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I agree not a lot was done to help the convoy people but some of us did fund-raise and assist with legal defense in various ways. They were supported by thousands of people but at the same time, they faced an 80% disapproval situation driven by mass media reporting.

All aspects of Canadian politics boil down to this reality: about three quarters or four fifths of the population are basically opposed to principled conservatism, and about one third will support fiscal conservatism, so any conservative party has to juggle this discontinuity in order to get elected. If they narrow their focus to issues that drive other nationalist populist movements, they walk into a guaranteed electoral holocaust. Some rather naive people say well if they offered the people a real choice, they would get more votes ... that has been tried and the reverse is true. But don’t confuse the mass mind with my mind, these are two different entities. I don’t derive my values from public opinion tendencies in Canada. When you get to Alberta the situation is more favorable and principled conservatism can win an election (and has done so). In BC the renewed Conservative Party is attempting the same feat, and came fairly close last year, losing by less than 5% of the vote and by three seats in the legislature. One wrong move by the socialists and they will be out of power. In Ontario, however, a watered down ‘progressive’ conservatism is the only marketable form, and so it’s go-slow globalism for the Ontario government. This is probably true also of most other provinces east of Alberta. Saskatchewan is a little more polarized but essentially the politics there are similar to Alberta. Manitoba has a tendency to support socialism because most of its population is in two large cities.

2028 election slogans:

Republican... Make America Even Greater

Democrat ... Can you loan me a hundred I’ll pay you back

Muskmen of the World Unite ... Grrrrrr

Things are getting so bad, they are nearly as bad as in the past. Is this what they removed? Nobody’s gonna miss that.

Jose, can you transition?

in the dawn’s early light,

what so briefly you knew

as a great pair of gonads ...

All that’s missing from this is J.R. Ewing (J.D. Vance?).

I agree with that. At the same time, I suspect Donald Trump does not understand the basis of Canadian sovereignty and rejects it in the name of manifest destiny, a philosophy which makes sense to me (as a less than enthusiastic Canadian) as it would be in everyone’s interest to unite the two countries. But at the same time, I am a realist and I know that this point of view is very much in the minority in Canada. Most people who realize in youth that they see things this way just find a way to acquire American residence and then citizenship. They don’t take the suicidal position of arguing for this in public in Canada. But nowadays it would be even more dangerous to do so given the hostility that has been generated against Trump.

We won’t be seeing political union of course and as many here have correctly pointed out, it would not be in your own interests to have so many additional Democrats with deep roots in globalist and socialist thought. This tendency totally dominates all politics in Canada except for the populist part of the Conservative base which is better represented by the breakaway Peoples’ Party than the established Conservative Party. What complicates this now is that the Conservatives have swung hard right recently and allowed their most populist MPs to run the party platform. The vested interests who fund this party are watching silently, whether out of self-interest (perhaps this would work out) or fear (when the time comes, we’ll reinstate the centrists who are basically go-slow Liberals).

Complicated, and bound to create a firestorm against an activist administration taking on globalism on every front. If the Democrats or a moderate Republican return to power, then all that fades into the background and interests become more similar, hence deals can easily be made. They are not great deals benefitting a lot of people outside cultural elites in both countries.

In my own case, I never really found it feasible to cross the border and I took the other road, fighting the globalist tendencies from within. That has gone nowhere really, quite a few of us have done this, and formed the Peoples’ Party which cannot gain effective traction against the Conservatives always drifting slowly towards our point of view and thus holding on to the half of their vote that would gladly defect if they thought we could win elections.

That same attitude is even stronger in Alberta and leads to a desire for independence. The problem for Alberta is that they need control of access to the west coast to implement most of their economic vision. A substitute would be political union with the U.S. and thereby directing all their resource flow south instead of west.

Canada won’t let go of their cash cow Alberta very easily, and the matter has not been tested by referendum. I suspect some Albertans are in a wait and see position, either Carney might be sensible enough to satisfy in the short term (unlike the departed clown prince), or, the Conservatives might win a federal election around 2028 or 2029. If they could hold on for 2-3 terms and remain populist, that would kill off western separatism. But that would require a massive shift of opinion in other parts of Canada.

It’s all very murky at the moment. Carney is posing as a centrist who is open to a return to sensible economics. He cancelled the carbon tax and now he’s cancelled the proposed digital services tax. The first of these moves has made him very popular because gas prices are now back to 2005 levels across Canada and there’s no longer any point in Canadians near the border crossing into America to get cheaper gas. In fact, in WA the gas works out to being 5-10% more expensive now than in our local gas stations. This is a first. Carney has stated that he doesn’t see the point of taxation that is then returned to part of the population (that’s how the carbon tax worked here under Justin Trudeau, the poorer half of Canadians got a quarterly payment, and the government scooped a considerable fraction of the tax and put it into general revenues under the laughable premise that this was “fighting the climate emergency.”

Anyway, I believe we will see improvements in Canadian politics eventually, somebody is bound to come along who can like Trump market the latent discontent against elites. The Conservatives did a fairly effective job of that until Trump sort of blew them up by enabling Carney to pull a rabbit out of the hat and beat them in April. This was not widely foreseen before Trudeau left office. I don’t know if this was a deliberate strategy for Trump, or just an example of unintended consequences. Conservative populist leader Poilievre unwisely chose the wrong door (becoming a me too Trump basher) and showed he wasn’t reading the crowd very well (his own crowd) nor perhaps was he who he said he was.

The PPC leader Max Bernier is a good person and a very capable politician but you would have to be Terry Fox, Gordie Howe and Gordon Lightfoot rolled into one to gain any traction against the conspiracy of silence that forces our party to operate as if it were a political science project known only to the students at one university. We easily got to 3-5 per cent of the vote (the former Libertarian vote) but beyond that, traction is difficult, a lot of conservatives won’t leave the party of their long experience even knowing they are being led around by the nose. It’s an attitude I don’t fully understand but I suppose it’s just an underlying insecurity, in a harsh environment — Canada is not like the sun belt where economic decisions don’t matter too much because you could survive with very little all year anyway. If Canada “gets it wrong” we freeze to death. That’s the underlying reality. And so far, while our political economy looks ridiculous to many observers outside and inside the country, the elites have not “got it wrong” so badly that people suffered. They might not have prospered as much as they could have prospered. But that’s not something anyone experiences so they don’t realize it.

“liberal party donors from indistry who have been supporting the livberals for years tio protect them from competition from US prodicersm so they can life the hogh life based pon false economy. all while abandonog the people of Canada”

I see. Very informative.

So after correcting the seventeen spelling mistakes, I think what you’re saying is, Canada, please allow us to suck as much money as humanly possible out of your country without any sort of taxation of profits so we can get very, very wealthy.

Carney sure bought in, I guess because he’s on their board of directors.

(oh no, somebody who disagrees with the mass mind, off with his head)

(that was in Washington state by the way, that guy could be anywhere by now)

Is the plea deal to accept some sort of diminished responsibility sentence due to mental illness?

You’d have to be fairly crazy to even consider killing four people you never met in the middle of the night for no reason.

From what I read elsewhere, a Door Dash driver happened to make a delivery to the house at roughly the time of the killing (just before I would guess) and can i.d. Kohberger who was in the parking area of the house (at 0400h).

I would hazard the guess that he was obsessed with one or more of the young women he apparently killed, was stalking her, and entered a zombie state that led to a violent end to his fantasies.

There were two other girls in that house who survived, one said she saw a person resembling Kohberger in a hallway (possibly after the killings, apparently). The other one was asleep and knew nothing about the events until the two girls conferred in the morning. The one who was awake apparently thought the people had passed out from partying and that the intruder was just on his way out (which he was, but she thought it was a case of party dude heading home).

You can see how she would not figure out what happened right away, it was so horrific that you wouldn’t necessarily imagine it, and apparently the people partied regularly (as college kids do).

I feel for the parents, but the upside is, there is now no doubt what happened, and they won’t have to sit through an emotionally wrenching trial staring at the back of this dude who killed their kids. A long trial is a gruelling experience (I know and the subject matter was much less emotionally jarring).

If by any chance they or their relations and friends happen to read this thread, my advice would be, concentrate on the goodness of the kids you lost and the fact that you will all be reunited in the world to come. And Kohberger will be somewhere else then. He will have to live out his life knowing what he did and what the consequences are (to some extent, I can believe he is not in his right mind but still, even insane people know to some extent what is real and what is not real). It may in fact be a greater punishment to live forty or fifty years in that situation, than to die in a hail of bullets (which is how Idaho does things from what I heard, some other notorious killer was trying to postpone that sentence on humanitarian grounds, rather ironic considering what he had done himself).

What a nightmare 24 hours for Idaho, north Idaho in particular.

Meanwhile I wonder where that guy is, who killed his three kids in a campground a few weeks ago, and then disappeared.

They say bad things come in threes.

Re Canadian border, I happen to live near that on the Canadian side about 100 miles northwest of where this is happening. My guess is, within a few minutes of first reports of shooting, some Idaho law enforcement units took up positions on highways leading to border crossings (there are two in Idaho and another two in n.e. WA) and are stopping all vehicles. A perp seeing that ahead would no doubt do a 180 and head south (being chased by law enforcement no doubt). They wouldn’t even get to a border crossing but say they did, Canadian border guards would also have enhanced security (like RCMP with swat teams).

I have been through something like this in Montana returning to Canada after just a bank robbery without fatalities, so I can imagine how much larger the police presence would be for this.

As for remote unattended border crossings, those largely don’t exist in the stretch between central BC and the Rockies but if nobody was paying attention you could get across where forestry roads on both sides approach the border (they never cross the border). There will be aerial surveillance on a very large scale between Hayden Lake and the border as well as in other directions. These perp(s) are probably still within 2-3 miles of where the shots were first fired (some reports make it sound like they continue to shoot). They (or he) are basically surrounded and won’t get out of there alive, at night it will be easier to detect them as temperatures fall and their human heat signatures take on a larger contrast with ambient air temperatures. It has been a very warm day (80s) but is likely to be cooling into 50s especially in hills. So I would expect them to be found by morning, if they don’t off themselves.

It could possibly be that guy who killed his three kids, just giving up on his life entirely and trying to go out with a big splash. I wouldn’t say it’s the most likely of the options discussed here already, but it’s not out of the question.

As to this being a diversion for a larger assault from Canada I think this is a very serious situation but that wouldn’t be the scenario here. A sizeable force of foreigners assembling near border crossings in Canada would attract a lot of attention and they wouldn’t get very far into American territory if they managed to break through a border crossing. Their chances of that would be much less now than 24 hours ago before this “diversion” so called. So that theory can probably be set aside. My guess is this involves either American radicals or Iranian operatives already in America before it went down.

At same time I would accept that Canada has failed western provinces notably Alberta and if they leave it will quickly become a failed state. Alberta will become a viable independent state. I don’t see them going in the direction of 51st state, it’s not worth the risk (of future Obamas).

I would say California is more of a failed state than Canada. We don’t let our forest fires get to the oceanfront. We have a border. We could fill a park with Mexicans but not a soccer stadium. We don’t have a train to nowhere.

Canada needs fixing up big time, agreed. But it’s not quite a failed state (yet).

The digital services tax is an attempt to tax revenue made by non-Canadian companies selling to Canadian residents. If the Canadian resident bought same product from a Canadian supplier, that supplier would pay the government an imposed 5% G.S.T. payment.

Example, if I buy a book from a U.S. based company for $40, any taxes included go to U.S. jurisdictions (or there may be no tax imposed). If I buy it at a Canadian book store I pay whatever price they have plus 5% G.S.T. and my local provincial sales tax (which may or may not apply depending on what kind of book, or what province).

So like many other countries, the government of Canada is trying to increase tax revenue by getting the U.S. supplier to add a tax (the legislated D.S.T.) that they will remit to the Canadian tax office. It isn’t imposing any new cost on the U.S. company, but it may reduce their sales in Canada in a competitive situation.

This is being portrayed as a tax on American companies but in fact it’s more like a disincentive for Canadian consumers to buy from American (on-line, hence “digital”) companies.

Many European countries already have an equivalent taxation policy (meaning either the U.S. is disputing with them or they already got used to it years ago and found it wasn’t reducing sales). If it doesn’t reduce sales, the only people out of pocket are the Canadian consumers paying the extra amount, unless the U.S. (or any other) company decides to drop prices (and therefore profits) to absorb part of the extra price caused by the tax to be remitted.

I noticed in the legislation they planned to exempt smaller companies (probably figuring it wasn’t worth the labor costs to administer a trickle of small amounts from “mom and pop” type sellers).

What isn’t clear to me is the opposite situation, if I sold a product to you in the U.S., would I be required to register with the U.S. tax bureau so I could do on-line business with you? That’s essentially what this is about.

Let’s say I was a big Canadian book-seller (which I’m not) and I sold you a mapbook for $40. Your government might want to get $5 from me as a tax or duty on that. Do you consider that to be unfair trade? Because if not, why is it unfair trade for us to seek $5 from you? (If you say yes, unfair trade, then okay, I agree, I would prefer an open trading environment where both sides were not paying — but if it’s a “we can bully you and you can’t complain” situation as I suspect it is from some comments here, then don’t expect a compliant attitude.

As to what this has to do with steel, it’s just that this diversion puts an end to negotiations about steel. Here again, I don’t think many people commenting have the faintest idea how complicated the auto industry is, various products cross the border in different stages of production several times before arriving for installation at an auto factory. Putting tariffs on these items going both ways half a dozen times is just going to kill off the entire golden goose because they don’t work that way in Korea, Japan or Germany.

Not a strong women’s team, I wonder what the outcome would be for Canada or U.S. women’s teams? I would guess much closer than 7-1 for that age group. Would probably need to use 18 to 21 year old teams to achieve that level of disparity for the stronger women’s teams.

I’ve actually played a soccer game with a top-level woman player participating, it was basically a beer league sort of setting and the woman player was at roughly an equal level to the rest of the people on the field. It was in the U.S.A. (in 1980) and the woman was on the roster of the then-current top collegiate soccer team. Now these beer league teams (the result of the game was 1-0) would both have been hard pressed to hold any sort of professional soccer team to a 10-0 outcome so I am guessing the women’s collegiate team would have been in the same ball park given that their squad member seemed to be at our level.

I think the main problem for parity of men’s and women’s soccer is average size of the players, although soccer is not necessarily dominated by large physical specimens like other sports. Men tackle a bit rougher on average too. These two factors mean that a male team keeps or obtains possession more frequently. If that were not the case, the actual skill levels with ball on ground are about the same. It’s the way in which the teams control possession that leads to the disparity. And it’s not really a knock on women’s sport, just a fact of biology (which trans athletes can perhaps erode to some extent but you have to wonder what level of male athleticism a trans athlete is bringing into women’s sport, it wouldn’t be like Team Uruguay declaring they were now women).

I also played in a game (this time in Canada) in which a ranked national team player was participating. He was a goalkeeper who thought he should grace us with his outfield play until we lobbed a 35-yard shot into his empty net. He probably didn’t do that on the national team he played with in Europe. That was the only goal we got in on him though.

One possible source of CC refusals, somewhere in the memory chain zeroes can change to letter O ... this happened to me, I don’t know if it was due to any part of the merchant’s software, FR input, or just inside my computer. But when I figured it out, the CC refusal I experienced (months ago after the merchant change) turned to acceptance.

In my case the zero was in my postal code (twice), and could be in an address or phone number or even the three digit card code (I only found an error in my postal code, the auto-prompt was giving me letter O for number zero, and so the credit card company was refusing to honor my request to pay.

From William Penn to auto pen.

The basic problem with predicting WW-III is that there is no good outcome, either you’re in World War Three, or you look like an idiot.

They blow up so fast, this looks like a golden age of peace and prosperity ... oh okay a couple of days without killing each other, whatever.

If I were president, I would be well into the thousands of usages by now. Just the debates alone ...

Trump should just say it’s a special military operation aimed at de-Nazifying Iran.