HonoredMule

joined 3 weeks ago
sorted by: new top controversial old
Conservative spending on Facebook ads has fallen off a cliff in c/[email protected]
Remember the time pp was pals with the people who wanted to hang Trudeau, burn down parliament, and overthrow the government? in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 1 points 19 hours ago

I think that's a gross mischaracterization. Commitment to keeping your word is not solely a matter of pride. At best having to break your word suggests a need for greater care in giving it.

Attorney General Pam Bondi directs prosecutors to seek death penalty for Luigi Mangione in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 5 points 21 hours ago

While I hope you're wrong in general and fear you're right about this specific outcome, I'm confident you're at least partly wrong about the bigger picture.

Lessons not learned will be re-taught.

Remember the time pp was pals with the people who wanted to hang Trudeau, burn down parliament, and overthrow the government? in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

This conversation has inspired me to generalize my vow, in a manner that I think I can comfortably advocate for all Canadians regardless of partisan affiliation:

No MP under a party leader who has held majority government for at least one year shall be considered eligible for my vote under a FPTP electoral system.

If you get a shot and you don't take it, you're out.

Remember the time pp was pals with the people who wanted to hang Trudeau, burn down parliament, and overthrow the government? in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 2 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (5 children)

Trudeau did me a real solid by resigning. 2015 was the last time I voted Liberal and I'd since vowed never to vote for a Liberal under Trudeau again until electoral reform was delivered. If everything else today was identical but swap Carney with still Trudeau, I'd be seriously conflicted.

I think I have a pretty even-handed opinion about him that fairly considers his strengths and failings overall. But I can never see still having FPTP as anything less than a cynical, partisan betrayal of the nation. It is the singularly important time that he chose to rule rather than represent, and by extension denied Canada our best chance to rehabilitate our own demons. Instead, the reasserted disenfranchisement powered growing anti-establishment movements that aren't even completely wrong while they threaten our very core values.

Addendum: to clarify, I'm not saying I think he deliberately put party over country. His choices and conclusions, however, demonstrated motivated reasoning at its finest. I think history has already proven him wrong. And while his own views evolved enough that he could acknowledge his mistake, he still didn't try to fix it.

Should Canada explore developing a nuclear weapons program? in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 5 points 23 hours ago

For sure. If we were to pursue nuclear armament -- and I'm not saying we should -- it would be in secret. Publicly withdrawing from NPT just paints a target on our backs well ahead of any possible benefit.

Maxime Bernier decries 'woke ideology' at campaign stop in Dartmouth in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Seems pretty convenient and downright efficient to me. People are outing themselves faster than ever before. I can now spot the dumbass in one syllable.

Maxime Bernier decries 'woke ideology' at campaign stop in Dartmouth in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

What's up with the drain these days? It's starting to sound like a pretty happening place. I'm down.

Conservatives drop second election candidate in one day in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

One-upmanship at its finest. Thanks for the diversion, I guess. :P

‘It’s a garbage poll’: Danielle Smith criticizes survey suggesting Canadians support retaliatory tariffs on oil and gas in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago

Then it should be right up your alley, no?

Carney unveils signature housing plan he says will double pace of home building in Canada in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I should have also mentioned: this past year Toronto finally reaped a boost in housing completions thanks to investments early in the last federal administration. Just? that has already driven down rents by something like 5-7.5%, to a 30-month low. (Of course that's at the same time housing starts are also at an all time low. 😑)

Carney unveils signature housing plan he says will double pace of home building in Canada in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Aw dang, I was all set to upvote and let lie. But I feel compelled to clarify I do not blame the speculators nor the wealthy (really, I don't), nor do I think the apparent prosperity of the 90s belies there being consistent problems going back even further than that and even just in terms of housing. A poorly engineered structure does not become flawed only as it collapses, and it was never going to end any other way. I see no reason to expect the moment it actually starts to be particularly special or interesting. If it were, I might have believed I could predict it. If I really could, there's be good money in that.

Ok so my rant continues for a while and it sounds like I might be preaching to the choir anyway. I'm pretty much doing it for my own benefit of getting these thoughts out at this point -- so no hard feelings if you're done. 😛

TLDR takeaway: I concur. Hooray for building more housing -- even if it's an imperfect solution, and even if a deeper problem remains.

the deeper problemSome of the debt-nervous measures I mentioned were enacted during the 80s and 90s. The averted y2k and dot-com bust that really wasn't didn't stop plenty of people (like practically everyone around me from about 1997 onward through the rest of high school and all of university) from accurately predicting with some detail the next two decades of downturn. Housing squeeze was already rising in the discourse then, as was the middle class marginalization via wealth drain. Maybe it runs earlier than that, but I was too young to pay attention. The only key element that to my memory was absent back then, was the use of housing as an investment vehicle being inherently problematic. Also I should acknowledge that for a lot of people the general malaise and pessimism only truly started as a fairly direct reaction to 9/11, which got rolled into their economic views.

I don't even blame (most of) our politicians (much). They were never in a position to dictate the world order, yet were subject to the rise of globalism and the advent of nations having to compete (sacrifice both monetarily and ecologically) for corporate participation. It was that or follow the various hard-left states that become impoverished pariahs if not outright overthrown. A major upside to potential U.S. collapse now is the possibility that the rest of the western world can collectively agree to stop doing that. It could then instead make capitalism pay-to-play with public cartels (collaborating nations) setting progressive prices that keep wealth distributed and fund kickstarting every new generation.

What I blame is laissez faire capitalism for rewarding and thus encouraging speculation and hoarding, neoliberalism for rebranding learned collective helplessness as a virtue, and most especially the economists and capitalists whose motivated reasoning laid this system's foundation. We (as a nation) should have forcibly maintained a balanced housing supply indefinitely, and should never have promoted homes as an investment vehicle. Middle class wealth should have been as much as possible invested into our own productivity and continued influence as shareholders. Those are maybe our own national-scale unforced errors.

I really don't know how it became the prevailing wisdom that we should all pour our wealth into the only physical asset that magically appreciates as it deteriorates -- like that was a perfectly reasonable thing to expect.

When I hear Carney praise the power of markets, it makes me sweat even as I know he's still clearly the best option. It is a tremendous relief seeing this housing initiative because it rewards my hope that he'll actually deign to put his hand on the tiller. I'm still worried this could go poorly in terms of positive effect vs reduction of public resources and future recourse, but I was/am way more worried about the consequences of not even trying.

Even if it delivers fantastically, it won't be enough. The natural forces that make power (of every kind, but most especially wealth) converge into few hands can only be slowed without the active management that's impossible when neoliberalism is the world order. But who know? Maybe we can at least add a layer of financialization and abstraction that shifts the next looming collapse away from people's homes.

Props for finding some actually pretty good long-term data on Stats Canada, BTW. It is kind of nuts seeing all the numbers stay around roughly the same ballpark, all the way back to when we had half today's population. Despite no major fluctuations or spikes, literally fewer housing starts in 2010 than 1970.

7
How are party leaders reacting to Danielle Smith's U.S. media comments? | Power Panel (youtu.be)
 

If you don't want accusations "going there" (despite constantly doing it to the other parties yourselves with groundless, disingenuous FUD), don't lead the way with your own actions. You, Danielle Smith, have thoroughly disgraced yourself, as does Lisa Raitt and any other double-speaking conservative apologist trying to gaslight away a bald-faced plea for foreign interference.

You asked a foreign -- and currently hostile -- government to act in a manner benefitting your preferred party's electoral outcome. By extension, you implicitly acknowledged that doing otherwise is demonstrating to voters why your guy shouldn't win, and that you want breathing room so voter attention can be redirected. You even sold it in a manner that implied stronger influence over Canada at best, and outright quid pro quo at worst -- literal collusion from our highest office with a hostile foreign entity against Canada.

Neither option so much as entertains the possibility Poilievre could actually be fit to defend Canada's national interests. That's why you like him, isn't it? What is Canada to you but an obstacle to your Oil & Gas masters? Every word of that interview carried layers damning all that Poilievre's CPC and your UCP represent, from values to character to political objectives to even basic loyalty to your own nation and for that matter the ecological future of the planet itself.

I didn't think there could be a Canadian politician worse than Poilievre, yet here you are and this incident is all about you, Smith.

You put yourself on tape directly confessing and doing far worse than everything you and the entire Conservative movement have managed to conjure as insinuations against everyone else combined. You literally betrayed our entire nation for a chance at personal gain. If there's any coming back from that at all, then my faith in the basic cognitive capacity of our average Canadian voter is seriously shaken.

If no laws were broken, there will be new ones named after you.

Resign.
Emigrate.
Shred your passport.
You have no business standing on Canadian soil.

view more: next ›