Get out of here

These types of articles drive me nuts, it’s been well known for decades that criminals get their guns from the US and don’t bother with the licensing system we have in Canada yet the only solution the Liberals ever have is banning guns from legal owners.

The data from GTA police is in line with what research has shown for many years, says Jooyoung Lee, a professor of sociology at the University of Toronto who studies the underlying causes and long-term consequences of gun violence.

“One thing we’ve known for many, many generations is that the U.S. is a global exporter of firearms and the vast majority of crime guns in Canada are originating in a very small kind of handful of U.S. states that have much more lax and porous gun laws,” he said.

Source: CBC

If our news organizations were truly objective, they’d question the powers that be why they’re enacting policy that doesn’t do anything and is all for show.

There’s no way I’m voting Liberal (probably ever again) but I take a lot of pleasure to see all the candidates in the leadership race to replace Trudeau are running as fast as they can away from his stupid policies.

Troll in chief

We really live in the best reality…  I laugh at the political commentators and politicians saying that they should do this and that to deal with or appease President Trump and to me, there’s absolutely no logic in what he’s doing.  I mean there’s a real large possibility that he doesn’t even know how tariffs work in the first place but even if he does, he’s flying by the seat of his pants here.  If we capitulate and deal with his stated goals (and when have rich people ever cared about drug users), he’ll just shift the goal posts.

The best way to deal with Trump is to appeal to his vanity, give him something small and make a big deal about it.  That’s what he wants he’s shown over and over, he cares greatly about praise and getting wins so give him something he can tell his supporters and move on.  If you give in completely he’ll just keep using the same tricks over and over again, even if we shut the border down completely, he’ll make up something else next time.

All the while, we’re stuck waiting for the Liberals to run their god damn leadership race with a government that’s in caretaker mode.  I bet JT wishes he didn’t announce his pending resignation as he was itching to run against Trump.

Nothing will save them

I have to admit, I never thought Justin Trudeau would resign and figure he’d cling onto power till the very end but resigning because he’s lost his caucus confidence is ok I guess.  By most measurable statistics like cost of living, GDP per capital, federal debt levels, etc his tenure has been a failure and I really hope people don’t look back at this time with rose colour glasses and say it wasn’t so bad, yes it was!  Trudeau and his focus on social issues over anything of substance has put Canada in a very perilous situation and his unchecked spending (like his father, took 15 years for the federal government to get ahold of the budget) will set us back for at least a decade, if not more.

As Donald Trump gets into office, we’ll have a caretaker government with no mandate what a great position to be in.  Prorogation is till March 24th and then the feds will need to release a budget as the fiscal year ends at the end of that month, if the Liberals lose that vote the earliest we can have an election is early May.  Sigh that time can’t come soon enough.

Fuck you Justin Trudeau and I’m glad you’ve destroyed your beloved Liberal party, may it die off completely and it’s brand never be rehabilitated.

Well I feel safer already

Yesterday the Liberals announced another round of gun bans yesterday and it includes guns like my GSG-16 rifle.  This is a plastic gun that fires .22LR but apparently fits their definition of an assault style weapon (there is no definition other than it looks scary) and to make things more comical, they’re going to send seized guns to the Ukraine so soldiers there can use them.  Yes I’m sure the soldier that gets one of these things is going to be so thankful, have range out to maybe 25 meters and need to shoot your target 10x to be combat effective…  I kid but this is ridiculous but not unexpected since the Liberals are flailing.

Their stupid GST holiday and bribe of $250 cheque (which is in limbo right now) didn’t give them any jump in the polls so I’m sure they’ll go back to their greatest hits of talking about abortion, LGBT rights and guns.  They certainly can’t run on their record, 9 years in power and the quality of life in Canada has gotten dramatically worse so time to roll out the social issues and try and create a wedge.  All fluff no substance with these idiots, sunny ways.

One good thing is that with all the activity on legal guns and the rise of gun violence (with illegal guns), I think we’re reaching a point where the populace is starting to realize the Liberals are simply gaslighting everyone and trying to scare people about guns is no longer working.

Man a federal election can’t come soon enough, it took 20 years to after Pierre Trudeau left office to get spending and our budget back into the black, sigh with JT’s stupid policies it may take another 20 painful years to get Canada back to fiscal responsibility…  I’ll also say this, after seeing how PET & JT have governed, I hope Canadians understand we cannot have another Trudeau politician again.

Lexus WTF?

So the battery that came with my 2018 Lexus RX350 was the original and was weak (died a few times which required me jumping it) so I purchased a battery from Canadian Tire with the intention to replacing it myself.  I’ve done this with other cars in the past and it’s fairly straightforward but just in case, I went on YouTube to look it up and followed these instructions minus the pressure washing.  The CT battery was neither tall or wide enough to use the Lexus battery restraint (odd it’s the one the counter gave me after getting my car details) so I didn’t even connect it, pulled it out and put the old battery back so I could get something else that fit properly and that’s the beginning of a nightmare.

Apparently it’s a common problem for Lexus head units/infotainment to stop working after the battery is disconnected (here, here, here & here as an example but there are more) and this affects all models, not just the RX.  I brought the car to my mechanic (who has a lot of experience with Lexus/Toyota products), he confirmed the head unit was dead, that he can’t fix it and a new one would cost $14,000 just for the parts from Lexus!  Talk abut being disappointed, in my search of forums, FB Lexus groups & Reddit this has been occurring since the late 2000s, how is this still a problem now?

So after assessing my options (buying a new head unit, a used head unit on eBay or trying to get it repaired) I’ve decided to drive 8 hours (4 hours one way) to Manlius NY (a suburb of Syracuse) to OEM Auto Audio to have my head unit repaired (they said it takes about 2 hours).  Finding the exact same head unit is difficult as there are a lot of different models for the 4th generation RX, even if they have the same features & specs and there are no local shops that can do this repair.  Yes I could ship the thing down but that’d add another week or two to this whole process and I want it fixed asap.

Anthony, my mechanic said after it’s repaired to plug everything in to test to make sure it works and fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly but OEM Auto Audio has good feedback by the various Lexus groups I’ve searched. Will update after it’s done but quite disappointed that this has been occurring for over a decade and Lexus hasn’t addressed it yet.

Only optics

About the only thing the governing federal Liberals care about is optics, they don’t actually care if their policies do anything. Well I’m glad cops are pushing back against Trudeau’s ridiculous claims that banning legal gun owners from purchasing handguns is keeping Canadians safer.

I don’t know why that bit about ghost guns is in this piece, this is a US problem due to their high availability of parts but it’s clear that legal guns are not the problem.  The system is designed to against diversion of legal guns too, if I divert some of my legal handguns to the black market when someone is caught the gun will still be show to be registered to me.

The unofficial motto of the Liberal party of Canada must be look good instead of doing good.  The next election can’t come soon enough and I can’t wait for that sanctimonious ass Trudeau to get tossed.  His policies have meant Canadians have had a lost decade of progress in so many metrics.

TD Insurance sucks

Dealing with TD so far has been a bit of a nightmare.  Despite requesting all communication occur through email, my agent insists on giving me a call instead and I think their phone system is designed to be frustrating to deal with.  When talking there seems to be a bit of a delay which is resulting in both her and I talking over each other constantly.  Next this lady says my rental cover is denied because I didn’t go through TD to book a car, yes I initially declined to get a rental but they said I could get a rental anytime so I did.  I declined before I found out my car was totaled and now that it is, I’ll need transportation for emergency purposes, I also read my policy, it doesn’t say I need to have TD book my rental just that they will reimburse me for reasonable charges.  I have a Hyundai Kona, its not like I rented a super car…

Next she keeps insisting on valuing my car as a base model when my Lexus NX was the F-Sport 3 fully loaded one.  I have a bunch of policies for my cars & real estate with TD & I think I’m going to move them if this is how I’m going to be treated, I don’t know if other companies will be better but they don’t deserve my business if this is how they treat me.

And my back still hurts so these jerks are making things more difficult.

The Liberals are always lying

This was a pretty funny read, the Liberals have been crying Conservatives are turning dental groups against their plan when they’ve done no such thing.

“There has been zero pressure, really, from the Conservatives on us in any kind of fashion that would result in the low uptake of dentists registering for the program,” said Dr. Robert Wolanski, president of the British Columbia Dental Association.
“The misinformation that has been provided has been provided almost solely by … the Liberal government and the NDP,” Wolanski said, of a program that was born out of the minority Liberals’ parliamentary alliance with the New Democrats.
Source: The Star

The Liberals are always lying, that should be the default position when any Liberal politician talks.  The Conservatives would probably not be any better but it’s the Liberals who have been in power for 9 years and well I’ll let you be the judge if you were better in 2015 when Harper was in charge (and I don’t even like Harper) or Trudeau now.

What a stupid plan

Trudeau’s government is not known for well thought out ideas and this has got to be one of the stupider ones.

Ottawa has been promising to launch this program ever since it banned the sale and use of 1,500 models of firearms on May 1, 2020. The buyback plan has the support of the gun control movement but faces stiff opposition from hunters and shooters.

“This seems to be a situation in which the Liberals promised a lot, and maybe they promised too much,” said Boily.

The government had to go back to the drawing board after Canada Post refused to collect banned weapons at its post offices, citing security concerns.

Canada Post is refusing to comment on the matter but sources within the organization said many post offices have little security, with no alarm systems or surveillance cameras.

“Zero,” said a Canada Post employee when asked to describe security at his post office in a small municipality. “The government is crazy if it thinks we can do this safely.”

Source: CBC

So the federal government want people to bring their guns and leave them at Canada Post offices, that sounds like a great target for organized crime to hit!  These guns were so dangerous that they had to be banned, yet the feds let owners sit on them for the next 4 years and then have 0 security at post offices.  Well thought out but of course it’s not about public safety, the last line in the article says it all, they need votes and they think this is what is going to save them.

Abortion, LGBT issues and guns, that’s what the Liberals are going to run the next election on because after 9 years they have nothing to show for their tenure.

You’re on your own

Toronto police’s advice to car owners is to leave your keys at the front door so that thieves who kick in your door to steal your car, they’ll take what they want and leave.  As you can imagine that’s caused quite an uproar and this author sums things up pretty well I thought.

The message from the Toronto Police Service couldn’t be clearer: we surrender, and you, the peace-loving, law-abiding citizens, should surrender, too.

For your own safety.

Regular Line readers will know — hell, anyone who pays any attention at all to the news will know — that auto thefts have been surging in this country, relative to recent years (yes, yes, I know — they haven’t yet gone past historic levels). It’s particularly bad right now in my hometown. The issue has finally percolated up into the public consciousness enough that it’s become a political issue. We’re getting new task forces and all that jazz — the kinds of things politicians announce when they realize, always belatedly, that they have to announce something. But while those announcements are made and repeated and recycled, thus giving the politicians their coveted ass-covering material, the thefts are continuing.

And the Toronto Police have reflected on the problem. They’ve mulled it over. Thought long and hard. And they’re advising people just give up. To stay safe.

Source: The Line

One of my pet peeves is when politicians or authorities tell me what to do to stay “safe” and the author makes a good point about what we are experiencing now is not the norm but rather the exception.  War, violence, stealing, murder and death is the norm something our society was able to shift away from but if the law and justice does not maintain the faith with the people, it’s very easy for society to break down.  As the author says too, heaven forbid someone protect themself or their property then the cops will definitely arrest the victim and charge them with whatever they can.

What’s the point of having a police force and justice system if they won’t do their jobs and why are the rights of criminals greater than the rights of their victims?