One consistent theme from the Trudeau Liberal government has been their relentless and incremental attacks on free speech. There is nothing an authoritarian state hates more than having people communicate ideas without the hand of government controlling it. Whether gagging election discourse through regulation or their attempts to battle “fake news”, the Liberals have dedicated a great deal of effort and time to trying to control discourse in Canada this last few years.
Yes, there are countless cranks and kooks out there on the internet who are pushing conspiracy theories and fake cures. Yes, some of these nuts are causing real damage.
Do you trust the government to sort between who the cranks are are and who aren’t though?
Do you trust the state to use these powers only to protect the interest of the citizens and not for the interest of the government?
That is what it always comes down to and no, I don’t trust the damn government and do not want to empower them further.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a fluid situation and things which were considered accurate last week are often not considered accurate today.
The pandemic modelling of a few weeks ago has proven to be hopelessly wrong and inaccurate. Would a person be charged for posting an out of date model showing those shitty infection curves?
Remember just a few weeks ago when Dr. Theresa Tam was saying that wearing masks would not help citizens reduce the spread of the virus? She has done a total flip-flop on that now. Could she conceivably be retroactively charged with spreading false information which put people at risk?
What about chloroquine as a potential treatment? It is considered as being controversial due to Trump mentioning it but it is considered promising enough that countries around the world are conducting trials on it. If the trials do indeed indicate that the drug is of no value in this application, will it then become illegal for people to mention it?
The consequences of this pandemic will last for generations. We can’t let government take advantage of this pandemic in order to erode our fundamental rights.
Once rights are given away, governments are always loathe to give them back no matter who is in power. Once free speech is gone, we lose our strongest tool in order to fight for every other right.
We need to be vigilant and never forget that the state almost always puts its own interests ahead of the citizens. We can’t let this legislation pass during this crisis.
Let’s face it. The WHO blew it big time. We are living in one of the very moments which this organization was formed to deal with and they have proven themselves to be hopelessly inept as they respond to every emergency slowly and appear to be trying to provide cover for China.
The WHO like most branches of the UN is simply a pit of patronage appointments for well connected bureaucrats.
The jet setting for that corrupted group is repugnant to say the least.
The bureaucrats blew $192 million dollars in high heeled travel in just one year!
For what? What on earth do they need to spend that kind of travel money on?
Hell, with that kind of jet setting one has to wonder how many exotic diseases were spread just by WHO staff alone.
That number is actually down.
In 2017, the AP reported that WHO was spending roughly $200 million each year on travel, including first-class airplane tickets and five-star hotels for its director-general.
The USA has suspended the $400 million per year that it gives to the WHO and with good reason.
These world organizations are little more than tax funded social clubs for the well connected.
Perhaps if countries start cutting funding and demanding results as the USA just did, those organizations would finally start working to do something useful.
There are few good things that may come from the COVID-19 pandemic but the extrication of nations from UN money pits such as the WHO may be one of them.
Hydroxychloroquine may or may not be an effective treatment for Covid-19. It will take testing and time before we can be sure. It has been in use as an effective malaria treatment for decades so it is not like this drug carries any unknown side effects.
Unfortunately, due to the massive case of Trump derangement syndrome among the mainstream media, testing on this drug has been delayed for precious weeks due to fears of backlash.
Back in March, Donald Trump spoke of the treatment potential of hydroxychloroquine. Immediately it became utterly politically incorrect to even consider that drug as a potential treatment for Covid-19 and the social media outrage mob mercilessly swarmed anybody who dared to suggest it.
Here in Alberta we saw it when local talk radio host, Danielle Smith simply tweeted a link to an article which touted the drug as a potential cure.
Smith was overwhelmed with hysteric social media abuse and deleted the tweet. People called for Smith’s resignation and demanded that the radio station fire Smith.
I was surprised not to see folks with torches and pitchforks outside of her home.
Canada’s State Broadcaster felt this tweet from Smith was a story worth reporting on.
OK, in all fairness the article that Smith tweeted a link to was overstating the results of this drug. It’s not like Smith wrote the damn thing though and the worst that really came about from tweeting it was in giving people some false hope on a quick cure. It did not merit the rage expressed at Smith.
Why such rage though?
Because Trump had mentioned the drug. Simple as that.
One idiot in Arizona killed himself by drinking aquarium cleaner. Trump was blamed of course.
If Trump mentioned that Tylenol is effective for treating headaches, would he be at fault if some moron hurt themselves by eating a whole bottle of the stuff?
Sadly the answer is yes.
Clinical trials for hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19 are being held all over the world including here in Alberta.
The reason for this is that there is some potential with this drug. If the drug is indeed useless though, the trials can prove this and researchers can move on to seeking other treatments.
Countries aren’t researching this drug on some bizarre point of principle. They really hope it may prove to reduce the death rate from the virus and I hope so to.
Meanwhile, CNN and others leading the Trump derangement charge are seeking out and publishing every possible story that they can in order to discredit the potential of hydroxychloroquine.
For crying out loud, these risks are already known. This is not a new drug and the potential side effects are well documented.
The Trump deranged don’t care.
They want this drug to fail simply because the Orange Man dared utter its potential.
This is a gross and dangerous attitude and we have to stop putting up with it.
You don’t have to like or support Trump. I certainly never will expect the deranged to do so.
Trump’s habit of spitting out bullshit certainly doesn’t help matters. That said, it can’t and shouldn’t be assumed that anything and everything that comes out of his mouth is wrong. That attitude is truly deranged, wrong and it is putting us all at risk.
This kind of derangement is not limited to Trump of course.
Here in Alberta we had dolts hysterically calling out Jason Kenney because he dared to share excess medical equipment with other provinces..Their derangement is so bad that they felt compelled to fabricate and ulterior motive on Kenney’s part.
When you hate a politician so dearly that you are rooting for a medication to fail or feel that sharing medical equipment with those in need is a bad thing, you are the problem. Look in the mirror and think about things a bit.
As the economic repercussions from the pandemic shutdown begin to pile up, we are starting to discover just how fragile our supply chains are. As the nation is plunged into unemployment numbers unseen since the Great Depression, we are hearing from agricultural producers raising the alarm that they are going to have a shortage of labor as the growing season approaches. How can this be?
The hard reality is that our society is spoiled and most of us simply don’t want those jobs. Most people won’t take them even if we aren’t earning otherwise. Temporary foreign workers happily fill the void as the jobs that we look down our noses upon are jobs which feed their families in their more challenged nations of origin.
I tweeted this yesterday and some people got pretty upset.
The truth hurts kids.
I understand the need for emergency funding for people put out of work with the shutdown. The problem is, as long as the payment for sitting at home is more than the payment for getting out to work, far too many people are going to choose to sit at home. This is the fundamental flaw of the concept of having a “guaranteed basic income” program and we are seeing it in action.
This issue is not unique to Canada by any means. European nations and the United States have the same issue.
Back in 2012, I managed the brush clearing and survey on a seismic (oil exploration) program in Steubenville Ohio.
Steubenville is a rust belt city which has been in decline since the 1980s. The population has contracted over the years as the skilled and ambitious people fled to larger centers.
I created the video below as it is such a striking city to look at. Half of the place is a standing ghost town.
While working down there, I needed to hire some laborers to aid with the bush clearing. Down there the role is known as being a “stick picker”. Essentially, all a person has to do is walk behind a chainsaw crew, carry the gas can and toss the cut bush aside so that a safe walking trail can be made through the bush. It is tough, sweaty work but it is pretty simple.
I went to the employment center in downtown Stuebenville to see about putting up a job posting. It was like being in a 1970s movie scene. The furniture and posters were period and the hippy-like counselor who greeted me fit the role. It was a snapshot of the past. Old motivational posters were pinned on the wall and a small bank of dated computers were available for job seekers to create resumes and send job applications from. It was a sad indicator of just how long this city had been in economic decline.
I explained to the counselor that I needed six to eight workers for a period of perhaps three months. I was going to pay around $4,500 per month for that period but it would involve working seven days per week for 28 day stretches (the same work schedule the rest of us were on). I wasn’t requiring any experience. My only condition was that I wanted to interview each applicant in person. I wanted to see their arms and teeth. Meth was an epidemic out there and I didn’t have time for managing addicts.
The counselor was quite excited and said that he would round up applicants.
Indeed, my email inbox was full of job applicants within a day. I picked what looked to be my best dozen applications and scheduled interviews with them at my hotel over a period of two days.
I sat at my hotel for two solid days and not a single applicant showed up for the interview!
I was called a few days later by the councilor and he asked if I had found some workers. I told him what happened and he said, “Yeah I was afraid that might happen”.
The issue was that the bulk of the people down there were collecting welfare in one form or another. In order to keep receiving payments, people needed to demonstrate that they were seeking work. They applied for my job posting but their greatest fear was that they would actually be hired so they made sure not to show up for the interview.
This wasn’t a matter of me not offering enough money. A person can buy a three bedroom home on half an acre in Stuebenville for less than $30,000. Making nearly $15,000 over a few months could set a person up quite well for awhile down there. I don’t know what welfare paid in that area but it surely wasn’t a hell of a lot. These people simply didn’t want to do the work!
People had been dependent on government income for so long that they had utterly lost the will to work even if it was available.
The majority of the project ended up being done by Mexican laborers who we brought up and doubtless some local fools where whining, “Them Mexicans is stealing our jobs!”
This is the welfare trap and a “guaranteed basic income” program would trap countless, thousands of people in it. It may seem unimaginable but there really are that many people out there who would simply go into retirement if they were given a basic income with no questions asked.
Ask this clown below who actually said he wants a guaranteed basic income so he can end his career student status and sit at home writing poetry for the rest of his life.
At least the bum was honest about it I guess.
I am sure that most agricultural producers would be more than happy to hire local labor rather than deal with the complicated and expensive process of bringing in temporary foreign workers.
TFWs are not cheap despite what many people claim. Oh they aren’t making millions by any means but the obligations and process required for producers to use them brings the cost per laborer well above minimum wage requirements (which do apply to TFWs despite popular myth).
Employers have to provide return transportation for the workers from their country of origin. They must provide housing which has been inspected by local authorities and can’t charge more than 30 percent for that housing and they have to provide transportation from the housing to the workplace. They also have to fully pay for private health insurance for every worker.
So if it is so much work and so expensive, why can’t producers simply raise hourly wages and bring in locals?
Again, it is because we are spoiled and won’t fill the jobs ourselves.
We are schooled to look down on the trades as it is within our increasingly elitist minded public education system. Kids have been trained that it is utterly shameful to do manual labor.
Along with that, we are spoiled with ready and cheap access to food items. The person bitching about how low the pay is for agricultural laborers is often the same one who bitches when the price of a loaf of bread goes up by 50 cents. Pressure to keep costs down is heavy on producers and they are in a low margin industry. How much higher do we want to make the cost of living in order to pay laborers more? We talk big but in reality we won’t put up with price shocks.
If we want our local population to fill these labor jobs, bringing in a guaranteed basic income is the worst thing we could do. It is a hard reality to face but far too many people are more than content to sit on their asses in perpetuity for a small welfare payment rather than get out and put in a hard day’s work.
Hard times are approaching and we are terribly spoiled in going into them.
Perhaps the hard realities which are coming will reduce that soft spoiled population in coming years. A tough way to correct the trend but effective.
The only way trends of the “woke” such as the #MeToo movement end is when they inevitably come around and bite the enlightened left in the ass.
It is unfortunate but it is a simple reality that “b” list celebrities are bigger drivers of public opinion on these sorts of issues than legal experts or policy makers. They drive the social media mob and the mainstream media gives them plenty of oxygen to work with.
The #MeToo hysteria hit a fever pitch during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings for his Supreme Court appointment and Alyssa Milano was holding a torch at the front of the parade.
The acting coming from Alyssa Milano during the hearings was her best work since Who’s the Boss as she appeared at every presser that she could find in order to emotionally demand that due process should be set aside when it comes to Kavanaugh.
Never mind that the allegations against Kavanaugh had no evidence to back them, were from decades ago and all came from people who appeared to have some strong political motivations behind them.
Milano and her cadre of social justice warriors had set the bar. The word of a self-proclaimed “survivor” was always to immediately be considered as being sacrosanct. Anybody daring to question the veracity of the accusations against Kavanaugh was to be swarmed and shut down as they were clearly misogynistic monsters who support sexual assault.
Thankfully the efforts of Milano and her associated mob failed. After having been dragged through the mud for weeks, due process won and Kavanaugh was appointed to the Supreme Court. It was found shortly afterwards that the allegations against him were indeed flimsy bullshit.
Alyssa Milano’s principles were put to the test this week and she failed dismally.
Creepy Uncle Joe Biden has emerged as the Great White Hope for the Democrats in this fall’s election. With years of bizarre behavior around women behind him, it wasn’t terribly shocking to see the sexual misconduct allegations surface shortly after his having gotten he Democratic nomination nod.
Former Joe Biden staffer Tara Reade has come forward with allegations that Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993.
Now with the bar having been set by Milano and her ilk, this should have immediately ended Biden’s bid for the Presidency no?
Reade’s allegations should be taken immediately and fully at face value and without question. That is the premise of #MeToo is it not? It doesn’t matter how long it has been. It doesn’t matter how little evidence there is. This has to be taken as gospel.
So how did Alyssa Milano respond?
She dismissed Tara Reade’s allegations as being bullshit and reaffirmed her support for Biden.
Suddenly she has discovered due process and feels that allegations should be investigated. For the sake of all women’s equality no less.
The hypocrisy was galling to the point where even the Hollywood types couldn’t hold back any longer.
Former Charmed co-star Rose McGowan brilliantly ripped Milano a new asshole on twitter.
Most of the social justice left simply went silent on the Biden issue. That may have let it run its course.
With Alyssa Milano diving neck deep into a pool of hypocritical bullshit on this one though, she has effectively dynamited the entire #MeToo movement.
People again have the ability to question allegations of sexual misconduct and they have the right to due process. Reputations do have value and accusers are no longer above critique.
Just as Justin Trudeau is to be thanked for ending the political witch hunt into people’s youthful past in order to find any glimmers of racism due to his blackface habit, we should thank Alyssa Milano for ending the #MeToo witch hunt.
Nobody in their right mind wants to see people get away with sexual misconduct.
That said, people in their right minds understand that due process and a presumption of innocence is critical in a just society.
Thanks to Alyssa Milano’s hysteric performance during the Kavanaugh affair and her unconscionable flip-flop during the Biden affair, folks in their right mind have taken control of the discussion again.
Not everybody is on Twitter. It can be a cesspool at times.
It is my favorite playground however as it really exposes the best in folks at times.
In but a few words, USA Today contributor Sally Kohn demonstrated just how profound the utter disconnect from even the most basic of economic reality is among the left leaning press.
I felt that I should share this gem here for those who aren’t on Twitter.
Millions of people in North America are out of work and idiots like Kohn feel that business owners simply chose to lay them off.
That’s right. Heartless, fat cat business owners have decided to decimate their income and the lives of the staff that they care for by “choosing” to lay them off to make a political point or something.
Yes you dolt! They were forced! They are broke. How do you keep staff when you have no revenue? Is it really that damned complicated?
As a business owner who has had to lay off staff before I can promise you that it is not a damned choice and we never want to do it.
To Sally Kohn I offer my most hearty welcome to go fuck yourself.
To those who are on Twitter, please feel free to send a little love her way. Maybe she will begin to clue in a bit though I hold little hope of it.
In desperately seeking any non-pandemic news, I came across this story which broke a few days ago.
It is just too comical and symbolic not to re-post for any who may have missed it.
A small German cruise ship called the RCGS Resolute encountered the Venezuelan warship Naiguata in the Caribbean Sea at the end of March.
There was a dispute between the ships over whether or not the Resolute was in Venezuelan waters. The hapless socialist Navy was probably navigating with an antique sextant so I am inclined to side with the private cruise company on this one.
The Naiguata then opened fire on the Resolute.
Apparently the Naiguata didn’t have adequate firepower to take on the cruise ship so they then tried ramming the ship.
This led to the warship Naiguata taking on water and sinking. All crew members were safely rescued.
The Resolute then carried on to port in Columbia.
Most of the stories of Venezuela’s failed socialism are pretty dark including their desperate citizens even breaking into zoos in order to eat the animals.
This story is more on the comical side but it does illustrate just how wretched socialism is. Despite having some of the richest oil reserves on the planet, Venezuela couldn’t even build a navy capable of taking on a small cruise ship.
We should bear these lessons in mind as we enter dark economic times.
There are still many fools who think socialism is the way to deal with our pending economic crisis and we can’t let those notions take root.
Remember when folks were calling for emptying Canada’s jail cells due to Coronavirus concerns were assuring us that it would only be “nonviolent” criminals who would be released?
Among those released, one was a getaway driver in a murder attempt, one pistol whipped and tasered two people and one was accused in a recent shooting.
I should clarify that these people were accused, not convicted. All the same, we incarcerate people accused of such violent crimes for good reason. There is a high likelihood that they will harm other people if they are free.
The thieves and drug dealers being released are not harmless either though some may consider them not to be violent.
What will these criminals do with their new found freedom? Seek jobs? Do volunteer work in the community?
For the most part these people have no stable network of friends and family to settle in with during the quarantine. They will be displaced, stressed and desperate. Then they will often try to rob people which can lead to some pretty dire results.
Our nation has put its law abiding citizens under house arrest and is releasing its violent offenders. What a gross and dangerous trend.
I suggest that folks who own firearms double check and ensure that their firearms are well maintained and ready for use. Those without firearms had best double check their home security and seek other ways to defend their families.
The pandemic shutdown has many associated impacts which can hurt people and crime will be one of them.
When the state refuses to protect the citizens, the citizens must protect themselves.
I hope this is remembered in the courts when the self-defense cases begin to roll in.
The “Friends of Canadian Broadcasting” group has been hanging around the periphery of social media notice for a few years now.
Despite their best efforts, few have really taken this bunch very seriously. When one looks at what is at the top of a list of items in their statement of purpose, it is not hard to see why they languish on the fringe.
Read that out loud to yourself. It sounds like a cult chant for the State Broadcaster. One can’t help but envision a circle of these loons standing in a circle around the CBC logo and starting their day by reciting this mantra ten times.
Sacred?
Nothing builds and extreme and closed point of view more effectively than declaring something as being sacred.
This little gang blundered into wider social media notice a month ago when they put out the absurd tweet below.
For those not familiar with twitter, there is a term for reaction to a tweet called “getting ratioed”.
This happens when a tweet is either so idiotic or so offensive that reactions from people decrying it far outweigh the positive responses. In this case there were over 1,100 responses in comparison to 56 likes. That is nothing less than a brutal ratio.
People have happily embraced alternative sources of entertainment such as Netflix and happily pay for it. CBC on the other hand is down to single digit viewing support and the funding for it is mandatory. Over 1000 people made a point of expressing that to these “friends”.
Despite being something of a fringe group, somebody has clearly dumped some significant money upon these people.
Formal polls are expensive to run yet the “Friends of Canadian Broadcasting” managed to commission a poll through Nanos with a number of questions.
The results really make one question the integrity of pollsters.
With 1000 people polled, apparently 70% of Canadians want more funding for the CBC?
A majority want tax dollars to fund mainstream media outlets?
As can be seen, the National Post and many other media outlets happily jumped on this and gave this little group some oxygen. They understandably want money.
I am forced however to call bullshit here. It beggars belief that in such a time of crisis with a looming depression that may last years, that people would want their scarce tax dollars going towards producing more shitty content with the CBC.
I held a twitter poll of my own. I understand that this will reflect bias of my following but all the same, with 5,300 individual voters at the time of this writing the results can’t be dismissed out of hand. Particularly when the outcome is so strongly on one side.
Of 5,301 people, 96 percent do not want more tax funding going to mainstream media outlets.
Even when the bias of my following is taken into account, where does this land? 85 percent? 75 percent?
It is pretty clear that the numbers that the “Friends of Canadian Broadcasting” gathered are utter hogwash.
Where did Nanos do their sampling anyway? The lobby of the CBC building?
Look, I know that conventional media members are hurting. Those are people like anybody else in that industry and they have bills to pay. They are stressed just as we all are while their industry collapses. That said, it doesn’t justify pumping more tax dollars into it. Just as the restaurant industry I am in has collapsed, so has conventional media. We need aid for the workers but the industries will need to settle on their own into whatever a sustainable model may be in the future.
Hard times are only beginning for us all. Many people will be coming with hands out seeking tax dollars to ease their burden.
The “Friends of Canadian Broadcasting” can take their ask for further handouts and stuff it deeply up their collective asses.
Canadians have no appetite for the government getting further into the media business. They are in too deep already.
Its almost as if they don’t even know that the worst economic crisis we have seen since the 1930s is looming.
The Mayor and council with their six figure salaries and multiple pensions feel that they can carry on with business as usual in city hall and continue to tax and spend as if times were good.
Jeromy Farkas and Sean Chu were the only voices of reason and as usual, they were insulted, belittled and shouted down by Mayor and the rest of council for their daring to propose to liquidate a city slush fund in order to halt the tax hike.
Ward Sutherland for example mused about Farkas having a “limited skill set”. When one considers that Ward’s claim to fame is his having spouted on about “Johnny Jew” while in the middle of an election campaign, he is hardly in a position to question the skill sets of others.
Along with Ward Sutherland, Naheed Nenshi, Druh Farrell, Evan Woolley, Shane Keating, Ray Jones, Peter Demong, Jeff Davison, Jyoti Gondek, George Chahal, Joe Maglioca, Diane Colley-Urquhart and Gian-Carlo Carra all voted in favor of a 7.5% property tax increase.
This makes for a very handy list of who should not be re-elected in the 2021, Calgary municipal election.
How utterly disconnected from reality does one have to be to not understand just how economically screwed the city of Calgary is right now?
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the city of Calgary was in a terrible fiscal position. Years of revenue from downtown energy companies had spoiled the city to the point that they hadn’t a clue how to stop overspending when the revenue collapsed. With a prolonged downtown office vacancy of 30 percent, the imbeciles in city hall tried to compensate for the lost tax revenue by increasing business taxes on remaining businesses by as much as 300 percent. Spending restraint simply won’t enter their minds.
We will be lucky if even three quarters of businesses in the hospitality industry reopen after the pandemic. Property values are going to be dropping dramatically and tax revenues will plummet.
How many businesses which had adapted to having their staff working from home will stick with that model after the pandemic? Many companies have just discovered that they no longer need brick and mortar locations or at least not nearly as much as they used to. Office space vacancy in Calgary is likely to spike to 50 percent soon. Who the hell needs it anymore?
Spending cuts aren’t a theoretical measure. They are a hard reality.
With the Mayor and council refusing to even accept that they need to get spending under control today, the economic catastrophe is going to be twice as bad tomorrow.
I don’t think there is any hope of bringing common sense into a group of people as disconnected from reality as the Mayor, most of council and the bulk of senior bureaucrats in Calgary city hall.
These people need to be fired en masse next year in the municipal election and replaced by people with a grip on economic reality.
The mushrooms in city hall have thrived on apathy and low voter turnouts. They count in an indifferent populace in order to maintain their perches and perks.
People are going to be galvanized and pissed off in the next municipal election. Calgarians will finally be ready for change.
We need to get to work right now in order to ensure that we replace the current crop of council mushrooms with decent people though. Fake conservatives such as Sutherland always manage to slither through the cracks and we need to vet these types out before they get near a council seat.
Calgary can’t afford another four years of the incompetence that Nenshi and gang have offered for the last decade.
