Quotulatiousness

March 30, 2025

Recycling an old slogan – [Mark Carney] “didn’t come back for you”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

I guess you could say that Elizabeth Nickson isn’t a Carney fan:

Doesn’t he look half-dead? Like a shroud covers his saggy emaciated face and spindly body. Indicative of lifelessness of his ideas. NOT his actual ideas because what he is currently selling are the ideas he stole from Canada’s Conservative Party. Those ideas are grass roots, labored over for decades in underfunded think tanks, all roundly mocked and slandered in our repellent media which never tells the truth when an easy lie is within reach. But now, in the hands of a “leader” who will not stop the Liberal Party and its Laurentian elite clients looting of the Canadian people, well now they are AOK. And genius. And a lie, because he will only perform the minimum to gratify the stupid, “educated” women who will elect him.

Because above everything Liberal Party looting must continue. And with Net Zero and all that elite clap trap there will be another three generations of Canadians to ruin, to steal from, to harvest their life’s energy to feed the Party’s enormous ego and the plush lifestyles in the posh suburbs of Canada. Scratch such a resident and whatever he does, his salary is boosted by government, in some form or other, via contracts which do not perform, ghost contracts, just money to play with for supporting the Liberal Party.

If Carney is elected, the country will break up.

First Alberta will go. Danielle Smith emerged grim from her last meeting with Carnage. Have you heard of stranded assets? That’s his goal for Alberta’s oil and gas. Albertas energy is responsible for one third of Canadas private sector economy and no matter what he says, he has worked for two decades for Climate Change sequestration nonsense. For solar and wind, for de-development, sliming his way around the world twisting arms. He was the grim reaper behind Justin’s authoritarianism. As a result our current economy is built on government and debt and refinancing loans and housing.

Oh he will lie and lie and lie and promise new industrial infrastructure. Sure he will. You know who will own that infrastructure? BIS, the Bank of International Settlements or some international banking outfit. They will own it because carbon credits and future use. They will retire some of our debt, not enough for us to actually grow, just to keep body and soul together. And we will grind forward another twenty years, piling up yet more debt, at which time the Liberal Party will broker off another hunk of our heritage.

Then Saskatchewan. BC and Manitoba will look at the powerhouse economy that the U.S. is building, and petition to strand the Eloi, with their banal life of ease on B.C. Coast, all as equally dumb and destructive as California’s ruinous elites. And join the U.S.

Canada has so much banked energy, so much thwarted ambition, so many lives wasted. So much potential lost. We are like a screaming adolescent banging ourselves against the wall, wanting nothing more than to get a job and get on with it. (Oh, wait, that was me)

Kaizen’s video is linked [here]. I STRONGLY recommend you listen to his powerful brief encapsulation of how fast the American economy is going to grow.

We tariff because we are broke. We are broke because we have regulated ourselves into stasis. This below represents what it is to do business in Canada. I have heard this from thousands of entrepreneurs.

The Conservatives “must perform all kinds of popular pantomimes, hide their conservative values, and they cannot act on principle”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

James Pew on the trouble Canada’s Conservatives and right wing parties across the western world face in trying to get elected:

Trump vs. Poilievre
Image by Grok

“Knock it off.” That is Poilievre’s message to Trump concerning the so-called “trade war”. Honestly, I think Poilievre should take his own advice. I don’t think he can though. Rightwing parties, in all Western nations, with the sole exception of the U.S., are strategically unable to be honest. They must perform all kinds of popular pantomimes, hide their conservative values, and they cannot act on principle. Not if they want to win in general elections. In the current Canadian election, you absolutely must be seen as adversarial to Trump if you are to have a hope in hell of winning.

While someone like me, who is constantly yelling at the radio, or the newspapers, when I read or hear about the stupidity that passes for political analysis in mainstream Canada, would love a principled leader (like Maxime Bernier) to tell it like it is, to stick to conservative values, to defend the traditions of the Western world, this is just not going to happen anytime soon in Canada.

Let me take this opportunity to dress down the entire edifice of Canadian elites. The ones of today and of the past half-dozen decades. From the business leaders, to politicians (including Poilievre), to the media (the absolute worst), they have all shown that principles are not something they prioritize. I’m not even sure if the majority of Canadians care. I know readers of this newsletter do, but there aren’t enough of us. The country is literally full of low-information, unprincipled partisans. Many are unstable emotional wrecks. Things that should be approached logically, sensibly and analytically, are almost always treated instead with histrionics.

What responsibility does the media (Canadian, American, and other media around the world) hold for both creating and escalating what should more accurately be considered trade negotiations, maybe even a trade dispute, not “trade war”!? This is exactly what Trump wants (at least I think it is, there is no way to really know). He is a master provocateur. He is playing the media, and as a consequence, the public too. The media are reacting in the way Trump and everyone else expects. I think far too many of us secretly love the drama; things are getting exciting, instead of boring as usual. The whole mess, which really should be a major bore of a story involving trade policy wonks, diplomats and business leaders, has been artificially amplified and exaggerated into an existential economic crisis. Pearl-clutching on the fainting couch has been the anticipated response of literally all involved, most importantly, Trump himself (again, this is little more than an educated guess). And the public eats it up (no guessing about that).

All of this is not to insincerely or callously downplay the very serious implications on Canadian businesses and workers. I absolutely put Canada first. Although, I see no sense in engaging in anything that can be construed as a “war”, against a nation we rely on economically and that protects us militarily in a world that grows more hostile by the day. It is the Chinese Communist Party and expansionist Islam whom I see as existential threats to Canadians (and the West). And, while I do not agree with or appreciate Trump’s rhetoric and actions towards Canada one bit, I cannot help pondering the situation Canada’s past leaders have placed us in, which makes us utterly reliant on American economic and military strength — is that not our own fault? Everything Trump is doing in the world, or at least everything he thinks he is doing, is meant to bolster the two things Canada relies on most: the American economy and military. This reality makes Canadian fightin’ words directed at America ring hollow.

Paradoxically, since the failure of Canada’s elites has rendered the country unable to stand on its own, anything Trump can do to strengthen America (including hurting Canada unfortunately) is in Canada’s overall best interests. What a tragic circumstance for any sovereign nation to find itself in. This would not have been the case, if over the lost Trudeau decade, and many decades before that, the country had been led by nation-builders engaged in ambitious nation-building. In the modern period, we have failed at nation-building. Maybe not miserably, but the overall effort has been inadequate. The post-national era of Trudeau being the height of this failure, and the absolute depths of our current despair. And now, sadly, pathetically, we are at the mercy of the orange one.

Dies the Fire and the Founder Effect

Filed under: Books, Economics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Feral Historian
Published 15 Nov 2024

The first book in S.M. Stirling’s Emberverse series, Dies The Fire yanks modern technology out of the world and sets the stage for a multi-faceted exploration of how distinct cultures emerge from small isolated groups and the profound effect individuals can have the societies that coalesce around them.

00:00 Intro
01:28 Founders
03:37 Desperation
04:51 Flawed Assumptions
07:05 Composites and Rhymes
(more…)

QotD: FDR, Mackenzie King and Churchill in 1940

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, Military, Quotations, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

On May 30th 1940, just after the war cabinet crisis & during the Dunkirk evacuation;

Winston Churchill was informed by the Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, of more dreadful news.

Roosevelt had no faith in Churchill nor Britain, and wanted Canada to give up on her.

Roosevelt thought that Britain would likely collapse, and Churchill could not be trusted to maintain her struggle.

Rather than appealing to Churchill’s pleas of aid — which were politically impossible then anyway — Roosevelt sought more drastic measures.

A delegation was summoned [from] Canada.

They requested Canada to pester Britain to have the Royal Navy sent across the Atlantic, before Britain’s seemingly-inevitable collapse.

Moreover, they wanted Canada to encourage the other British Dominions to get on board such a plan.

Mackenzie King was mortified. Writing in his diary,

“The United States was seeking to save itself at the expense of Britain. That it was an appeal to the selfishness of the Dominions at the expense of the British Isles. […] I instinctively revolted against such a thought. My reaction was that I would rather die than do aught to save ourselves or any part of this continent at the expense of Britain.”

On the 5th June 1940, Churchill wrote back to Mackenzie King,

“We must be careful not to let the Americans view too complacently prospect of a British collapse, out of which they would get the British Fleet and the guardianship of the British Empire, minus Great Britain. […]

Although President [Roosevelt] is our best friend, no practical help has been forthcoming from the United States as yet.”

Another example of the hell Churchill had to endure — which would have broken every lesser man.

Whilst the United States heroically came to aid Britain and her Empire, the initial relationship between the two great powers was different to what is commonly believed.

(The first key mover that swung Roosevelt into entrusting Churchill to continue the struggle — and as such aid would not be wasted on Britain — was when Churchill ordered the Royal Navy’s Force H to open fire and destroy the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kébir — after Admiral Gensoul had refused the very reasonable offers from Britain, despite Germany and Italy demanding the transference of the French Fleet as part of the armistices.)

Andreas Koreas, Twitter, 2024-12-27.

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