It doesn't matter what anyone thinks of Farrakhan or Trump, Frarrakhan makes some interesting comments about the former president.

Even if we eliminated all taxes on home builders in Canada, they cannot possibly build enough housing for 1.5 million newcomers per year. And green regulations at all three levels of government add $55, 000 to the cost of each detached single dwelling.

When Stephen Harper was pm our total intake immigrants, students, and refugees was about one third what it was in 2023. There was no housing shortage crisis on his watch. Cut annual immigration intake by two thirds and there is no housing crisis in Canada. Cut ineffective green construction rules and the price of new units drops

These are simple common sense solutions. And new taxes will not some how spur mass building and increase supply.

Apparently I received an email that the host would be having an upgrade today. I deleted it without reading. Sorry about that.

One of the biggest myths radical leftists who use climate change to advance socialism make is that capitalism makes local environments uninhabitable and people less healthy. The data shows precisely the opposite.

As one argument would have it, capitalism is responsible for the destruction of the environment because capitalism is based on growth. And yes, capitalism has led to tremendous economic growth. But without this growth, an ever-expanding world population would not have been able to provide even the most basic necessities. After all, in 1800, there were just one billion people on the planet; today there are more than seven billion.

Economic Growth Helps To Combat Hunger And Poverty

It is all the more astonishing that, despite this rapid population growth, the world has not been overcome by rampant poverty. Looking back to 1800, most people in the world were extremely poor—average incomes were the same as they are in the poorest countries in Africa today and more than 90% of the global population was living in extreme poverty. The development of capitalism and economic growth reduced the proportion of extremely poor people in the world to less than 10%—despite the sevenfold increase in the global population during this same period. So growth is not a bad thing in and of itself. In fact, growth has led to a reduction in hunger and poverty.

Life expectancy at birth has increased more than twice as much in the last century as in the previous 200,000 years. The probability of a child born today reaching retirement age is higher than the probability of previous generations ever celebrating their fifth birthdays. In 1900, the average life expectancy worldwide was 31 years; today it stands at 71 years. Of the roughly 8,000 generations of Homo sapiens since our species emerged approximately 200,000 years ago, only the last four have experienced massive declines in mortality rates.

In the last 140 years there have been 106 major famines, each of which has cost more than 100,000 lives. The death toll has been particularly high in socialist countries such as the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Ethiopia and North Korea, killing tens of millions of people through the forced transfer of private means of production to public economies and the weaponization of hunger. On its own, the biggest socialist experiment in history, Mao's Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s killed more than 45 million Chinese.

The number of deaths due to major famines fell to 1.4 million per year in the 1990s—not least as a result of the collapse of socialist systems worldwide and China increasingly embracing capitalism. In the first two decades of the 21st century approximately 600,000 people perished of hunger. That is equivalent to roughly 2% of the death toll from the early 20th century—despite the fact that the global population is four times larger today than it was back then.

The Price Of Growth—Destruction Of The Environment?

But isn't there a price for this growth: environment devastation? Of course, nobody would deny that industrialization causes environmental problems. But the assertion that growth automatically leads to ever accelerating environmental degradation is simply false. Yale University's Environmental Performance Index (EPI) uses 16 indicators to rank countries on environmental health, air quality, water, biodiversity, natural resources and pollution. These indicators have been selected to reflect both the current baseline and the dynamics of national ecosystems. One of the Index's most striking findings is that there is a strong correlation between a state's wealth and its environmental performance. Most developed capitalist countries achieve high environmental standards. Those countries with the worst EPI scores, such as Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Niger, are all poor. They have both low investment capacity for infrastructure, including water and sanitation, and tend to have weak environmental regulatory authorities.

Contrary to prevailing perceptions, industrial development and technological advances have contributed significantly to relieving the burden on the environment. Both Indur Goklany in his book The Improving State of the World and Steven Pinker in chapter ten ("The Environment") of his book Enlightenment Now demonstrate that we are not only living longer, healthier lives in unprecedented prosperity, but we are also doing so on a comparatively clean planet.


Researchers have confirmed that economic freedom—in other words, more capitalism—leads to higher, not lower, environmental quality.

Every year, the Heritage Foundation compiles its Index of Economic Freedom, which analyzes individual levels of economic freedom, and thus capitalism, in countries around the world. The Heritage Foundation's researchers also measure the correlation between each country's environmental performance and its economic freedom. The results couldn't be clearer: the world's most economically free countries achieve the highest environmental performance rankings with an average score of 76.1, followed by the countries that are "mostly free," which score an average of 69.5. In stark contrast, the economically "repressed" and "mostly unfree" countries all score less than 50 for environmental performance.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rainerzitelmann/2020/07/13/system-change-not-climate-change-capitalism-and-environmental-destruction/?sh=920531e6d72a

This video is by Leslyn Lewis. I admit, I haven't seen it yet. I'll comment on it after I watch it.
https://leslynlewis.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-smart-cities?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#media-8fbb382b-24fc-4987-9651-dfdd786c6c07

I heard BF lifted the lockdown on guest viewing, so my curiousity got the better of me, and I took a brief look.

Realgrimm, I like your idea about uniting under one forum roof. But, it will never happen at BF unless ownership of that forum changes hands. Besides being unstable and unpredicatble, the owner of BF has abused his panel more than any forum owner I have ever seen. If you were to become the new owner, it might be possible to unite what is left of the community under the BF banner. But, I think that would happen over the owner of BF's dead body.

It is no wonder Dems think rules only apply to the other party. Voting to oust George Santos is just another example of that.

The Republican party needs to grow a backbone.


https://www.theblaze.com/columns/opinion/have-the-republicans-lost-their-marbles?utm_source=theblaze-breaking&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20231211Trending-ActiveUserTrending&utm_term=ACTIVE%20LIST%20-%207%20Day%20Engagement
They took selective action against a conservative-voting GOP congressman who has rallied consistently to his party's tiny majority. Shame on such moral posturing!
Perhaps the dumbest thing I've seen Republican congressmen do in my entire long life was their vote to expel former U.S. Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) from their fellowship. One doesn't have to admire Santos' character or excuse his con games to recognize he was no less worthy of his former post than many Democrats who remain in Congress.

Of course, nothing happened to our alarm-tripping black radical except for a slap on the wrist and an inconvenient censure. When Republicans finally voted to censure him, they could only pull along three Democrats. This came after the Democrats spent weeks trying to block even a minimal recognition of Bowman's outrageous behavior.

House Democrats also allowed their colleague Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) to remain chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, even after revelations that Swalwell was having an affair with a Chinese spy. The Democrats have also more recently blocked any attempt to discipline Swalwell for his misbehavior.

Were Santos' actions so singularly shameful that they surpassed the sleazy behavior of many of his colleagues, such as Senator Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who is only one of our morally compromised Democratic solons? Charlie Kirk has devoted a recent podcast to the timely theme of "why expelling the clown George Santos is dumber than usual for Republicans."

Self-destructive righteousness
Such activities may be driven partly by a need to overcompensate for the way the media depict Republican politicians, namely as mean-spirited, ultra-partisan right-wingers. This may drive Republicans into engaging periodically in unseemly virtue-signaling and constant jabbering about finding "common ground" with the left. New York Post columnist Miranda Devine has mocked the 105 Republican congressmen who "were suckered by moral vanity" into cutting their own throats.

Although I wouldn't discount Trump's vanity or verbal intemperance, it is to his credit that, unlike most congressional Republicans, this populist hero doesn't indulge in self-destructive righteousness.

I won't hold my breath until the Democrats start dumping their own clowns in a spasm of moral righteousness or in order to disarm media critics. The Democrats are a serious, ruthless force who will break any rule or protect any miscreant to hold onto and expand their power. I may loathe their politics, but I profoundly admire their relentless pursuit of what they want.

Democrats could easily dump Bowman, Menendez, and other lowlifes in their party without risking seats. Such tarnished pols could be easily replaced by their ideological and even gender or ethnic look-alikes. But why make such concessions from their position of power? Let the other side fall on its sword. That's not how the Democrats act.

Is Santos really more reprehensible than that black racist demagogue Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), who, about a week before he left for a pro-Hamas demonstration, managed to trip the fire alarm in a U.S. Capitol office building? From the video made public of the incident, Bowman committed his criminal act quite deliberately and did it apparently to keep the House from agreeing on a temporary budget bill that would avert a shutdown. Bowman was eager to bring about a shutdown to punish "racist" Republicans. He therefore acted in a blatantly criminal fashion, endangering the lives of his colleagues.

What was done to Santos was for Republicans the height of folly. The Long Island district that he represented, mostly in Nassau County, will almost certainly go back to the Democrats. Meanwhile the thin majority that the GOP now holds in the House will become even more sliver-like. Since former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has already announced that he plans to depart at the end of the year, this will shrink the Republican voting margin to just three. If Republicans are now having problems trying to assert their will in a predominantly Democratic Congress, try doing it with an even narrower majority.

Small government is smart government.

Javier Milei, Argentina's new libertarian president, has wasted no time amputating various bureaucratic tentacles.

Within hours of being sworn into office on Sunday, Milei made good on his vow to take a "chainsaw" both to government spending and to what he called his country's "political caste," signing an executive order to cut the number of government ministries from 18 to nine.

Preston Manning warned in the 1990's that public health care would become unsustainable unless the Canada Health Act was reformed. The former PC party, the Liberals, and the NDP dismissed his warnings as trying to bring US style health care delivery to Canada. Now his warnings are reality and we still bury our heads in the sand and pretend Canadian health care is not on life support.

Tsunami of critical reports show Canadian health care is on life support

If every government in Canada — federal and provincial — is treating health care as a priority, then why is the system irretrievably broken, year after year?

Most of all, why does nothing ever get better, despite decades of studies documenting the same problems over and over again?

This week alone, four studies documented major problems with Canada's health-care system, all of which were made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, but all of which have been issues for decades.

A Fraser Institute study released Thursday reports that median wait times for medical treatment across 12 specialties in 10 provinces this year are the highest they've ever been in the three decades during which comparable records have been kept — 27.7 weeks from a referral by a general practitioner to treatment by a specialist.

That's up from 27.4 weeks last year and 198% longer than in 1993 when it was 9.3 weeks.

A report by SecondStreet.org released Wednesday found that, based on partial data from the provinces, at least 17,032 patients died in Canada while waiting for surgery or diagnostic tests between April 1, 2022 and March 31, 2023 and that the total number could be as high as 31,397, a 64% increase over the past five years.

A report by the Ontario Auditor General on four aspects of the province's health care system also released Wednesday found:

* 200 unplanned emergency department closures in provincial hospitals between June 2022 and June 2023 because of a shortage of doctors and nurses in 23 hospitals, mainly in rural, remote and northern Ontario locations.

* wait times for treatment in emergency rooms are increasing, along with hallway medicine.
* staff in long-term care homes lack critical training, plus there aren't enough of them to ensure patient safety and quality care.
* Public Health Ontario is struggling with inefficiency in its labs and poor coordination of public health research in areas such as latent tuberculosis and wastewater testing for COVID-19.

A study released by the Ontario Health Coalition Tuesday reported 1,199 temporary or permanent closures of hospital services this year up to Nov. 24, resulting in the loss of 31,055 hours of patient care, the equivalent of 3.44 years.

A report by the Ontario College of Family Physicians last month said that last year, 2.3 million Ontarians didn't have a family doctor, which will increase to 4.4 million by 2026, a major reason hospital emergency rooms are overwhelmed by patients who could be treated by a family doctor if they had one.

A report released by the Fraser Institute last month comparing Canada's health-care system to those of 29 other developed countries with universal health-care systems, who are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, (excluding the U.S. which doesn't have universal health care) found that in 2021:

Canada ranked 28th out of 30 countries for the number of doctors (2.8 per 1,000 people); 23rd out of 29 for the number of beds dedicated to physical care (2.3 per 1,000); 25th out of 29 for MRIs (10.3 per million people) and 26th out of 30 for CT scanners (14.9 per million).

Among 10 comparable universal health care systems that measure medical wait times, Canada's were the longest, with the lowest percentage of patients waiting four weeks or less to see a specialist (38%) and the lowest percentage waiting four months or less for elective surgery (62%).

While more money (which federal and provincial government claim they don't have) may be needed in some areas of health care, money alone isn't going to fix the problems.

Adjusted for age — the percentage of the population over 65 — Canada ranks highest for expenditures on health care as a percentage of GDP among 30 OECD nations, and ninth-highest per capita.

The public cost of Canadian health care last year was $331 billion or $8,563 per Canadian, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, with health care consuming about 40% of provincial budgets and accounting for 12.2% of Canada's GDP.

Given all this, it's painfully obvious that Canada's health care system, based on the myth of "free" health care, is broken and that we need to start seriously studying what other developed countries with universal health care are doing right that we're doing wrong.

Or nothing will ever change.
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-tsunami-of-critical-reports-show-canadian-health-care-is-on-life-support

Canadians, please sign this and forward it to everybody you know who cares about the future of Canada.

Petition to the House of Commons
Whereas:
We the citizens of Canada have lost confidence in Justin Trudeau and the Liberal/NDP coalition;
We call on the house for a vote of no confidence;
We ask for an election 45 days after the vote if won;
The current government elected is not acting in the best interest of all citizens;
The policies of this government aren't aligning with the crisis Canada is facing: housing costs, infringement of civil liberties, highest inflation in history, unbalanced immigration policies, taxation to the point of poverty, weakening of our economy by importing natural resources that Canada already has and under-utilizes; and
Based on the past eight years of this Prime Minister, Canadians do not have confidence in this Prime Minister, after five ethics investigations and Canada's reputation being tarnished on a global scale under his leadership. To the extent that Canada is being discluded from participating in statements regarding important geopolitical events.
We, the undersigned, citizens and residents of Canada, call upon the House of Commons to call for a vote of no confidence and a federal election 45 days following the vote.
https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-4701

Today's conservatives are the defenders of free speech. We are the ones who oppose draconian powers of the state. We are the ones who oppose corporate welfare. Today's conservatives, like yesterday's liberals are the ones who oppose barbaric religious practices. Today's conservatives are the ones who see people as individuals instead of their race, religion, sexual orientation, or culture

I could go on, but most people will get the point. Today's liberal are fascists. Today's conservatives have picked up the mantle of traditional liberalism.

This is not a good situation where all the conservatives/classical liberals are on one forum and all the leftists are on another, again save Garraty.

I suggest we have a leftist sub with Oak or Admin as mod(s). Seamoron could post in it too. Absolutely no interference from me. You can call me a balding middle aged Trumptard Gook if you so choose.

I will run this idea by the two admins. I don't know how to use the panel and set it up. But, if you guys want it, let's do it.

If you can't find a problem create one to justify the millions in taxpayer dollars you receive annually.

he Canadian Human Rights Commission recently published a paper suggesting that statutory holidays linked to celebrations of Christian significance, Christmas and Easter in particular, are evidence of "religious intolerance."

The paper from the federally-funded "human rights watchdog" made little secret of its ultimate aim, underscoring that Canada must work towards the "eradication" of such so-called religious intolerance.

The CHRC was created in 1977 and tasked with administering the northern nation's Human Rights Act. While the outfit allegedly exists today "to help ensure that everyone in Canada is treated fairly," it prioritizes helping specific identity groups and has a team that is 76.8% female.

The commission, which takes for granted that "ystemic racism is a persistent problem in Canada" and receives around $32 million in taxpayer funds annually, has assumed considerable judicial powers in recent decades.

I guess the flip side is any 0f you who did not receive a dose or more, do you have any regrets?

Other than not going to Florida for two years, I have no regrets about my natural immunity.

Anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders said Thursday he is ready to join the next Dutch coalition government after he surged to a huge election victory.


"It is going to happen that the PVV is in the next Cabinet," Wilders said, using the Dutch abbreviation for his Party for Freedom.

With nearly all votes counted, Wilders' party was forecast to win 37 seats in the 150-seat lower house of parliament, more than double the 17 the party secured in the last election.

Wilders' election program included calls for a referendum on the Netherlands leaving the European Union, a total halt to accepting asylum-seekers and migrant pushbacks at Dutch borders.

It also advocates the "de-Islamization" of the Netherlands. He says he wants no mosques or Islamic schools in the country, although he has been milder about Islam during this election campaign than in the past.

Although known for his harsh rhetoric, Wilders began courting other right-wing and centrist parties by saying in a victory speech that whatever policies he pushes will be "within the law and constitution."

His victory appeared based on his campaign to curtail migration -— the issue that caused the last governing coalition to quit in July —- and to tackle issues such as the Netherlands' cost-of-living crisis and housing shortages.

In his victory speech, Wilders said he wants to end what he called the "asylum tsunami," referring to the migration issue that came to dominate his campaign.

Mainstream parties are reluctant to join forces with him and his party, but the size of his victory strengthens his hand in any negotiations.

Wilders called on other parties to constructively engage in coalition talks. Pieter Omtzigt, a former centrist Christian Democrat who built his own New Social Contract party in three months to take 20 seats, said he would always be open to talks.

Kate Parker of the Economist Intelligence Unit said in a written analysis of the election that Wilders' party "will have to moderate its far-right policy stance" if it is to attract support from Omtzigt's party and the center-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, also known as VVD, of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

The Federal Communications Commission is poised to vote today on a sweeping set of new rules called the "Preventing Digital Discrimination Order."

This legislation was meant to infuse some federal dollars into America's sagging internet infrastructure. Unfortunately, this vote will grant the FCC the power to control nearly every aspect of internet infrastructure in the name of our secular gods of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The TL;DR of the obtuse rules is the ability to censor, control, and regulate internet service providers based on vague laws around equity. Most disturbing is that it doesn't have to be "discrimination" as it's generally understood but rather "disparate outcomes," meaning all internet infrastructure must produce perfect equity or face the wrath of the United States government.

The agency's unelected officials will convene to deliberate on regulations to integrate the latest progressive ideals regarding race and identity into the internet landscape. It's expected to pass 3-2. It will stifle innovation and impede internet access opportunities, all in pursuit of achieving equity.

If approved, this would mark the first time the FCC would gain the authority to oversee various aspects of every ISP's service termination policies, including customer credit usage, account history, credit checks, and account termination, among other related matters.

Experts have been sounding the alarm about what this could mean for internet freedom.

Even FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr has blasted the power-grab, calling it a free pass giving the "administrative state effective control of all internet services and infrastructure."

"President Biden has called on the FCC to adopt new rules of breathtaking scope," Carr noted on X, formerly Twitter. "Those rules would give the federal government a roving mandate to micromanage nearly every aspect of how the Internet functions — from how ISPs allocate capital and where they build, to the services that consumers can purchase; from the profits that ISPs can realize and how they market and advertise services to the discounts and promotions that consumers can receive."

"The FCC reserves the right under this plan to regulate both 'actions and omissions, whether recurring or a single instance.' In other words, if you take any action, you may be liable, and if you do nothing, you may be liable. There is no path to complying with this standardless regime. It reads like a planning document drawn up in the faculty lounge of a university's Soviet Studies Department."
https://www.theblaze.com/return/the-fcc-is-voting-to-seize-american-internet-infrastructure-in-the-name-of-equity?utm_source=theblaze-breaking&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20231115ActiveTrending-FCC&utm_term=ACTIVE%20LIST%20-%207%20Day%20Engagement

The Biden administration has already shown they want the internet to act only as something that disseminates the kind of information they approve of getting out. Nobody should be surprised they are taking it a step further.

Bold as could be too.

The man who led a street full of cheering Montrealers in prayer to 'kill them all'

Adil Charkaoui has been linked via allegations and investigations to extremist groups ranging from al-Qaeda to ISIS

A man on a balcony in a Canadian downtown takes a microphone and leads a public prayer for the violent eradication of the "Zionist aggressors." "Allah, count every one of them, and kill them all, and do not exempt even one of them," he says in Arabic. Below him, a crowd of hundreds respond with cheers.

The speaker was Montreal Imam Adil Charkaoui, and the venue was the city's Oct. 28 "Stop the Genocide in Gaza" rally — one of dozens of Canadian events organized over the last 30 days by the Palestinian Youth Movement, a group that has openly praised the Oct. 7 massacres and called for continued violence against Israel.

Charkaoui's speech may very well have been overlooked entirely if he hadn't posted it online himself. He posted it (from multiple angles) to his Twitter, Instagram and Facebook profiles — along with lengthy screeds calling for the violent destruction of Israel, and denouncing Western media and politicians as Zionist collaborators.

"Israel terrorist, politicians complicit," he wrote in French in an Oct. 31 post repeating a chant led by the same crowd who cheered his "kill them all" prayer.

"The only solution is the end of the occupation," he added, alleging that the "Zionist entity" could be destroyed in 24 hours if not for "traitors" in the Arab world staying the Palestinians' hand.

This is not out of the ordinary for Charkaoui, a Moroccan immigrant who has spent more than 20 years facing allegations and police investigations linking him to Islamist groups ranging from al-Qaeda to the Taliban to ISIS.

None of which has stopped him from obtaining Canadian citizenship and even being cited as an expert on "anti-Islamophobia."
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/imam-who-led-montrealers-in-prayer-to-kill-them-all

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Friday announced that he is moving from Seattle to Miami, joining other high-profile billionaire entrepreneurs who have made the move to Florida.

The Palm Beach Post recently reported that Mr. Bezos paid some $79 million for a seven-bedroom, 14-bathroom home in Indian Creek Village, located in Miami-Dade County. In August, The Associated Press reported he also bought a waterfront estate in the area for $68 million.

Billionaire investor and Citadel founder Ken Griffin revealed last year he was moving his company's headquarters from Chicago to Miami, citing the Windy City's crime rate as a reason for the decision.

Eric Schmidt, former chairman and CEO of Google, and his wife have been purchasing waterfront homes on Miami Beach's Sunset Islands area since 2020, The Real Deal reported.

I got an email that the host would be doing some maintenance today. But, I didn't read click on it until this morning.