Moonbox

Slippery-slopes are weak rhetorical devices. They're usually referred to as examples of bad logic. Nobody is saying anything about individuals. We're saying that public servants are paid to serve the public, not their own best interests. There's a conflict of interest in public servants plugging for the Party that plays nicest with them. The Liberals benefit from this probably more than anyone, so if you want your tax dollars to go towards folk who are going to advocate and propagandize for the Party that pays them the most and holds them to the lowest standards, be prepared for our young people to get indoctrinated by charismatic teachers who post their own videos online.

This is common-sense stuff. Even in the best economy, there are always companies struggling or going out of business. A strong economy doesn't mean every single company is strong and succeeding. Competition, markets and demographics changing etc always generate layoffs and movement in the job market. Correct. The fact is that often the location and type of job openings available do not match where the workers are or what their skills are. When the coal-miner in Virginia loses their job, or Amazon warehouse clerk gets laid off after the pandemic online-shopping boom ends, the jobs that replace them might be in a different State or be higher-skill than. This is called frictional unemployment, and it's always happening.

While I don't think it's appropriate to disallow political commentary/criticism in general, that's not really what this is. When you have a federal police officer spending his private time publicly ridiculing the government over identity-politic issues like immigration and LGBTQ+, you open yourself up to accusations of bias and impartiality. These sorts of things are absolutely the type that an attorney would use in a courtroom to discredit an officer or even worse his entire unit/institution. Perhaps, but a case-by-case application of rules/standards leads quite a lot open to interpretation. Having political opinions and expressing them like an adult is one thing. Being a hyperbolic mouthpiece over wedge-politics online is another. Folks need to keep in mind that for every police officer or soldier there is complaining about the Liberals, there are 10x as many teachers, nurses and civil administrators ready to tell everyone how racist and corpo-friendly the conservatives are, and how they hate students, want to privatize health care and are destroying the environment. There's an inherent conflict of interest in this sort of political advocacy, and as a public servant who represents your organization, you IMO have a responsibility to recognize this and maintain a degree of public impartiality and professionalism. These groups know which Party butters their bread, and spending their free time plugging for the one that tends to support and pay them more is, IMO, highly inappropriate.

It's like musical chairs over there. Kids-stuff.

The fighting in Soledar is interesting because it's not a particularly important town, with its strategic significance mostly being its proximity to Bakhmut, which itself isn't itself strategically important. The focus here seems to be that the Wagner Group has focused its strength there, hoping to demonstrate its ability to capture territory where the rest of the Russian Armed forces have failed. The focus on Bakhmut has mostly puzzled Ukrainian generals and western observers. Interesting news for me this week is how NATO seems to be sending heavier and heavier equipment to Ukraine now. Last week they announced infantry fighting vehicles like the Bradley and Marder were being sent, followed by french light tanks. The next shoe to drop will be Main Battle Tanks, with Britain looking to potentially send Challenger 2's and Poland hoping to send Leopard 2 systems. The Russians do not have a match for these vehicle, and legacy equipment like their T-72's have proven woefully inadequate against 3rd generation tanks like the Challenger or the Abrams.

Perhaps, but the rational talk gets suffocated by the stupidity on both sides. The knee-jerk reaction for either is to point to the extremes. Natural gas and nuclear plants are two rational solutions, but even THOSE get protested (again, by both sides). The Karens and Kens wet their beds at the prospect of coal plants being shut down and energy costs going up marginally, and the tree huggers go apeshit at the thought of natural gas because it's another (albeit massively cleaner) fossil fuel, or because nuclear waste has a long half-life. Neither will accept a half-measure. It's all or nothing, or everyone goes REeeeee!

Right, but we don't solve anything by declaring war on climate science, or the "alarmists". We do it by pointing at bad policy and presenting better alternatives. Climate change is a serious problem. Governments are investing in R&D. Some means of energy production are better/cleaner than others. Just because we don't have perfect solutions doesn't mean we don't do anything. There's lots that we can do to begin already. Natural gas burns ~40-45% cleaner than coal, but we have certain groups and jurisdictions fighting even that transition. F'em. There are frothing greens out there who will bi**ch and moan that we're replacing one fossil fuel for another. F them too. 45% reduction in emissions for power generation is huge, and it's economically viable. No solution is perfect, but that doesn't mean we don't pick any.

Most Canadians agree. That 2/3 of our main party leaders are boobs is fairly common sentiment. Surely the 3rd isn't just as bad or worse...right? ☹️ The climate stuff isn't BS, and you aren't the spokesperson for the Canadian people. That much of our climate agenda has been some combination of ill-advised, out-of-touch or downright corrupt is (IMO) inarguable. Sadly we have polarized politics where on one side we have "smelly Walmart people" denying the very idea of climate change, and the other hand we have equally ignorant Greta wannabes peddling outrage and distaste for anyone who doesn't unquestionably fall in line with the existing agenda. There is a middle ground where we take the problem seriously and come up with practical solutions where we invest in the proper projects/policies/technology without a lot of influence-peddling and grift, but all of the oxygen gets sucked out of the debate by people screaming at each other.

Because the NDP is going to vote in-line with Pierre Poilievre? ? If it happens, and I highly doubt it will, it would only be if circumstances lined up to make it disadvantageous for the Conservatives. The NDP under Jaghmeet is...not impressive.

Because all of their energy was spent complaining about Harper, and the fact that Trudeau is doing what they were complaining about is cognitive dissonance they’d prefer to not think about. This pretty normal for both sides.

I don’t know anything about that, but it seems dumb.

Like I said, trying to buy something for $25 that ships for more than $25 is usually silly. Unless you're collecting something rare/specific, you can probably go on Kijiji locally and buy the same thing for $40, but no shipping (or better). That doesn't really make any sense.

It's funny how this went from the Liberals crying foul over the program 10 years ago and eventually cancelling the sole-source bid, to one-upping it and buying even more of the planes than Harper had planned. Well done guys. Well done. ?

Comedy is subjective, so I can hardly comment on what old folk used to call funny. What is definitely funny is that guys like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson were so insecure and had been mocked and laughed at for so many years by Late Night hosts that Fox News felt they needed their own "comedy" show to try and counter it. ?

That doesn't make sense. I suspect you're goofing something up and not reading it right. . If you're selling on eBay and shipping it yourself (rather than using one of the tied-in services that eBay offers), then eBay couldn't/shouldn't charge HST. What would they charge it on? They have no idea what the final cost is when you go to Canada Post. If you're shipping from Canada, whoever ships it will charge you HST, and aside from international duties that should be the end of it.

Okay, so you're old. ? Explains why you like Gutfeld!

The shipping is irrelevant. That has nothing to do with the government. The HST always applied to shipping. That eBay is getting slapped with HST means your item cost $3-4 more.

That's not how companies post their hiring data, goof. Lockheed doesn't go out and do a presser announcing, "We are hiring 20,000 people RIGHT NOW". They do, however, exactly that with layoffs. As far as news articles go, you will find far more of sweeping layoffs at specific companies than of hiring, even when the job market is good (and it was near-record good in 2022). As for Lockheed, the best I know is they hired 20,000 people since 2020, with 10,000 in 2021. They had 5000 open positions in the Spring, and just announced they're adding 500-600 workers at their Orlando campus. https://news.clearancejobs.com/2022/05/23/lockheed-martin-on-a-hiring-surge-offering-large-signon-bonuses-for-key-programs/ That's just one example, among many, that when all added up lead to net-positive jobs in December, despite your doom-porning.

So...what exactly is your argument here? Overall job numbers don't matter because you can trawl the news feeds looking for examples of companies that laid people off? As for companies doing tons of hiring in 2022, look at Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Chase, Deloitte and more. It's pretty goofy to be pointing at individual company layoffs as signs of the apocalypse when the economy is adding more than they're losing, by wide margins. Fake news though, right? Government-friendly statistics.... ?

Not necessarily. There are a lot of wholesalers who buy in bulk and sell new to customers through places like Ebay, effectively circumventing the sales tax. For used items being sold for less than what you paid, it probably shouldn't apply, but a lot of online selling is just a store or business or wholesaler selling directly to customers. Canada has no reason to worry about the well-being of companies like eBay. Not because of sales tax. If it costs you $25 to ship an item that costs $25, that's hardly the government's fault, and it's ridiculous that you'd even try to argue it is. There are numerous private delivery firms that compete for the shipping/parcel business, so use them if you think Canada Post is grifting you. The HST on a $25 item is what...$3-4? How on Earth are you blaming the government for the other $30+??? ?

Pile-up into job growth to end 2022 you mean??? ? https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/06/us-jobs-report-december-2022-economy US added jobs overall in last economic update (December). https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-december-jobs-unemployment-falls/ The same story in Canada. Cherry-picking news from individual companies might be seem compelling if have a doom-porn fetish, but that's all they're good for.

Yes yes, I can always move on without commenting - sort of like could have here too right? ? Because their plans sucked. The 2021 Conservative environmental platform was a joke. There's no contradiction in disliking one option, and liking a stupider alternative even less. September was a long time ago. Since then Trudeau is up (don't know why), and PP is down, as evidenced by the Dec 19 poll. Again, it's earlier, and it's also showing the Tories are down (along with the Liberals). The NDP were the net winners in that poll. Just being angry doesn't get any any point across. F*CK TRUDEAU is inarticulate, incoherent anger - the equivalent of toddlers having tantrums. You don't engage with angry adult babies for the same reason you don't a toddler having a meltdown. It just leads to more and bigger problems down the road. We've had a front-row seat to this phenomenon in the US. The Constitution is irrelevant to this conversation, and it's silly to bring up. Of course I'm being judgemental. So what? What I'm mad about is the general (and thoroughly predictable) incompetence of the Trudeau Liberals, and their poor management of our finances. Unfortunately the current iteration of the CPC sucks all of the oxygen out of these topics, focusing instead on culture-war bullshit, as well as yoking and echoing the rage, ignorance and/or conspiracy theories of the dumbest part of their base. Hard pass. That's one of the more ridiculous things you've said here on this forum. We have far more in common than we don't. Sure, and getting rid of him should be a chip-shot for the Conservatives given his inarguably poor performance. Instead, the CPC chose a caustic mouthpiece and populist - the guy who'd best galvanize the opposition and turn away the middle-right voters the Party needs to actually form a government. It's possible he could still win, but PP's so unpalatable outside the base that you set the bar really low for Trudeau. This is massive thread-derailment at this point though. If we want to continue this conversation we probably need another thread for it.

Blackbird has a right to practice and speak about his religion, and so do adherents to the flying spaghetti monster. That doesn't mean anyone is required to listen, or that they need to politely nod their head when he devolves a secular debate into a question of theology...over and over again. I'm pretty sure I never said carbon pricing is working, and I've definitely said that carbon offsets are a scam. You steer yourself where you want to go when you read here. I have a beagle, and she might be better than Trudeau, but Pierre Poilevre isn't. What polls are those? The last I read was in December, and he was historically unpopular for new conservative leaders. https://angusreid.org/justin-trudeau-pierre-poilievre-inflation-health-care/ Whether or not the Conservatives are doing okay in the polls is another matter, but how poor of an impression PP has made so far, the party's polling gains are in spite of him, rather than because of him. The F*ck Trudeau stickers and flags are retarded - the symbol of angry, ignorant children who can't communicate like big boys/girls. Trudeau may be the worst PM we've ever had (I'd say his dad is the only contender for worse), but that doesn't mean we can't follow the Americans down the path of incoherent rage and lead ourselves into the abyss like they did. Pierre Poilievre so far has nothing but amplify this stupidity, and I'll vote for the hamster before I vote for what he's so far offered.

I'm not being dishonest. You're being dopey. You brought up climate change. However you figure it related to the topic, you brought it up. Wondering why you got responses and conversation on that after bringing it up yourself is a giant facepalm.