Moonbox

That's the whole point. There is harm. Vulnerable women feeling harassed/judged/intimidated as they privately seek medical treatment is some (not all) of the harm the legislation is there to prevent, weighed against a protestor's right to "pray" specifically within 100m of the clinic. The "harm" to free speech is that these poor buffoons have to do their "praying" >101m outside the clinic. The horror. Yes, letters were sent out. The letters did not say what JD Vance said they did, which is that private prayer in their homes could be illegal. That's an explicit lie, just like the Haitians eating cats and dogs was, and you're left trying to rationalize it.

Right now? Probably Trump. In a couple months, who knows? Either way, I don't think PP is going to commit to much, just like he already hasn't. You don't interrupt while your opponent is scoring on his own net, or imploding. I don't find that fascinating, or even curious, because the average person really doesn't care about the details. In my early years in financial planning, I was very task and detail-oriented. I'd have spreadsheets, drill-downs, risk comparisons, projections, simulations and scenario planning - all that jazz prepared before every meeting and ready to go. Over time, I realized that most clients only had about 5 minutes worth of attention for that sort of stuff. Anything more, and I'd start to lose them. I still do that stuff on my own for them, in the background, but they don't give a shit to hear about it. Their decision-making process in terms of finance was to determine if they liked me, if they trusted me, and if I seemed competent. Once that hurdle was covered, most of them are ready to just let me do my thing and don't really want to hear about it or my decision making process.

Poilievre will try to sell Canada whatever he thinks is going to be popular at the time. If everyone is pissed at Trump, he'll talk tough about how he can contend with it. If the utter failure of Trudeau Liberalism is still what's on the average Canadian's minds, that's what he's going to focus on.

🤡🤡🤡

It does, because freedom of speech isn't limitless, even in the United States. That's why you can get arrested for harassing or threatening people, among an exhaustive list of other limitations. It's not like we saw you supporting the Gaza protestor's freedom of speech either, is it? Because it's absolute nonsense. Ignoring that JD Vance outright lied (just like he did with the Haitians eating cats and dogs) and no letters were sent out saying you can't pray in your home, the whole idea of people not being allowed to pray in their own home is ludicrous to start. What is the Scottish government going to do? Install cameras in everyone's house, and peer through windows to make sure nobody's praying inside? That's the sort of silliness you're reduced to when you're defending these goofs.

Like I said, we know you can't actually explain or rationalize why, specifically, these donkeys need to pray within earshot of abortion clinics, and why that crucial right is somehow more important than that of vulnerable women being able to seek medical treatment with some privacy and without having to fear harassment or intimidation from protestors, which is really what these silent prayers really are. You're going to do your regular mental gymnastics, just as you did with Vance's cat-and-dog eating, and talk about anything but what you're being pressed on. It's boring, and even better, completely irrelevant to the topic of Ukraine, just like Vance's speech was in Munich. 🤣

Oh no, he was told he had to move 100m away to "silently pray"?1?!? Better send the Vice President of the United States to harangue (supposed) allies at a security conference over it. 🤣 I think you'd have trouble trying to rationalize and explain why the rights of belligerent fundamentalists to "silently pray" specifically within 100m of abortion clinics somehow supersedes the rights of vulnerable women to seek medical help with a measure of privacy and dignity, without shame, judgement, harassment and/or intimidation. Pray 101m outside. Problem solved. 🙃👍

It's really awkward that you write that bolded part as you spiral out into another juvenile tirade. You lasted more than 2 posts though, so that's probably a record for you. Good job little buddy! 😉

In reality, Adam Smith-Connor sought out an abortion clinic to "silently pray" near, knew there was a law against it (implemented for various good reasons we could discuss in another thread), and spent almost two hours arguing with the officer who asked him to leave before he was finally removed. In reality, Vance's speech was a ranting balogna-fest from the culture-warrior grievance catalogue, underlined by the absurdity that it was delivered at a freaking European security summit, from the genius who broke the story about Haitians eating cats and dogs. 🤣

Naw dog. He straight-up clowned himself, and nobody who listened to it who wasn't already drinking the Kool-Aid did anything but laugh or cringe. Folks living near abortion clinics aren't allowed to pray in their own homes, yup yup. 🤣

Vance made a clown out of himself in that speech, like he usually does. Just because he's not 100% wrong about everything doesn't change that.

No, he didn't say that. That's how the National Post and the rest of Pierre Poilevre's fluffers frame what he said, panicking as they are after Trudeau's resignation. Their frenzied attempts to demonize Carney make them look silly and immature when they have a 10-year record of abject failure to campaign against. Honesty? According to who? I have trouble seeing how it does. It seems like the least reasonable and least justifiable interpretation - the one that would serve no purpose and for which you probably can't explain any motivation.

My point is that it would make no sense for him to be talking about the Emergencies Act, for multiple reasons. First, a trade-war would be a nonsense justification for its use, and it would be shut down by legal challenge. Second, the Liberals would be pretty gunshy on this considering how much blowback they received last time. In the context of the Orange Blob, the Emergencies Act could be enacted if Trump made actual attempts to annex Canada by force, otherwise folks are blowing a lot of smoke around this.

NATO economies don't need to be set up for war. They just need to be scaled up to 2-3% of GDP, which would easily outproduce Russia's fully-mobilized war economy. In a year, they basically erased Russia's artillery shell advantage from 10:1 to near-parity, and that was without breaking a sweat. Meanwhile, Russia is fully-committed and running out of money... Yes, the donkey-people in Russia believe everything the man says, but he's also been able to insulate them from the war's effects. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, they have no idea what's going on. In the far-east and the Caucuses, the dirt-poor hinterlands where most of the recruits are coming from, they know better. Either way, when the piggy-bank runs out later this year, Russia's everywhere will start to feel it. The real question is whether Trump throws Ukraine under the bus, as folks have suspected he would all along.

The last time the emergency branch of POGG powers was used was to fight inflation in 1976. A destructive trade-war declared by our (supposed) closest ally would probably constitute a bigger crisis.

Emergency Powers = Emergency Act, I assume, as far as the OP is concerned? Is anyone else aware that there's an entire branch of parliamentary emergency powers under the principles of POGG? Doubtful.

I'm just quoting you back to yourself. NATO's combined economies dwarf Russia's. Spending 1.7-2% of their GDP, EU members are spending the same amount as Russia, who currently commits ~7% of theirs (and over 40% of their government's budget). The point? NATO can fund this war forever and never even feel it. They could drown Ukraine in arms and overwhelm Russia economically with any sort of actual commitment, and the average taxpayer would hardly notice. We spend far more money on far stupider things than countering aggressive and dangerous dictatorships, and just like the Soviet Union bankrupted itself trying to keep up, NATO could do the same to Putin. These too, are simple facts. It's 100% true. That's why there aren't 1,000,000 Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. It's why North Korea and other allies have had to send troops/volunteers. It's why Russia had to empty prisons, why its MoD needs to coerce or bully unwilling conscripts to sign (often fraudulent) contracts, offering rapidly increases bribes and bonuses that they are eventually not even going to be able to afford. You're right that Putin obeys or disregards laws at it suits him, but even that has limits. Popular support for his invasion hinges on his ability to insulate the big cities from its affects, but he can only draw from the poorest margins of society for so long, and only as long as he can keep it quiet.

"You can throw numbers around all you want..." 1.5 million men under arms, a large portion of whom (conscripts) are forbidden by Russian Law to be sent to the front lines. North Korean troops fighting in Russia tells us they are not sustaining their horrendous losses, as is the fact they're barely nudging the front line forward despite the casualties. Regardless, the Russian war chest was $117B to start the war. It was down to $35 billion by the end of December. At the current pace, it's gone by mid-late summer, at which point the Russian people will start feeling its costs directly and acutely. Maybe I'm naive and can't actually believe they're willing to go back to North Korean/Soviet style military economy, but the cowed servility of the average Russian donkey-person is hard to underestimate now.

Yes, you've already said that, multiple times, and I've already responded to that, multiple times. Rather than repeat 5 paragraphs of things you've already said, maybe answer this: What else is Russia capable of? Beyond terror-bombing civilian infrastructure and throwing meat into fortified positions, what else is Russia even capable of with their peasant army and 1960's surplus equipment? You keep framing this as if it's a choice for Putin, rather than the only option he has available.

Yeah, we understand what you think you're point is. It's just not a very good one. At a basic level, you have to accept that there's a threshold where the amount of lives and equipment lost is not worth the amount of territory being gained. If not, then you're proposing that losing 1,000,000 soldiers to capture a cow path would be acceptable in Mad Vlad's mind. Assuming you can at least get on board with that logic, we have to assume what you actually mean is that Putin doesn't view casualties the same way we do, which is undoubtedly true, but completely irrelevant. He can devalue his people and overvalue territory all he wants, but he can't afford to continue losing soldiers and torpedoing his country's finances for as long as Ukraine could continue to cede territory. That's objective fact. Understanding that, you have to realize that Russia's efforts in this war hinge on the narrative. Their only hope is to win the information war - to convince the west they're way stronger than they are, that the situation is hopeless, and that their grinding advance is inevitable. It's not. Russia is always weaker/poorer/less capable than they pretend they are, but if enough Army Guys buy into Putin's propaganda spin, they'll win regardless.

Liz Truss the incompetent MAGA fangirl? The one who resigned in disgrace after 45 days as the UK PM, after tabling its most disastrous budget in recent memory? We're going to that Liz Truss for a review of Carney? 😑 That reads in his favor.

All it suggests is that they're not capable of anything else. 🙃 It explains how Ukraine narrowed the artillery shell advantage from 10:1 to 1.5:1 in less than a year, and how they'll be able to quickly outscale Russia with even the slightest amount of commitment. Fortunately for Russia, they have guys like you doing everything they can to promote the inevitability of their victory. Yes, and that was my point. You keep talking about how Ukraine relies on foreign military aid to underline its weakness, but dismiss the reality that Russia has relied heavily on shitholes like North Korea and Iran. That's the whole point, isn't it? Ukraine needs the support to hold off and defeat Russia, and here you are doing everything you can to argue against it. 😑

At horrific cost and of near-meaningless strategic value. It'd be hard to believe that you did, if I didn't already know better. "Advancing is advancing", as you keep saying, is absolute nonsense and displays a shocking ignorance of even the most basic parts of sound military doctrine. As far as combined arms go, Russia has written a treatise on exactly what not to do. Russia cannot keep up if NATO (or even just Europe) resolves to continue supporting Ukraine. It's economically outclassed 10:1 by the EU alone. It's already dealing with 10% inflation and 21% interest rates, and their "economy" is more and more based on deficit-financed arms production. Last time they tried this was in 1989. Do you remember what happened? The fact that Russia has resorted to bringing North Korean troops (and workers for their factories) and is relying on Iranian and North Korean arms to support their war effort should tell you a lot.

Marxist....Zionist...Globalist... LOOK I GOT BINGO!

Trump has always been a joke. I suspect a large portion of his supporters also consider him one, but don't really care because he's pointing against what they've been annoyed with for the last 15-20 years - a government and public service concerned more with supporting minorities and their interests, than them. Maybe, but he doesn't help his case with comments like the one from this presser. Those not inclined to give a Liberal the benefit of the doubt after 10 years of Trudeau will hear it how it sounds. I think you're going to be very disappointed.