Moonbox

Nope, sorry. Bible-thumpers are a very different breed than everyday Christians. You'd be considered one - the tasteless type prone to preaching and proselytizing to people uninterested in your religious messages.

? If he was talking purely about the military, I'd maybe listen carefully to what he has to say. Because he's ranting vaguely about whatever was grinding his gears at his time, and about society in general, I take his comments for what they were - ranting.

So he didn't bring up comments about "deplorables?" ? My god dude. I'm not saying he put a MAGA hat on. I'm saying he was pushing a lot of the same talking points. 5 generals - among the highest ranking members of the military and who should all be of unimpeachable moral character (or almost 4% of the active generals/admirals). The fact that none of have been proven is notable, but spurious sexual assault allegations are rare. As for the rest of the services, they're reporting on average 178/year, which is by my napkin math 3x higher than the national average. Don't know. If it's a low number, why are you so worried about it? I'm betting that these soldiers will take care to look after themselves, and you're unlikely to have trans folk with long neon pink locks poking their heads out of the brush to wave their hair around, or wear jangling nose chains in combat zones. So I know quite a few retired millennial soldiers, and curiously not a single one of them mentioned any of these things. What they did say was that there was a bloated and often clueless bureaucracy enforcing crappy culture that made serving (and particularly career advancement) a constant exercise in frustration. We have 129 generals/admirals for 65,000 service members (and shrinking). The US marines have ~60 generals for 180,000 service members.

I'd say we're seeing the opposite, and the fact that more moderate, non-Trumpian candidates fared better in the mid-terms would signal this. There are of course exceptions like Ron DeSantis, or people like Boebart in extremely safe republican districts succeeding, but by and large the culture-warriors and the election deniers were the ones who fared worse. When you have a lame-duck president like Biden presiding over poor economic conditions and general anxiety, we can probably both agree that the midterms should have gone better for the Republicans? Harper was a pragmatist. He won because he muzzled the social conservatives in the base. I miss Harper and the leadership he offered, regardless of how he managed to look like Darth Vader in a sweater. The fiscal conservative message he offered (but didn't always deliver) resonated with the swing voters in Canada that the Conservatives need, despite their wishes that it were otherwise. Which should serve as an indication on how unpalatable the CPC bases' social conservatism is to the RoC outside of the Prairies and rural Ontario. My vote for Trudeau in the last election was my first Federal Liberal vote since Paul Martin in like...2004 or something (I can't remember the year), and it was only because I had zero patience for O'Toole playing footsie with vaccine deniers and Bible Thumpers until right before the election. Cut that crap out and urban Ontario will fall in line. After 15 years of crappy Ontario Liberal governments blowing holes in our pockets, we're not keen on seeing it happen Federally.

It wasn't meant to be demeaning. Monetary policy and inflation economics are esoteric to probably 99% of the population. It's not simple theory with simple problems and simple answers, and even the average 4 year econ grad only has a baseline understanding. I'm not what would be considered an expert either, but I do speak to and listen the people who are. Today's unusual inflation is still almost all supply-driven. The COVID lockdowns were disastrous on supply chains and many of these issues have still not been sorted. Russia and Ukraine have made that problem a whole lot worse. The supply chain is healing gradually, but we're seeing a cocktail of inflation drivers still pushing prices. Now it's mostly labour/service driven, since the cost of goods has stabilized to an extent. Demand for everything is high still after 2 years of lockdown, so we have a booming labor market and workers who are demanding higher wages not only because they have more options but also because they need more to cover the increased of goods (a trickle-down effect). As I said, inflation isn't a purely Canadian or North American problem. It's a global problem with global inflation almost doubling the average compared to the last 10 years. This by itself should prove Justinflation and Liberal spending aren't to blame, but that's the narrative that opposition leaders around the world are peddling and voters aren't generally inclined to listen to detailed technical explanations when they can opt for a one-liner instead.

What would you say this was about then: “can you imagine a military leader labelling half of his command as deplorables, fringe radicals and less-thans and then expect them to fight as one?” Are you going to honestly say that wasn't a Hilary reference? ? I've no problem with the baby boom generation at large. I just have little regard or attention to spare to tedious old grumps who feel the need to talk down to younger generations and pontificate on how they're so much worse than the generations that came before. ? a threat? I'm not sure how many times I have to repeat it, but this speech was irrelevant. He talks about recruitment crisis but then whines about collective apologies (implied: towards Natives) and statues coming down (of figures that Native Canadians find troubling for their history), knowing full-well that Natives make up a disproportionate number of soldiers in the military. In the same speech he rails against cancel-culture while the CF's leadership is mired in sexual harassment scandals with an increasingly large female makeup. He complains about uniform and hair color/facial hair standards being changed to reflect a more diverse membership, and then tops it all off with a condescending rant about young people and their culture of entitlement, knowing full-well (once again) that this is the demographic the CF needs most. Michel Maisonneuve couldn't have done a much worse job making the case for young people to join than he did here, and to have so many officers present cheer his tone-deaf rambling just made the optics worse.

That's not really true though. Higher gas prices have demonstrable impact on consumer behavior. Though it's true that there's a floor for a lot of people who still have to commute to work or job sites, an expensive tank of gas or flight fuel costs have obvious impact on discretionary choices. It's not that simple at all though. QE can be problematic, or it can be very helpful as a policy tool when properly managed. This is a topic that's poorly understood, with even 4th year bus/econ grads having limited grasps. The average person understands it only on a conceptual level, making it an easy target for scapegoating and strawman. Every opposition government in the world right now is blaming the sitting government for inflation they didn't cause, and that's because this is an easy narrative to push that requires too much technical knowledge to debunk.

I think there are some fundamental misconceptions presented in this video that are problematic. First, Big C Conservatism is precisely why the Liberals keep getting elected. You are talking primarily about fiscal conservatism, which is something a lot of people in the middle or middle-right can get behind (this is an important small-c issue), but the social conservatism is what has turned all of these folks away for years, as dialamah explains. For climate change, you are talking about focusing on consumption but then criticize the carbon tax, which focuses on consumption. That's an odd take, but maybe I missed something. Your argument about central banking is overly simplistic and not really a specifically Canadian issue. Everything our central bank does is in the context of what the US Fed is doing, and it's really not just a matter of the money machines printing off cash to bail the government out of their spending. This is the narrative that conservatives and crypto-bros are pushing everywhere, but it's pretty detached from actual economics or monetary theory. Transitory inflation, for example, was the argument that supply chains were causing most of it and that this would ease over time. The economists at the time were not counting on China shutting down and promoting zero-COVID, nor did they anticipate another massive supply shock from the Russian invasion in Ukraine. In hindsight it's easy to say they got it wrong (and they did) but this is a horseshoe and hand-grenade sort of "science" that's never precise. The average voter (and the media at large) aren't exactly interested in an economists' Monte Carlo simulations.

It's not particularly hard to change the function of SAM to SSM. Russia's "thousands of older ballistic missile"s are likely in the same state of most of their older equipment - rusting and useless. If they weren't, why are they buying suicide drones from Iran? You can question the bias from western sources, but that doesn't mean they're always wrong about everything. ?

Old people whinging about the young'uns - tale as old as time, as certain as death and taxes. You're right that it wasn't specifically MAGA. Calling it wisdom is a laugh though, since all he did was parrott a long list of MAGA grievances for the Canadian perspective without expanding on them or providing any original thoughts or ideas. You could have replaced Michel Maisonneuve with any Minnesota farmer, told him not to talk about Mexicans or stolen elections, and you'd have heard a similar rant.

It only counts as biased if it's saying something you don't like, right? ?

You're projecting emotions on me that don't exist. As you said, this speech will be quickly forgotten and considered irrelevant. A retiring officer using his award acceptance speech as a soap box to natter off his bitter worldviews isn't worthy of much attention, or regard. Whether or not you agreed with the dude's ramblings wasn't really what we were talking about either, was it? Even I agreed with some of it (like the statues coming down, or the military needing more funding and equipment as part of recruitment efforts). What we were presumably talking about was how many parallels I could draw to MAGA slogans and grievances. This guy wasn't providing thoughtful, articulate criticism either. He was just nattering off a list of things he didn't like and vaguely complaining about them. Sure. I'm a Millennial and don't take criticism well. ?‍♂️ You realize we just acted out a cliché right? You get yourself worked up and go on a rant, and I don't listen (or read) most of it because you're not saying anything I haven't heard 100 times before, and I respond with "okay boomer". It's such a mystery why guys like Michel Maisonneuve are failing to win young hearts and minds.

Okay, but you're questioning my morals while defending someone you acknowledge was an awful human being not too long ago and who neither made amends nor showed sincere contrition. I feel comfortable with where I stand on the balance of morals vs you on this issue. He was 14. No, it's not. That's the whole point. The message being sent is that this behavior is not tolerated anymore - period. Don't be a horrible, entitled little tw*t and think you can do whatever you want without consequences because you're good at hockey and popular at school. I can give you names of players who have been booted from the league for bad conduct years before they ever played, so let's not pretend that they're all allowed carte-blanche. Sure it does, if that's all there is to the story. I suspect, however, that's not the case. There's no statute of limitations on this sort of thing, and 35-40 years ago, the world and attitudes towards things like sexual assault were very different. I suspect for this you're referring to all of the officers in the military losing their positions. Why do you keep talking about 10-13 years old? Mitch Miller was 14. One thing I think that is funny about this attitude you have here is how you're lamenting the little jerk's punishment. I can give you cases of teenage bullies being criminally charged for bullying. In Mitch Miller's case, the NHL and its teams are just not interested with working with him. He was a nasty little turd and he's given them ample reason to believe nothing has changed, and he was never entitled to play for them.

No, you asked me why I was "howling at the moon" over the speech. I was joking that the only MAGA talking point he didn't mention was the stolen elections. Here are your MAGA grievances/talking points: 1. Climate extremism ? 2. Collective apologies (in the context of 4000 dead/missing residential school students, or sexual harassment problems within military leadership in Canada) 3. "Erasing history" (an absurd idea, but no doubt pointing to statues being taken down etc) 4. The untrustworthy MSM and the young, woke journalists 5. Cancel-culture - according to him as soon as you're merely accused of something you're DONE! 6. Socialism (those darned entitled kids getting their endless handouts). 7. "Special interest groups" 8. Comments about divisive leaders, pointedly implicating Hilary Clinton and her "deplorables" comments while curiously not saying anything about Donald Trump, who's been by far the most divisive leader in US history. 9. Canada can be Great again I told you already. The man's speech reads like an old Trumpy boomer complaining about millennials. Some of these comments in isolation would probably be unremarkable, but to go on a long, winding diatribe about all of the above in an acceptance speech for a military service award was not only pretty bizarre, it also followed a pretty clear agenda. He went out on soap box he was provided to rant his politics at people, and they were all following a boringly predictable template.

Gotta love these thread/article/video titles. "_____ OWNS Liberal in debate" "_____ DESTROYS theory of ______" Take a darling of the far right, say they're doing something in ALL CAPS (for emphasis duh), and then post it on Rebel Media, or 4chan or whatever moldy basement website you're following for the day. Easy clicks.

Where was I howling at the moon? I merely agreed with you that this speech would be quickly dismissed and regarded as irrelevant and tone-deaf. Perhaps you could clarify all the things he outlined that were wrong with the actual military, rather than the shopping list of MAGA grievances that he checked off? This isn't even really hyperbole. Aside from claims of stolen elections, he pretty much ran the full program, including complaining about Hilary Clinton.

Not really true. If we doubled our military budget, it wouldn't bankrupt us. We'd need a small increase to taxes or to cut the fat our somewhere else. We'd still not have a big military capable of much force projection, but it would be a far cry better than what we have now. We waste a lot of money these days. If Army Guy is right about anything, it's that Trudeau is fast and loose with our money.

I don't know. It didn't work out here though. We should at least be pushing these pipelines through now. It's madness to me that it's so hard to get at least that done.

Yes that's fair. Mass graves is a mischaracterization that's bounced around everywhere (including my post). What they do know is that thousands of childrens died and/or went missing at residential schools, and over a thousand potential unmarked graves have been identified. Many of these investigations only started this summer, but I'd argue the most important part of the story is how many natives died in residential schools. ?‍♂️

Right. Okay. I can never keep track of what I am to people on this forum. One minute I'm a Trudeau flunky and the next I'm a Trudeau hater. ? The NEP appropriated foreign investments without compensation, thereby scaring off external capital for years. It also flopped majestically, turning out to be a massive waste of money that provided no benefit to anyone and turned Alberta (and the Prairies to a lesser extent) into even more of a wasteland for the Liberals for the next 40+ years. Even Pierre Trudeau fans generally acknowledge the utter failure and foolishness of the NEP.

Disagree. We could go through it line by line and draw the parallels, but do you really care? I suspect not. My favorite part about the whole thing is how he complained about collective apologies (with the context of our recent history discovering mass-graves near residential schools) in a room full of totem polls shortly after watching an aboriginal dance performance. Talk about tone-deaf. I'm not really too sure what you think Scandinavian social programs have with cancel culture in Canada.

Well the generals speech was parroted directly from the MAGA playbook, checking off all the right boxes and complete with "Canada can be great again". As for conspiracy clowns, show us again how much hyperbole you can fit into one sentence.

This is one of the big issues with Canada's energy strategy. We missed the boat on our own refining capacity 40+ years ago with Trudeau's dirtbag father and the disgraceful NEP etc. We would certainly be in a better place with more oil domestic oil production and refining today, but we had to build the infrastructure and capacity decades ago, and we didn't. Trying to fix it now would be throwing good money after bad, so the only thing we really can do (as Army Guy said) is drop some of the gas tax to provide temporary relief. Will that happen? Unlikely IMO.

Fine by me. The guy's speech was pretty much MAGA copy-paste, but for a Canadian audience.

You filled out my BINGO card of conspiracy slogans, and all in one post! Thank you!