have seen so many cases of violent people being released because the courts were too busy to hear their cases in a timely matter, too many cases of people who commit outrageous acts of violence being given slaps on the wrist because the criminal court system is now, by intent and law, racist. And let us not forget too many cases of people being arrested for acts of political (sometimes violent) activism only to have their cases dropped by a friendly Crown. So it's hard not to believe these people are being singled out for the vengeance of the government in a system that just does not give a damn about fairness, justice, or protection of the public.

This is Canada. That rarely seems to happen. They certainly should have. If we let you come into this country and you treat us like garbage we ought to be able to kick your bony arse back out again pronto.

There's a good video on Youtube by Larry Lessig that demonstrates that in America, what the people want over the years and decades has almost no correlation with what the American government does. Instead, it's what a tiny percentage of the country he calls the 'economic elite' want that gets taken care of. These are the people who fund politicians. Their opinions matter. Nobody else does. In the UK, someone recently said, the people have been telling the political class for the last thirty years that they want less immigration and the political class has responded with a big, upthrust middle finger. How vigorously it was pumped up and down depended on which party was doing the pumping. But essentially, the will of the people was entirely ignored. The result being that after promising to lower immigration to less than 100k in an election that gave them a huge majority, and then letting it rise to 800k, the Tories lost 100 seats to the Reform Party. The people voting for them knew that under a FPTP system the vote splitting would only benefit Labour, who they also cordially despised, but didn't care. Reform only got 5 seats but the voters seemed content to destroy the Conservatives Now, a couple of months on, Labour is despised, with a lower approval rating than Justin Trudeau. In the US, we have Donald Trump as the answer to this anger at being ignored. Perhaps in the UK next election it will be NIgel Farange. Both, to put it politely, very flawed gentlemen. All of which is to say, it wasn't the citizen's irresponsibility which is necessarily causing issues but the arrogance of the political class. You can throw in the academic and media class for good measure. Both look down on ordinary people, as well, and neither is much interested in reflecting or even knowing their views. If ordinary people's views are irrelevant to the elites it's unsurprising they don't always exercise them responsibly. In order to responsibly exercise the choices and decisions in governance the citizen requires a good deal of information on issues and choices, and the likely consequences of those choices. And that requires they spend time to get that information from a media class not particularly interested in giving it to them - or certainly not giving it to them without a good deal of slant on what the people learn.

According to a Conservative MP every refugee applicant costs the taxpayers $82,000 per year. We had 146,800 asylum claimants in 2023. That will cost us approximately $12 billion per year. Since the time to process refugees now stands at 44 months, last year's tranch will cost us over $40 billion in total to process through the system. But of course, we also have the asylum claimants from 2022. And the ones from 2024. The final numbers aren't in for this year but are expected to be somewhere around 185k. That's $15.2 billion this year plus, of course, the 12 billion for last year's group. So $27.2 billion this year on asylum claimants from the last two years. Let's add in the 92k claims from 2022. That's another $7.5 billion for this year. So we'll spend $34.7 billion in taxpayers money this year for these three years worth of applicants. That's across all government levels.

Except... not really. Except, not really. Trying to. DEI is getting in the way. You lefties have a habit of speaking so authoritatively about things you know nothing about. We had about 15k asylum claims in the last year Harper was here. Then came Trudeau and his rainbow coalition and his famous invitation to the world. We had about 150k asylum claims last year, most from young men. This year we may get 190. Next year, with a combination of Trump removing the protection order from Haitians and looking to deport more, and Canada finally telling all those Indians who are here as fake students that they have to leave, there's no tellin how many claims we'll get. Could easily surpass 500k. Our refugee system is broken. Trudeau broke it. He expanded the definition of 'refugee' so that almost anyone qualifies if they lie a little. The US, UK and France accept about a third of claims. Spain is 12%. Canada accepts 85% Are you gay or bi or trans or just say you are? Welcome to Canada! Here's your passport! Now let's address the 15% who get rejected. They get a letter telling them they have to leave. We don't verify whether they did or didn't. We don't keep track. We have no equivalent of the Americans' ICE to go look for illegal aliens, detain and deport them. We really have no idea how many illegals there are in the growing ethnic enclaves and no way to find out. The odds are, though, that almost everyone just stays. Border Services is down by about 3,000 officers according to their union leader. About 20% of RCMP positions are vacant. From what I've heard and read, classes to train new officers at both CBSA and RCMP (and the military) are being delayed because the Liberals have imposed rigid DEI requirements, insisting that every single class has a proper number of women and minorities.

It's borrowed money so we will have to pay interest on it. It's going to be a nightmare for small business/retailers to reprogram everything and then reprogram it again. It's clearly designed to buy votes. The Liberals are borrowing $6.5 billion and throwing it on the mountain of debt they've already rung up, just to buy votes. In other words, they're using our money for campaign purposes. It will likely cause a spike in inflation, delaying the bank of Canada's lowering of interest rates so that in the end it might actually cost us more than we get. It's not your hard-earned money. It's borrowed money. They will apply your hard-earned money to paying the interest on the borrowed money, however.

Tow trucks. They're buying tow trucks. Why not just call them that?

Its still way too costly. Buy the regular model and pull the doors and roof off. There ya go. Same thing for a fraction of the cost.

Dude, even tons of Republicans hate his guts. He makes Ted Cruz seem classy and responsible by comparison. Trump appointed him because he knows Gaetz has no ethics or principles and will do anything he's told to do, and screw what the law or constitution says.

Go back to your nurse and tell her to wipe the drool off your chin since you keep shorting out the keyboard you useless, demented old shitbag.

Why do you think Trump never released his taxes? Trump and his organization have been playing fast and loose with laws for decades. He even admitted it in his book (ghostwritten for him) about how he'd dealt with the mob. He cheated his suppliers, cheated his customers and sued anyone and everyone who said anything he didn't like. And that was while he was still a Democrat. His charity was a hoax. His so-called university was a ripoff. He was an incompetent businessman and again sued anyone who pointed out his incompetency - when he was still a Democrat. Why was he the subject of so many investigations? Because guys like him count on their activities being largely ignored. The US is, after all, a pretty corrupt society. But the more prominent you get and the more enemies you make the more likely it is that stuff will come out. That's not lawfare.

Probably also someone who didn't repeat conspiracy theories about the CIA.

You know she was labelled a Russian asset back when she was a Democrat, right?

The fictional network of U.S.-funded Ukrainian bio-weapon laboratories, the function of a Moscow-orchestrated disinformation project, has been picked up by Gabbard, as well. The day Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Gabbard said it was all NATO’s fault. In Moscow, Gabbard is known as “Russia’s girlfriend.” While she was a serving congresswoman, Gabbard paid a courtesy visit to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad in 2017 and returned to the U.S. encouraging Americans to be “skeptical” about Assad’s thoroughly documented use of poison gas to slaughter Syrian civilians. She described the mass uprising against the hated Assad regime as an American-orchestrated “regime-change war.” Gabbard loudly protested the Trump administration’s 2020 targeted killing of the Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, the principal animateur of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Yemeni Houthis’ Ansar Allah terrorist group and Iraq’s Kata’ib Hezbollah. Soleimani’s death was widely celebrated by pro-democracy Iranian dissidents.

Former Federalist magazine publisher and current Fox News contributor Ben Domenech calls Gaetz a “sex trafficking drug addled lying philandering piece of s–t,” noting that, “He is abhorrent. His eyes are permanently rimmed with the red rings of chemical boosters. In person, he smells like overexposed Axe Body Spray and stale Astroglide.… The man has less principles than your average fentanyl addicted hobo.” https://nationalpost.com/opinion/donald-trumps-cabinet-of-circus-freaks-and-bond-villains

Where's my self driving car?

My sister and her family had to move into town because the electricity bills in their rural area were threatening to bankrupt them. How many others have had to give up their homes? How many more will as Trudeau continues to increase carbon taxes for NO BENEFIT WHATSOEVER. Oh, the refunds? Yeah, they pay off for guys like you, living in big cities in condos taking the subway to work. People out in rural areas don't have the luxury of cheaper electricity, cheaper heating costs due to being in a large building, and easy public transit. Chretien signed it but had no intention of doing anything about it. And didn't. That's arrogance. Trudeau is trying to fulfill it no matter how many people it destroys and no matter how minute the benefit. That's arrogance, too. He doesn't care who he hurts because he's on a mission from the climate gods of the UN. Meanwhile, CO2 keeps rising as the Chinese, indians, Vietnamese, Indonesians, Thais, Egyptians, Brazilians and everyone else throughout the third world keeps building coal plants. The West is getting poorer and poorer as the cost of electricity rises, while China and Russia are getting rich on supplying us with the manufactured goods that are now too expensive to make here due to high energy prices and carbon taxes. And they're using those riches to make weapons they might soon turn against us. We're seeing that proletariat revolt all across the West, angered by the elites and their determination to pour third-world migrants across our borders while strangling our economies with their stupid, pointless climate change policies. August? Is that you?