Responses...

Thank you to those who pointed out that taxpayer-funded Healthcare is a very attractive benefit to manufacturing in Canada.

RA...

Wow. I would never try to engage in a debate with you about Trump or perhaps even US politics in general. You know much more about the details than I do.

These days, I figure that it up to those much younger than I am to decide in which direction the country goes. My days of hanging off every utterance from cable news channels, giving myself daily ulcers, are long behind me.

Now I tend to focus on results, rather than how we got there. All I am willing to do is to vote every four years then hope for the best. I have been a conservative all my life and when it comes to making a choice when voting, who best aligns with what I believe:

Closed borders
Lower taxes
Smaller government
Drill, baby, drill
Merit-based opportunities...No Affirmative Action... DEI by another name
Two genders
Solving National issues, not interfering in International issues

So the best choice of the two, is Trump. Is he a perfect feces-throwing chimp?

Of course not. But he best aligns with what I believe and gets the results that I hope for.


Separately but related, I could not tell you one comment Justin Trudeau has ever said. I was not a fan of his father and I am most likely not a fan of him. Until this past weekend when the UK waded into the Ukrainian sinkhole pledging £1bn and boots on the ground, I had no idea who the Prime Minister of the UK was.

On the other hand, many Canadians - certainly on this board - are acutely aware of the US President and are PASSIONATE in their abject hatred of the man. It's a free country with free speech and we are all able to hate who we like and express it.

The way I see it, that much vitriol about a politician that you cannot affect or vote for is very similar to what they say about holding a grudge... swallowing poison then expecting the other person to die.

But that's just me.

Thank you for this opportunity to express myself.

I am always amazed at the blatant bias and lies that Fox News Network  gets away with.  Also the fact that the network is totally 100% a propoganda mouthpiece for Trump and his version of the Republican party.  This has been going on for years and virtually nothing was said or done about it. 

The lame excuse that it is a cable network and the rules don't apply is beyond pathetic and laughable.  I hope all politicians and those in government south of the 49th are happy, because you are just starting to reap the benefits.  What is evolving is neither freedom or democratic.  What is really sad, many don't seem to understand or care. 

Good points Dial Twister.  I am not as familiar with politics in the UK so I really don't know the extent of Rupert Murdoch's influence in Britain.  The Brits do have history and of course the monarchy and tradition to counter whatever Murdoch's media puts out.  Also significant that US media, while popular in the UK doesn't have the same influence as here. Brits still support and often prefer their own music, TV shows,  radio and still have a fairly strong home grown movie industry. 

Canada is very unique in that we have always been in a sea of American culture and much of their culture is more or less our culture.  Much, but not all.  I am sure the next round of negotiations for the USMCA will be focused more on culture and media this time.  Watch for a full press to get rid of all cancon regs, and  our regulations regarding internet, ownership of media and other irritants that the Republicans don't like. 

All of this will be key if the end game is for Canada to becoming totally absorbed by the US.  They will try and trivialize the importance of any Canadian culture or differences found here.  It will be a battle, so get ready.    

deLaat wrote:

Closed borders
Lower taxes
Smaller government
Drill, baby, drill
Merit-based opportunities...No Affirmative Action... DEI by another name
Two genders
Solving National issues, not interfering in International issues

I don't have the time to address all of the points that deLaat raised, but I definitely think DEI deserves some clarity. Both America and Canada have had very racist pasts. I know that from growing up as a non-white kid in Toronto, the racism hits you starting from kindergarten (both from your fellow students and your teachers) and keeps coming right into adulthood. White people seriously don't understand how different your life is when you are born non-white in either country, which is why to them DEI is seen as an affront to what they believe was already a merit-based system that was fair to all job applicants. I'm going to let this tweet explain to those who disparage DEI just why it was put into existence:



Racism and sexism has always existed in the job market. I vividly remember when one of my female classmates in engineering, who was about to graduate and was sending out her resume to apply for work, told me that she would deliberately omit any signs of her being FEMALE on her resume to ensure that she would at least get an interview. It was already tough enough for her because her surname gave away the fact that she was of middle eastern descent, she didn't want her gender to also further lower her chances. She was an engineer, for pete's sake! That's what the job market was like for non-whites and women back in the early 90s.

And let me add that studies show that a bias towards hiring white english-speaking candidates isn't just a trait of white company managers, I recall ABC's 20/20 did a segment back in the early 2000s where they showed even African-American managers were more willing to hire a white candidate and far less likely to hire a black job candidate. This had a lot to do with basically being a part of American culture where you are subconsciously taught to see white as the defacto best choice, even if you were given two resumes that showed the non-white person was more qualified.

One more thing. MAGA women attacking the idea of DEI is hilarious. They don't even seem to grasp the fact that DEI was meant to fight against gender discrimination too. Although this MAGA idiot found out this past week when she lost her job thanks to the orange felon.



 

Americans will remain in danger as long as they continue to exhibit appalling ignorance about the world around them.
That includes basic knowledge of their own country and politics.
Today many Americans who voted for Trump are stunned that they are losing their Medicaid.
They did not realize that medicaid was what they got from Obama through the Affordable Care Act, which was nicknamed Obamacare.
Many Americans did not realize this, so they thought they were good with getting medicaid, but not that communist Obamacare, not realizing they were one and the same thing.
So during the election campaign when Trump told them he was going to get rid of Obamacare they didn't realize he was referring the medicaid.
Now they know.
Just the other day I saw a clip on Youtuve of a Trump supporter who was horrified to find her insulin had gone from 12 dollars a day to 78 dollars because their medicaid had been cut.

 

Just the fact that a small minority of Canadians still like tRump is enough to make you wonder about their IQ.

You gotta understand though that this is an artificial crisis manufactured by a psychopath who has a Hitler like grip on many in his society right now.
Take tRump out of the equation and all this ends.
Nobody will continue with his mad plans when he's gone, not even JD Vance.
And when and if the Dems get control of the House and Senate again -- hopefully in a couple of years, it will all be over.
Democrats will block tRump at every turn, and then he will be be a pathetic lame duck until he is booted out of office.
If he tries anything outrageous -- he can't fire all the military... some will still be around and capable of assassinating him.
That was what happened to Hitler and it was a fluke that he did not die in Operation Valkyrie.
Heck tRump almost got offed in the Butler Pennsylvania attempt.
And if tRump thinks he can "annex" Canada he's got another thing coming.
Do you think the UK and other NATO countries will go along with that?
Not to mention our Joint Task Force 2 elite special forces crew.
And then there's just good old Mother Nature.
tRump's mind is clearly going.
His father was about 78 when his dementia began to set in.
tRump is already showing all the signs.
This is a horrendous chapter in history for us all, but it will pass.
And American's will regret it for generations to come.




 
 

TomTV wrote:

I think the notion that:

"And when and if the Dems get control of the House and Senate again -- hopefully in a couple of years, it will all be over."

is a very optimistic vision of the future. During last year's election run, many people reposted a video of Trump telling Christian voters that they'll never have to vote again once he is elected this time. Here's a link:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-tells-christians-they-wont-have-vote-after-this-election-2024-07-27/

"Christians, get out and vote, just this time. "You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians."

He added: "I love you Christians. I'm a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote," Trump said.

The throwaway excuse is that he meant he was going to unite this country and end the divisiveness is bullshit. Many folks took this to mean he was going to do whatever (cheating) it takes to stay in power permanently. Is any of what he is doing right now, look like he is "uniting" America?  Instead, the Republicans are passing bills that make it impossible for traditional Democratic-leaning voters to vote at all (see my earlier post), firing legions of government workers to replace them with loyalists (the Project 2025 authors, the Heritage Foundation are the ones who seem to be directing Trump when it comes to many of his executive orders -- last month someone discovered that a PDF file containing one of those orders contained metadata that indicated who the author of the PDF was, and it was someone linked to the Heritage Foundation. THEY write the orders, pick who ends up in Trump's cabinet of dangerously incompetent morons, and Trump signs them).  

Both the far-right Christian nationalists and the Russians have a lot of common goals:

- isolate Americans from their democratic allies, ideally make Americans as xenophobic as possible (so that allies can't influence them to return to the old ways). Cult leaders do this: you isolate the person who just joined your cult from their family and friends so that the leader becomes the sole source of information.

- dismantle the existing educational system and require that church teachings are made a part of the upbringing of all American children: once again, very much the way a religious cult would operate. All it would take is for the Heritage Foundation to get their belief system installed in ONE generation of young Americans, and you have a huge army of willing far-right Christians brainwashed by propaganda from all media sources: FOX News (TV), social media (Musk owns Twitter, Zuckerberg owns Facebook and Instagram), and public school. We define our reality by the information fed to us, if all of that info says the same message, and since we don't develop critical thinking skills to question what we are told until late in adulthood, those kids are the ones who will blindly follow whoever leads the US then (Trump or his successor). The US essentially becomes North Korea or Russia, a regime where a tiny number of people sit at the top, with a loyal military to defend them, while everyone else is too hungry and too destitute to fight back.

- destroy the wealth of the average American e.g. fire them from their jobs, trigger a huge recession while at the same time letting prices skyrocket so that no one can afford anything: a car, a house, food, everyday items, etc.  America already has a long-standing history of creating massive asset bubbles where the average Joe loses most of their money: the tech bubble, the housing bubble, the mortgage-backed securities bubble, and now the crypto currency bubble. Get the suckers to bet their lifesavings on some worthless asset, then collapse it (while shorting that asset so that the insiders make billions off that collapse).

Normally, a politician who drives the country to economic ruin would get voted out. NORMALLY. Unless the ruling government passes bills that make those voters ineligible to vote or just simply cheats (as I strongly suspect the GOP did in the 2024 election) by writing software that flips the votes to Republican as the digital ballot is being uploaded over Musk's Starlink network. Now that the GOP are in power, they could write a law that requires every state to use "Trump voting machines" instead of machines from a third party like Dominion. Or maybe Elon Musk will supply them, who knows.

What are the masses left to do once they are broke, have bills to pay, and there are no jobs?  The US government will then step up -- join the military!

Join the federal government! Make them the biggest driver of jobs in the US, so long as you follow the rules set up by them, of course. To run a corrupt government (or empire) you NEED millions of desperate, disillusioned and hungry civilians. They have to be so desperate to keep their job with the regime that they wouldn't dare to speak out against the government, lest they find themselves on the street.

Right-wing politicians don't believe in social programs, so these Americans  wouldn't have a social safety net to rely on, no unemployment insurance, no welfare. It's either you keep your job at the government or military at all costs, obey any order given to you, or you wind up one of the many homeless people living on the street, in their cars, or in an alley.

NOTE: if you don't think Trump and his allies intend to use a crypto bubble to destroy the economy while enriching themselves, just days ago Trump announced "a strategic Bitcoin reserve" as one of his initiatives. Go ahead and google it. It will be the biggest pump-and-dump con that any con man has ever run.
 

Best pay attention to Tom because he is dead right. This is exactly where tRump madness (he's really just a front for White Christian Nationalists) is taking the (formerly United) States of America.

And as neighbours right next door to the crazy, the verbal abuse and economic terrorism are already coming our way.

Mango Mussolini will throw whatever vile, illegal, immoral sand he can into our economic gears so that, eventually, we'll come crying for 51st state status. F' that noise. From my cold, dead hands.

And the latest attack from Trump on Canadians...  would you like to be fingerprinted just like a US criminal? Then please go ahead and stay more than 30 days in the USA:

https://x.com/Dan_GT2/status/1898370190443770326

Thanks to an executive order from Donny, Canadian snowbirds now will have to register as foreign aliens with immigration. The process includes fingerprinting. This is for stays of 30 days or more.

Those Canucks still interested in staying in Florida for the cold winter months are going to love this. Trump is wrecking the Florida economy (and perhaps sticking it to his one-time rival, Republican DeSantis)

EDIT: link to the Global News article
https://globalnews.ca/news/11071153/canada-snowbirds-us-registration/
 

Last edited by TomTV (March 8, 2025 6:39 pm)

mic'em wrote:

Donald Trump didn't come up with this stuff on his own, the real issue is to discover who is backing him, and remove them from the scenario. 

 
I think Stephen Miller, Trump’s Chief of Staff has a lot to do with all the boneheadedness, he’s a piece of work with no soul.

TomTV wrote:

- dismantle the existing educational system and require that church teachings are made a part of the upbringing of all American children: once again, very much the way a religious cult would operate. All it would take is for the Heritage Foundation to get their belief system installed in ONE generation of young Americans, and you have a huge army of willing far-right Christians brainwashed by propaganda from all media sources: FOX News (TV), social media (Musk owns Twitter, Zuckerberg owns Facebook and Instagram), and public school. We define our reality by the information fed to us, if all of that info says the same message, and since we don't develop critical thinking skills to question what we are told until late in adulthood, those kids are the ones who will blindly follow whoever leads the US then (Trump or his successor). The US essentially becomes North Korea or Russia, a regime where a tiny number of people sit at the top, with a loyal military to defend them, while everyone else is too hungry and too destitute to fight back.

Quoting my earlier prediction... and this is from Twitter user @ArtCandee today:

The staff of the Department of Education are being told to clear out their offices by 6:00 tonight.

Republicans have always leaned towards poor education in the red states: dumb voters are easier to manipulate emotionally, trick with propaganda. They don't want people with critical thinking skills.

EDIT: added to back up my point... courtesy of Perplexity:

Among the 15 least educated states, 11 are red states.

UPDATE: Link to the CTV news story
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/article/us-education-department-plans-to-lay-off-1300-employees-as-trump-vows-to-wind-the-agency-down/



"Is this the first step on the road to a total shutdown?"
"Yes!"
 

Last edited by TomTV (March 12, 2025 1:04 am)

"I love the poorly educated."
-Donald Trump, Feb., 2016. 

A direct quote and not a big surprise about who voted for him.

Dial Twister wrote:

Tom, I'm exhausted. You're exhausted. Everyone should be exhausted. The madness never stops.

We're all exhausted but Trump seems to have an endless amount of energy. Even as he's shutting down the Dept of Education, Trump is trying to help his top henchman Elon Musk save his dwindling fortunes as millions of people around the world turn against Tesla and boycott the company's vehicles. Organizing what is essentially an infomercial for Tesla in front of the White House,  Trump claimed that he's going to buy a Tesla himself and urging others to do so.  Is he seriously thinking that gas-guzzling MAGA car owners who care barely afford $15 eggs are suddenly going to buy electric cars on his say-so?



More than that, even the most loyal MAGA isn't going to buy a car or CyberTruck that basically has a target on its back from angry mobs that are seeking payback against DOGE for laying them off from their jobs.



(For the owner of the CyberTruck at the bottom-right, at least be glad that they drew a big penis... right?)



That saying about how anything that Trump touches, dies, has never been more applicable. Another reason we don't want to be his 51st state.



 

Buying a Tesla is now an essential part of "owning the Libs".

The writing's been on the wall for Tesla for some time now. Despite their early innovations, they've let their product lineup ossify. The vehicles aren't particularly well-built and the other auto manufacturers are closing the technology gap. In a distortion-free market Tesla's finished, but I'm sure MAGA voters will be fine with their social security funneled into Tesla's big fat bailout.