If you go to a supermarket at certain times of the day, you’ll find that the deli counter can be quite busy, so you pull a little ticket from the dispenser and mooch around in the general area, loading up the yoghurt and Pop-Tarts until your number’s called. For 15 billion bucks, maybe the airlines could buy a couple dozen dispensers apiece. But apparently not. They want you backed up in lines shuffling your bags forward a couple of inches at a time because your misery is their convenience.
Mark Steyn, “Flight From Reality”, The Spectator, 2001-11-17.
October 24, 2025
QotD: What airlines could learn from supermarkets
Comments Off on QotD: What airlines could learn from supermarkets
October 23, 2025
Karine Jean-Pierre’s “tell-nothing tell-all” memoir of the Biden White House
In the free-to-cheapskates part of this post (i.e., outside the paywall), Matt Taibbi discusses the former White House Press Secretary’s book Independent as the author does the rounds of TV talk shows to boost it:
Independent, the new tell-nothing tell-all by former Joe Biden spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre, is framed in the introduction as the patriotic diatribe of a once-loyal Democrat who’s now “free to speak for myself” and “eager to say what I think”, thanks to a dramatic decision:
After being a party insider for twenty years, I now believe I can fight harder for my country from outside the Democratic Party than from within it. From here on, I am politically an independent.
Just a few pages later, however, Jean-Pierre claims she only noticed something wrong with Biden once, during his infamous debate performance last June 27th. “Whoa … He must be sick,” she deadpans, then reframes Independent as an answer to a book she hasn’t even read:
CNN anchor Jake Tapper kicked off the debate. He later wrote a supposed tell-all about Biden, Original Sin … accusing [Biden] of a cover-up of his mental decline and how his aides quashed concerns. I was technically a part of the president’s inner circle and saw Biden every day and saw no such decline. I never read Tapper’s book and don’t ever plan to because that does not track with what I saw in the White House.
It’s all entertaining stuff (the “technically” is hilarious). Jean-Pierre announces she’s finally free to tell the truth, but begins by declaring that Tapper’s Original Sin — another book marketed as “the full, unsettling truth … told for the first time” — was wrong not because Tapper was lying about how long it took for him to notice Biden’s problems, but because Biden never had any problems to notice.
Jean-Pierre is generating significant negative Internet wattage this week, battered everywhere for insisting she never saw anything concerning in Biden’s private behavior. In a wild exchange with Gayle King of CBS, she doubled down on a book passage claiming she didn’t even see an issue with Biden before the critical debate, even though she traveled to it with him on Air Force One (“Maybe I was too nervous … to notice whether or not he was sniffling?”). Apparently, that trip was a rare instance in which Jean-Pierre not only didn’t talk to Biden on the plane, but didn’t have conversations with anyone who did. “I had no clue Biden had a cold and was off his game”, she wrote, “until he began to speak at the debate”.
Independent reads like an oxygen-deprived sequel to Tapper’s book. The humorous premise of Original Sin involved Tapper’s sources insisting Biden “stole an election” because if he’d stepped aside earlier, the party might have had a “robust primary” — exactly the scenario they spent years fighting to avoid, savaging challengers like Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson and smearing Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. directly into the arms of Donald Trump. The CNN man insisted “insiders” who had a “much better window into Biden’s condition than the general public” saw things that “shocked them” before last June’s debate, when the awful truth finally became obvious even to news media. But according to Tapper, the problem wasn’t so much that insiders lied, but were lied to. His first chapter was titled “He totally fucked us”, a quote about Biden by Kamala Harris aide David Plouffe.
Never mind that the world could see Biden was in drool-cup mode as far back back as 2019, or that Special Counsel Robert Hur made it legal record that Biden likely couldn’t be convicted because a jury would see him as incompetent, an “elderly man with a poor memory” who couldn’t find his own underpants, let alone classified papers he was accused of mishandling. No, the problem was, “Biden fucked us”.
Jean-Pierre has now one-upped Tapper by insisting nothing was wrong with Biden and that — get this — the real problem was that the press undermined the president, and not after the debate, but all along! “Pretty much since the day he’d stepped into the White House”, Jean-Pierre wrote, “the press had taken every opportunity to imply Biden was too old or mentally unfit for the job”. She is referring to the same press corps that insisted Biden was “sharp as a tack” for four and a half years, while he was serially sternum-poking voters, staring into space, walking off set in the middle of interviews, and turning every public ceremony into a potential Chevy Chase routine
Comments Off on Karine Jean-Pierre’s “tell-nothing tell-all” memoir of the Biden White House
October 22, 2025
The Korean War Week 70: Casualties Rise For The Chinese – October 21, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 21 Oct 2025The UN forces launch Operation Polecharge, hoping to complete Operation Commando, but they have worries away from the field, since UN pilots have violated the neutral zone and killed two young Korean boys, causing an outcry. If that weren’t enough, a new Soviet atomic bomb test has the entire world on edge.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:56 Recap
01:12 Operation Polecharge
02:37 Chinese Tactics
05:15 9th Corps Attacks
07:10 Unit Integration
10:04 B-29s Shot Down
11:06 The Mutual Security Act
12:47 Neutral Zone Violation
14:11 Summary
14:29 Conclusion
15:56 Call to Action
(more…)
Comments Off on The Korean War Week 70: Casualties Rise For The Chinese – October 21, 1951
October 20, 2025
Carney’s trip to Egypt, without the pesky Canadian media tagging along
I guess it’s slightly to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s credit that he was able to get a last-second invitation to attend President Trump’s latest international triumph … we all know how Mr. Carney loves him a nice photo op. But it was almost unprecedented that he nipped over to Egypt without taking any of the usual flappers and fart-catchers of the Canadian media along with him:
X-post by former PMO chief of staff Norman Spector, who noticed something was up concerning how the Prime Minister’s team got its message out
Image and caption from The Rewrite by Peter Menzies
Last week, the Parliamentary Press Gallery (PPG) and I had something in common.
We were both dismayed.
They, because they weren’t invited to join Prime Minister Carney on his last-minute trip to Egypt for a photo opp; Me because most of them didn’t seem all that interested in looking into the circumstances of the PM’s hasty departure and instead allowed themselves to be played in the most appallingly obvious manner.
What got the PPG’s knickers twisted was that they weren’t invited to accompany Carney when he departed Ottawa in a rush to get to the Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheikh, a popular spot on the Red Sea for the world’s glitterati. It took PPG President Mia Rabson a couple of days to issue a statement, but she made it clear the PPG disapproved:
The Parliamentary Press Gallery was not informed in advance of the Prime Minister’s trip to Egypt to participate in the Middle East Peace Ceremony on Oct. 12-13, […] The Gallery is disappointed and dismayed at the exclusion of Canadian media from the event and expresses in no uncertain terms that this must never happen again.
It is unprecedented that Canadian media be entirely excluded from a Canadian prime minister’s foreign trip.
The only reporting I could find on this was in Politico, where it was recorded that the PMO had posted this notice: “6:30 p.m. The Prime Minister will depart for Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to attend the signing of a Middle East peace plan. Closed to media.”
What first caused my jaw to drop and to become, like Rabin, disappointed and dismayed, were the stories left unpursued. On the morning of Oct. 12, Canada was not listed as among the countries invited to join in the “peace summit” associated with the ceasefire deal reached between Israel and Hamas. If it had been, the prime minister may not have had to charter a private jet because the usual Royal Canadian Air Force planes and crews were, as City News‘s Glen MacGregor reported, unavailable.
There are two lines of journalistic inquiry there, neither of which appears to have been of interest. The first is: how can Canada’s military be so poorly equipped that there isn’t at all times a fully-equipped aircraft and crew on standby and is this an issue that will be addressed in the future? The second is: how did we wind up getting invited to the peace summit? Comments by US President Donald Trump indicate that we weren’t initially considered important enough to be on site but phoned to ask if we could join the party. (The Line — which doesn’t accept government subsidies — noticed.)
Trump, in remarks to media said: “You have Canada. That’s so great to have, in fact. The president called and he wanted to know if it’s worth — well he knew exactly what it is. He knew the importance. Where’s Canada, by the way? Where are you? He knew the importance of this.”
What was pursued, at least in comments online by journalists, was Trump’s inability to identify Carney by his correct title. (In an exchange that followed, Carney sarcastically thanked Trump for elevating him and, in response, was told “at least I didn’t call you governor”. Ha ha.)
Everyone is free to make their own decisions, but if Canada had to call Trump to ask to be invited, Canadians need to know if that means we are in the president’s debt. Trump, after all, seems like the sort of guy who keeps score.
But it’s what followed that really got creepy. While Canadian reporters were not allowed to accompany the prime minister to Egypt, someone who says he or she was on the plane started phoning around to tell reporters what happened. And they went for it. The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and Politico all reported unverified statements emanating from a single, unnamed source. The Globe‘s Robert Fife reported that “a senior government official” said that while Carney and others thought they were just in Egypt for a photo opp, during a four hour wait for Trump to arrive from Israel “Mr. Carney had back-and-forth conversations with a group of leaders”.
So, after a bit of ritual humiliation — par for the course with Trump and Carney — the PM got to have unstructured/unfocused chit-chat with other diplomatic rag-tag and bob-tail clinging to the President’s cape. Not a good look, but Canadians must be getting inured to their national leaders being treated as, at best, an afterthought.
Comments Off on Carney’s trip to Egypt, without the pesky Canadian media tagging along
From Hitler’s Rockets to America’s Arsenal – W2W 049
TimeGhost History
Published 19 Oct 2025From the ashes of Nazi Germany to the launch pads of the American desert, the story of the nation’s first ballistic missile is one filled with contradiction. A man who once served the SS soon became a celebrated figure in the United States, and his weapon of war was transformed into a symbol of progress. Here, we will explore how this unlikely journey unfolded and what it reveals about science, power, and morality in the modern age.
(more…)
Comments Off on From Hitler’s Rockets to America’s Arsenal – W2W 049
The real reason we’re suddenly discussing “The Great Feminization” now
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Clifton Duncan offers an explanation for why “The Great Feminization” is a hot topic of discussion, and I think he has a valid point:
The only reason people are talking about “The Great Feminization” now is because it’s affecting women.
Men young and old have been talking about it for decades.
For decades boys and men have had their desires dismissed; had fathers denigrated and denied them; had their spaces, interests and hobbies invaded; had primary and higher education weaponized against them; had jobs and promotions unjustly denied them; had reputations ruined by false allegations; watched pop culture fester with anti-male slop; had wealth and progeny stripped away by prejudiced family courts.
What happened when they voiced these complaints?
They were called misogynists, resentful of their inability to match women’s success as they seethed over the dismantling of the patriarchy.
They were called losers, whiners and complainers who should shut up, grow up, man up and get married.
But now —
As men avoid women at work, or withdraw from the labor force altogether; as men leave the church; as men abandon dating and marriage; as men reciprocate women’s embrace of modernism and rejection of traditionalism; and as womanhood faces erasure, ironically (but predictably) at the hands of the very liberals and progressives women celebrate for hatcheting away manhood and masculinity —
Only now, as the consequences of treating women’s needs as all that matter and men’s needs as superfluous (and offensive) are evident,
Only now, as men usher in a new sexual revolution by unapologetically focusing on themselves and their own happiness, refusing to serve a society that’s signaled repeatedly that it no longer values them and prompting more and more women to wonder “Where Have All the (Good) Men Gone?”
Only now has it become safe for *women* to broach the topic of “The Great Feminization” and be lavished with acclaim for making the exact same points men have been chastised for making for over 25 years.
Symbolic.
Update: Francisco at Small Dead Animals posted this video of Camille Paglia talking about what women have lost through Feminism:
Comments Off on The real reason we’re suddenly discussing “The Great Feminization” now
October 19, 2025
Printed Maplewash from Random Penguin “Canada”
In the latest SHuSH newsletter, Ken Whyte discusses one of the most cynical and blatant attempts to “Maplewash” US product as 100% home-grown Canadian: a book of essays by living and dead Canadian authors, titled with the Liberals’ moronic “Elbows Up” slogan … with all the profits going to Random Penguin’s US corporate headquarters:
Ever since the Trump tariffs against Canada were launched last spring, US firms operating in Canada have been engaged in a variety of maple-washing tactics to shield themselves from consumer backlash. Some are as simple as new labelling — “prepared in Canada!” More audacious was McDonald’s effort to make everyone forget it’s the White House’s caterer of choice: a partnership with Canada’s sweetheart, Shania Twain.
You might think the McDonald’s gambit would be hard to top, but Penguin Random House has done it.
Penguin Random House Canada is a division of Penguin Random House LLC, corporate headquarters at 1745 Broadway, 3rd Floor, New York, New York, 10019. Penguin Random House LLC is in turn controlled by Bertelsmann, a media conglomerate in Gütersloh, Germany, but legally and operationally, it is a US company. Its executive leadership, including CEO Nihar Malaviya, works out of the above address. Strategy and publishing priorities are set in New York, and profits in PRH’s many far-flung international divisions flow to New York. You can see why this firm, with its dominant position in the Canadian market, might feel vulnerable and want to camouflage its Americanness when everyone starts shouting “buy Canadian!”
[…]
There are at least four levels of cynicism to Elbows Up!
The first — let’s call it eye-popping — is that Penguin Random House Canada would use so many of its own authors as human shields in a trade war. I mean, that’s cold. You not only have to conceive it, you have to be confident the authors are so oblivious that they won’t notice — or so obliged that they won’t care — that they’re laundering the reputation and protecting the economic interests of a US multinational and that the net proceeds from their rousing defence of Canadian sovereignty are going straight to 1745 Broadway, 3rd Floor, New York, New York, 10019, along with the licensing rights to their contributions.
[…]
The third level of cynicism — gobsmacking — is that Penguin Random House Canada used its McClelland & Stewart imprint for this atrocity.
I’m not sure there’s ever been a more important Canadian cultural institution than M&S. In the second half of the twentieth century, it was synonymous with Canadian literature. It published the core of the modern Canadian canon — Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Alice Munro, Mordecai Richler, Mavis Gallant, Robertson Davies, Rohinton Mistry, and many others. More than that, M&S was a symbol of our cultural sovereignty. Its catalog is the closest thing we’ll ever have to the Elgin Marbles.
Jack McClelland, who built the company, ran into financial trouble and sold M&S to strip-mall baron Avie Bennett in 1986. In 2000, Bennett cashed out, selling 25 percent of M&S to Penguin Random House and granting 75 percent to the University of Toronto because federal rules required majority Canadian ownership of cultural enterprises. It was an ingenious deal: UofT played the stooge of Canadian control; PRH had its way with the jewel of Canadian publishing; M&S remained eligible for federal grants because of its “Canadian ownership”. Then, in 2011, the U of T quietly transferred its shares to PRH, giving the multinational full ownership, never mind the foreign-ownership rules. UofT explained that playing the stooge of Canadian control was no longer “a core business” of the university. The house that built Canadian literature, along with its full catalogue of Canadian classics was now fully domiciled at 745 Broadway, 3rd Floor, New York, New York, 10019. The feds didn’t lift a finger.
I don’t know what you’d call that but a cultural crime.
And I don’t know what you can say about PRH using M&S for its maple-washing exercise beyond that it’s gloating.
The final level of cynicism — this one’s just sad — is that Elbows Up! is a forgettable book. It has none of the freshness, quirkiness, and genuine intellectual engagement of The New Romans. It takes as its title a partisan Liberal slogan from the last election (an act of toadying that probably qualifies as its own level of cynicism). A few of the essays, particularly those by the younger writers, are interesting, but none of them has much to say about Canada’s current predicament or the nature of the Canada-US relationship. I was struck by how many of the contributors can’t see beyond their narrow professional or personal identities. It’s as though they’ve never before been called upon to consider Canada as a whole. They lack the vocabulary to contribute anything meaningful. Also, the emotional tone is oddly flat from start to finish.
Comments Off on Printed Maplewash from Random Penguin “Canada”
Mandating the use of bodycams for ICE agents
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, ESR discusses the results of mandating bodycams for police officers, suggesting that bodycams on ICE agents won’t drive the changes activists are hoping for:
This is a followup on my earlier post about the expected effects of requiring bodycams on ICE agents.
I used Grok to do some digging into the literature examining the effects of bodycams on measurable statistics of unlawful police violence.
I did not have any strong expectations about what I was going to find.
Do the query yourself if you like, but I can tell you that the answer is going to reduce to two sentences:
1. Bodycams do not have any statistically significant effect on measures of unlawful police violence.
2. Body cams do have a statistically significant effect, reducing allegations of unlawful police violence.
This means that the only statistically significant effect of bodycams is to deter false claims of police brutality and bigotry.
Note: do not read this as me claiming that cops are untarnished angels. I know people who have been brutally abused by police. I know this does occasionally happen, and I condemn the police culture of silence about such abuses.
What I am saying is that what you see on bodycam footage, which is almost always police exercising commendable restraint in dealing with extremely violent and stupid people, reflects reality. If it didn’t, reality would leak around the edges of the camera non-coverage as an observable effect on incident statistics.
I don’t expect the effect on ICE to be any different. I expect mandatory body cams to backfire rather badly on people who pushed them in the hopes of exposing ICE as some sort of out-of-control Gestapo.
If anything, I expect the consequence to be an increase in already high levels of public support for mass deportations of illegals. Because I know what the results of lots of bodycam and security camera footage has been about public perception of underclass criminality. It gets more difficult to sell the narrative of these people as innocent victims of a repressive society after you’ve seen your 47th video of a screaming semi-psychotic trying to knife a cop during a traffic stop.
Some of the activist orgs that wanted the body cams made mandatory for street cops now want them turned off. I think it’s pretty likely the same thing is going to happen with immigration enforcement sooner or later. Most likely sooner.
Comments Off on Mandating the use of bodycams for ICE agents
Forever War: Becoming the Enemy
Feral Historian
Published 8 Mar 2024The Forever War is a great piece of post-Vietnam social critique, not least in its depiction of a society that deserves to lose the war that its chosen to fight. Here I talk about the story through that lens, meandering toward a point in the usual Feral Historian manner.
Also I wanted to get this one out because I’m going to make some Forever War comparisons in an upcoming video.
Most of the B-Roll is from the Forever War comic adaptation, both the original black and white version and the later color release. Also threw in some clips from Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars just to mix up the visuals a bit because there’s already too much of me sitting on a rock.
00:00 Intro
00:53 The Draft
03:25 It’s so Army …
06:54 No Civilization
09:35 War’s Over. My Bad
13:14 Parting Thoughts
Comments Off on Forever War: Becoming the Enemy
October 18, 2025
Remembering GamerGate
We’ve lived through such a tumultuous decade that it’s sometimes difficult to remember what things were like in the “before times”. On Substack chat, John Carter linked to this essay by Billionaire Psycho which helps refresh memories about one of the seminal events that kicked off the political and social chaos of the last decade:
GamerGate is maybe the most important event of the past 20 years which never receives mainstream media coverage. Lomez will be publishing an in-depth history of GamerGate, to serve as an official record going forward, and that’s crucial as part of building a foundation for a new culture — fighting the narrative war over how history is remembered, how history is interpreted, what events are recognized as significant and influential moments in culture, and how Western identity is defined.
GamerGate was only possible because a generation of incompetent Leftists inherited an empire built on propaganda that came without a legible instruction manual. Leftists forgot how to run their imperial machine. Video games sedated young white men, funneling their energy into a simulation of achievement, an illusory power fantasy of digital significance. Leftists forgot that porn, video games, movies, junk food, and other passive consumption activities primarily existed to prevent young white men from doing anything useful with their lives. And this zone of sedation was viewed as another industry to conquer so that DEI activists could bully the video game industry into providing overproduced elites with fake jobs.
This event was important for several reasons.
GamerGate exposed American Sharia laws. It unveiled the shibboleths, religious taboos, and blasphemy codes which were considered more important than Constitutional protections on “free speech”. A gulf emerged between written laws, and selective enforcement.
GamerGate was maybe the first time in 50 years that Leftists suffered a real, measurable defeat.
It functioned as a generational awakening: a catalyst that activated a decentralized army of shytpoasters, bloggers, podcasters, streamers, journalists, and RW activists.
It mapped out in real-time the architecture and OODA loop of the Leftist hivemind, providing empirical data on how the swarm intelligence perceives, coordinates, reacts, propagates … and suffers damage.
It educated critics of the hegemonic monoculture that rules the Global American Empire.
But I think the most important aspect of GamerGate was that it disproved the narrative illusion that everyone more or less accepted as conventional wisdom, the bedrock of the uniparty worldview. Before GamerGate, it was taken as a self-evident fact that America was a capitalist country, and that all of the evil in the world was caused by Wall Street corporations chasing “shareholder value” and advancing “the profit-motive”. Capitalism and racism were the invisible demons which could be used as scapegoats for anything bad that ever happened at any point and at any place in American society.
Leftism could do anything it wanted, no matter how dumb, destructive, intrusive, or evil — and then blame capitalism and racism for the consequences.
This illusion was shattered by GamerGate.
[…]
There’s one important thing that’s been lost since GamerGate (GG) and the Meme War of 2016, which is the adolescent fun, transgressive irreverence, and juvenile sense of humor which once characterized the RW youth. There was a brief window when video game enthusiasts believed they could meme their way to victory (they did), win a landslide election (they did), and reverse imperial decline (they didn’t). Ten years have passed since then. Countless accounts have been banned, doxxed, deplatformed, debanked. Dissidents have been prosecuted and imprisoned. The presidency of 2016 was stalled out and subverted, the election of 2020 was stolen, the election of 2024 almost ended in an assassination on live television. Covid lockdowns crashed the economy and trapped everyone in their homes, while Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioted outside in the name of George Floyd.
At some point, it stopped being fun, and the contest turned into a forever war.
Comedy turned serious.
But it should be remembered that in the aftermath of GamerGate, humor and a playful, childish energy fueled the engine of RW victories. That’s the secret ingredient.
Samizdat is the key to winning.
Always remember to keep having fun, and keep laughing, because our enemies are ridiculous.
Comments Off on Remembering GamerGate
October 17, 2025
Stellantis took the bribe, left Canada anyway
The former American Motors plant in Brampton, now owned by Stellantis, was supposed to be the manufacturing site for a new Jeep vehicle. The federal government under Justin Trudeau handed about $15 billion to Stellantis to build an EV battery complex in Windsor, Ontario. It was apparently just assumed that this meant that Stellantis would keep the Brampton facility open and operating, but that assumption was faulty:
Stellantis has announced they’re leaving Brampton. That’s it. End of story.
Three thousand workers. Gone. A manufacturing base gutted. A city thrown into economic chaos. And a federal government left holding a $15 billion bag it handed over like a drunk tourist at a rigged poker table.
The Jeep Compass — the very vehicle they promised would anchor Ontario’s role in the so-called “EV transition” — will no longer be built in Canada. Production is moving to Belvidere, Illinois. The same company that cashed billions of your tax dollars under the banner of “green jobs” and “economic transformation” has slammed the door and walked out. And no, this isn’t a surprise. This was baked into the cake from day one.
Let’s rewind.
In April 2023, under Justin Trudeau’s government, Chrystia Freeland — then Finance Minister — and François-Philippe Champagne, the Industry Minister, announced what they called a “historic” agreement: a multi-billion-dollar subsidy package to Stellantis and LG Energy Solution to build an EV battery plant in Windsor, Ontario.
It was sold as a turning point. The future. A Green Revolution. Thousands of jobs. A new industrial strategy for Canada. But in reality? It was a Hail Mary pass by a government that had already crippled Canada’s energy sector and needed a shiny new narrative heading into an election cycle.
And here’s what they didn’t tell you: the deal had no enforceable commitment to keep auto production in Brampton. There were performance-based incentives — yes — but only for the battery plant. Not for the Brampton assembly line. Not for the existing workforce. And certainly not for ensuring the long-term health of Canada’s domestic auto industry.
They tied this country’s future to a globalist fantasy. A fantasy that assumed the United States would remain under the control of climate-obsessed technocrats like Joe Biden. A fantasy that required a compliant America pushing carbon neutrality, electric vehicle mandates, and billions in matching subsidies for green infrastructure.
But in November 2024, Americans said no.
Donald Trump was elected president. And just as he promised, he tore Biden’s green agenda to shreds. He pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord — again. He dismantled the EV mandates. He unleashed American oil and gas. But he didn’t stop there. Trump imposed a sweeping America First manufacturing policy, pairing 25% tariffs on imported goods with aggressive incentives to bring factories, jobs, and supply chains back onto U.S. soil.
And, as Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman points out, it’s just the beginning:
You probably heard the news by now: Stellantis is cancelling its opening of a Jeep factory planned in Brampton, taking over 3,000 jobs and USD $600 million of investment out of Canada and moving it to the U.S.
This is the latest development in the growing trend of companies scaling back their operations in our country and choosing instead to grow in the US. Whisky maker Diageo found its name in the headlines last month when they announced they’d move their Crown Royal bottling facility south. GM laid off or cut down shifts for 750 autoworkers in Oshawa and 900 in Ingersoll while sending $4 billion to the U.S. Those are the ones that drew the headlines.
Why is this happening? Well – the reason on everyone’s mind right now is tariffs. And it’s true – tariffs are having a big impact on the Canadian economy and on our trading relationships. But there are other, deeper reasons at play, too.
Companies don’t just make decisions on a whim – especially those related to long-run production and fixed investments totalling hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. Those decisions are made as part of detailed, multi-year analyses that take into account predicted economic conditions, market forces, and many other factors. A massive move of your production facility isn’t a temporary, six-month decision to be trifled over – it’s a permanent thing and that means they aren’t coming back.
The objective is to decrease uncertainty, cut costs, increase production, etc. etc. all to work in favour of any company’s ultimate goal, which is, of course, to make money.
So let me translate what all these investment and job cuts really mean: they’re not a knee-jerk reaction to the tariffs, although those play a part. They’re a statement about the long-term trajectory of the Canadian economy and the kind of climate that a decade of Liberal government has built for businesses in this country.
If these companies thought the U.S. tariffs would be transitory, a six-month blip, an economic fad – then they’d have no reason to cancel factories that will be producing goods for 20 or 30 years. That wouldn’t make financial sense.
[…]
If things get worse, the government might resort to its favourite strategy of just offering more hand-outs for businesses to try and entice them to stay here, but that only works for so long. That Stellantis plant in Brampton? The one that’s moving to the U.S.? The Ontario government promised them over $500 million just a few years ago – and the feds followed.
Turns out, you can promise to cut somebody a giant cheque and it’s still unprofitable for them to do business here.
As I mentioned, the continued trade uncertainty doesn’t help our situation, and the Prime Minister’s failure to get a deal is costing us big-time – especially as he promises to drive a trillion dollars of investment southbound at the expense of our workers here.
But as long as the Liberals keep the same old approach towards economics and business in this country, as long as the Liberals keep the taxes high, the productivity low, and the red tape piled up high — expect to see more headlines like the one about Stellantis, not fewer.
How many more job losses will it take for our leaders to realize that?
Comments Off on Stellantis took the bribe, left Canada anyway
October 16, 2025
RIFfing the US federal workforce
In Reason, J.D. Tuccille considers the impact of the US government shutdown on the federal civil service:
“Lincoln Memorial During Government Shutdown 2013” by Flickr user reivax is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 
.
As promised — or threatened, if you wandered over to Reason by accident — the Trump administration has started using the government sort-of-shutdown as an opportunity to engage in mass layoffs of federal employees. In the game of chicken between Republicans and Democrats over just how much the government should overspend and on what, the losers so far appear to be some of the almost 3 million Americans who thought federal employment would be a comfortable way to collect a paycheck.
Setting thousands of former government workers loose to seek jobs elsewhere — preferably not involving money forcibly extracted from taxpayers — is a step in the right direction.
Shutdowns Are (Mostly) Political Theater
As we all should know by now, government shutdowns are largely political theater. National parks and museums are closed to inconvenience the public into believing something big is happening even as taxes keep getting collected and government enforcers continue twisting arms to make sure people comply with laws and rules that never should have been imposed.
The Brookings Institution’s David Wessel pointed out last week, “the Justice Department said 90% of its employees would be exempted from the furlough” and “the Department of Homeland Security said in its 76-page contingency plan that roughly 95% of its nearly 272,000 employees would remain on the job if a shutdown occurred”. Agencies accomplish this by defining “essential” employees who remain on the job in the broadest way possible.
Paychecks may be delayed during the shutdown. But after it ends, “employees who were required to perform excepted work during the lapse will receive retroactive pay” and “employees who were furloughed as the result of the lapse will receive retroactive pay for those furlough periods” according to the Office of Personnel Management. Basically, all federal employees eventually get paid whether they continue to work or are sent home for the duration of the “shutdown”.
An Opportunity To Reduce the Federal Workforce
At least, that’s how it usually works. This time is a little different because the Trump administration came into office promising to downsize the federal government. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was supposed to accomplish that goal, but the shutdown offers another opportunity. Even before furloughs began, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) sent out a memo noting:
With respect to those Federal programs whose funding would lapse and which are otherwise unfunded, such programs are no longer statutorily required to be carried out. Therefore, consistent with applicable law, including the requirements of 5 C.F.R. part 351, agencies are directed to use this opportunity to consider Reduction in Force (RIF) notices for all employees in programs, projects, or activities (PPAs) that satisfy all three of the following conditions: (1) discretionary funding lapses on October 1, 2025; (2) another source of funding, such as H.R. 1 (Public Law 119-21) is not currently available; and (3) the PPA is not consistent with the President’s priorities.
The White House is apparently taking this opportunity seriously. “Around 4,200 employees were laid off in total on Friday,” reports Eric Katz of Government Executive. The biggest cuts were at the Department of the Treasury (1,446 employees) and the Department of Health and Human Services (between 1,100 and 1,200 employees). The Department of Education, which President Trump proposes to totally eliminate, also experienced layoffs (466 or nearly 20 percent of its remaining workforce), as did the Environmental Protection Agency, Homeland Security, and Housing and Urban Development.
Everything this administration does seems to involve a bit of chaos, and the latest rounds of reductions in force are no different. While hundreds of employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were included in the layoffs, some were fired by accident and immediately rehired.
Chris Bray notes that — stop me if you’ve heard this before — a district court judge has ruled that the President doesn’t have the power to do, well, pretty much anything to do with the federal workforce (what is it with the executive branch thinking they have powers that haven’t been explicitly approved by the judiciary?):
After a just absolutely bizarre hearing in a Northern California federal court, a judge has forbidden the Trump administration from laying off government employees. The hearing may have been held in the Court of the Red Queen: After Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Hedges argued that she wasn’t going to get into the legal merits of the Trump administration’s layoffs because the court lacked jurisdiction and the plaintiffs hadn’t met the legal standards for filing a lawsuit, Judge Susan Illston warned that, actual quote, “This hatchet is falling on the heads of employees all across the nation and you’re not even prepared to address whether that’s legal?” Getting laid off is a hatchet attack, so we skip the arguments about ripeness and standing. It’s emotionally dire, a thing that feels very bad. Judges talk like this, now. OH GOD COUNSEL THIS IS LIKE A THING WITH A KNIFE THAT WOUNDS ME. Objection, your honor, inadequate trigger warning. […]
Illston declared the existence of a temporary restraining order from the bench, and I’ve been waiting for her written order to land on PACER. It’s here, and it’s … very … Well, okay: It has a lot of feelings. […]
Opening paragraphs, first page:
Note that the first paragraph frames federal RIFs as historically unprecedented, while the second paragraph frames the current federal RIFS as not ordinary: different than the way RIFs are usually conducted. So this is unprecedented, but it has happened before, and the problem with the unprecedented thing is that it’s not being done the way the thing that has never been done before is usually done.
But anyway, a reduction in force of federal personnel during a shutdown is “unprecedented in our country’s history”. Of course, a reduction of force alone is not at all unprecedented, and the Clinton administration reduced the size of the federal bureaucracy by about 400,000 people. Illston doesn’t articulate a reason why reducing the bureaucracy during a shutdown is worse, or a reason why Clinton RIFs were good but Trump RIFs are a violent hatchet attack, but she clearly feels it. Of course, during a shutdown, the agencies being shrunk have no approved funding, so it would seem to make more sense to be careful about personnel costs, but this argument means that I just hurt people with a hatchet.
Above all, note that the argument out of the gate is a normative argument, not a legal argument. This is unprecedented! This is not ordinary! If a judge feels that something is a little off, she can order it stopped.
Comments Off on RIFfing the US federal workforce
The Mexican-American War 1846-48
Real Time History
Published 16 May 2025In the early 19th century, the United States and Mexico share a massive cross-continental border, but US settlement in Mexico, expansionist ideals and religious differences put the young republics on a collision course. As tensions boil over into bloodshed, the tiny, inexperienced US army marches to a war which will forge the modern United States.
Chapters:
00:00 Texas Republic
05:06 Declaration of War
07:03 The US Army
09:26 British Muskets in the Mexican Army
16:19 The Mexican Army
18:24 The Battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma
21:38 California and New Mexico
25:11 US Volunteers
28:40 Battle of Monterrey
33:03 Expanding the War
36:59 The Pedregal Battles
40:18 Battles for Mexico City
43:42 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
45:14 Legacy
(more…)
Comments Off on The Mexican-American War 1846-48
October 15, 2025
The Korean War Week 69: Conquered … But At What Cost? – October 14, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 14 Oct 2025The Battle of Heartbreak Ridge ends with victory for the UN forces, though the casualty count is alarmingly high for both sides. One must wonder, is that sustainable? It’s a week of action, as Operation Commando continues further west. The Commonwealth Division takes Maryang-San, but taking it and holding it are two different things. A 9th Corps offensive kicks off as well, slowly grinding forward. There’s a breakthrough away from the battlefield, as both sides finally agree on a site for any future peace talks- Panmunjom.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:29 Recap
00:47 Operation Commando
03:01 Heartbreak Ridge Ends
07:44 Comparing the Two Ridges
10:25 9th Corps Attacks
11:24 The Belgians
12:17 Panmunjom
13:19 Summary
13:39 Conclusion
Comments Off on The Korean War Week 69: Conquered … But At What Cost? – October 14, 1951
October 14, 2025
White Hoods, Bloody Hands: The Klan as America’s First Terrorists – W2W 048
TimeGhost History
Published 12 Oct 2025From Pulaski to Stone Mountain to Brown v. Board, the Ku Klux Klan evolves from Reconstruction terror to a decentralized, Cold War–era movement that bombed churches, lynched citizens, and hid behind “anti-communism”. We trace the First, Second, and Third Klans — rituals, networks, and the brutal campaign against desegregation and civil rights.
(more…)
Comments Off on White Hoods, Bloody Hands: The Klan as America’s First Terrorists – W2W 048
