Moonbox

Except there's tons of data, including but not limited to the disproportionately way higher rate of admission to the ICU (and death) of unvaccinated people. Your ignorance sadly doesn't make that less true.

Nope. That's an appallingly ignorant claim, proving you either don't know what IFR even means or you're utterly clueless about how math, epidemiology or straight common-sense work. If a disease had an IFR of 100% but could only be transmitted by licking rats or infected people's inner-ear, nobody would be too concerned. That's why viruses like Ebola, Marburg or Hantavirus don't cause nearly the same health scares as something like COVID, despite having IFR's 25-90x higher. They're not nearly as infectious, thus easier to control, thus far less dangerous. That's utter, completely made-up bullshit, and I say that as someone who actually speaks to life insurance actuaries and follows this data on a semi-regular basis.

It's not a suspension of human rights. It's a reasonable limit to the guarantee of specific rights in the face of a health crisis. There comes a point when the costs outweigh the gains for the mandates and restrictions, and I think those were reasonable arguments to make even before the end of 2021, but not on the basis of pseudo-science, questionable conclusions drawn from good data, or straight-up falsehoods, one of the most obvious being this gem: Which isn't true by any measure - with even the mild Omicron variant being ~40% more likely than the seasonal flu to cause death - this after almost two years of COVID circulating through the population already. This also ignores that the IFR is only one piece of the puzzle when comparing COVID to influenza, with COVID being demonstrably more virulent/infectious.

At all costs? Totalitarian controlling mindset? When you stop screaming into your pillow and can actually speak without hyperbole, more people will take your seriously and listen to what you have to say. The foolishness and ignorance behind your conspiracy theories and rabid hyperbole are what scare most people. You can barely go one post without raving about totalitarians or nazis, so it shouldn't be a surprise nobody's really paying attention to you. Like with the doomsayer wailing on the street, we walk past as quickly as possible and tune you out.

That's too bad, because your Rights under the Constitution are not limitless and guaranteed "only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society." In this case you right to earn a livelihood was balanced against the general population's health and safety and the limits were deemed reasonable. You were even given a choice on the matter, and if you chose not to be vaccinated then too bad, so sad, you were going to have to tough it out and live with the consequences. It wasn't oppression or discrimination. It was a science-backed health mandate that applied to everyone across the country and was implemented to save lives and keep people safe. The unvaccinated folk were an unnecessary health risk that prolonged the pandemic and endangered people and your pseudo-science and cherry-picked dissenters fell light-years short of demonstrating otherwise. I was standing up for the rights of people to remain safe from ignorant, obstinate and selfish fools who chose to make a health crisis way worse than it ever needed to be on the basis of conspiracy theories. When our government demonstrated an actual threat to our rights (the Emergency Act), I did take issue.

Most of the cases for fines aren't even being pushed forward. Seeing cases for minor fines when the Courts are backlogged by 6 months or longer are about as low on the priority list as parking tickets. For the cases that are being thrown out, it's usually because law enforcement errors (like misinterpreting the rules), or because they've been delayed too long to proceed. Constitutional challenges, however, have been expedited through the Courts and have in almost all cases been dismissed, with judgments emphasizing the point that the mandates are, in fact, Constitutional.

If I'm an elder here in my 30's then I guess this board is filled with children. but how often are we really excited about our party leaders? With how many compromises are required to gain widespread appeal, the best you can usually ask for is someone who doesn't scare you and who's better than the rest.

Sure, but the media isn't wrong because it's the mainstream media, and that's the central delusion of your viewpoint - that journalists from all different political stripes, backgrounds and countries from around the world (and often conflict with each other) are all in lockstep telling the same lies. The fact of the matter is that 90% of Canadians got vaccinated and were following the mandates and the science believing that this would hasten the "return to normal". A small subset of the population, however, refused all of the above and then proceeded to tell everyone they were better judges of the science, that they cared more about freedom and that the government they'd just re-elected was tyrannical. No media spin was required to turn popular opinion against them. Tamara Lich is not a reasonable person, and whatever legitimate concerns the protestors had were drowned out in their absurd hyperbole and the obstinate nuisances they made of themselves. Blocking $300M worth of daily trade at the Ambassador Bridge was so ridiculously tone-deaf for a movement trying to argue about the damage being caused to the economy that it was clear from the outset that they weren't reasonable. I don't have a cable, so whatever. Youtube and podcasts can have interesting/valid content, but then it's also full of mountains of bullshit. If that's the only place you're getting your news from, then you're filtering your sources to create a feedback loop that's going to repeat your views back to you.

I don't think they did. The mandates were set to end soon anyways and no government wanted to been seen as backing down from the rabble. The Emergencies Act was a farce and was a shameful abuse of power. It wasn't unconstitutional and the Courts have supported the mandates and dismissed almost every case brought against them. They weren't discriminatory either. There's no question that the rhetoric was divisive and went too far, however. There was absolutely an editorial bias, but that's because every newspaper has an opinion and attitude, and also tries to report on what they figure their audience finds important. The protestors were deeply unpopular because they were viewed as selfish, loudmouthed malcontents. Showing up with "Fuck Trudeau" signs was hardly a signal that there was going to be any productive dialogue, and some of the primary organizers of the protests (like Pat King and Tamara Lich) are idiots that set the tone. Like his father (who I previously felt was Canada's worst PM ever), Trudeau is an unprincipled populist who has nothing useful to say other than what he thinks his supporters want to hear. I can't stand him, but the wild hyperbole and the conspiracy theories don't hurt him. They just make his opponents look unreasonable and present an even worse alternative.

Regarding energy policy? Yeah absolutely.

Not really much of a pickle - that's the sorry moral equivalency I was talking about earlier. In what bizarre mental hellscape does the failure to deal with Jeffrey Epstein's crimes (Jeffrey Epstein, who was let off easy in 2007 by a friend of Trump and who was himself a friend of Trump) draw a favorable comparison of the Russian propaganda machine?!?!?!? The key difference, of course, is that on one hand we have Putin's regime banning independent media, strictly controlling the State media's message and outright murdering their critics and political opponents at home and abroad. On the other, we have hundreds of media organizations from around the world, coming from different cultures, perspectives and countries, all seeing and saying the same thing. GEEE. WHICH ONE IS MORE RELIABLE!???

Lots of people question them and criticize them, including myself. Look up my posts on this forum from when Trudeau was first elected MP and how I dreaded his name joining Parliament. I've hated the Trudeau name for as long as I can remember. Nobody calls me a freak, except maybe you jokers. Your problem is that you can't criticize the government without falling back on hyperbole, conspiracy theories and the tired, used-up rag of "Mm...mm.mainStrEAM MedIA". As soon as you pull out that gem, you've lost the debate and most reasonable people will justifiably tune you out. The truckers protest was a national embarrassment in the first place, but Trudeau doubled-down, fanned the flames and proceeded to embarrass himself and the government on top of that. It was a truly great moment for Canada.

Of course I know you're using hyperbole. It's not helpful though. Middle ground isn't for you to define. It's a vague and evolving range falling between opposite ends of the existing political environment. What was middle 30 years ago is 100% irrelevant to what is middle today. Never comes up for me personally. Sorry that my friends and I are educated? ?

Considering your "facts" are just your own rabid conclusions and opinions, that's really circular logic ? Yeah maybe I'm spreading "globalist propaganda". Let's consider who's more likely to be lying: 1) Russia, the invading country run by a 20-year despot whose opponents have a habit of being gunned down on the streets or being mysteriously poisoned by radioactive and/or nerve agents or 2) The entirety of the rest of the world, outside of Russia and beacons of freedom like China and North Korea. THIS is the central delusion of your demented world views. LOL! Like I said, if you're following Russian State media - I'm sure you could believe what you're saying there. It's a pathetic revelation of your state of mind though. When you're coping so badly with reality that Vladimir Putin is trustworthy but the rest of the world media (from Fox News, Al Jazeera, the BBC, Turkish News etc and all the way back to Canada) is all lying.

Uh huh. That's a mighty fine self-serving bias you got there ser. but you continue to repeat Russian propaganda claims. Where are you getting that from exactly? Can you compare that to the devastation of Grozsny? Your "understanding" is based on your careful filtering of information to suit your biases. Your attempts at moral equivalency would lead you to believe Trudeau arresting protestors occupying Ottawa for weeks is (give or take a few war crimes) pretty much the same thing as the Russian Federation flattening rebel cities, murdering opposition leaders and flat out banning independent media in Russia. Same thing, yup. For sure!

Sure you do, and sometimes he's actually right, but then sometimes he's just being inflammatory and you'll eat it up regardless. Harper was good at eviscerating his opponents in debates as well, but at least he understood that he had to win an election and that riling people like Zeitgeist up wasn't good enough. Do you see the problem with this comment? Please tell me that you can see it.

We'll have to wait and see who throws their hat into the ring. Part of the groundwork for that is seeing how serious the leadership contest will be. If it's just a coronation of Pierre Poilievre and his lead seems insurmountable, we can fast-forward 4 years to the next election the CPC loses and hope maybe THEN the Party will start to realize they can't keep repeating the same mistakes.

Or you could be an adult and acknowledge that both are stupid claims. The "you did it first" argument is kindergarten logic. but you trust Russian state media. Brilliant. ? There's two sides? REALLY!? It's kind of hard to have a dispute without two sides, so thank you for that brilliant insight. Nobody said that Ukraine is 100% innocent. I'm fully aware that Ukraine has right-wing extremists fighting in Donbass-Luhansk and that their government has proven dysfunctional and corrupt over the last 15-20 years. The reality, however, is that whatever issues they have don't excuse a Russian invasion, and they absolutely pale in comparison to Putin's abysmal record of human rights abuses (both foreign and domestic), the atrocities committed by his regime in places like Grozsny as well as everything going on in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. His claims of "genocide" by Ukrainian forces are a gross distortion of reality attempting to victim-blame Ukrainians, whilst shifting focus away from his own crimes. Outside of the Russian state media apparatus (or shameful apologists swallowing its propaganda abroad), everyone sees it for the sad joke that it is.

That's the underlying conceit of your logic. You've determined what's appropriately conservative and that nothing short of that is acceptable, despite the fact that these views are non-starters for most of the rest of Canada. Just because you can't have everything you want, doesn't mean you don't have choices. You can choose Pierre Poilievre or a politician cut from his cloth who most Canadians will want nothing to do with (thereby ensuring the continuation of Trudeau-style Liberals), or you can be an adult and accept that compromise is necessary. There are fiscal conservatives out there who could perhaps halt/reverse some of the creeping overreach of wokeism without scaring progressives away, but Pierre Poilievre ain't that.

Usually the simplest explanation is the right one, rather than nonsensical conspiracy theories. The idea that Freeland is purposely waving around Nazi symbols is so stupid and begs so many questions it's worth nothing but eyerolls, but it's what you want to believe so you'll move Mountains in your brain to have it somehow make sense to you. yet it's the separatists in these regions being criticized in the UN for their persecution of Roma people, Crimean Tatars etc. The fighting in these areas has no doubt turned ugly and war crimes are committed by both sides by, but in terms of ethnic cleansing, the criticism has been on Russian-backed separatists. That is, of course, unless you're following state Russian media and propaganda, which seems to be what you're doing. Wow! Such useful commentary! Unfortunately, the rest of your posts on this matter are decidedly anti-Ukraine and speak for themselves. It's pathetic and disgraceful.

There's no question. They keep losing elections the same way over and over again, provincially and federally. It seems they're more concerned with appealing to the base than actually winning elections.

and your line of reasoning is why the Conservatives keep losing. Doing the same things over and over and not learning anything from those mistakes is the definition of...something.

Ukraine didn't invade Russia, nor did they follow Nazi justification protocol for annexing Crimea and Luhansk/Donbass (100% parallel to Sudetenland). No, she was photographed with a red and black scarf that said "Glory to Ukraine", and she probably had no idea that it was linked to resistance movements in Ukraine going back to WW2 and that far-right extremists in Ukraine like to use it. At worst this was a gaffe, but for someone who cried endlessly about media reports of far-right extremism among the Truckers Protest, this is a pathetic example of your hypocrisy and the mental gymnastics you'll do to rationalize things you like vs things you don't like. Worse, however, is that you're actually spending your time making excuses for a regime run by a criminals that regularly murders its opposition leadership, that has almost fully banned independent media and that has made criticizing the war in Ukraine a criminal offense. Now they've invaded a sovereign nation that demonstrably doesn't want them there and you're slurping Russian propaganda from telegram and the garbage-web and repeating it back to us. The wretched coping and rationalizing you have to do call Freeland a fascist while apologizing for Putin is shameful.

Did he say that actually West, or are you just bullshitting more? ?