pascalrobichaud.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

🍊’s threats against Canada have caused the liberal party to rise in the polls. If 🍊 keeps it up, he may end up reelecting a left-wing, pro-environment and pro-DEI government. If 🍊 really wants conservatives in power in Canada, the best he can do is leave us alone. Methinks he can’t help himself!

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Everyone will encounter at least once in their life a situation where they could kill if the means to do so was readily available. If everyone has a gun, the likelihood that someone acts out in such a situation is greatly increased. Humans are imperfect and shouldn’t have in hand the means to kill.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

survey on the effect on Canadians’ desire to buy US-made goods since 🍊 took office. 76% indicated that they would buy less, 17% unchanged and 2% more. In 2024 Canadians bought $350B of good from the US creating an estimated 8 million jobs in the US. How many of those jobs are held buy 🍊 voters?

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Many Americans are just now waking up to US agriculture being subsidized by the government buying surplus production and liquidating it by giving it underdeveloped nations. This was USAID‘s role. Without it many US farmers will go bankrupt, diminishing supply and increasing prices.

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

All that is necessary for civilization to fail is for one generation not to educate the next. The rise of extremism, of bigotry and anti-intellectualism we are experiencing is a failure to educate. Liberal political institutions cannot exist in an uneducated mind. One must learn to be a citizen.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

We live in a geopolitical monopole: the US is the only superpower. Others aim to change this and establish a multipolar world with themselves are regional powers. Russia and China cannot do this by directly challenging the US‘s military power, so they are undoing the US from within with 🍊‘s help.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Over the years, we’ve slowly been made comfortable with reductionist speech: citizens became consumers, society became the economy, families became household units, etc. all of it reducing our relations to transactions and breaking us up into a mass of atomized individuals, easy to manipulate.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

It astounds me daily how much energy and time humanity spends to counter and manage its own immaturity! The number of inspections, controls, verifications, audits, investigations, trials we undergo to prevent or preempt dishonesty and malevolence boggles the mind. Humanity has some growing up to do

submitted 15 days ago • 1 comment

Canada out negotiated Trump, likely in coordination with Mexico. Canada will now place 10,000 personnel (which they were already doing) at the border. They reinforced the border to protect from the US against a potential invasion and will now curb US drug and weapons traffickers. The US got nothing.

submitted 19 days ago • 223 comments

Guns flowing into 🇨🇦 from the 🇺🇸 have been a problem for a long time. Guns are stolen in the 🇺🇸 and smuggled into 🇨🇦. Gunmakers then get to sell more guns to replace the stolen ones, while unofficially flooding 🇨🇦 with guns. Makers have successfully lobbied the 🇺🇸 gov to turn a blind eye. Fix the border!

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

youtu.be/gFi3kloTKlg. To understand what is happening to our political systems, here an audiobook of David Livingstone’s On Inhumanity, which describes the psychological process of dehumanizing opponents that is at the core of proto-authoritarian regimes. This explains why 🍊 demeans others.

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

The US is not subsidizing Canada. It has a trade deficit with Canada because Canada sells what the US needs. Most of this is energy, which Canada produces for cheaper than the US. Remove energy from the mix and the IS has a large trade surplus. The logic behind the tariffs just doesn’t hold up.

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

Frustration at the presidential election is understandable, but the left must not be consumed by insult politics. When some of the MAGA voters become disillusioned with the incoming government‘s incompetence, there must be a way for them to cross over to the Dems. Otherwise, the GOP will win again.

submitted 39 days ago • 0 comments

Tocqueville thought us all that democracy is based on three principles: liberty, equality and public sovereignty. The three have to be in balance to have a true democracy. Many now focus entirely on individual liberty at the expense of equality and sovereignty, moving us away from democracy.

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

A friendly visitor coming along to wish us well as we explore the rivers of Northern Peru.

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

🍊’s explanation for DEI causing the crash in DC is “common sense”. The more I see this government act, the more I am convinced that sense is not common!

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

Extremists that would impose a fascist regime on our countries are always there waiting in the margins for our democratic reflexes to fail. Fascists have full responsibility for their actions, but we are all responsible for the failure of democratic institutions.

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

The US gov collected 5 trillion $ last year. 84% of that was from income tax on individuals and businesses and special income tax for Medicaid/care and Social Security. Customs and Duites (tariffs) accounted for 2%. There is no way to fund the gov via tariffs.

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

I find myself conflicted by the harm that 🍊will cause and an inner desire to have him do his worst so that those who voted for him learn a valuable lesson.

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

With the US seemingly giving up its role as leader of the free world, who will pick up the mantle? The UK? France? Germany? The EU? Others?

submitted 28 days ago • 1 comment

There will be 1460 days in office for the current US administration. To fully deport up to 10M undocumented immigrants, ICE would have to deport about 7000 per day…an impossible number.

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

I’m caught between, as a humain being living in these times, a sense of dread and impending doom, and, as a political science nerd, the thrill of seeing theories about the degeneracy of democracy and proto-totalitarianism being realized right before me. I’m not cheering, but I can’t look away.

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

With SCOTUS giving the President immunity for crimes committed in office and the President pardoning the J6 insurrectionists, the door to abuse of power is wide open. As the President has a stranglehold on the GOP, he will never be impeached. There are no more checks on the power of the Presidency.

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

Is anyone keeping a stopwatch count of when the war in Ukraine will end? Much of that 24h is already gone and no sign of a peace agreement yet. Just checked and Russians are still very much attacking Ukraine.

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

Alberta Premier, Danielle Smith, stood apart from all others Premiers and the Prime Minister of Canada, refusing to be part of a united front to resist the Trump tariffs, so she could pander to Trump and Trump turned around and cut her from the inauguration. I almost feel bad for her…almost.

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

It wasn’t long ago, I could have reasoned, rational, pragmatic discussions with my right-leaning friends. We would disagree, but with respect and consideration. They would argue for smaller government and I would counter with the need to redistribute wealth. None of that is possible now. I miss it.

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

Seeing business pulling out of their net zero commitments in anticipation to the incoming US administration, tells me they weren’t in it by conviction, but purely by opportunity. This seems to correlate with the sudden decline in support for human rights. Many were just pretending to agree.

submitted 34 days ago • 1 comment

I’m caught between, as a humain being living in these times, a sense of dread and impending doom, and, as a political science nerd, the thrill of seeing theories about the degeneracy of democracy and proto-totalitarianism being realized right before me. I’m not cheering, but I can’t look away.

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

Plato believed that there is a lifecycle to governments, with each type of government devolving into a lesser form over time. Democracy would devolve into the final form, tyranny. With the backsliding of democracy the world over and the rise extremism, I wonder if he had it right.

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

“The long great-power peace of the postwar era didn’t just happen… An important lesson, then, is that a cold war is the reward for deterring a hot one,” Hal Brands writes.

submitted 35 days ago • 2 comments

Norway is cold country Norway is capitalist country Norway is major oil and gas producer Norway is a free country Norway is one of the happiest country in the world …and… Norway‘s cars are almost all electrical. Over 90% currently are and the aim 100% soon. Let‘s all be like Norway!

submitted 36 days ago • 0 comments

If the speed limit in our country is nowhere higher than 120kph (75mph), why do we keep selling vehicles that can travel at twice that speed?

submitted 36 days ago • 0 comments