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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: March 14th, 2023

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  • Moreover, a war meant to strengthen US global power weakened it — by deepening the transatlantic rift within NATO, overstretching the US military and creating a global impression that Trump had blundered into a costly war with no plan to end it.

    Trump did achieve his objective to weaken NATO, which he had been pursuing well before this war, by constantly admonishing its allies and threatening to leave. But because of the belligerent way Trump acts about everything, of course the US doesn’t have the trust for countries to just blindly jump into random military adventures. That’s the real power, in many cases more useful than kinetic power that Trump squandered for US military forces.

    He doesn’t consider tradeoffs systematically or plot out complicated maneuvers several steps in advance. Trump follows his instincts ; he assumes that superior US power will force opponents to back down.

    Far as I can tell he just looks at what authority he has and sees how he leverage it to solely his benefit. If the author wants to call that his instincts, sure, but I attribute his total lack of planning to narcissism. Maybe in his first term, he had enough competent people in the top brass to execute a workable war strategy. Now, his war cabinet is now a Fox & Friends clownshow, and the most powerful guns, military tech, ships and planes can only partially compensate for the Russian-style incompetent sycophantic executive leaders.





  • Good on you for making the supportive case, though it’s apparent many Lemmings aren’t happy with it and I also respectfully disagree. Conceptually, there is a case for building any of the 3 projects as you’ve laid out. However:

    • The absolute cost and the opportunity cost of building those piplines are massive, in increasing order from the Transmountain Expansion Expansion, Churchill and Alberta-Ontario Piplines.
    • If I had to choose, the Churchill pipeline seems to be the better way to get to Europe for the capital construction costs based on timelines of the passage being able to open. Building through the Canadian shield requires extraordinary amounts of blasting.
    • The demand outlooks are much bleaker than what oil industry affiliated reports would like to represent. The Hormuz shock has sent the message that oil & gas dependence is the problem, not who the supplier is, which might have been the takeaway from 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
    • Prices of oil would be expected to come down when supply recovers along with this demand dropping, and suddenly pumping out more oil in Canada becomes unprofitable for oil companies.
    • That lack of profitability will empty out any pipelines we would build and put Alberta into massive deficits. This situation is entirely predictable, but of course the UCP will do nothing to prepare.
    • At that point, useless infrastructure to us won’t matter whether it routes through USA or Canada or whether it is redundant.
    • Securing long term price/supply contracts, like the German LNG one, may help with the profitability side but consigns the world to decades of pollution from the forced demand, slowed transition away from dependence on gas.
    • The main benefits are political, yet the federal Liberals literally buying a pipeline project to see it to completion has seemingly not moved Albertans’ view of the federal government. The UCP relies on a continued stream of grievance to be able to lay blame or distract from their own scandals and failures. Even now federal co-operation towards Premier Smith’s wishes and demands have not stopped her from playing silly and dangerous political games with the UCP separatist supporters.
    • So, money would be much better spent for initiatives that would be less damaging to the environment, politically more popular across Canada including Alberta, and actually be more useful. HVDC Power interconnects, a national intercity bus, telecom, solar, wind and battery industry manufacturing hubs, etc…

    Heck, as a BC taxpayer I’d be fine if part of my federal tax bill helped fund and quickly build the high speed rail project that starts and ends in Alberta. Premier Smith seemed to like trains, and it would be a real sign that the federation can all help each other get things done sometimes, more than just rhetorically, and not just for Ontario and Quebec.








  • I’m not saying every average person is a rapist, but since it’s a common enough experience (21% of women) despite underreporting: https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics/statistics-depth/, I’m saying most people could be believably accused of an incident like this happening in their lifetime. And people who have been long scrutinized in a political career or from an elite institution will tend to be able to stay clear of incidents like these.

    And it’s an entirely separate issue, that unless Platner steps down, the election is currently a choice between him and an incumbent Senator that at best might say she is concerned about women’s rights being taken away but will do nothing, and at worst will support a party that plans to take even more rights away from women, including the right to vote. If one wants to hold a consistent position as to “blue no matter who”, the same applies for a potential rapist as it does a bland corporate dem, as it does a former policewoman, as it does a Muslim democratic socilaist.

    Listen, as more info comes out verifying the claims from the Politico article or perhaps other revelations I think Platner may be best to step down. That’s his choice to make, but I think we should be measured when evaluating every accusation and claim of whatever nature, instead of getting in a frenzy.




  • Crazy thing about this is that there are just enough details that I believe it is real, but just enough missing pieces that it puts it in doubt…

    • Platner was supposedly drunk af and according to Racicot and didn’t remember anything the next day, so it would be plausible Platner himself can’t recall anything about the incident.
    • All the messages she sent to Platner are gone (Does he still have them? Platner never getting the messages and Platner hiding those messages are both plausible possibilities.)
    • No official records of the incident, just her telling her therapist, boyfriend, and other friend, and the boyfriend repeated the story to Politico.
    • Some fb message exchange with the other friend released, claims it was in 2023 but we can’t see the date.
    • We don’t have the emails with dates, just Politico’s descriptions of them.
    • The NYT didn’t confirm nor deny whether Racicot was one of the other accusers that spoke in more vague terms about his behaviour.

    Yes, this is a piece that can make plenty of people feel vindicated about their hunches on Platner. But the way this came out and how the media jumped on this story while it has passed over oodles of testimony of Trump committing sexual assault, I can equally understand people being suspicious as well. And it is a playbook that can be trotted out whether there is a true story behind it or not, anytime there is a Democratic candidate for a position that didn’t come from a prestigious institution with everything given to them on a silver platter.

    People are crying for “average” people to be part of government, this is an average person we got from Maine and now many are getting upset. People who haven’t had anything happen that could be construed as scandalous from their high school prom to now, where a story like this could credibly be denied, are shut-ins like me who aren’t interested in dating and wouldn’t seriously think to run in politics, or are well-educated with above-average wealth.


  • I will believe the accusations by default but if he does not drop out, Mainers still need to choose the rapist (accused, alleged or not) over the supreme-rapist enabler who will help remove the right for women to vote and have bodily autonomy, continue reckless and expensive wars, subsidizing billionaire excess, and send US taxpayer money to Israel’s genocide while starving Maine. If Platner drops out, more likely than not, a replacement like David Costello may write many words in opposition to Collins’ party, but push for little action.

    I think Platner has 48 hours to research to find if AIPAC or outside groups (not including Cheyenne Hunt & Reckoning Action, Racicot reached out to them supposedly) have unduly influenced the details or timing of this. Some kind of credible evidence to put the evidence behind the allegations in doubt would be needed else this whole campaign is possibly sunk. CNN’s Tapper is happy to jump on this story asking leading questions. ETA: And many outlets that would decry HasanAbi as an anti-Semite are readily citing him speaking against Platner.