So? What happened during the State of the Union?

Come on, people, I’m on kid duty here all day, minding children while pacifying three grumpy grandmas at the same time. Can somebody return me to the world of adults by sharing their impressions of the event?

When I’m in Montreal, I’m mostly confined to an expensive pretty suburb but today we ventured downtown to entertain the kids. The very first thing we saw in the Old Port was a homeless, pantless addict, defecating in the middle of the street. My kid is not used to such sights, so I had to make a speech about drug addiction and homelessness.

There was nothing remotely similar in Montreal 15 years ago. This is a problem that has been manufactured since then. This was the most livable city in North America, and it’s being murdered in the same way as all North American cities are being murdered.

What’s great about being in a Canadian bookstore is that there are books by Canadian authors.

OK, one of them isn’t Canadian but still, two are better than nothing. I often get asked about Canadian literature, and I need to be able to give at least a couple of names.

I’ll post my impressions as I go along.

I have now read everything that Eric Rickstad published so far. Dude is very woke but he writes well. He’s going to release a new very woke novel in a couple of weeks, and I wonder if the talent will outweigh the politics. It has for me so far but the upcoming novel is about “gun violence that men use to victimize women and children.” There needs to be a serious amount of talent for me to disregard this kind of idiocy.

Talented people are often very stupid.

Leaving aside specific personalities, a presidential administration should have employees who understand cultural differences and make sure that embarrassing gaffes don’t occur.

Don’t offer the Prime Minister of India a nice, juicy steak. Don’t make Holocaust jokes to the Israeli ambassador. Don’t put people from warring countries next to each other.

We are drowning in incompetence, and it’s visible in everything.

I really, really hope this is one of WashPo’s habitual lies. The Biden administration couldn’t have possibly insulted the wife of the Ukrainian president this way.

Russians murdered 5 Ukrainian children in Odessa a couple of days ago. The youngest was 9 months old. We are all mourning. And Biden chooses this moment to humiliate Ukraine’s First Lady by seating her next to some piece of trash neo-Nazi widow. Which will strengthen Russia’s propaganda narrative that Ukrainians are all Nazis and even Biden knows it.

Even if Yulia Navalnaya were a decent person (which she’s not, and I’ve been explaining this for years), this would be a horrible idea. You don’t sit Jews next to Germans, even nice Germans, while the Holocaust is ongoing. Ukrainians are burying children every day. Hearing Russian speech is painful. Hearing Russian accents is very unpleasant. Looking at the happy, smug Russian faces while they prattle on how it’s not their fault because Putin made them is torture.

Navalnaya is a grifter, like her late husband. She already created a foundation in his name and is collecting money. For what? “To fight Putin”, of course. How will she fight Putin with money? That’s never explained. But it’s convenient for Biden to pretend that these crooks will defeat Putin because this allows him to continue to do next to nothing to honor the US obligations and help Ukraine.

It’s not enough to betray people, you also need to humiliate them into the bargain.

Polyamory is the Uberization of love. It’s the sharing economy of relationships.

Isaac Rosa, Feliz final

Montreal has a very strong, long-established Jewish community. It now also has a large and very aggressive anti-Semitic group. This is going in a very bad direction. I don’t see any city in North America as seriously at risk for a violent assault on Jews but I do fear that for Montreal.

President Biden is privately pushing for a much more aggressive approach to 2024: Go for Donald Trump’s jugular.

https://www.axios.com/2024/03/05/biden-new-strategy-attack-trump-2024-election

Translation: Biden has zero achievements or proposals, so he will inflict yet another round of “Trump is a fascist who’ll end our democracy” on all of us.

Fortunately, Trump also has zero proposals or ideas, so he’ll inflict his own “Biden will end our democracy by starting WW3 and also Deep State something something the swamp something something else.”

Everybody gets the politicians they deserve, so congratulations to us all. I fail to see a meaningful difference between these two retirees, so I’ll probably not vote at all. And when I say this to the supporters of either side, all I hear in 100% of cases is how the other side’s candidate will “destroy democracy.” Which proves the very point I’m making but whatever. As long as people can get off on feeling as saviors of democracy, who cares about crime, immigration, inflation, and all the rest of it.

What kind of absolute savages with outdated brains call people on their work phone and leave messages? Everybody half normal sends emails.

I especially love it when a person who wants a favor from me leaves a message to call them back on some stupid phone number. Normally, I wouldn’t know about these voicemail messages because I haven’t listened to one in over 15 years but my IT dude installed an app that translates voice messages into emails and inflicts them on my notice.