Reply With QuoteIt's not just about Zelensky though, he makes things up and many of his statements are littered with untruths and down right lies. It's embarrassing listening to him.Originally Posted by Old_pie
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I wish I could understand why he makes such clearly factually incorrect statements. It is not for the benefit of the rest of the world. He doesn't need to do it for his voters. Does he really believe it or does he just have it in for Zelensky, a man on the world stage who has more status than the orange man?
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It's not just about Zelensky though, he makes things up and many of his statements are littered with untruths and down right lies. It's embarrassing listening to him.
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He's telling the American (re)public what they want to hear, it's their favourite toy and you can't take it off them.
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Same can be said with Starmer and his lot
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Same was said about Boris Johnson and his lot.
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The world.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
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In a bit of better news, Trump has had some potential effect on the upcoming Canadian election.
https://bsky.app/profile/leohickman..../3lmw6vr7z7c2a
Wow. Will be interesting if theres anything remotely similar in the Australian election.
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I am sceptical on how much of the Liberal Partys resurgence in the polls is a reaction to the election and behaviour of Donald Trump, rather than a reflection a several other factors that have recently upset the previous trajectory.
Our former prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who was so beloved outside of Canada but absolutely hated within, finally stepped aside. As your chart shows, he was getting absolute wrecked in the polls and he was taking the whole Party down with him.
Some of the reasons for his unpopularity were as follows: There is a very serious housing crisis here that has been getting exponentially worse with each successive year and they have been doing absolutely nothing about it - even go so far as to tell the public they will not bring housing prices down. Inflation, while according to official numbers has been coming back down closer to normal, people are not seeing it at the grocery stores. Or infrastructure has suffered from severe neglect and lack of investment. This is apparent in every major Canadian city, and Canadians are finally becoming aware that countries like China have far surpassed us in modernizing. This is coupled with the fact that we, like many western countries, have been bringing in record numbers of immigrants but just do not have the public infrastructure to support them and accommodate so many people. There has also been a significant shift in the wind in regards to identity politics issues. Trudeau was the champion of jumping on top of a Pride Parade float - this is now backfiring. As you may recall he was caught in photographs wearing black face more than once and is was probably the only global leader of his time who could get away with it. But his years of talking a lot while saying nothing are catching up with him. It was long evident before he realized it that be needed to go.
But nobody was ever really excited about the Cinservative Partys leading man. They only wanted to punish Trudeau.
This was exactly in the same veins as all the British politicians - Theresa May, the forgettable woman who lost the bet to the head of lettuce, Rishi Sunak and now Keir Starmer. Nobody really voted FOR any of these politicians, but rather did so begrudgingly because they liked the other option even less. Many would characterize American politics the exact same way. I would even go so far as to say very few people were die hard Trump or Harris fans, they just found their particular choice a bit less unpalatable than the other.
Enter Mark Carney, the new Liberal Prime Minister. Despite being a somewhat disgraced world banker of sorts, the Canadian media has pumped him up to be the second coming of Jesus. Theyre really worked hard and spent a lot of money trying to pump him up in the eyes of Canadians. And according to official polls (which somehow are oddly much different than internal polls), people are buying it!
There was even a clear election campaign propaganda article the other day crediting Carney with orchestrating a buying and selling of US bonds that caused Trump to pause the tariffs. What it failed to mention, and made it so obviously clear that it is an election article, is that Carney had been PM for less than a month and still does not even hold a seat in the Canadian parliament and yet he somehow significantly increased our bond yield within 3 weeks, and organized half of the world to do the same, then sold them off en mass. A poster above alluded to this same story.
Anyways the election is right around the corner. If the polls are right The Liberals will have pulled one out of a hat. But I think it is far less to do with Trump and more the lack of options.
Like you guys had the choice between Sunak and Starmer, while the Americans had the choice between Trump and Harris.
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Thanks Andy, seriously interesting stuff from you. I don't know much about Canadian politics, but I suspect you're right about a lot of stuff there.
But also, I guarantee there's also a Trump effect - as there is here in Australia. His brand is toxic to a majority of Australians, and that majority grew when he began trashing alliances, abusing allies, tearing up old trade agreements on a whim and doing... whatever the fork he is trying to do with tariffs. So far he's achieved only economic damage as near as I can tell.
Our "left wing" government were consistently behind in the polls until Trump's Rampage 2.0 began, and now they're definitely ahead again. However, I sincerely hope for a minority government because like your "left wing" party they have achieved exactly nothing whatsoever about our housing crisis, and there are smaller parties and independents advocating for more direct action on the issue.
Australia is a very strange country with a lot of different environments in which people live, so the solutions aren't going to be one-size-fits-all, but basically like Canada we simultaneously have ridiculous amounts of land per person, and a critical shortage of housing. We also have every resource you could possibly imagine so there is absolutely no reason for there to be a shortage of anything, let alone something so basic as housing. But successive (incompetent) governments of both "sides" have either ignored the problem or actively made it worse, because it's easy "economic growth" to have one asset class that a majority of people invest in that constantly grows in "value" no matter what.
The reality is that the most of the "value growth" in our housing stocks is just inflation, but good luck explaining that to the average voter. Although a growing number definitely sense that something is wrong.
Prior to Trump's various fiascos since taking office again, the right wing party here were very much trying on his slogans and adopting his talking points. But recently they've been backpedalling on that hard enough that everyone seems to have noticed the shift. And it's not a good look.
Thankfully, because we have mandatory voting and consequently very high voter turnout, the kind of extremist nonsense Trump sprouts was never going to fly here with enough votes to win power. And because we have ranked choice voting minor parties and independents have been steadily growing in power for a while. The two majors were down to about 30% first preference votes each last federal election and the polls suggest that number's slipped.
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Fairly clear now why the US and Trump are siding with Russia, this from Witkoff.
In his interview with Fox News, Witkoff said: "This peace deal is about these so-called five territories. But there's so much more to it… I think we might be on the verge of something that would be very important for the world at large."
"On top of that, I believe there's a possibility to reshape the Russian-United States relationship through some very compelling commercial opportunities that I think give real stability to the region too," he added.
This on top of the US demand for access to Ukrainian mineral wealth in return for continued weapons supplies, the American strategy is clearly one of lining their pockets with absolutely zero, genuine regard for the rest of the planet.
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