Nazis Danielle Smith and Elon Musk deserve to rot together in hell, but I think Satan would declare them too evil for entry:
Alberta’s cowardly premier, can’t even look students in the eye. Pathetic greedy traitor turd.
Canadians aren’t being asked to meet the moment by Emmett Macfarlane, Mar 27, 2025, Defending Canadian Democracy
As Donald Trump triples down on his economic war against Canada, one of the things that inspires the most hope is the vociferous and passionate response of Canadians. We’re boycotting US products, we’re abandoning trips to the US (flight bookings from Canada to the US are down 70%), and finding other ways of making our feelings known.
In a period of polarization and negativity in politics, the country is virtually united in fierce and righteous anger at our country’s closest ally and economic and military partner transforming itself into our greatest enemy.
Unfortunately, it’s a moment that our political class seems unwilling to meet.
Sure, there’s tough ‘retaliatory’ talk. But our political leaders seem to think this is just a bump in the road and that we’ll soon return to normal relations with America. As I’ve written recently, there’s no going back. Not only is America no longer a friend, it is no longer a democracy.
Despite Canadians’ instinctive recognition that the threat to our sovereignty and well being is grave and serious, instead of being asked to prepare to sacrifice and come together to fight a generational battle for freedom, what are our political leaders offering us? Income tax breaks.
Yes, the federal election campaign is still young, but the dominant theme so far from the three major parties – Conservatives, Liberals, and even the NDP – is that they’ll lower income taxes.
[Image credit: Mike Moffatt]
The political incentives at work are obvious. The cost of living has been the dominant electoral frame for several years now, after a period of nasty inflation coupled with the ongoing housing crisis. And in a hugely important election, who wants to be the lone political party warning of the economic calamity being imposed on us and doing things to raise government revenue instead of offering Canadians a break? After all, a couple hundred dollars month extra in the bank is meaningful to a lot of people.
The problem is that income tax cuts are meaningless if people lose their jobs, face months- or years-long waiting lists for medical care, or entire sectors of the economy are wiped out by the criminal occupying the White House.
What Canadians need right now are leaders who recognize that war-life effort needs to be demanded of us. We need to structurally shift our country and economy away from the authoritarian hell scape to our south all while weathering its economic attacks on our country. This requires massive investment, including: 1) supports for workers and sectors hit hard by Trump’s tariffs, akin to the financial measures the federal government brought in during the pandemic, 2) infrastructure investments to move more and more goods to the ports on the eastern and western shores, 3) investments in housing, research and development, and universities to attract talent that is currently seeking to escape America, 4) investments to develop domestic industries in crucial areas of vulnerability, including food, medicine, and manufacturing, 5) war-like investments to rebuild our military and properly equip it, in order to prepare for the very real security and sovereignty threats Trump is making.
Wasting billions on income tax cuts in this context isn’t just a bad idea, it is ruinous. It’s also the opposite of fiscal responsibility. You don’t starve government coffers at a time when generational investments are needed.
Moreover, it’s a wasted political opportunity. Canadians are pissed. They are also scared. They should be.
Our politicians are too accustomed to treating us like idiot children. Our politics incentivize short-term, bad thinking. This election is an opportunity to have an adult conversation for once, and to recognize that sometimes keeping a country requires collective action and sacrifice. We should be talking about ways to raise government revenue, and to find ways to shift government spending to those priority areas (this might include, for example, flattening or even cutting the salaries of over-paid tenured professors in order to better invest in university hiring).
Canadians also need to reserve some of their anger for politicians who are failing in more abject ways to meet the moment.
While Trump attacks Canada, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has decided to join him, by sowing division, joining far-right lunatic fringe American media, threatening our national unity, and demanding not that Trump stop his attacks but merely that he pause them so her buddy Pierre Poilievre has a better chance at winning power. She is not standing up for Albertans, she is hurting their country, and they should stand up and demand her resignation.
If Canada’s political class won’t lead, Canadians need to demand more from them. I have to believe we’re finally ready for it, because the alternative is there soon won’t be a country worth defending.
Michael Guy:
The problem of course is that the primary job of any politician is to get elected. If it takes promises of income tax cuts to do it then so be it. The other items can be dealt with after you secure your majority government.
L-A:
Totally agree. When I hear some of the campaign promises I feel like the politician is totally missing the mark. I don’t care about retirement age and tax breaks…I care about my country being wiped out. There is no going back if we get annexed and the monster turns our country into a hellhole of second class non voting citizens who watch our land and resources get raped. I want a leader who wakes up Canadians. Who tells us to not naively hope for the best…it’s time to prepare for the worst. A leader who demands unity from all Canadians, no matter when they became Canadians, and from all political parties and start to get war ready. If no war happens, great….we will have built up our defenses. But the threat from the monster isn’t going away anytime soon. I want a leader who says ‘hey every Canadian needs to do this, this and this’. I’d more than do my part and I’d vote for them.I would not at all be surprised if Douche Fucker Trump bombs a major Canadian city or two or three on election day, or before it, blames NATO to create chaos here and in the USA, declares national emergency, prohibits further elections in USA, or Greenland and Canada, prohibits judges (American or Canadian) from making any rulings except for his fascist fuckers, sends in the tanks, Jan 6 insurrectionists and other white violent hate-filled gangs to start mass murdering all the Canadians that Musk’s Nazis don’t want in the Stasi gene pool. Still many of us will fight back, to the death. Not being American is worth dying for.
Alison Hall:
Mark Carney will be the one to lead us through this. He is not just promising tax breaks, he’s getting rid of barriers that promote countrywide trade, pipeline to the east (if only DS would cooperate!) war time housing initiatives and more. He’s a strategist, economist and has announced a whole host of spending that you mention is appropriate in a time like this. Military, the arctic, all of that is part of his platform. He can also deal with a narc like Trump…(if you’ve ever had to deal with one, you know that “do not engage” is a necessary tactic AKA do not kiss the ring). Yes he will have to communicate with him. But the less trump knows who he’s up against, the less ammo he has. Patience and strategy, that’s what Canada needs.
Neil Thomson:
As someone who runs local all candidates debates (Kanata), the vast majority of voters (particularly Boomers) vote with their wallets in mind.
Gail Silvius:
Thank you. I agree that our politicians are looking short term and are not accurately assessing the scope of the political threat to Canada and the international order.
Premier Smith seems to have empowered her separatist cohort with her list of “demands” and threats of a national unity crisis.
Geese are smarter than people — they look out for each other, Between standing guard while others eat, to switching off which bird leads in a V formation, geese embody cooperation, a value that humans too often forget by Neil Steinberg Mar 25, 2025, Chicago Sun Times
What do geese know that we don’t?
The value of organization, for one. While the structure of the United States government, built over centuries, is being torn apart in a matter of months, we can still look up and see those tight Vs in the spring sky as flocks of Canada geese return north.
Though many geese never leave the Chicago area. A pair showed up at my feeder last week. Most of the birds we get are “LBBs” — little brown birds, sparrows, wrens, finches — shamed by the occasional red cardinal. My feeder has also been visited by everything from ducks to hawks, which, of course, are not interested in the birdseed, per se, but the wildlife below — bunnies and squirrels — scavenging what falls from various beaks.
The geese were nibbling at those paltry leavings when, big-hearted fool that I am, I went outside. The geese removed themselves to a safe distance and I grabbed a heaping scoopful of seed and tossed it on the ground. There. Bon appetit.
Opinion
Have you ever watched geese eat? I hadn’t. One goose would plunge its face into the seeds, happily gobbling. The other wouldn’t. It stood guard, head on a swivel, looking left, then right. This went on for several minutes. Then they’d switch.
“Sentinel behavior,” said Michael P. Ward, an expert in conservation and bird behavior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Trying to detect predators. A lot of things want to eat birds, and they’re better working together, taking turns.”
Cooperation. Looking out for each other. Another practice that has fallen on hard times in the human world.
One doesn’t get a goose expert on the phone every day. I seized the opportunity.
That flying V formation? I assume it’s to keep the flock from getting separated.
“No, it’s actually aerodynamics,” Ward said. “The wind goes around the lead bird. The bird in the very front of the V pays a cost.”
There is no designated head goose. They take turns at the point of the V. Again, sharing the burden.
I suggested more geese are sticking around Chicago due to global warming.
“That is definitely correct,” Ward said. “Winters in Chicago have become more mild. Geese learned to take advantage of human food. Geese are hanging out on people’s roofs. In Chicagoland, the majority of them are staying. Then you have birds that come down from farther north.”
The geese seem to weigh the chance of starving to death in Illinois — where snow can cover the fields they like to forage — against being shot by hunters in Kentucky.
“People see geese as this dumb bird that gets in my way, but if you actually start studying them, they make decisions and have strategies,” Ward said.
Geese are so smart that to tag them, Ward’s team can no longer just drive up in a university van — geese recognize it and flee. He’s taken to having grad students disguise themselves as joggers — geese are used to ignoring joggers — in order to net them for tagging.
So here, too, geese exceed humans, as being not easy to fool.
Thus, they suffer the fate of the savvy of all species.
“They’re the most hated bird in Illinois,” Ward said. “Geese are the poster child for the human/wild bird conflict.”
Why? Several reasons. First, poop. An adult goose can turn out from 1 to 3 pounds of excrement. Every day.
“We’ve done surveys,” Ward said. “The vast majority of people in Illinois want to see more birds. They also don’t want geese in their backyard.”
I sure don’t, and worried, even as I was tossing birdseed before them, that I was inviting this pair of troublemakers to live in my yard. Geese are an enormous nuisance. A number of local businesses make a living chasing them off golf courses and such. But my duo seemed to tire of such easy pickings and moved on.
Geese are also aggressive. They will attack people, usually because they have a nest hidden nearby. In that sense, they are once again better than people, who will attack you for no reason, for the pure pleasure of lording themselves above you. Though there is good news — again, about geese.
“They can’t really hurt you,” Ward said. Yet another difference between geese and people where humans come out worse. Because people can really hurt you, such as by crippling Social Security.
Geese stick together because doing so helps them survive.
“Most of the time, they cooperate because there are so many threats,” Ward said. “There are benefits to cooperating as opposed to trying to be the lone wolf.”
Geese know that instinctively. I’m afraid that’s a lesson Americans keep having to learn anew.
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