Trump Mimic PoiLIEvre Voted The Most Likely to Roll Over to Trump

Canadian Politics / Ideologies / Politics / Rightwing claptrap6 Comments

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The grievance-mining, rage-farming, puerile Trump mimic Pierre PoiLIEre was voted by Canadians the political leader most likely to cave in to Donald Trump rather than stand up for Canada against the fascist bully. That’s not surprising, given the piffleswipe PoiLIEvre has been using Trump’s playbook since Trump started his own campaign some years back: lie, deflect, gaslight, accuse, lie again, insult, never take responsibility, attack, lie some more, and blame everyone else. PoiLIEvre’s own corrosive mix of far-right bombast and bumper-sticker slogans gained him a solid following among the gullible grievance magnets in his Maple MAGA and convoy insurrectionist followers. … click below for more ↓

Rage-Farming Trump Mimic Poilievre Scrambles to Pretend He’s Pro-Canada

Canadian Politics / MAGA cultists / Politics / Rightwing claptrap / Trump fascism / US Politics13 Comments

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The trade war that the racist and fascist felon and Putin asset Donald Trump initiated against American allies Canada and Mexico, as well as against China, Colombia, and other nations has brought out the stark differences between Canada’s conservative parties and our centrist and leftist parties. Suddenly caught like deer in the headlights by Trump’s attacks, the federal CONservatives are flailing to try and convince Canadians that they aren’t really the rightwing Maple MAGA extremists they’ve been pretending to be for the last few years. Instead, they are eager to tell us, they’ve been real Canadians all along. Just as … click below for more ↓

WTF Ontario?

Politics / Provincial Politics4 Comments

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Seriously, WTF? How could such a corrupt grifter like Doug Ford not only get re-elected, but get his party of lackluster cons, conspiracy cultists, Talibangelists, and ne’er-do-wells elected as the government again? It’s almost like the majority of voters in this province don’t read the news, don’t care about what he’s done, are apathetic about democracy, and are too lazy or stupid to bother to vote. Oh, wait… The voter turnout in the 2025 Ontario provincial election was an appalling 45%. FORTY FIVE PERCENT! That means less than half of eligible voters gave a shit about voting. The percentage turnout … click below for more ↓

Chaucer’s House of Fame

Chaucer / Musings / Poetry2 Comments

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Recently, while I was reading in bed — as is my nightly habit — I came across some lines (641-660) from Book II of Chaucer’s early poem, House of Fame, in a recently purchased book on his prologue to the Canterbury Tales (a small 1960 reprint of a 1903 original picked up at the local used book store). I’ve seen the 2,158-line poem (Wikipedia says 2,005 but that’s wrong) in my Riverside Chaucer, but never paid it much attention and can’t recall ever reading it beyond the opening lines. I’ve always focused more on the major works: Canterbury Tales and … click below for more ↓

Sidewalk Ethics and Etiquette

Collingwood / Council / Legal issues / Planning & Policies / Publicity & CommunicationsLeave a comment

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There is a theory that a person’s moral compass may be judged by how they deal with shopping carts. Those with even a modicum sense of ethics and morality return them to the store or its corral. Those who leave them in the parking lot or steal them are immoral and unethical, and probably sociopaths who support Trump or PoiLIEvre. Back in 2020, I wrote about this theory, and quoted from a website that included this statement: “The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing.” And another site I quoted had this … click below for more ↓

Dither, Dally, and Doddle

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Municipal elections2 Comments

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If I were looking for a single word to succinctly describe Collingwood Council, it would not be ‘decisive.’ Nor would it be progressive, capable, innovative, or enterprising. I would not even apply the word ‘adequate’ much less ‘competent.’ No, the word that comes to my mind is ‘inept.’ At the November 18, 2024 meeting of council, Mayor Hamlin announced that Councillor Brandon Houston was taking a leave of absence for an unspecified period of time and an unspecified personal reason. This didn’t set off many alarms because Houston’s lacklustre presence at the council table has not been noteworthy and I … click below for more ↓

Don’t be a Traitor to Canada

Canadian Politics / Trump fascism / US Politics6 Comments

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As I write this, Canadian news media are racing to cover and explain the story that the racist felon fascist president, Donald Trump, has imposed 25% tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. This is a concerted effort to cause their economies to collapse, and in Canada’s case, to bully us into submission and allow our nation to be subsumed into his empire. As I have written on social media in the past, he is following Hitler’s playbook: his Rhineland move is to send troops into Panama; his Anschluss move is to force Canada into annexation; his Sudentenland move is to … click below for more ↓

The New Fascists Have Arrived. American Democracy is Dead.

MAGA cultists / Politics / Rightwing claptrap / US Politics21 Comments

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I get no satisfaction from saying ‘I told you so’ and ‘I warned you about them.’ But I did, over and over. So did many, many others, all of them far more informed and experienced in politics, reporting, and history than I. They warned about fascism. They warned about racism. They warned about criminal behaviour. They warned about the oligarchs. They warned about Project 2025. But millions of Americans ignored them and elected a convicted felon, a blatant grifter in cognitive decline who openly lied and spread disinformation and Russian propaganda. No one should be surprised that they got what … click below for more ↓

The Body Snatchers

Books & Reviews / Bureaucratic malaise / CollingwoodLeave a comment

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I think it’s about time for another remake of the 1956 film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, this time instead of aliens taking over human bodies, we should have a far-right leader who creates a cult of personality that turns normal people into mindless, worshipping zombies he and his henchmen control. Oh, right: that’s not fiction. It’s actually happened: MAGA is the prominent contemporary example, but we can also turn to other rightwing parties emerging in democracies across the world, which themselves in thrall to the cults of personality created in Russia and China under Putin and Xi.* Wouldn’t that … click below for more ↓

The Rise and Fall of Self-Checkout

Culture / Culture wars / Predatory capitalismOne Comment

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I refuse on moral, ethical, and simply human grounds, to use a self-checkout at any local store where they are installed. My initial reaction to them was outrage: this is how big retail chains get rid of employees and reduce their staff and thus human costs. This is how people at the lower end of the wage scales get unemployed but CEOS and executives get bonuses. It also means the customer is forced to play the role of cashier without any monetary benefit from doing so. I am almost always pro-worker and believe any so-called innovation that affects workers and … click below for more ↓

Home on the Open World Range

Culture / Games & Gaming / MusingsOne Comment

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A recent article in the Journal of Internet Research described a study that came to the conclusion that open-world games (OWGs) “may offer unique cognitive escapism opportunities, potentially leading to relaxation and enhanced well-being.” Well, duh! Pretty much everyone playing OWGs has known that for the past three decades since those games were published. After all, isn’t escapism the whole point of gaming? People have played games for millennia: to gamble, for intellectual challenges, for entertainment, learning, competition, and often for simple solo pleasure. But open-world games are a recent invention, and while not unique to the computer era, have … click below for more ↓

Blue Skies, Nothing But Blueskies…

Musings / Social media issues / Social Order & Disorder3 Comments

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Enshittification is a delightful neologism coined by author Cory Doctrow in 2022 to describe how things decline in quality and service. While it initially meant to describe how vendors would gradually change their services to move the focus from users to business interests, it has expanded to include the way Elon Musk has turned Twitter-aka-X-aka-Xitter into a fetid swamp of rightwing toxins: racism, misogyny, Russian disinformation, lies, and, of course, his conspiracy-addled pronouncements from the throne, which no user is allowed to block. Ever click a link to a site and when it opens you get flooded by pop-ups, ads, … click below for more ↓

When I’m 64…

Daily life / Music & Reviews / Musings / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

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Will you still need me? Will you still feed me? When I’m sixty four… it seemed cutely remote to consider being that old when the Beatles sang “When I’m Sixty-Four” back in 1967 on their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Sixty-four seemed so far away then. My father wasn’t even that old in ’67. Sixty-four was to my teenage self somewhere in the distant future, like science fiction or The Jetsons. Old age was somewhere in the time zone of my grandparents, an exotic foreign, and wrinkled land. Unimaginable being there, at least for me when that song … click below for more ↓

Normalizing Fascism: The Paradox of Tolerance

Critical Thinking / Media / Politics / Rightwing claptrap6 Comments

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The Brexit campaign succeeded on a platform that cultivated anger, fear, conspiracies, and racism based on lies and disinformation. Donald Trump’s campaigns have succeeded twice on platforms that increasingly cultivated anger, fear, misogyny, conspiracies, and racism based on lies and disinformation. Pierre PoiLIEvre, head of Canada’s now far-right MAGA-mimicking CONservative Party campaigns on a platform that cultivates anger, fear, conspiracies, and racism based on lies and disinformation in the hope of succeeding as the next Prime Minister. If Canada’s electorate is ignorant enough, and has not learned the lessons either of history or the American experience with fascism, he might … click below for more ↓

Enemy of the State

MAGA cultists / Trump fascism / US Politics15 Comments

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It was very clear from his first presidential campaign that Donald Trump was adversarial to the very notion of the USA, to its Constitution, to its judiciary, laws, courts, police, military, schools, to its free speech, its allies and trading partners, and its media. It was very clear from the outset that he intended to be a dictator, not a president, and he cared nothing for established processes, laws, and institutions. He intended to rule by himself, for himself. And he did, for four years. He surrounded himself with cronies, sycophants, and incompetent and pliable family members to do his … click below for more ↓

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