Moonbox

I'm not speaking past you. I just think your reasoning appears vague and aimless. Our ballooning public deficits aren't caused by mysterious or esoteric forces. They're a function of unprecedented spending increases that have not generated even remotely commensurate increases in revenue. Yes, and we're definitely not getting it. The bar is set so low for "doing better" that I think your pessimism in that regard is unwarranted. If we're looking at value for the dollar, the worst course of action is borrow and throw more money at the things that haven't been providing it.

I don't think anyone is seriously arguing that household debt is managed the same way as public/government debt. The comparison is drawn as a simple heuristic to bring one simple reality home: Money spent on things you want today, must be repaid in the future. If the thing you want today provides no future benefit, you've impoverished future-you for the sake of today-you.

Except in a lot of ways it is. Frivolous spending is still frivolous spending, whether it's financed by government or household debt. In some contexts yes, in others no. Michael brings up a good example about financing a bridge that will provide value to its community for generations. The same can't be said the non-productive expansion of our public service and bureaucracy or for wasteful subsidies/handouts.

Do you see all of the white parts? That's where Russia has "lost". 🙃

With all due respect, I think this is poor reasoning. The erosion of our public finances is an issue of poor stewardship and incompetent management. This is becoming a crisis that's already imposing an actual structural burden on Canadians for decades to come. As for vision, or what's going to help us, the first step is to remove the decision makers who are doubling down on policy that's guaranteeing the problem gets worse.

The solution to wasting money frivolously is to stop doing it. It doesn't have to be rainbows. He just has to stop punching holes in the hull of our ship. It will most assuredly not be sunshine and rainbows for all of the public sector workers that we'll need to dump, but it still needs to happen to not sink the boat.

Try, if you can, to remember this post before the next time you want to call me a Trudeau fanboy.

To go with your trollbait copypasta? Salted tears??? Did that come off your Rolodex, grandpa, or did some Reddit Andy use it and you thought it was a zinger? 🤣

Here's the thing though: Trudeau has done such an abysmal job that Poilievre wouldn't even have to be mediocre to shine in comparison. As much time as Pierre has spent harping on conservative social issues, Trudeau has spent as much or more on cringe-level virtue signaling. The one file that actually matters the most is the one Trudeau has catastrophically botched, which is economy and the fiscal balance sheet. As much as I dislike Pierre and shake my head that this is the best the Conservatives could come up with, for the things that matter most, it's inconceivable that he'd be as bad or worse than Trudeau.

So you start with easily debunked nonsense claims, fall back on juvenile insults, and now resort to spelling corrections, of all things. 🤣 You should try turning your gaze inward. "Simply walking in your footsteps" is kindergarten babyshit, but par for the course coming from you. 👌

Pretty lies and simple-minded slogans made for simple-minded people are, at best a lousy indicator for a politician is going to do in office. For me, I am cautiously optimistic that a lot of the dumber stuff PP has said was just for the dumber parts of the Conservative base, and especially for Mad Max's delusional supporters.

So what does that say about you, as you fall back on puerile insults as soon as your balogna arguments get debunked? This is how you like it, I guess? 🙄

For someone supposedly concerned with keeping arguments precise, you're certainly having to do a lot of revisions. First it's "Every Tyrant has opposed religion", then it's qualified by "post Protestant Reformation", now it's "western civilization and law". 🙄 Even so, I gave you examples of 20th century, Christian dictators in Western Europe...What's your next revision? Were Spain and Belgium not "western" enough? For providing us with a chuckle at your expense? Yes. Thank you. 👌

PP doesn't have to differentiate himself from Trump. He's not a degenerate 300-pound blob with a spray tan, and can form full sentences with a healthy vocabulary. Comparing him to Trump is desperate, and it will backfire. The only similarities they share are the sloganeering and the simple messages for simple minds. Drain the swamp! Axe the Tax! It impresses a...certain type. 😆

Oh I see. Post-Reformation... Why didn't you say so? 🙄 after all... Even post-Reformation, it's still a dumb and easily disproven claim. Leopold II, Tsar Nicholas, Franco, Pinochet...Putin...all Christians, all tyrants, and that's hardly a comprehensive list. Thanks for your wondrous insights, as usual...

I'm guess I'm saying that if you understand the principles of falsifiability, you're not likely posting unfalsifiable claims in the first place. Pointing it out to someone who has will likely just fly overhead and right past. This is a place where "certain types" regularly respond to requests for citations/proof of their claims by demands that you disprove them. 😑 I'm not counting Graham as one of those, and I don't say this for his sake, but my TLDR is: dumb it down.

Trump's performance? In the primaries? The GOP is full of cowards and nobody ran against him. As for the border, it's now Trump himself who's holding up any progress on a Bill to deal with the border. This is the campaign issue he wants to run on, and he's desperate to make sure that the GOP and the democrats don't make a deal on it and bring any resolution.

History in the US says that guys who lost elections lose over 75% of their rematches.

I think you're overly optimistic on people understanding this. Falsifiability is a great way to check your own reasoning, or to identify delusions and partisan logic from the outside, but the nature of the beast is that the people who fail this test do so regularly, and confidently.

I think that's funny that you consider it a certainty. 🙃

Without seeing the bill, nobody can tell wtf you're talking about. The only thing for certain is that the carbon tax didn't increase it by 30-50%. 😑 You're absolutely right about this. Most of the solutions we've seen so far have been grifts that funnel money to special interests (usually wealthy investors or landowners) and do next to nothing to fix the problem. All the billions in solar investments Ontario did during the Dalton McGuinty days amounted to nothing. Farmers got subsidized to put inefficient and useless panels on their property, and Samsung investors got a handout, but we generate next to nothing in solar power. The solar manufacturing jobs that were promised disappeared as quickly as the subsidies did. These are the sorts of feel-good but braindead things our governments have done over the years. Mainly because we let them. People are concerned with dumb things instead of real things.

I'm not sure who you think is saying they are. I just watched some videos of Gazans walking openly down the streets holding white flags and getting gunned down in cold blood with Israeli tanks parked nearby. It's possible some of these are false flag, but I suspect at least some of them are exactly what they look like. This is the infantilizing of the Palestinian people that I mentioned. You imply that their bad actions over the years (like the Oct 7th attacks) are consequences of other external influence, rather than the choices they made. You curiously don't apply that same consideration for the Israelis, who've lived under constant threat of attack since Israel's founding and might have some reasoning for the security measures they impose. The Treaty of Versailles was a mistake and made future conflict likely, but only because it was such a compromise. It humiliated Germany and impoverished the German people, but did nothing to curb Prussian militarism or their ability (and inclination) to conduct war. A revanchist war with France, Britain and Poland were perhaps foreseeable. The Final Solution and Lebensraum were uniquely German choices. The Soviets made sure the mistake wasn't repeated. They forced all of the Germans out of East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia and brutally subjugated East Germany for ~50 years. The Marshall Plan wasn't benevolence on behalf of the Allies. It was a strategy to meant to yoke the strength, knowledge and experience of the West Germans and use them as a bulwark against a common enemy in the USSR. Germany unconditionally surrendered and they had no choice in the peace that was made, but that peace lasted.

Something you fail to understand is...well...history it seems. Centuries of Christian tyrants ruling by Papal blessing or Divine Right, and the millions of people who died as a result of their wars, purges and general brutality, prove everything you just said there is totally clueless. 🙃

I am not convinced he isn’t actually just a talking Pom Pom. I’m just not sure how any of that related to NATO enlargement.