Phyllis Stein and the Philistines

This is getting ridiculous. I get it that Poilievre is not Mr. Congeniality but these MPs ran under his banner just last spring. They knew who and what they were running for. Clearly this is just personal opportunism.

The average number of limbs per person

What I find interesting about the Newsoms is that they both relentlessly promote liberal/left ideologies that are corrosive to family formation and undermine traditional values. However, at the same time, they've been in a heterosexual marriage for 20+ years and have 4 children together. By those measures, they are more "trad" in terms of their own lifestyle than most Americans are, even a lot of conservatives aren't married with 4 kids. So what that tells me is the Newsoms KNOW that the traditional family model is the best; that's why they chose it when they both could've chosen anything else. But as elites they still promote insidious ideologies that end up harming the ordinary people who listen to them. It's a perfect illustration of "luxury beliefs."

Canada has the 4th-largest oil reserves on the planet. We should not have $2-per-litre gas. Canada's political leaders need to stop making excuses and start building. We need to build pipelines. We need to build refineries. And we need an energy policy that actually puts Canada and Canadians first! 🇨🇦

🚨 Canada is cooked The Liberals are floating Canada joining the EU. The Brits left. The Greeks were ruined by it. The Italians regret it. Germany is in recession. France can’t form a government. Half of Europe wants out. And Carney’s Liberals are seriously asking if Canada should join? 🤣

Canada has the 4th-largest oil reserves on the planet. We should not have $2-per-litre gas. Canada's political leaders need to stop making excuses and start building. We need to build pipelines. We need to build refineries. And we need an energy policy that actually puts Canada and Canadians first! 🇨🇦

I’m seriously rethinking donating to any political party or even voting in any elections going forward. The whole thing stinks to high heaven. The removal of Ruby Dhalla from the Liberal leadership race, which strangely, we never heard the facts or anymore about that. Chandra Arya getting kicked out of the LPC altogether after 10yrs and Carney slipping into that riding. Never got the facts or heard anymore about that either. The Liberal leadership race was a farce and just theatre required to install Carney. Chrystia Freeland played her part, helping the god-father of her son so she could eventually duck out of Canada altogether. Frank Baylis played his part and paid a favour back for multi-million dollar government contracts for ventilators he was awarded. Battiste backed out and Gould knew she never had a chance in hell. Now we have numerous, unethical floor crossings that Canadians didn’t vote for. Even if it was the other way around, with Conservatives in the same position, I’d call it out. It’s all just a bunch of what feels like traitorous shenanigans.

A young Bill and Hillary Clinton in the 1970s.

As if the Blue Jays getting swept by the White Sox wasn't bad enough for Toronto, the spider is out again today

Pierre Poilievre opposing the $90 billion Liberal high-speed rail project has caused quite the controversy. Likely because the Laurentian Elite who loot Canadian taxpayers stand to gain BILLIONS and they want major backlash against anyone who threatens their impending goldmine of corruption. Let's do the math they don't want you to see.... The Base Cost: According to Joe Carson's "Diagnosis Red Tape," for every dollar paid in federal taxes, 26.72% never re-enters the private economy. It's consumed by bureaucracy. That means a $90B public project carries roughly $24B in administrative overhead. True taxpayer burden: ~$114B. There are roughly 20 million taxpayers in Canada. That's ~$5,700 per taxpayer, so that 12 million people in the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor can have access to rail. EXCEPT THINGS NEVER GO ACCORDING TO PLAN Bent Flyvbjerg's database of 16,000+ megaprojects across 136 countries finds that 91.5% go over budget, over schedule, or both. The mean cost overrun is 62%. Rail projects specifically (according to Liberal friends McKinsey & Company) go over budget by an average of 44.7%, and their demand is overestimated by 51.4%. Applied to Alto: $114B × 1.447 = ~$165B. That's ~$8,250 per taxpayer. Meanwhile, the Liberals' projected $35B yearly GDP increase? If demand is overestimated by half, that's closer to $17B. Now, consider the recent Eglinton subway line in Toronto. The Eglinton Crosstown LRT was originally projected at ~$5B. Final cost: $13B and it took 15 years. The Eglinton Crosstown is 19km long. Alto is ~1,000km. That's 53× longer. The Eglinton Crosstown cost $684M per kilometre. If Alto hit a similar per-km cost, you'd be looking at $684B. That's obviously absurd but the point stands: Canada just proved it cannot build 19km of light rail on time or on budget. The answer is to build 1,000km of high-speed rail? The Eglinton's cost multiplied by 2.6×. Apply that same factor to Alto: $114B × 2.6 = ~$296B. That's ~$14,800 per taxpayer. But it gets EVEN WORSE. Now add corruption... The Charbonneau Commission established that mafia-linked cartels inflated Montreal public contract prices by up to 30%. A whistleblower told the Globe and Mail in 2009 that the Mafia controlled roughly 80% of road contracts, with prices inflated up to 35%. Then there's the "Green Slush Fund" scandal: the Auditor General found 186 conflicts of interest at SDTC, with an estimated $150-390M in misappropriated funds. That's roughly 17-45% of the fund's total approvals funnelled to insiders. Applied to Alto's $90B base: $15-40B in corruption. Applied to the Eglinton-style $296B scenario: $50-133B in corruption. Let's summarize, shall we? Best case (on budget, on time... which never happens): ~$114B total. ~$5,700 per taxpayer. Realistic case (Flyvbjerg's average rail overrun): ~$165B total. ~$8,250 per taxpayer. With half the promised GDP benefit. Eglinton case (2.6× cost escalation): ~$296B total. ~$14,800 per taxpayer. With corruption layered on top: $15-133B more (depending on the scenario) vanishing into the pockets of the politically connected. Also, don't forget: VIA Rail, the organization that would operate this system, currently can't run its existing trains on time. And that, my friends, is how you market corruption and economic insanity as "infrastructure investment."