Moonbox

Andrew Coyne has not had much good to say about the Liberals lately.

I don't think it did (I searched for it), but the survey asked a bunch of questions that weren't about "wokeness" specifically, and the results are interesting: By a 78 to 22 margin, Canadians agree that “political correctness has gone too far By 70 to 30, people prefer a colour blind rather than colour-conscious approach to issues in society Bolded is what my position has been for a long time.

The right has been a wasteland for comedy for decades, and it's something they've been self-conscious of for a long time. Liberals have dominated this space for as long as I've been alive.

We've been burned thousands of times with lies and deception from the "right" as well. Being skeptical of the "left" is fine, but when you save zero skepticism for the "right" you make yourself an easy dupe - easy to manipulate and easy to fool. The list goes on of his failings too, doesn't it? The fact that he's a compulsive liar, and can barely get through a sentence without fibbing? The fact that he tried to overturn the election? The 93 criminal indictments, and the numerous trials he faces, not to mention that he's a proven fraudster, and now owes $400M for cooking his books? None of that matters to you, or you just convince yourself it's not true? 🤔

Economist at the time agreed a tax cut was welcome, though they overwhelmingly (and still do today) argued that an income tax cut would have been better. A tax cut is still a tax cut though 🤷‍♂️.

This is the sort of clueless and completely out-of-touch stupidity that lends credibility to the "REeeEE! WOKE WOKE WOKE!" crowd. Nobody reasonable was ever offended or felt excluded by the term manhole cover. Zero effort, money or attention is warranted to this kind of foolishness.

Okay. That's my fault. My tone was wrong here. I apologize. Let me try another approach: When you claim that "one-sided skepticism" is something that "works for you", I struggle to understand how you can say that seriously. That amounts to an admission that you hate/distrust one side so badly that you're going to blindly accept/believe everything the other side says. If that's the case, then all they have to do is validate your anger, amplify it, and they have your vote. Whether or not they're telling you the truth is irrelevant?

I don't think there's any need. I'd argue that whether or not they have history that "impacted" Canada is a subjective question. Canadian History is pretty freaking boring after the War of 1812, with the only things I remember from then until WW1 being our independence. It sounds dopey, and you're probably right, but do we even know they're going to teach? Is there going to be like, 3 pages in a textbook on the underground railroad, or will they be devoting multiple chapters to the first female black woman in Canada to own her own sewing business, in lieu of talking about the Plains of Abraham? 🤔

I'm just curious...How popular do you figure he really is? Have you ever really looked it up, or is this just your preference manifesting as the version of reality you prefer? Works? For what? Keeping you ignorant and easily manipulated? You're essentially admitting to being a thoughtless partisan hack. 🙄

You say this as you're engaged in probably a half a dozen similar arguments, where each opponent in their own way is calling you out for your belligerent stupidity and your toddler-level self awareness. 🤣🤣🤣

If they're saying peer-reviewed = infallible and unquestionable, then they're wrong as well, especially in the social sciences. Peer-reviewed just adds credibility, and mainly depending on the quality and standards of the publishing journal/board/group. In the case of Roland Fryer, he had a working paper that was not subjected to peer-review but the New York Times picked it up and published it anyways, and this was back in 2016. The methodology and conclusions of the study have since been picked apart and refuted as flawed by other experts, including by the university he worked for. Many of the people who liked the conclusions he drew, however, have elevated him to mythical/martyr status, just like the anti-vaxx crowd did with the odd dissenter. They revere the experts that tell them what they want to hear, and ignore everyone else.

That's not what peer-reviewed means.

Sure. Actions speak louder than words. What I think you're struggling with is what those actions are speaking to. I'm just thinking if you're so interested in what Buffet said and what he's doing, you may have read (or listened to the transcript) of his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders explaining why. It's out there for the public to see. 🤷‍♂️

You can take any poll with a grain of salt, of course, but I don't know why you keep talking about 1500 Canadians. There have been quite a few of these surveys, both very recent and back over the years, and they've all told the same story. When you survey thousands of people over multiple polls, from numerous different polling companies, and your margin is 70:30 in favor of Biden, we're not guessing anymore. I would say that if I'm skeptical of someone's specific claims and want to challenge them (especially on a topic I don't know much about), I'll take a minute or two to actually look it up before posting. Maybe, but I think you need to pick a lane. You were arguing how popular you figured Trump would be in Canada among Canada's conservatives. Polls show he'd barely get 50% of their votes. You poo-poo the polling showing that, but then happily point to polls showing Trump's popularity in the US, or Trudeau's unpopularity in Canada. Do polls matter, or not? Or is it just the polls that support the narrative you follow that count? That's really not a good thing.

Spending more money doesn't automatically make you stronger. It will be a decade or more before Russia can replace what they've already lost. Their economy is smaller than Canada's, and everything they're doing (and mostly struggling at) is being done at the expense of their civilian and consumer industries, and by piling up debt. The Soviet Union tried a decades-long experiment with this sort of economy. It didn't work out. They may have more influence in certain parts of Africa, but they definitely don't have "better" relations with China. They're just dependent on them. India, for example, is quietly pivoting away from Russian arms manufacturing, given how poorly their equipment has performed and how they can't even sustain and maintain their own domestic needs, let alone those of export partners. They are grinding down Ukrainian defenses in battles of attrition. Russia has a 4:1 manpower advantage. In the last yar and a half Russia has nothing but two small towns to show for how many dead peasant-soldiers? As for their economic growth, that's all based on government spending (mostly on the military). That's not economic expansion. That's just going into debt to buy things that explode somewhere else. The shell or missile that blows up in Ukraine does not improve the productivity or living standards of the average Russian. Yes, that's where the Russians are at. They needed import them from Iran of all places and copy their designs, because they couldn't do it properly themselves. Not caring about how many of their own servile donkey soldiers die.

Warren Buffet also just explained why he has a huge pot of cash on the sidelines. Did you read what he said?

I don't know. I don't care. Like I said earlier, reading this dumb thread was the only reason I even knew it was black history month.

What's more powerful about them now? The fact that they've lost most of their professionally trained army and most of their modern armor and vehicles? Are they stronger now rolling around in tanks from the 1960's, and selling their oil at a discount to a limited list of buyers? Their quickly dwindling currency reserves? Is their need for garbage-tech from Iran and North Korea a sign of strength? I don't get that take.

Is that what I said, or did I say this? 😑

No, it really, really doesn't. 🤣 The tools already exist, and a search engine can comb through and compare images from databases of billions of images in seconds. Basic off-the-shelf software exists today that only costs $25-30/m and can match images of people from copy/pasted photo captures from all over the internet. That's just the small scale stuff that's been released, nevermind the tools that Google and Meta have developed but refused to release because of privacy concerns. https://www.npr.org/2023/10/11/1204822946/facial-recognition-search-engine-ai-pim-eyes-google As usual, you have no idea what you're talking about.

There are no contradictions. You can be weak and rotten, but still dangerous. 🙄

I didn't say either, so I guess the better question is what game are you playing at?

That's the beauty of computers and AI, genius. Scale doesn't matter anymore. A search engine can scour through billions of images in mere moments.

I think early on the hesitancy was around the belief that Ukraine wouldn't last more than a few weeks, and that giving modern NATO weapons to a country that would be quickly overrun was a bad idea. Some of what you're saying is probably also true. At this stage, most of the hesitancy is coming from Republicans (and especially Trump) holding up any funding. Not too very strong countries. One very strong country, and one weak and rotten one pretending to be. Russia being subservient to China isn't a good thing for us, but letting them overrun Ukraine would have been worse. Everyone has to make the best of the mess Russia made.

Which poll are you referring to? Did I post one? Nevermind that 1500 Canadians surveyed is actually a decent and statistically significant sample size, there have been lots of other similar polls, both larger and smaller, taken across Canada. Most of them show Trump wouldn't even win Alberta, let alone anywhere else. I mean that you come to these topics with your mind already made up, before you do any research on them. You find it "hard to believe" that all of the polling going back years and up to today show Trump is consistently and wildly unpopular in Canada. That's only because you never bothered looking. You have a lot to say about Biden's gaff's, but somehow miss how Trump makes the same sort of mistakes all the time, with the added bonus of his deranged ranting and the parade of former colleagues, appointees and friends warning he's unfit for office. You say the thing you hate the most about Justin are his lies, but figure that Trump is better than Biden, despite Trump's record of compulsive, brazen and absurdly easy-to-disprove lies? We're talking truly ridiculous stuff, and that doesn't even touch on all of the court cases demonstrating and proving his pathological lying. These are just a couple examples pulled from one thread. You're not a dumb guy and can put things together when you try. Unfortunately your scrutiny and skepticism only seems to point in one direction.