Moonbox

He really wasn't. Trudeau will be forgotten as an ineffective dolt 10 years. Trump will long be remembered as not only the worst president in US history, but probably the worst leader in the G7 since WW2. Keep convincing yourself of that if you have to, but the fact is that Canadians found the Freedom Convoy such an ignorant, stupid and distasteful movement that they barely even cared about the Emergency Act. This wasn't Far-Left sentiment. This was just...everyone sentiment. Even the majority of the CPC members disagreed with what they were doing. PP is hardly Stephen Harper 2.0. At best he's doing an impression of Preston Manning. Though he's certainly no Donald Trump, the Freedom Convoy was VERY Trumpy (as is your moronic hyperbole) and by voicing his support for them and by being a bit of a demagogue himself, that's how Canadian voters will view him. His Purity politics in the leadership campaign is only confirming it.

Nobody's asking you to show up at the parade in your buttless chaps. There is a bare minimum requirement, however, that politicians guarantee and defend rights on these issues. They can choose not to at their own peril, but having something like 10% of the electorate not trust you and then being unpopular with women is not a great starting point for an election campaign. I do hold everything Justin's done against him, but it too will end up being a blip on the radar. The Emergency Act was unnecessary and an abuse of power, but it will be remembered as a cautionary tale rather than a turning point in Canadian politics. This is something that Trudeau can and should lose his government over, but here's the problem: The Freedom Convoy represents something worse to Canadians - an embracing of Trump-style politics and all of the ignorance, hate and anger it represents. The craziest thing about the Emergencies Act isn't it was invoked without proper grounds, but rather that Canadians were so strongly against the Freedom Convoy that they didn't even care that much. Say whatever you want about Trudeau, he wasn't worse than the Conspiracy Theorist in Chief. and I'm almost certain that's bad for Canada. It's bad for the Conservative Party because they'll lose the next election and it's also bad for Canadians because Trudeau and/or his government will be rewarded for their poor performance.

Balancing the budget is common sense and math. There's nothing ideological about making sure you don't spend more than you can afford. Who are you...concurring with, exactly?

There's plenty of garbage on CNN and MSNBC too, but nothing like Tucker Carlson. Wait a second...you think that the Russians (who are trying to hold the world hostage on energy) are negotiating on behalf of the Americans (who have sanctioned them to oblivion), to circumvent the only leverage the Russians have? Am I getting this right? ?

A "what if" is exactly what this is, and a foolish one to boot. Ukraine isn't part of NATO. It was refused NATO membership, over and over again, so this is just a silly red-herring. Miloburke is exactly right in his assessment. Putin just can't accept that Ukraine would drift away from Russia and potentially end up happier and more prosperous than the crumbling tragedy that he's led Russia into. He fears that the same thing could happen in Russia, and given Ukraine's historical ties to Russia his failures would be all the more apparent. Having a pro-west Slavic nation with sizeable Russian population on his doorstep with deep cultural and familial ties to Russia make it hard/impossible for him to control the political narrative. You can fool Igor in Russia with censors forever when he regularly speaks to his sister Olga in Kyiv.

The problem with Trudeau is he's cast the tent poles so wide that he seems to stand for everything but actually stands for nothing. He's great at seeing which way the wind blows and knows well enough to support vaccines and health mandates that are popular in the current day, but otherwise he appears to just be a waste of time that offers little more than empty speeches about what being "Canadian" is. I can't even listen to him speak anymore. Even so, prior to the Emergency Act he really hadn't done much. He was a clueless (but mostly harmless) goof that followed the advice of people smarter than him and didn't rock the boat too much, which is an appealing quality of its own sometimes when measured against alternatives.

So we agree on that at, at least. Because they weren't very sincere. Like I said before, you can't just mumble some mealy-mouthed assurances that abortion or gay marriage rights debates won't be part of the agenda. The unfortunate reality for the fundamentalist Conservative base is that there are millions and millions of gay people and women who like to have sex in Canada, and nothing short of emphatically defending their rights on these issues is going to suffice. Harper understood that. The candidates since have not. Then there's the Freedom Convoy, which was hugely unpopular and viewed (rightly IMO) as an angry mob of ignorant losers that even most Conservative voters found distasteful. Aligning with those clowns (as Polievre has) will perhaps appeal to PPC voters and the CPC base, but it will turn off the centrist voters required to form a government. It's a choice. If you have two terrible options, you choose the less terrible one. The adult solution here is elect someone who can bring the most voters into the CPC tent and win an election, which Pierre Poilievre is the opposite of. If the CPC chooses to elect him leader, they'll have nobody but themselves to blame when they fail. Canada will end up with the government they chose, and that won't be his.

No they haven't. The Russian military is full of conscripts who don't even want to be there, and the idea that they've been "surgical" is a freaking joke. Their initial plans have been embarrassingly thwarted. Like in Chechnya, the Russians are turning to their usual solutions - bombardment and indiscriminate brute force. Putin's "concerns" are a farce. He dreams of a restored greater Russia, but nobody wants to be part of it or its "sphere of influence". Under his leadership, the Russian economy is a shambles and most Russians live in poverty. The fertility rate is far below replacement rates and demographic trends will see its population shrink in the coming years while immigration rates fail to make up the difference. Unsurprisingly, a poverty-stricken dictatorship ranks relatively low on the list of desired destination for immigrants. I don't think Putin is mad. I think he's desperate and completely amoral. This is an old, evil little man realizing his dreams were crumbling to dust and that maintaining the status-quo only made things worse. He attempted to intimidate and bluster his neighbors into submission (a play directly out of the impotent-bully playbook) but they called his bluff. Ukraine turned out to have a spine. NATO turned out to have a spine. Most surprisingly of all, the EU also ended up having a spine. Now he's stuck in a campaign that will make both Soviet and American campaigns in Afghanistan look like grand successes by comparison, and his economy will be fall apart as part of the backdrop. This is the end for Putin, and I bet he knows that. What's so pathetic about your reasoning is that the solution to all of this would be to give everything that this murderous little despot wanted, rather than him just...not invading Ukraine. It's so dumb and so morally bankrupt it raises clear questions about your character.

Okay so now we have a right, a left and then a centre. Great. Now we're getting somewhere. Even amongst those groups, however, there are wide ranges of attitudes and they can't be strictly defined. Rather than looking at this (as you seem to) as a one-dimensional sliding scale of left to right, you'd be better of looking at it as a Venn diagram, where the groups and subgroups within them have varied attitudes that can overlap on some issues but disagree completely on others. A red Tory, for example, might be on board for everything you said above. He/she just might also be pro-immigration, strongly pro-science and emphatically anti-Trump, which would put him in conflict with parts of the Conservative base. This voter therefore has to measure the trade-offs and will end up voting for the party that can reassure . You don't have to support Trudeau. He's deeply unpopular and your views are shared by people across the political spectrum - liberals, conservatives, NDPers, quebecquers etc. He should be easy to defeat...unless the opposition is Pierre Poilievre and Jagmeet Singh. ?

They weren't treated like the enemy. They tried to transition out of almost nowhere from a command economy into an open one over a period of a few years and the process was corrupted by mobsters and well-connected apparatchiks. Russia had like less than 10 years of briefly experimenting with democracy before Vlad and his KGB and mobster friends took over. Even then, plenty of leaders and countries cozied up with Russia and established deep trade ties and it wasn't until 2008-2009 (Georgia, the gas crisis with Ukraine etc) that the west started to really sour on Russians again, and only half-heartedly until recently. No, it's all for nothing because of Putin. The invasion of Ukraine proves NATO's raison for being. Sweden and Finland are talking about joining now, and it's purely because they're not strong enough to defend themselves against Putin's naked aggression. If you want to talk about the extremists in Ukraine, you have to talk about the Russian-backed ones going tit-for-tat with the Azov brigade, as well as the Russian persecution of Crimean Tatars. There are bad actors on both sides, but Putin invaded Ukaine and is shelling its cities, not the other way around. You're here making apologies for him because you're so desperate for something to explain why the world doesn't work the way you want that you're easy pickings for Russian propaganda and the bots and garbage they post on telegram and your conspiracy websites. It's freaking sad.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/you Go take a look for yourself. There's you (singular), you (plural) and you (proverbial/general). You act like "conservative" and "liberal" is hardcoded programming or something. If your thinking was correct, then the outcome of the election would be the same every time give or take the difference in voter turnout, because a "conservative" is night and day different than a "liberal" and there's no way to bridge the gap between. The error of this thinking should be...self explanatory. I suppose it's impossible, in your mind, than people can form intelligent, informed and nuanced opinions on a variety of different issues and decide where they stand on a case by case basis. They just have to "pick a side" - team white or team black, and then you have to follow what they say.... Do you even think before you write this shit? Some of the stuff you (specifically) say is pretty foolish, but I suppose you're not nearly as silly as some of the other brainlets on this forum and I can't lump you in generally with them - my apologies if you thought that's what I was doing. Along these lines, however, perhaps you then understand the problems with framing everyone as strictly "liberal" or "conservative" with nothing in between. Clearly if you're not part of the "far right", then you acknowledge there are degrees. If you can acknowledge that there are degrees, then you have to also acknowledge that the political environment is more complex then a demarcation line with completely opposite people on either side.

Who was complaining about that, exactly? Nobody!? Was that just another pointless red herring? Sure was. Pierre Poilievre's divisiveness is on full-display just in how he attacks Jean Charest as "un-Conservative." From the outset, he's aiming to exclude and shrink the tent. That's a great way of getting the base in Alberta all fired up, but the small-c conservatives among whom Charest is popular are effectively being told, "You're not welcome". That's basically all of Quebec, the Maritimes and urban Canada. Great strategy. ? Before you natter on about Charest being a Quebec Liberal, there is no real Federalist Conservative Party in Quebec. It's the Liberals or a separatist party. Just like how the PC's in Ontario are very different from the federal Tories, so too are the Quebec Liberals way different than the Federal ones.

I've voted PC in every Ontario provincial election. I voted for Harper every time but the first time he ran (Paul Martin instead) and then voted against Trudeau in every election except for the last one, and only because I supported the mandates and I couldn't tell wtf O'Toole was about or what he stood for. Even then, I regretted it by early 2022 and think Trudeau's done exactly what I feared he would - polarize Canada and turn Alberta and the Prairies against the rest of the country just like his father did. Regardless, Pierre Poilievre will just throw more gasoline on the fire. Picking another divisive idiot as a counter-movement against Trudeau doesn't fix anything. It just feels good to hear your anger and frustration validated by someone.

You do realize that you can be plural, right? ? My line in the sand is Pierre Poilievre and the worm that he is. I won't vote for him, nor will most of Canada. Your line in the sand is that people who don't vote for him are 100% opposite of you, as if they're an alien species or they come from China or something. because it's a retarded question and misses the point entirely. The "left" that you keep referring to isn't a specific identity, nor is the "right". There's a wide range of attitudes in Canada and many of them overlap. Before the clown parade infested this board, I'd have considered myself right-of-centre. I've never liked Trudeau. I'm 100% pro-pipelines. I'm 100% against ineffective green energy spending (like Ontario's Green Shift). I'd like to see the public service shrink and think they're grossly overpaid. I think wokeness has gone too far. Because I supported vaccine mandates and thought the Freedom Convoy was stupid, however, I'm a left-woke-totalitarian-fascist, and Pierre Poilievre would agree with you. Oooookay. ?

It is about you and your crappy attitude and what you're saying. Complaining about how divided we are after telling us, is foolish, and that should be self-evident. YOU have decided that people who don't agree with you are 100% opposite of you. YOU have drawn an arbitrary line in the sand and proclaimed that everyone on the other side is against you, and that you have nothing in common and can find no common ground. YOU have decided this is a battle where one side wins over the other, and no compromise is possible. Your anger and frustration doesn't make this intellectually compromised viewpoint any more rational. It's a hypocrisy sandwiched in irony...or maybe irony sandwiched in hypocrisy.

Or maybe it's not, and all of this wailing and gnashing of teeth is just a lot of lame coping with Canada moving in a direction you can't handle. Too bad, so sad. As for poverty, our debt levels are miles better than the Americans, so maybe you can go to Florida and help them sort it all out.

Somehow I'm not surprised.

The Russians who have immigrated here did so because they preferred Canada over Putin's Russia. The Russians here are criticizing Putin, as are Russian expats around the world. They're the only ones who can get past the Russian censors. 200,000 Russians have emigrated from the country in the last 2+ weeks, and they speak out as well. Most of the folks complaining about russiaphobia are Putin apologists and conspiracy clowns, only pretending to care about discrimination or racism when the regime that's been feeding them propaganda for the last 6 years gets nailed with sanctions and boycotts. Black people, hispanics, muslims - NO WAY! KEEP THEM OUT OF OUR COUNTRY! Those poor, poor Russians though. ?

I'll gladly stay out of the clown parade. Most of Canada will too.

Sure that's why the Ukrainians are fighting NATO right now.

All or nothing! Agree with me on everything or you're a commie nutter! I've voted Conservative...like 90% of the time. I've also been a Trudeau hater for as long as I could vote. Like I said before, you can search me on this forum and find posts about me complaining about him back when he originally elected as an MP. That's what makes this sort of ranting so unbelievably retarded. If believing the conspiracy theories, yelling moronic rhetoric about commies and fascists and just generally being an ignorant fool is the pre-requisite for being part of the CPC, you'll have a pretty small tent! Good luck in the election....

NATO got too aggressive with what? With not allowing Ukraine to join when they asked? ?

Where are the nukes in Ukraine, goof? It's pathetic how suspicious you are of western media, but then you're on your knees believing literally everything that comes out of Putin's Russia. Worse yet is the moral equivocating, something something about Cuba therefore invading Ukraine is totally fine! It's warped thinking, both intellectually and morally bankrupt.

I don't think either of them can win the party leadership, but they have 6 months to sort it out I guess. Preston Manning 2.0 Pierre Poilievre will do a great job getting everyone who was already going to vote CPC to vote CPC again. He'll maybe even take votes away from the PPC. It'll just be sad watching him strike out completely in Quebec, the Maritimes, most of BC and all of urban Ontario (so like half of the country's seats ?).

Where was the worst of the Islamophobia coming from, I wonder? Was it from Obama and the "Liberals", or was it from white trash and orange man? Folks have really selective memories here. On one hand they can praise the big orange baby and his overt racism, can justify blocking immigration/refugees from muslim and hispanic countries etc, but when Russia invades another country and the world seeks to punish them for it, it's RUSSIAPHOBIA!!!!! AAAAH. Less Tucker Carlson and less Kremlin propaganda would do you some good. The funniest part of about all the random telegram channels and garbage websites folks is that there are absolutely no checks or balances on any of them and Igor from St. Petersburg can make up whatever the hell he wants with a VPN and pretend to be another angry Canadian. All he has to do is to feed into your anger and frustration and boom, you'll believe anything he says.