11.07.2022 08:25 PM

Words fail

 

51 Comments

  1. PJH says:

    Another Refoooormer who will assist the Conservative Party of Canada snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet again….It has ever been thus… Bon Appetit!…

  2. Peter Williams says:

    I have little sympathy for people who were ‘disturbed’ by horns honking.

    • Peter,

      I have little sympathy for people who are not disturbed by horns honking, you know, twenty-four fucking hours a day right outside their home in Ottawa. Jesus Christ, smell the damned coffee…

      • Peter Williams says:

        Ronald

        I have lived with horns honking, hammers banging, power saws, grinders, jack hammers, concrete drills, etc. from the condo construction site next to me (as close to 10 feet) for for two years. The 8 units are configured in a manner that focuses sound on my house.

        Oh, and the workers play loud music. It has to be loud enough that they can hear it over their sawing, hammering, etc.

        Many times you could hear the workers dropping F bombs more often than the letter ‘e’ occurs in the English language.

        Oh, but perhaps you’ll say it’s not 24 hours a day. Wrong. They don’t secure their Tyvek house wrap, so when ever the wind blows, it flaps noisily. When they pour concrete in the winter they did one or two units at a time and used big fans to blow hot air under their tarps 24/7.

        Complain to the city? They’ll tell you construction noise is largely excluded from the noise bylaws. Complain to my city councillor? You get “sorry noise is part of living in the city”.

        And during excavation work, the equipment operator loved to bang the excavator bucket on the ground to break up the previous building’s concrete foundation, or to loosen frozen soil. The caused my whole house to shake, pictures to rattle, china cabinet to rattle, etc. And drywall cracks.

        So I know a lot about living with noise. For two years, an they’re no where near finished! But I can’t enact an emergencies act to stop it.

        Trudeau or anyone of cabinet refused to meet with the Truckers. They could have, they should have.

        • The Doctor says:

          False equivalency award goes to . . .

          • Peter Williams says:

            Doctor

            The false equivalency award goes to …? Justin Trudeau.

            Horn honking in Ottawa does not require the invocation of the Emergencies Act. The EA specifically states the situation must be one that cannot be dealt with by any other laws of Canada.

            Didn’t Justin Trudeau tell Doug Ford that the police had all the tools they need?

            Not only that, but “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian”. Justin Trudeau or one of his Cabinet Ministers have met with many groups, including ones that have used violence. They wouldn’t meet with the Truckers? Even behind the scenes?

          • Martin Dixon says:

            Not really. Protests are SUPPOSED to be disruptive. That is the point. Otherwise who would notice. I fully supported the right of CUPE to disrupt our office but I am kind of a fan of the constitution. Others mileage may vary.

        • Martin Dixon says:

          “Trudeau or anyone of cabinet refused to meet with the Truckers. They could have, they should have.”

          Exactly right.

        • Peter,

          I modify my previous comments given your particular circumstances which is an ongoing terrible thing for you and your family.

          But I can’t agree that Trudeau and his ministers should have met the truckers. Why? Did not a substantial element say that Trudeau had to resign and did not some of them say that they would stay in Ottawa until he did? Seems to me that no one said they would force Trudeau and Company out but I’m not sure about this last part.

          • Peter Williams says:

            Ronald

            The Trudeau government met with representatives of groups that blocked rail lines and even set them on fire.

            The Trudeau government met with protesters in northern BC even though construction equipment was being wrecked and set on fire.

            These groups said they wouldn’t stop their actions unless their demands were met.

            Most of the truckers worked through the pandemic, while Trudeau and a lot of us were staying at home.

            The Truckers had lots of grievances. You are free to disagree with their grievances. The truckers then watched Trudeau tell people not to travel, while traveling himself. They watched Trudeau tell people to mask up. Then they see Trudeau partying in a bar in The Netherlands.

            The government should have met with the Truckers.

          • Martin Dixon says:

            Yes-that is basically the MSM/CBC party line. I don’t buy it for a second. Another view presented with Rex’s usual wit. Guy is a national treasure. Of course the CBC basically forced him out because they couldn’t tolerate this sort of hearsay(I would love to see the details of that NDA). Reason one million why the CBC news division should be defunded but I digress.

            https://nationalpost.com/opinion/freedom-convoy-was-perfectly-canadian-in-its-moderation

          • Warren says:

            A treasure? They should bury him.

          • Peter,

            I don’t agree but I DO agree that the Trudeau Liberals should NOT have met with those two groups. Period. They should have stepped aside and let the police press charges where appropriate. NEVER, EVER should have they met with those people. But Himself’sTM judgment is par for the course…

          • Peter Williams says:

            Bury him?

            Under what?

    • Sean says:

      I have less than a little sympathy… actually, precisely zero sympathy for people who argue with doctors and then allegedly fight for freedoms which they already have by causing a public nuisance. I will have satisfaction when the police track their financing, throw them all in jail and expose the entire movement for the total fraud that it was.

      • Peter Williams says:

        Argue with doctors? A lot of the pandemic has been characterized by people saying trust the experts and don’t argue with doctors.

        Remember when senior public health officials in Canada (doctors!) and the WHO (advised by? Doctors!) said there was no evidence of human to human transmission of COVID? All while China was locking down cities and banning travel. This should have told us something? But we’re not supposed to argue with doctors?

        Remember all the doctors who said masks don’t work?

        I had an argument with my doctor. I have some significant health issues. Early reports of blood clots from the vaccine had me worried about getting the vaccine. My doctor gruffly told me there are no side effects. I told him never to bulls**t me again. There were side effects, and I had a right to know what they were, after all I’d be the one suffering them.

        We argued for about five minutes. Then we gradually came to an amiable conclusion. He admitted there was a risk to me given my other health issues. I said, thank you, given what you’ve now told me, I am making an better informed decision. I will get vaccinated. I told him the vaccine decision may have an unfortunate outcome if side effects occur, but it was now the right decision that I could live with.

        In my opinion we don’t do a good job helping people manage what they perceive to be two potentially bad choices. I. e. How to choose the lessor of two evils.

        By the way. After I was vaccinated, and wearing a mask, my doctor told me to avoid crowds. He told me the mask and vaccinations were not sufficient to prevent me getting COVID. At the same time, public health, Trudeau, Biden, etc we’re saying vaccinations would stop you getting COVID.

        So I encourage people to question, and at times even argue with doctors. End up having better discussions. It’s our bodies, and we pay the price when the doctor is wrong.

        • Martin Dixon says:

          No-they are not our bodies, that is clear-they are only our bodies if you are pregnant.

          • Martin,

            You don’t have me on board with this kind of value judgment. Nope.

          • Martin Dixon says:

            I deal with government “experts” regularly. It is a an oxymoronic term . You would have to have been very naive to have just followed their recommendations blindly right from the start but that was the expectation.

        • Peter,

          You did the right thing. Absolutely. But medical science by necessity is an ongoing science which is often inexact or insufficiently informed particularly when a threat first strikes. As with everything else, wrong decisions are made and insufficient information is provided prior to time moving on and the development of the learning curve as regards medicine and science. Fauci made mistakes, Tang made mistakes. The provincial authorities as well.

          • Peter Williams says:

            Ronald

            I agree with you that Fauci and Tang made mistakes. Not sure if they’ve admitted them.

            Unfortunately, for a long time, if either one of us had made the above statements, we’d be called all kinds of names, called science deniers, and possibly even been called Nazis.

            We watched ‘two weeks to stop the spread’ become two years. We watched health officials and politicians say get vaccinated and you won’t get COVID, and you’ll stop transmission.

            A neighbour, a medical doctor, told me privately that getting the vaccine was the right thing to do but he didn’t think it wouldn’t stop you getting COVID, and wouldn’t stop transmission. The virus mutates too fast.

            Turns out my neighbour was right. He wouldn’t go public with his views, the risk of professional retribution was too high.

            Will we have a full, frank, and competent look back on the COVID response? I doubt it.

    • The Doctor says:

      Great, give us your address, we’ll park a bunch of big rigs outside your residence and blare the horns 24/7 for a couple of weeks straight.

      • Peter Williams says:

        Doctor

        Been living with two years of the equivalent noise.

        And reread my initial point where I said I have no sympathy. Now you say no sympathy for me when I’ve had to live with two years of noise. You’ve made my point.

      • Martin Dixon says:

        Speaking of false equivalencies. Quite funny!

  3. Sean says:

    Truck horns are the new punk rock. – rim shot! I’m here all week folks, don’t forget to tip your waiter!

    • Robert White says:

      When I was playing drums in The Friction City Bugs back in the late 70s the Ottawa Police were camped out right beside our Bank Street studio pretty much every Saturday night during spring & summer months. The old folks home down the street didn’t particularly like our style of music.

      Truck horns are meant for emergency use when driving. If a parked truck is disturbing the peace it’s a clear noise infraction given the intended use of truck horns in our society. Truck horns are not suitable means of demonstration against the state. Banging drums is acceptable.

      Diesel air horns emit dangerous ear piercing sound that should never be used to menace neighbourhoods of human beings.

      Terrorizing a population is not exactly Punk Rock. Punk was about being more outrageous than Rock & Roll whilst at the same time borrowing a page from it.

      My band only annoyed the elderly & police.

      RW

  4. Martin Dixon says:

    One person’s protest is another person’s pain in the ass. That is kind of the point of a protest, isn’t it? As mentioned elsewhere, last Friday during the illegal walkout of the CUPE workers, we had an out of town steelworker and his steelworker friends bellowing at our business front door (not Bouma’s), stopping clients and staff(many elderly) from coming in our driveway and they were playing terrible music(a form of torture for some just for the record) just because Bouma occupies a small part of our building. They actually kind of looked like many of the convoy protestors! Not asking for sympathy or complaining(actually found the whole thing kind of ironic and funny, but that view was not universal within our office) but that is kind of how things work. The difference, of course, is Ford sorted it out, JT could not(even though it was within his power).

    • Martin,

      People who honk serially are POS. Period. It’s one thing to exercise their right to strike and honk sporadically but it’s quite another when assholes honk continually for half and hour or more. I would throw all those type of fuckers in jail and lose the key for at least a month, minimum.

      • Martin Dixon says:

        Except for the minor detail that they were breaking the law. Maybe it was not constitutional but neither were many of the mandates enforced during Covid if they ever made it to court(feds gave up, threw in the towel, surrendered, packed it in, read the writing on the wall, waved the white flag, conceded, folded up shop, tapped the mat, cried uncle and ran home to mama when they were asked to try and defend their unconstitutional travel mandates) and the EA likely wasn’t either. I am no fan of the tactics of some of the tactics used in Ottawa but I just find the hypocrisy about the right to protest on behalf of one’s constitutional rights nauseating.

        • Martin,

          Until a court at first instance declares a law, regulation illegal, unconstitutional or issues an injunction, all laws and regs are presumed to be both constitutional and legally enforceable.

          • Martin Dixon says:

            Right. Why Friday’s walkout should be referred to as an illegal walkout and nothing else(as it has been below).

    • Sean says:

      1. A strike is not an illegal walkout. It is a Constitutionally Guaranteed right.
      2. Ford gave up, threw in the towel, surrendered, packed it in, read the writing on the wall, waved the white flag, conceded, folded up shop, tapped the mat, cried uncle and ran home to mama.

      • Martin Dixon says:

        When they were disrupting our business, it was an illegal walkout. Period. The right to strike is NOT a constitutionally guaranteed right. It was a right provided by a bunch of unelected lawyers on the SC 7 years ago. Governments of all stripes force people back to work all the time and they will continue to do so, as they should.

  5. Warren,

    As for this person, if Ms. Fischer is broadminded in outlook — able to advise the leader with several templates or options on any given issue, then she’s already OK in my book. But if she tows one line on every issue, then PJH will ultimately be right on target.

    • Martin Dixon says:

      If she advised him on this presser then she is doing a fine job. I don’t think she did though. I suspect he is his own counsel. He has been winning elections in enemy territory for 20 years for crying out loud. Maybe he has learned a thing or two. His answer on the convoy was great-pretty well my position. Jt could have stopped that honking in about 10 seconds and he chose not to. People should take their noise complaints up with him. 20:00 minutes in, he basically told the Ottawa press gallery(with a smile on his face) to go fuck themselves. What I have been telling my conservative MP friends to do for years. They won’t give him a fair shot and never will. Harper should have cut the news division funding of the CBC years ago. A bunch of talking heads on the CBC conceded that his approach of him throwing them a bone periodically to them is working. They don’t like it but they conceded it is working.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXoX4HZsPUs

      • Martin Dixon says:

        Ibbotson was whining about this presser in the Globe today. Good. He starts off by comparing him to Trump which makes Pierre’s point. Patent nonsense and there is no having an intelligent conversation with someone like that, so you shouldn’t. Someone said on Twitter(one of the two people who responded with a tweet) the better comparison is to Desantis given what he is talking about. I literally just read today how much of an overwhelming victory he had(after barely winning the last time). No doubt they were crowing about it on Fox but I saw it nowhere else. Just that he won. Which, again, makes Pierre’s point.

        • Martin,

          I absolutely loathe people like Abbott and DeSantis, tough guy Republican cowards who use asylum seekers as pawns in a political chess game against the federal government. You don’t take people off the streets and ship them willy-nilly to NYC, Chicago or anywhere else by bus without providing for them upon arrival. Where is Texas and Florida’s MONEY to help provide for these people? Abbott and DeSantis are certified pieces of shit, period. Let the losers at Fox News predictably crow about that. The rest of us in a civilized society, not so much. Pierre better treat those two fuckers as radioactive. Ditto for their cowardly policies. Otherwise…it’s lights out for us in the next election.

          • Martin Dixon says:

            My point was about the media and what they pick and choose to cover. And Pierre’s approach to same. Warren pointed out Desantis was a big winner. Very few other outlets did. I shouldn’t have had to look up the online results. He won by .4% last time-FIFTEEN points this time. Here is what the poster said. “Poilievre focuses on cost of living, stifling regulations, out of touch elites, giving personal control back to individuals, and countering woke culture.” Those all look like winners to me. Maybe Desantis plays politics with immigration to keep his base in line. Pierre never will although I am sure the usual suspects will give it a shot hanging him with the issue. Good luck with that! A picture is worth a thousand words.

            https://www.westernstandard.news/news/who-is-pierre-poilievre-s-wife-ana/article_02a7786c-32dc-11ed-a65e-fb5f4bd47a85.html

  6. Warren,

    Well, you beat me again! I was predicting a shellacking because of the economy and inflation and it should have been so but clearly wasn’t. That means it’s a good night for Democrats: plenty of election deniers went down; DeSantis wins strongly which weakens any future Trump candidacy; Kemp wins big which is a win for Democrats because he stood up against Trump so Dems win on anti-Trump Republican voting patterns; only Vance so far is a clear win for Trump and his turds. And then there was the terrible attack on Pelosi’s husband. How much did that play in voting patterns?

  7. Trying to translate the tea leaves to Canadian politics will be difficult: we don’t know what voting patterns will be in the next federal election. Will women outvote men as they usually do? Will the CPC spur increased voting among men and young people? So, I for one regard the American results as mixed gruel and I don’t see any clear patterns for our next election.

    • Martin Dixon says:

      Neither do I but I am sure somehow JT will find some lesson in there like his insane rantings about the possibility that women would lose the right to choose after the SC decision.

  8. Gloriosus et Liber says:

    “ This person is the new communications director for the Conservative Party of Canada?”

    FFS ‍♂️. Are these bozos actually trying to lose? Is this all a plot by the Liberals to make the Tories unelectable?

    As a former Reform voter, I shake my head at how far the CPC has fallen. Even Stockwell Day wasn’t this inept.

  9. Gloriosus et Liber says:

    “ This person is the new communications director for the Conservative Party of Canada?”

    FFS. Are these bozos actually trying to lose? Is this all a plot by the Liberals to make the Tories unelectable?

    As a former Reform voter, I shake my head at how far the CPC has fallen. Even Stockwell Day wasn’t this inept.

    • GL,

      A Communications Director is a transmission vessel, no more, no less. So, IMHO, she or he is not important in the overall scheme of things: what counts is consistent and on-target messaging. Fischer may or may not do that job well. But Pierre and the rest of us will live or die on messaging. Big-tent messaging win us power. Targeted messaging on unpopular themes would keep us warming the opposition benches. Pierre is off to a good and solid start on inflation and the economy. Hopefully he sticks mostly to that and avoids vaccines and truckers. Otherwise…

      • Martin Dixon says:

        The MSM/CBC won’t let him avoid vaccines and truckers.

        • Martin,

          Who gives a shit what those assholes do. What’s important is that Pierre does not take the bait and does not bring up issues that will cause independent voters in Canada to do exactly what they just did in the midterms in the U.S. It ain’t rocket science. Does the OLO get it?

          • Martin Dixon says:

            Those “assholes” have a lot of power. Managing them is more of a problem than managing his message(I am sure he will do fine there). It has been ever thus. Chantal Hebert was the latest to moan about about his comments about the Ottawa press gallery in the Toronto Daily Star.

          • Martin,

            There comes a point when even the most biased of media losers lose their “influence”. A case in point: the Mulroney and Chrétien Sponsorship Program in Quebec. That positively killed Martin in 2006 and that bunch of exceptionally biased losers couldn’t do a damned thing about it. Hope it’s exactly the same in the next election.

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