I appreciate you sending yourself portraits, it’s always nice to have a visual of who I’m talking to. Won’t lie, wasn’t surprised

Neither side justifies murder. You’re just altering your definition of murder to allow for it to cover that. Both sides agree that an unlawful killing is wrong, both sides also agree but there are some circumstances when unfortunately is necessary to kill another person but that’s not the same as murder.

For example some people do say that Obama killing Bin Laden was murder. But I think that most people would define it is an act of defense of the nation. It’s not like he didn’t do anything or that he could be arrested and brought to court

And yes it is getting to the point where we no longer live in a free and just society. Which is a major problem. But worse it divides the people to the point where it’s no longer possible to get back to a free and just society. Which is an even bigger problem

And yes I can’t argue with you, that is what we’re seeing today. America is fracturing into smaller groups who become tribal and defend their interests rather than have open and intelligent conversations looking for common ground

Perhaps it’s inevitable. I mean every major empire eventually falls and very frequently if you look at it the declines that we’re seeing today mirror many of the declines of empires of the past. People breaking into factions, no common sense of right or wrong, no common ground for discussions.

I guess we’ll see where we go from here

You mean by saying facts and truth and that everybody should respect everybody? Yes people who Believe that people should be respected are absolutely the worst, ask any Nazi 🙄🙄

You’re acting like gender acceptance is a binary thing. Either you accept all of it or none of it. Sorry but that’s not the real world.

In the real world people can say that they support the right and transgender people to exist and live their lives happily and freely and still not agree with them being allowed in women’s sports. That is a perfectly valid argument to make whether you agree with that argument or not. And it doesn’t mean that the person doesn’t believe in transgender or gender diversity you just means that there are elements of it but they have issues with that conflict with the rights of other people

Sorry but you’re just 100% wrong and you’re letting your bias and hatred guide your thinking. And that’s what’s creating the backlash against transgenderism. Your style of intolerance and absolutism eliminates the possibility of having an intelligent and respectful conversation about the issues. And that’s not healthy

And look at your hate-filled response. “I would ask you to talk about what you mean but i’ve already decided to hate you and ANYTHING you could possibly say”. What the hell is that? Is that really the person you want to be?

When you absolutely force people to agree with you 100% or insist that they are scum that need to be eliminated which is what you’ve done here then the majority of people are going to choose that they’re not scum and don’t want to be eliminated and if it’s US versus them then it’s the trans that have to go

And that’s what we’re seeing play out now and it’s absolutely unnecessary and ridiculous. You’re spreading hatred being like that. Don’t do it.

Then considering your being intolerant i don’t have to respect or care about you right? And if gender advocates are intolerant of anyone then it’s fine for me to be intolerant of gender diversity right?

Sigh.

Every body has to be tolerant of everybody kiddo. That’s the only way it works. You don’t have to LIKE the person or their thoughts but you do have to be tolerant.

What we DON’T tolerate is violations of people’s rights. It’s okay for you to decide that you think that white CIS people are scum. But if you go around treating them like scum and violating the rights then there’s a problem.

If there is no tolerance for intolerance then there is no tolerance. Eventually everything becomes intolerance

Sorry to break it to you

No, I’m not saying anything remotely close to that and you’re completely making that up because you can’t address the point. Pointing out the two sets of rights conflict doesn’t mean that one side does or doesn’t support the other

And yes you absolutely have a right not to like gender diversity. That is absolutely every person’s right. You have the absolute god-given right not to like anything, you don’t have to like puppies if you don’t want to. Who told you you didn’t have the right to decide what you do and don’t like?

But we’re not discussing what people like. We’re discussing people’s rights. And rights are not absolute. And if someone’s gender rights conflict with someone else’s rights to something then there’s going to have to be a solution that minimizes the impact of BOTH parties rights and that’s jus the way it is.

And stop making up fake arguments just cuz you can’t deal with the actual argument

That’s arguably true from one point of view and I can see why you’re saying that. I guess what I’m saying is I feel like it should be more ubiquitous to both right and left thinking. For example both right and the left generally speaking can agree that murder is bad even if we don’t agree on what we should do with murderers. Some things are outside of the realm of left and right.

I think is a society we should come to an agreement that certain extremism whether it’s left or right is horrible and wrong. And there was a time when that was a generally accepted belief. “I disagree with what you say but defend to the death your right to say it”. etc etc.

When I was a younger person there was a great deal more belief in the idea that repressing speech or repressing people or groups or any sort of authoritarian Behavior be it on the right or the left was unacceptable and would like to see that pervasively agreed on by both sides of the spectrum again.

The Hallmark of a free and successful society is its ability to be tolerant of multiple and often conflicting ideology and still find a way to work together on those things we agree on.

You’re replacing to be “I can’t think of a logical counter argument therefore I’m going to create an argument he didn’t make and fight against that”.

Can you point to anywhere that I said people have a right to deny a group of people public existence"? No? I never said that? Well how interesting 😂

And I wonder if you would extend that same line of thinking to Nazis or cultures that believed in slavery.

What I said was that it is common for people’s rights to conflict. This is the so-called can’t shout fire in a theater concept, although that specific example is a bad one and has been disproven.

In other words Someone’s right to free speech does not eradicate someone else’s right to safety. So when that happens we have to look at solutions that create the least amount of offense to people’s rights.

You seem to be struggling with this concept. You seem to be claiming that One group’s rights are absolute and any other rights must be ignored or else people have been denied the right to exist or something.

Sorry buddy but you’re the one who’s spouting nonsense that doesn’t exist in the real world.

Of course I’ve had personal experience of it, but to base my statement on one person’s soul experience would probably not be very valuable. However on a larger scale we can certainly see it in action as well. And you can follow the progression as people become less and less tolerant in the light of more and more radical demands.

One person’s experience is always interesting but the broader picture certainly is what is important

It is a problem with the left and arguably society in general that we are slower to acknowledge the dangers and horrors of left wing extremism then we are with right wing. Some estimates put Stallings killings at around 20 million. Left Wing radicalism has killed more people the right-wing radicalism

I don’t even know if it’s about forming a center, I think we should try and be promoting the idea that there is no difference between right-wing or left-wing radicalism and that all radicalism should be regarded in the same light.

It’s my opinion that the sun is going to rise in the east tomorrow. You can argue that it’s not a fact, but I wouldn’t be betting any money against it 😉 Does that make me arrogant?

Truth is rarely absolute. If you think that it’s not true or if you think that additional contacts or information is necessary then by all means present your case.

There’s always two sides. Nothing is ever black and white. Acceptance does not mean Every element of the demand must be addressed unquestioningly. Nor does questioning elements of their demands represent a lack of acceptance to their existence.

I absolutely would say the shit about the civil rights movement. In fact I do. For example people demanding reparations for black americans to make up for slavery that happened generations ago is not something I believe in. That doesn’t mean I am claiming slaves didn’t exist or that black people don’t have issues today or that there shouldn’t be actions that address those issues.

Waving around the term human rights issue doesn’t change anything. It is common for human rights to conflict. When one person’s rights butt up against somebody else’s rights Then generally speaking a conversation is had to look at solutions that minimize the impact of both people. It is absolutely not the case and it is extremely repressive to simply pretend that one group’s rights don’t exist in order to favor another group’s rights and that’s just simple logic.

So pretending that nobody else has a valid opinion and should shut up is the kind of thing that has led to this blowback where people are saying “If it’s a question of one set of rights or the other and there’s no compromise then I would rather it be my rights that exist and not theirs”. That is not a good way to proceed.

This probably won’t be popular but it is true nonetheless.

What has happened is that people, on the both the right and the left, bring up legitimate concerns with regards to gender diversity issues. They’re concerned that we might be going overboard with preferential hiring, they have concerns about men and women’s showers and the like, and while there are often answers and discussions to be had around these issues even if you don’t agree with them they are legitimate

But instead of treating them like legitimate issues and engaging with people that have these concerns unfortunately the transgender advocate community and many on the left have lashed out and basically called anybody who has questions about any of this transphobic scum who need to be locked up and should be disposed of and silence and any other nasty names they can think of.

This tends to polarize these positions and people start feeling attacked and they tend to move into the anti-transgender camp. A child is banned from a school just for saying he believes there’s two genders 100 parents out there start thinking the things have gone too far and if they see a chance they’ll oppose this

Then you wind up with two sides. And there’s never any discussion between two sides, it’s just us versus them and them versus us.

And once that takes hold it’s really hard to beat. Unfortunately transgender rights issues got handled very poorly in the last six or seven years and now there’s growing opposition that’s not being driven by rational concerns but rather tribalism

We haven’t got the technology now, never mind in the past

Even if we eliminated every single car and switched to buses and trains and every single one of those buses and trains was electrically driven and there were no fossil fuels, which at this point in time is pretty much impossible, it would still only reduce fossil emissions in the transportation sector by about 40%. The rest would still be there, and that doesn’t address any of the other sources of carbon such as power generation which would be necessary to provide all of that electricity so we’d lose about half the benefit right there.

Right now we couldn’t come close, to be blunt we couldn’t even make a significant difference as near as I can tell. Which is why politicians keep making great promises to make the public happy and then fail to deliver

Which is why we should have been worrying about adoption and that’s where our focus should be today. Absolutely we should also be putting energy and resources into developing the next generations of technology that we will need to eventually eliminate fossil fuels, but that isn’t going to save us in the short term

We need massive advances in battery technology more than anything else. When it becomes as easy, efficient and cheap to store electricity as it is to store oil then this fight is over. And we need for environmental groups to get behind "not perfect’ solutions. For now the latest nuclear tech is amazingly safe and pollution free but many such groups still fight it tooth and nail, even though it could massively cut fossile fuel use.

But while we wait to get there, we need to be doing what is necessary to adapt. Changing laws about making cooling options mandatory in new buildings and homes, having detection and firebomber capacity to deal with wildfires properly, figuring out how to deal with water issues etc etc.

We can’t stop climate change right now. We can’t even substantially slow it down. The day will come but it’s not here

We made was not focusing on mitigation and adoption. We spent decades messing around with fake protocols and accords and targets that politicians used make it seem like they were doing something when they weren’t.

If we had spent the same time and money getting ready for climate change we would be a million times better off. In the future, and they’re not too distant future mind you, the technology will finally advance to the point where we can begin to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. But we’re not there yet and we’re not talking governments and people into giving up their jobs and lifestyle until we can offer them technology but doesn’t require that. That’s just a simple fact

We should have been talking about climate change but we should have been doing something completely different. By now we could easily have deployed forest fire technology to allow us to identify and smother fires effectively and we just don’t have it yet and we’re only now getting serious about making that happen.

Well… at least he’s consistent! And that’s hard to find in this day and age…

LOL sorry, i use voice dictation for several reasons and it does that sometimes and i don’t always catch it. It’s ‘riding’

Well the NDPis always an option. If you kind of like the conservatives but you don’t like the current candidates you should probably get involved with your local writing association and see about helping to pick a candidate that you like. Or if you’ve already got a conservative MP in your writing meet with his or her policy committee or them directly and talk about what you’d like to see different. You’d be amazed at how much of an effect that has and if you feel that way then there’s bound to be others who also feel that way.

Democracy isn’t about just showing up once every four or five years to vote after all 😁

Well, it’s kind of complicated 😁

We signed the original deal a decade and change ago and then built the bridge. The deal was that all revenues would go to canada until the 4.5 billion usd price was paid back, then it would go to income splitting.

Trump said ‘nope’ and Carney and trump agreed to a new deal. But Carney would not let the details be released. However the documents have since been leaked, and we BELIEVE the leaked version is correct. The liberals have not said otherwise.

The new deal is a more of a preliminary deal document which is being finalized, but the terms of the deal are laid out.

Carney said the new deal still included the ‘pay back canada for the bridge’ clause, but its’ pretty clear from the leaked doc that it does not. Carney has subsequently said he "could have explained that better’ and does not deny that will no longer be the case.

There is also a requirement now to pay into a ‘development fund’ for ‘the area’ which is thought to mean it would be spent on the US side, and may even go to maintenance of the competing bridge. The libs refuse to confirm or deny that.

So … the NEW deal is still in place but there are a few elements which SOUND pretty bad but we’re not sure about. It seems certain however that when carney said (two times) that the bridge would include repayment he was not speaking accurately. Some say he lied, some say he may have been “misbriefed,” but either way it looks horrible and hence the pic

There’s nothing disingenuous about it, voters walked away from it every time. That’s entirely a fact and you can do your own research on the various models that were proposed, I’m not here to compile a book for you. It’s a matter of public record, these were voted on. We’ve seen mixed proportional proportional and a few others.

And every flavor that gets proposed gets shot down. British Columbia itself alone had three freaking referendums on it and launched a citizens committee to study it before one of them and it still got shot down

When people take a look at it they don’t like it. It’s a bad idea

And who cares how many other countries use pR? Israel’s one of them and they’ve been constantly criticized as having a horrible government. PR is a crappy system

But it’s an especially crappy system for a country as large and as diverse as ours is. The problems with PR are minimized when you have a smaller more homogeneous population. You have a population like ours it Magnifies all of the problems with PR 100 fold

As for the reasons why Canadians walked away from it it doesn’t really matter. The records are there and you can look it up if you want but the fact is they did walk away from it. Ontario, the Atlantic provinces, british Columbia, all toll groups that represent more than half of our population and they all shot it down some of them multiple times

You sold yourself on the idea that it’s good and you’re not looking at the problems that come along with it. But when people give it serious consideration they see those problems and they say no

The best you would ever sell in Canada is some form of limited proportional representation where the majority of the MPS are elected first pass the post but then a small number of seats are awarded to each party based on their percentage of vote to try and balance things a little bit and even that’s a bad idea. But it’s an idea that at least some people might accept. But it doesn’t actually address any of the issues people who support PR reportedly claim to care about

There are other ways to improve representation in our democracy that would be effective. PR is not one of them