Moonbox

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.

It was a mistake, but even if he hadn't, he's contrasting himself against the (well overdue) blowback vs DEI, and that's not an election-winning strategy. The obsession with "woke" (whatever it really means) isn't any stupider than the sanctimonious, finger-wagging, outrage farmer from the opposing tribe. For every MAGA donkey there is shouting about the trannies, there's a 3-year general arts grad raging about privilege and climate change while while eating avocado toast. That person and that attitude, I suspect, is what the MAGA crowd is really angry about.

I think that's the problem. What it "sounds like" to people is going to be based on their perspective. In context, with everything else he said, I think it's perfectly reasonable for you to view it that way, and I think most people will "hear" it the same way. I doubt that was his intention, but he's reading the room poorly I think these sorts of statements are losing arguments for him.

It's still better than not being able to deal with him at all, and it doesn't actually change anything. Trudeau has been a lame-duck for the better part of a year and nothing is stopping Trump from doing it again once the election is called. This is nothing but a stalling tactic to help the Liberal Party re-organize. If Trudeau cared about Canada, rather than himself, we'd have had an election last year back when it was already clear he'd lost his mandate and the confidence of Canadians.

I don’t think you can even say that though. Proroguing parliament heading into a trade war was not the best thing for his country, and it was far from the only cynical, self-serving decision he made as PM.

That's the bigger consequence of all this, and I suspect that was the point all a long. All of this grandstanding and carrying on is about causing uncertainty and getting risk-averse businesses to diversify or relocate TO the USA. What Orange Man fails to realize is that this isn't a given, it's a two-edged sword, and it doesn't happen overnight.

That's the key here. Getting paid 9 months to go find another job is a pretty sweet deal for anyone with the skills/motivation/knowledge to succeed. Those who don't will take their chances.

I think the bigger problem sometimes is that there is so much thinking, so much naval-gazing, so much squabbling and moralizing, that problems are ignored and left to fester. What was a smaller issue that could have been nipped at the bud with deliberate, surgical action ends up becoming monolithic, at which point a sledgehammer becomes the better tool. Say whatever you want about Orange Man, that sort of *decisive action has value.

The congressional majorities are slim, as is the popular vote difference in most of the battleground districts. He has a lot of runway this early on (especially with Democrats in disarray), but voters also have short memories and I have trouble believing Republican Reps/Senators will support policies that doom them upon re-election.

He won by a lot in the college, but not in the popular vote, and his margins in many of the swing states was slim. 2 years can change a lot of minds, though I agree with most of the rest of what you're saying.

All he did was acknowledge that Carney could have worded it better.

Yeah that's how this works. You make a claim you can't support, and then I'm supposed to research it! For someone complaining about getting in fights and trolling, it's funny how you keep running back to this. Like the dumb goldfish, you just can't help biting, I guess?