MitchM70 🇨🇦

Trump could be the best prime minister Canada never had.

That’s not even close to the whole story. For most of us, one, two, three, or even ten pipelines changes nothing. When oil crashed in 2014, the industry had tens of thousands of layoffs. The province was hurting but there were signs of hope: Northern Gateway, Energy East, and TMX. Northern Gateway had its approval cancelled by Trudeau. Energy East was cancelled because Ottawa wanted to count upstream and downstream emissions, which put the project on shaky ground. But the coup de grace came when Québec’s prime minister at the time, François Legault said that there was “no social acceptability for a pipeline.” TC cancelled it shortly after. Finally, we fought over TMX because Ottawa wouldn’t assert its jurisdiction. Trudeau let Horgan and BC make it so risky to try to build TMX that Kinder Morgan had to pull out. Nobody wanted the federal government to buy the pipeline, they should have simply enforced the conditions to ensure it was safe for Kinder Morgan to proceed. Albertans had stayed quiet for a long time over equalization because Ottawa was staying out of our faces, so it was just the price to pay to operate in this country. But when came time to help Alberta after the oil crash, the whole nation turned its back on us and proceeded to crush the three beacons of hope we were counting on to turn the corner. That’s when a lot of us started paying closer attention to politics to figure out how to get our voices heard. It didn’t take very long before we started looking at seats in the House of Commons and the Senate and realizing how unequal and unfair our representation is in Ottawa. Bottom line is that we’re effectively screwed and that the people we subsidize through equalization continuously vote for governments that attack our industry. Fixing the constitutional mess is impossible because it would require either Ontario or Québec and all the maritime provinces to vote in favour of curtailing their own political power. It will never happen. In 2019, we figured that Canada was going to be smart enough to realize that Trudeau was a disaster and we’d get back some common sense. Wrong. Trudeau was voted in for a second time. If you were in the oil and gas industry at the time, you probably had your first taste of western alienation with the Wexit movement instantly polling above 30% in support of independence. Next up is covid and that’s when all hell broke loose with the spending, the OIC to prohibit common guns, etc. Albertans’ living standards were the most impacted by Trudeau and now Carney’s insane deficit spending. We watched as Trudeau pranced around on the world stage, virtue-signalling with our money while the cost of living was sky rocketing. In FY 2024-2025, we watched the Liberals send $13B abroad between gender equality and climate change foreign aid, while running a $36.3B deficit. We had one last hope with Pierre looking like he was going to get elected and stop the bleeding. But they parachuted Carney in and the rest is history. The country’s finances are in shambles and it would take 3 generations to fix this mess if we started today by doing the obvious, which Ottawa is still refusing to do. Ottawa is fiscally irresponsible and now headed down a very dangerous path of authoritarianism with all the bills that were passed in this parliamentary session. Alberta independence supporters see the writing on the wall and don’t care about any number of pipelines. Once you’ve looked close enough at the system, you realize it can’t be fixed and there’s no coming back from realizing the true extent of the mess Canada is in. The Canada we grew up in doesn’t exist anymore. It is a sinking ship and independence is the only way to save Alberta.

@MarcNixon24 Mark Carnage.

Mark Carney promised a new trade deal a year ago as an election promise. Today still no deal. Who pays the price? Working class Canadians

@Martyupnorth Maybe they’re thinking of freezing bank accounts again.

This is getting ridiculous.

Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software. 5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed. 6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost. 7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way. 8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive. 9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret. 10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed. 11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice. 12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin. 13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet. 14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war. 15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia. 16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn. 17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives. 18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within. 19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all. 20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim. 21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful. 22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what? Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska techrepublicbook.com

@JeffreyRWRath Google, what’s the capital of Canada? Yeah, tough quiz when you can search for the answers.

What a joke.

@ikwilson The MOU to nowhere.

Canada has been blocking the development of Alberta’s vast energy reserves for 10 years and continues to do so.

Here is a helicopter flyover of the Ice Fields Parkway between Banff & Jasper. Class 4/5 avalanche is no joke!

@JoryS71502 @teresaann42 @TTrudzik @CoryBMorgan It's just unbelievable that people think like that.

@MitchM70 @teresaann42 @TTrudzik @CoryBMorgan She's a leftist. Doesn't understand that government money comes from taxing people and buisness', oh and printing it which deflates the value aswell

Windy but warm. Petition signing station at the Airdrie Walmart right now

@teresaann42 @TTrudzik @CoryBMorgan Please educate me how they work, then.

@MitchM70 @TTrudzik @CoryBMorgan Not how taxes work across Canada, champ.

@teresaann42 @TTrudzik @CoryBMorgan That money originates in Alberta, sweetheart.

@TTrudzik @CoryBMorgan I’ll say you’re gonna lose if you haven’t read that yet. BUh-bye Felicia.

A brief 🧵 on philosopher-kings and self-serving mobs: You will never create a law that can permanently prevent the abuse of power. Corrupt and power-hungry people eventually find a way around those laws... and then rewrite them to cement their hold on power. Ultimately, restraint comes from culture -- the moral codes we hold ourselves to, the expectations of how power is to be used, and the role we expect govt to play in society. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius was a good emperor -- the quintessential philosopher-king -- not because the laws of the Empire restrained him but because he was a Stoic who practiced what he believed. Those beliefs shaped what he expected from himself. The stories and philosophies you learn as a child will guide your behaviours and choices for the rest of your life. What you teach your children today literally shapes the society they inherit tomorrow. Most of today's leaders have not been raised on a classical liberal philosophical foundation -- or if they have it was perverted as it was taught. Hollow men and women. But the blame cuts both ways. They are hollow men and women presiding over a hollow society. Because the problem equally affects the other end of the spectrum -- the voter. Look at the stories and beliefs (or lack thereof) that are handed down to children by parents and teachers in society as a whole. When these children grow up to become voters, they will select leaders according to the beliefs, philosophies, and expectations that were imprinted on them (or failed to be imprinted on them) when they were young. And those beliefs, philosophies, and expectations will also determine what they will put up with from their leaders if those leaders stray "out of bounds". As Plato once wrote: Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws. A culture that abandons the philosophical foundations of its founders and begins instead to view everything as transactional cannot and will not produce good leaders. And in a democracy in which The People themselves have ultimate responsibility choosing who rules over them -- if a cultureless and opportunistic people begin to use the ballot box as a transactional and self-serving tool, they will get leaders who cater to those self-serving whims (and then sell them out to a higher bidder). As Benjamin Franklin once said: "When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the Republic." The sum of the bedtime stories that are read to each generation's children creates the culture for the next generation of adults. The parent that lets Hollywood do the storytelling at home is likely also going to be equally passive about letting the govt decide what stories will be told at school. Compound that apathy across enough parents, and the few who care will be so outnumbered that their only option will be to unplug their children from the system altogether -- assuming that's even an option (homeschooling is illegal in Germany, for example). A child raised on Game of Thrones simply won't view the world the same way as a child raised on Homer's Odyssey -- it will change not only what they expect from the world, but also what they expect from themselves.

@MarcNixon24 It’s a business trip. The problem is that it’s a Brookfield business trip.

Mark Carney going on Vacation. I thought he was ALREADY on vacation. He spends more time flying in a PRIVATE JET than he does in the HOUSE OF COMMONS

Albertans’ frustrations with Ottawa go far beyond energy. It’s about a pattern: - Blocked pipelines - Punitive regulations - Unfair fiscal transfers - Runaway federal debt and inflation - Unchecked immigration - Soft-on-crime policies - Attacks on lawful gun owners - Federal overreach into provincial jurisdiction At some point we need to be honest about what this means. Alberta and Ottawa increasingly want very different futures. Maybe the most realistic solution is also the simplest: let Ottawa pursue its agenda… and let Alberta chart its own path. A prosperous future for our kids and grandkids. #AlbertaIndependence

@sccNick70 @SicknDamnTired @atensnut No line.

@SicknDamnTired @MitchM70 @atensnut It won't leave a line?

Do you know what this is? Actual size about 4 inches long.

@Martyupnorth Need a recent picture.

Canadian passports are about to get more expensive - Yahoo News Canada. Why not issues passports good for 25 years, and save a ton of money. share.google/7vtt0C5vY46sDy…

@BungalowMo13 @atensnut I loved that van!

@MitchM70 @atensnut My brother had a van like that! His was purple! 😂

What was your first car? Mine was a 1964 Corvair Monza. Had rear engine like Volkswagen bug.

@WSOnlineNews Kind of like letting infrastructure maintenance (Calgary's waterlines) lapse and let some other mayor down the road deal with it!

Nenshi says the UCP's budget deflects debt to future generations, rather than addressing the issue now westernstandard.news/alberta/nenshi…