Trudeau spoke to parents concerned with their right to decide what their children are taught in schools. The group of Muslim parents were very worried about the “gender ideology” being forced on their children. The reporter called his answer evasive. Listen for yourself; here’s what he said in full, “I’ve heard
Continue readingTag: politics
A Puff of Absurdity: What Do We Tell the Kids?
A couple weeks ago, Obama, interviewed by Hasan Minaj, explained his thoughts on climate change (at 5:37 and 10:25, and 15:29): “If you’re not stressed about climate change at a time when we’re seeing record forest fires and haze floating right here in DC coming from the north and flooding
Continue readingThings Are Good: Snowflakes Important to Political Organizing
vote You’re likely thinking “oh no, not another political thing about snowflakes”, but I assure you this one is different. These snowflakes are conceptual and not the stereotype of a right winger getting mad because they saw a beer commercial. When it comes to organizing people to get a political
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Harper’s Handshake
Recently former prime minister Stephen Harper tweeted about the “importance of centre-right parties strengthening their collaboration” The tweet was accompanied by a photo of Harper shaking hands with the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, The “centre-right” party Harper was referring to was Orbán’s Fidesz. Think about that for a moment.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Emperor’s New Clothes 2.0
Paul Krugman wrote about how someone like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. becomes such “a crank”: “One sad but true fact of life is that most of the time conventional wisdom and expert opinion are right; yet there can be big personal and social payoffs to finding the places where they’re
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Could This Be You?
So, you’re at the grocery store on Saturday morning, in the check-out line, and perusing the gossipy mags and debating a chocolate bar, and the air you exhale is quietly raining down on a little boy standing in line a foot in front of you. But you’re fine, so what’s
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Counterpunch Unhinged – The TQ+ Voice You Need Hear
Did you want to see an article that uses almost every activist Left trope? Well of course you don’t, it’s an unpleasant venture no matter how you happen to slice it. Yet here we are, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Any article that bears the nom de plume “Nicky
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Difficulty of Knowing
The main character from Camus’ The Plague, a medical doctor spending his days and nights helping the sick, said, “A man can’t cure and know at the same time. So let’s cure as quickly as we can. That’s the more urgent job.” This hit me as particularly poignant as we’re
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Google on C-18
It’s a bill, not a virus. The gist of it is that it requires American tech companies to pay Canadian news organizations for content that appears on their platforms. The hope is that the law will help Canadian news agencies. But Google and Meta responded that they’re just going to block
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Trans “Existence” – The Motte & Bailey Tactic Illustrated.
Know it when you see it. “A very common (and newly-named) informal rhetorical trick I’ve been observing, both online and in real life, is this one right here. The motte-and-bailey fallacy (also known as the ‘motte-and-bailey doctrine’). Although it is often found in arguments made by supporters of
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Teaching in the Face of a Bleak Future
I can’t imagine teaching right now. This post is a mishmash of thought around teaching at such a momentous time in history. Well, momentous for us. I’ve only been retired a year, but the world has gotten so much worse in that time with climate change hitting some serious tipping
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: We’re Back to Rhetoric of Welfare Cheaters
An old one, but the agenda still fits! According to Queen’s Park reporter Jack Hauen, on Monday Premier Ford said: “What drives me crazy, is people on Ontario Works–probably 3,400,000–that are healthy. . . . It really bothers me that we have healthy people sitting at home collecting your hard-earned
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Symbols of Class
The Titan submersible hasn’t been found yet, and the supply of oxygen is gone. Some think they perished days ago from pressure or another type of malfunction, all horrific to think about. That likely won’t stop anyone from looking for the vessel in order to recover the bodies. It’s my
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: It’s Hard to Emigrate to New Zealand. I Checked
This one minute video is the type of thing the government of New Zealand posts: a virologist explaining that every Covid infection significantly increases the risk of getting diabetes, mental health issues, blood clots, breathlessness, chronic fatigue… so we need to do everything possible to protect ourselves. Yup, Covid will
Continue reading52 Ideas: Alberta is missing the transition window
When Alberta’s Premier, the Hon. Danielle Smith, gave her election victory speech; she made it clear that she believed that she could protect Alberta’s Oil and Gas industry from the Global Energy Transition. Or as she put it, “We need to come together no matter how we voted to stand
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: A Laughing Matter
I got laughed at in the grocery store today. That hasn’t happened in a while. Cases of hospitalizations/day are at their lowest since December 2021 right now, which is fantastic, but they’re still higher than some of the earlier peaks that once sent us into lockdown and masking everyone everywhere. Our
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: D. Smith Suspended From Facebook
The Premier of Alberta was whining about being temporarily suspended from posting to Facebook yesterday. 1. Smith, you block people, constituents, all the time!2. You post deadly disinformation about hoaxes routinely.3. Meta/Facebook has blocked links to my website despite it not hosting misinformation, and provides no opportunity to appeal, so
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: 2035 Is Too Hard: NDP and Sask Party and now UCP
A month ago the Sask Party and the SK NDP both said for different reasons, that getting our energy system to net-zero emissions was too hard. The NDP said this was because the Sask Party did nothing so far to improve emissions, while the Sask Party prefers to believe the
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