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Friday, January 17, 2025

Alexander Skobov, Russian Dissident

Posted by tequilamockingbird at 12:04 PM 0 comments

The Second Coming - William Butler Yeats, 1919

Posted by tequilamockingbird at 11:59 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Adorable!

Posted by tequilamockingbird at 6:02 PM 0 comments

Monday, January 13, 2025

Best teammate, indeed!

Posted by tequilamockingbird at 11:39 AM 0 comments

Sunday, January 12, 2025

Skipping

I love this clip!
Posted by tequilamockingbird at 11:39 PM 0 comments

Jean Chretien responding to Donald Trump

 This is an article published in the Globe and Mail. Jean Chretien is responding to Trump suggesting Canada should become the 51st state.

Today is my 91st birthday.
 
It’s an opportunity to celebrate with family and friends. To look back on the life I’ve had the privilege to lead. And to reflect on how much this country we all love so much has grown and changed over the course of the nine decades I’ve been on this Earth.
 
This year, I’ve also decided to give myself a birthday present. I’m going to do something in this article that I don’t do very often anymore, and sound off on a big issue affecting the state of the nation and profoundly bothering me and so many other Canadians: The totally unacceptable insults and unprecedented threats to our very sovereignty from U.S. president-elect Donald Trump.
 
I have two very clear and simple messages.
 
To Donald Trump, from one old guy to another: Give your head a shake! What could make you think that Canadians would ever give up the best country in the world – and make no mistake, that is what we are – to join the United States?
 
I can tell you Canadians prize our independence. We love our country. We have built something here that is the envy of the world – when it comes to compassion, understanding, tolerance and finding a way for people of different backgrounds and faiths to live together in harmony.
 
We’ve also built a strong social safety net – especially with public health care – that we are very proud of. It’s not perfect, but it’s based on the principle that the most vulnerable among us should be protected.
This may not be the “American Way” or “the Trump Way.” But it is the reality I have witnessed and lived my whole long life.
 
If you think that threatening and insulting us is going to win us over, you really don’t know a thing about us. You don’t know that when it came to fighting in two world wars for freedom, we signed up – both times – years before your country did. We fought and we sacrificed well beyond our numbers.
 
We also had the guts to say no to your country when it tried to drag us into a completely unjustified and destabilizing war in Iraq.
 
We built a nation across the most rugged, challenging geography imaginable. And we did it against the odds.
 
We may look easy-going. Mild-mannered. But make no mistake, we have spine and toughness.
And that leads me to my second message, to all our leaders, federal and provincial, as well as those who are aspiring to lead our country: Start showing that spine and toughness. That’s what Canadians want to see – what they need to see. It’s called leadership. You need to lead. Canadians are ready to follow.
 
I know the spirit is there. Ever since Mr. Trump’s attacks, every political party is speaking out in favour of Canada. In fact, it is to my great satisfaction that even the Bloc QuΓ©bΓ©cois is defending Canada.
 
But you don’t win a hockey game by only playing defence. We all know that even when we satisfy one demand, Mr. Trump will come back with another, bigger demand. That’s not diplomacy; it’s blackmail.
We need another approach – one that will break this cycle.
 
Mr. Trump has accomplished one thing: He has unified Canadians more than we have been ever before! All leaders across our country have united in resolve to defend Canadian interests.
 
When I came into office as prime minister, Canada faced a national unity crisis. The threat of Quebec separation was very real. We took action to deal with this existential threat in a manner that made Canadians, including Quebeckers, stronger, more united and even prouder of Canadian values.
 
Now there is another existential threat. And we once again need to reduce our vulnerability. That is the challenge for this generation of political leaders.
 
And you won’t accomplish it by using the same old approaches. Just like we did 30 years ago, we need a Plan B for 2025.
 
Yes, telling the Americans we are their best friends and closest trading partner is good. So is lobbying hard in Washington and the state capitals, pointing out that tariffs will hurt the American economy too. So are retaliatory tariffs – when you are attacked, you have to defend yourself.
 
But we also have to play offence. Let’s tell Mr. Trump that we too have border issues with the United States. Canada has tough gun control legislation, but illegal guns are pouring in from the U.S. We need to tell him that we expect the United States to act to reduce the number of guns crossing into Canada.
 
We also want to protect the Arctic. But the United States refuses to recognize the Northwest Passage, insisting that it is an international waterway, even though it flows through the Canadian Arctic as Canadian waters. We need the United States to recognize the Northwest Passage as being Canadian waters.
We also need to reduce Canada’s vulnerability in the first place. We need to be stronger. There are more trade barriers between provinces than between Canada and the United States. Let’s launch a national project to get rid of those barriers! And let’s strengthen the ties that bind this vast nation together through projects such as real national energy grid.
 
We also have to understand that Mr. Trump isn’t just threatening us; he’s also targeting a growing list of other countries, as well as the European Union itself, and he is just getting started. Canada should quickly convene a meeting of the leaders of Denmark, Panama, Mexico, as well as with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, to formulate a plan for fighting back these threats.
 
Every time that Mr. Trump opens his mouth, he creates new allies for all of us. So let’s get organized! To fight back against a big, powerful bully, you need strength in numbers.
 
The whole point is not to wait in dread for Donald Trump’s next blow. It’s to build a country and an international community that can withstand those blows.
 
Canadians know me. They know I am an optimist. That I am practical. And that I always speak my mind. I made my share of mistakes over a long career, but I never for a moment doubted the decency of my fellow Canadians – or of my political opponents.
 
The current and future generations of political leaders should remember they are not each other’s enemies – they are opponents. Nobody ever loved the cut-and-thrust of politics more than me, but I always understood that each of us was trying to make a positive contribution to make our community or country a better place.
 
That spirit is more important now than ever, as we address this new challenge. Our leaders should keep that in mind.
 
I am 91 today and blessed with good health. I am ready at the ramparts to help defend the independence of our country as I have done all my life.
 
Vive le Canada!

Posted by tequilamockingbird at 9:19 PM 0 comments

Thursday, January 9, 2025

"I Need A Hero"

Posted by tequilamockingbird at 6:29 PM 0 comments

Thursday, January 2, 2025

Caitlin Clark (Scottsdale, Arizona)

Posted by tequilamockingbird at 7:27 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, January 1, 2025

You nailed it again, Charlie.

Quotation from my favorite columnist, the great Charlie Pierce:

"In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, "And we shall overcome." I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh's madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing 'Amazing Grace' in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

"These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.

"And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.

"The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides. We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.

"Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don't have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.

“Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn't he a funny man? Isn't what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now." ~ Charles Pierce



Posted by tequilamockingbird at 6:51 PM 0 comments

Sunday, December 29, 2024

There are dogs, and then there are border collies.

Posted by tequilamockingbird at 10:32 AM 0 comments

Trump on H-1B visas (2016)

Posted by tequilamockingbird at 9:44 AM 0 comments

Clark: "You can't see me"

I've seen so many times that Angel Reese fans have accused Caitlin of making the "You can't see me" gesture against Louisville in an effort to justify Reese's actions after LSU defeated Iowa and she chased Clark around the court taunting her with the "Ycsm" gesture and pointing to her ring finger. Poor sportsmanship, just like when she jumped off the Chicago bench to applaud Chennedy Carter for her cowardly hip check of Clark from behind (when the ball wasn't even in play). Everyone said it was directed against Hailey Van Lith; Van Lith debunks that claim here.
Posted by tequilamockingbird at 2:07 AM 0 comments

Champions also fail.

This Twitter post from Scottie Pippen is a great defense to use against the people who justify their hatred of Caitlin Clark by dismissing her value because of her high rate of turnovers.
Posted by tequilamockingbird at 1:20 AM 0 comments

Friday, December 27, 2024

Elon (as Adrian Dittman)

Unbelievable.
Posted by tequilamockingbird at 6:46 PM 0 comments

Friendship - Kate and Caitlin

Posted by tequilamockingbird at 2:58 PM 0 comments

Kids will be kids

 

Posted by tequilamockingbird at 1:28 PM 0 comments

Kids will be kids -- in Scottish!

Click here for the Scottish version.

Posted by tequilamockingbird at 1:25 PM 0 comments

Thursday, December 26, 2024

Angel Reese - Quadruple Dribble!

Posted by tequilamockingbird at 6:28 PM 0 comments

Caitlin Collection

I love the little skip at one minute! She's having fun!
Posted by tequilamockingbird at 11:11 AM 0 comments
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