Argus

Seems to me a certain drooling idiot told us weeks ago that the death rate in Florida had gone down to almost nothing because his latest man-crush, the governor of Florida, had okayed the use of a bullshit 'cure' for covid. I guess that was a lie too. Florida’s pandemic death toll surpassed 50,000 people on Thursday, a grim milestone reached after a summer surge of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths fueled by the highly contagious delta variant of the virus that causes COVID-19. Though the number of new cases and hospitalizations for the infectious disease have declined in Florida since the last week of August, the seven-day average of deaths reported has fluctuated and this week reached the second-highest point since the pandemic began in spring 2020. The state reported 1,554 new deaths to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and 9,760 new cases on Thursday, according to Miami Herald calculations of the data. In all, Florida has recorded at least 3,473,873 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 50,811 deaths. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article254271183.html

What horse shit. So some clown takes pictures of an empty parking lot - when, we don't know - six AM on a Sunday? Who knows. And concludes nothing's going on inside? What kind of low grade, drooling moron would believe this crap? Yeah, yeah, it's all made-up! No one is dying! there's no disease! It's all the lizard people from Alpha Centauri seeking to control our minds by making us wear masks! Overall, we rate Becker News far-right biased and questionable based on the use of poor sources, the promotion of right-wing propaganda and conspiracies, and frequent publication of misleading and false information. Detailed Report Questionable Reasoning: Poor Sourcing, Conspiracy Theories, Propaganda, Failed Fact Checks Bias Rating: FAR RIGHT Factual Reporting: LOW Country: USA (44/180 Press Freedom) Media Type: Website Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/becker-news/

Forty year old warships, and damned few of those. Forty year old fighter planes we don't even know when or if we'll be replacing, and three understrength, under-equipped regiments of infantry. What good are we as allies?

How many future generations are going to be able to profit from it? If real energy alternatives under intensive development now (Like Fusion power) work and spread it might become worth a lot less.

Where have you been for the last few years? You haven't seen the multiple times China has suddenly cracked down on a variety of our exports because we said or did something which irritated them? You haven't seen anything about their ongoing trade war against Australia, a country they signed a free trade pact with, because Australia dared to call for an inquiry into the origins of Covid? https://outline.com/NAvVRM

The more oil and gas we can export the richer we will be. Also, the more sources of oil and gas the cheaper they will be in the world, which might lure more countries away from coal.

In other words, just like Trudeau has been doing for the past five years. The differene being the reporters are desperate to get O'Toole to say bad things about Alberta's premier while those who question Trudeau merely want to know about government policy and actions.

That and Trudeau doesn't like having to answer questions, and wants control of House committees back so they stop asking for information about things he doesn't want to talk about. I guess if he fails to win his majority he'll re-launch his lawsuit against the House of Commons for daring to ask for information about what was going on in the government.

Canada was not asked to join the military and security pact. So much for our special relationship and being a member of the 'Five eyes". It has now been replaced by the "Three Eyes". The Canadian government was surprised this week by the announcement of a new security pact between the United States, Britain and Australia, one that excluded Canada and is aimed at confronting China’s growing military and political influence in the Indo-Pacific region, according to senior government officials. Three officials, representing Canada’s foreign affairs, intelligence and defence departments, told The Globe and Mail that Ottawa was not consulted about the pact, and had no idea the trilateral security announcement was coming until it was made on Wednesday by U.S. President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. One of the Canadian officials referred to the pact as the new “Three Eyes” and said it’s clear that Canada’s closest allies consider Ottawa to be a “weak sister” when it comes to standing up to China. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the officials because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canadian-government-surprised-by-new-indo-pacific-security-pact/

You're acting like I suddenly introduced a non sequitur into the discussion. Canada was left out because, in part, it's not considered much of an ally by the US as well as the Trudeau government's fawning capitulation to anything China says. Given China uses its trade as political leverage, and punishes those who dare to criticize or disagree with it with various levels of trade interruption, yes you can. The more important China is as a trading partner the lower you have to bow.

Counting you?

There are few columnist opinions on this yet as it just happened. Do you seriously not think O'Toole or Harper would not have taken a more pro-US stance on China than we're seeing from Trudeau? New Zealand isn't in it because it is rapidly becoming a province of China. Despite multiple warnings from its own and allies intelligence agencies about growing influence among its politicians and corporate leaders, often secured by bribes, the current NZ PM has prioritized good relations and trade with China over all else. NZ has refused to criticize China over anything, be it human rights abuses or Covid. China is now its' number one trading partner, and China's economic influence and leverage continues to grow there.

When was the last time Trudeau answered a direct question that wasn't a softball posed by one of his fawning admirers from the CBC?

I'd call it necessary spending because you can't do anything if you can't get elected.

Yes. It's almost impossible for a party promising austerity to get elected in this era, where the other parties are throwing money around so freely. Not until people start getting scared at the size of the debt. And they're not there yet. Still, I've heard little from the Tories about cutting corporate welfare, cutting interprovincial trade barriers, or expanding the economy. Nothing but generalities about the military and very little about national security or law and order.

I think if we had shown signs of being willing to push back against China, willing to clamp down on their political interference here, on their electronic espionage, willing to field some kind of reasonable military, willing to support our closest allies, we'd have been in this group. I have almost no doubt at all if Harper were PM we'd have been part of this group. But none of these countries trusts Trudeau or the very China-friendly people around him.

O'Toole's fault. He should have simply refused to being interviewed by a member of the Justin Trudeau cheerleading squad. You want to interview me? I get to pick which of your people do it. The CBC would have given him that. BTW, she was just as hard on Singh during their one on one. It's only Trudeau she gushes over.

Western countries have much, much, much smaller militaries than they used to easily afford, despite them being larger economies now. Canada, as one example, has a military half the size it was back when our population was half the size it is now. So by inference, if we could afford a military of 125k back in the 1970s we could afford one of 250k today. Instead we have about 67k. The military of major western countries is also far smaller than it used to be during the cold war.

TIL the United Kingdom was in the South Pacific.

There is some of that. The media focus a lot more attention on 'racists' or anyone in a conservatives party who shows signs of having had bigoted/racist thoughts but pay rather less attention to such people in left wing parties. When they are found the media seem more willing to accept they are anomalies than in conservative minded parties. When a party is new, it draws a lot of oddballs, and has little means to screen against them. It takes time to develop an organization to do that. And as we see from the NDP, even long-experienced parties with veteran staffers miss people. Btw, I don't like Bernier. I think his behaviour over vaccines and masks is disgraceful. I'm not going to vote for him or his party. That being said, a lot of his party's policies are pretty solidly conservative and would be supported by a very large number of Canadians, ie 40%-60%

Peterson's position, as far as I can remember, is that many of the the Marxist minded intellectuals got tired of trying to rally the working class and instead seized on identity politics as a way to batter down the system. Now instead of rallying the poor they get to rally various minority groups against the evil, racist, paternalistic Capitalist system. The goals are still the same. Weaken support for the current hierarchies and political system and introduce ideas of Marxism (ie, equity now, and seizing the wealth of the upper classes.)

If a million scientists believe something does that make it argument ad populum or simply the obvious truth?

To quote the head of the Canadian nursing association "We have nearly half a million nurses in Canada. If only one tenth of one percent are confused or have taken confidence in incorrect/misleading information that's still hundreds of nurses." The organizing nurses of these protests are, I understand, no longer working as nurses, and under investigation and will likely lose their licenses.

The problem is these people are going to attach themselves to whatever party they consider to be the most conservative. Whether that party wants them or not. We don't have any fascist political parties in Canada the way we have Marxist Leninist and Communist parties. So if the PPC didn't exist these people would be voting Conservative. If the Conservatives disbanded they'd be joining the Liberals against the evil NDP. Well... maybe not the Trudeau Liberals...