Wednesday, October 14, 2026

A Few More Talarico Questions

On one hand, as I noted in yesterday's update, there now appears to be video evidence that James Talarico was at home during the period he was out of the public eye, and the whole Ohio mental facility atory has been discredited. On the other hand, this doesn't answer the key question of why he was out of the public eye at all, and it doesn't answer the subsidiary question of why his campaign handled the whole episode so poorly.

Matt Margolis at PJ Media quotes two moderate Democrats:

Mark Penn, who served as an adviser to Bill Clinton, weighed in during an appearance on Fox News.

"Oh, this is super odd. There's no question about that," Penn said. "These are the final days of a hundred million campaign, a major effort, one of the most key Senate races, and your candidate disappears for 12, 13 days with no clear word, no messages, no ability to kind of send out some messages, has the flu? This doesn't, this really doesn't make sense."

Former Democrat strategist Dan Turrentine blasted the campaign's handling of the situation.

"My first reaction on Sunday afternoon was that if the allegations of receiving mental help were true, the Talarico campaign would be insane to think they could hide it and deny it. Almost nothing in this day-and-age can be hidden in a major campaign," Turrentine wrote on his Substack. "But on the other hand, I was dumbfounded at, and very worried about, the lack of aggressive pushback from the candidate, his campaign, and outside Democrats."

. . . Turrentine went further in a conversation with Sean Spicer on The Huddle, and his arguments make perfect sense.

"It has made me nervous still today that they have not put stuff, like, I would put my primary care physician before camera," Turrentine said. "'Yeah, he had 103-degree fever, dehydration, and we were afraid he could pass out.' Whatever. I would put the urgent care, like, receipt. Like, you probably paid for something out of pocket on your debit card, your credit card. Like, I would flood the zone to say, ‘You clowns, here is 8 million pieces.’ And the fact that they haven't today still makes me a little nervous,” he said.

. . . [Republican Sean] Spicer acknowledged that individuals have a right to medical privacy but argued that candidates play by different rules. "But you're running for office. Obama put out his birth certificate," Spicer said.

"He could literally take a screenshot of the urgent care and say, 'You numbnuts, look at this.'"

Turrentine had another suggestion. "Put your cell phone records out. Like, that's how the New York tax authorities find out where you were," he said.

Asa I've been saying for a while, forget license plate readers and Flock cameras, video is everywhere, and phones are everywhere. Why it apparently took the Talarico campaign until Tuesday to wake up to the idea that there was video on Talarico's home security is beyond me.

But my questions go beyond even that. How did the campaign let this turn into an issue at all? Even Trump had started to post about it. On one hand, if he had the flu, he could at least have made a zoom call to his campaign about it, which they could have released. Then, when his absence became more and more noticeable, veteran political types should have been aware from the start that there could be bogus claims that he'd checked hinself into a mental facility, had been diagnosed with AIDS, or whatever else.

They should have been ready with receipts the moment that, or any other, bogus story broke. Inastead, they let two days go by that drew attention to the fact that whether he'd done it or not, he looked like the kind of guy who'd check himself into a mental facility.

But this still leaves another question unanswered: whether or not Talarico was home the whole period he was out of the public eye, the flu is still a weak explanation. I tend to lean toward an explanation a few people have offered: like some other Democrats in recent years, he declines in the polls the more people see of him. This happened with both Hillary and Joe Biden, and once the campaigns began to notice this, they found ways to lower their profile. So I'm with the Babylon Bee:

The problem is that the campaign managed to turn something that should have been an innocuous non-event into yet another episode that suggested the guy's a weirdo.

posted by test @ October 14, 2026   0 Comments

Tuesday, October 13, 2026

Catching Up With Talarico

I took Columbus Day off yesterdsay, and I haven't posted any update to the Talarico medical saga. The story in brief is that Sunday mnorning, Nick Sortor and Rhein Amacher challenged Talarico to disclose his whereabouts for the prior two weeks or so by 1:00 PM, or they would do it. With no reply by the deadline, Sortor posted what appeared to be a recording of a phone conversation between Amacher and a female voice tht identified herself as an employee of the Lindner Center of Hope medical facility in Ohio. The Talarico csmpaign was a bit slow to respond, but it did: By Sunday evening, Talarico had appeared in two TV interciews reiterating the flu story, more or less, and the Lindner Center announced that it had never treated Talarico. This still left questions:

Here’s the problem with the flu cover story. Talarico’s campaign never acted like it had a candidate sick with the flu. With the general election less than a month away, his team went radio silent. Worse, it posted video from old rallies and tried to pass it off as current.

Who does that over a flu bug?

Then there are the inconsistencies. Talarico claimed he was sick enough to need a week of recovery, and in nearly the same breath he complained that he never got one.

“Unfortunately, the campaign made me work from home, so I didn’t even get full days off,” he said.

So which is it? Was he flat on his back drinking liquids, or was he on the clock? If you’re telling the truth, you tend not to contradict yourself. On top of that, Talarico changed his story. When he spoke to the Hispanic Business Council via Zoom, he said he went to urgent care in Dallas. Now it’s his primary care physician, presumably in the Austin area, which is roughly three hours from Dallas.

Scott Pinsker at PJ Media puts the best face on things:

But it’s 100% true that Talarico missed 12 days of political campaigning in the final 50 days of the race. And it’s also true that his flu story is at least somewhat contradictory. . .

Again, not exactly a smoking gun. Barely a smoking match.

If this were a legal case, it’d be laughed out of court.

But it’s not a legal case; it’s a political race — which means its jurisdiction is the court of public opinion.

And in the court of public opinion, the biggest, most compelling, most deeply damaging circumstantial evidence is this: James Talarico looks like the kind of guy who’d use mental health professionals.

By yesterday morning, though, Talarico was running a new ad: In Saurday's post here, I said, "If I were to theorize, I'd say that his campaign's internal polling has shown a much bleaker picture, and that the various low-T, vegan, and trans attacks have been effective." A new ad where he tries to reposition himself over the border would be consistent with this theory.

But so far, his capiagn has relied on simply denying that he was at Lindner Hope, insisting he was home with the flu, and relying on Lindner Hope at least to confirm that part of the story. The problem is that the story is skechy and not entirely consistent, while video is everywhere, and so are phone records. I'm a little surprised that the compaign didn't just produce phone records to confirm that he was, as he claimed Sunday, working from home.

By the same token, if sleuths like Sortor are still on the case, they ou.ght to be trying to get video confirmation of his whereabouts if they have other ideas. But I think Scott Pinsker has the best read on the situation: James Talarico looks like the kind of guy who’d use mental health professionals. And not just use them, he needs to use them. That guy is wound pretty tight.

UPDATE: CBS News says the campaign has showed it security camera footage placing Talarico at home during the period in question. This is what they should have been showing Sunday.

posted by test @ October 13, 2026   0 Comments

Sunday, October 11, 2026

So Sue Us!

Canada's Industry Minister Mélanie Joly is a stereotypical girlboss who tosses her hair repeadedly in a particularly annoying way. Late last month,

Stelco Holdings Inc. said on Monday that it plans to idle part of its Hamilton [ON] plant in order to "ensure the survival" of the company, as U.S. tariffs squeeze its sales.

Stelco said the decision will impact up to 500 employees.

In a memo obtained by CBC News on Monday, the company said it will indefinitely idle its cold-rolled and coated operations at its Hamilton Works plant, with operations set to begin winding down on Oct. 9.

In response,

Ottawa has given Cleveland-Cliffs until the end of Tuesday to share a plan to keep jobs in Hamilton or face potential legal action. In 2009, Industry Canada sued Stelco's previous owner, U.S. Steel, over job protection. The matter was settled out of court in 2011.

. . . In an email to CBC on Thursday, Gabrielle Landry, spokesperson for Industry Minister Mélanie Joly, said the government would "use every lever possible to defend Canadian industry, protect jobs, and secure our supply chain."

Landry added that the government had offered to provide financial support to sustain Stelco's operations.

"Its decision to reject these practical proposals and continue with layoffs is extremely disappointing," she said.

Cleveland-Cliffs's CEO said, as nicely as he could, "So sue us."

Hundreds of southern Ontario steelworkers facing layoffs will be recalled if Canada and the United States reach a trade deal on steel, the head of Stelco's U.S.-based parent company said Thursday.

. . . He said he has spent more than a year and a half pushing Ottawa for stronger protections against foreign steel imports, arguing that measures adopted so far have helped the hot-rolled steel market but have not gone far enough to protect galvanized steel producers.

. . . The company began issuing individual layoff notices in Hamilton on Wednesday, with about 90 workers expected to receive notices this week, said Ron Wells, president of United Steelworkers local 1005, which represents unionized workers at the Hamilton plant.

. . . "It's a temporary layoff," Goncalves said. "I do believe that one day we're going to have a trade deal, I just don't know when.

"Once this trade deal is reached and we're back and able to produce and sell galvanized steel, we will bring back these people."

Joly replied, The problem for Joly and Carney is that they're making a big-deal threat to sue over 500 jobs, when the Canadian economy lost over 100,000 jobs in August snd September:

Canada lost 68,000 jobs in September, according to Statistics Canada, marking a second straight month of losses.

The unemployment rate ticked up by 0.1 percentage points to 6.5 per cent, which is where it stood at the start of 2026.

The figures bucked economists' predictions for a gain of 9,200 positions in September. It comes after another surprise last month of 42,000 job losses for August, which snapped a hot streak for the labour market.

. . . [Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce] senior economist Andrew Grantham adds that while some data volatility is likely behind the poor report, losses in manufacturing could be a sign that new tariffs, which came into effect in August, are taking a toll.

The consensus seems to be that the only cure will be for trade talks to resume. On one hand, Carney walked out of the talks just as a satisfactory resolution was about to occur. There will be pressure on Carney to show the pain Canada is now experiening was worth the delay. On the other hand, Trump recognizes Carney's dilemma and is disinclined to ease the pressure:

US President Donald Trump on Monday said he was in no hurry to restart trade talks with Canada, accusing Ottawa of treating Washington unfairly and saying any future agreement would require Canada to be "honest" with Washington.

Trump made the remarks when reporters asked whether trade negotiations with Canada could resume before the US midterm elections. He did not give a timeline for restarting the talks.

"I don't know. Canada behaves very badly with the United States and I don't know," Trump said before boarding Marine One.

Trump is clearly not happy with Carney and is just goinjg to let him stew.

posted by test @ October 11, 2026   0 Comments

Saturday, October 10, 2026

Tala-Freak-Out?

This is too funny to ignore. From NBC News:

After drawing scrutiny for his absence from the campaign trail, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, who had been sick with the flu, returned to the stump in Texas on Friday.

“James Talarico is back on the campaign trail talking to voters at Austin City Limits,” Talarico campaign spokesman JT Ennis said in a statement.

Social media posts showed Talarico walking on the grounds of the festival on Friday.

Via PJ Media:

As time passed, rumors began to swirl. As Matt also reported earlier on Friday, Sara Gonzales at The Blaze, Spencer Pratt, and others claimed they heard unverified tips that Talarico had checked into a mental-health facility after having a full mental breakdown at the end of September.

Just as these rumors hit their peak, Talarico has finally made a public appearance. On Friday, he was seen walking the grounds at the Austin City Limits Festival, talking and taking pictures with other festival-goers. Well, I hope he's not contagious.

Around the time Talarico disappeared, his campaign produced an ad claiming he wasn't a member of the Chinese Communist Party. This ran starting October 3:

Texas Senate candidate James Talarico released a new campaign ad this week directly denying allegations tied to his voting record. "Ken Paxton is lying about my record, even making fake AI videos of me," Talarico says in the ad. "No, I'm not a member of the Chinese Communist Party. No, I don't support sex change surgeries for kids."

The denial follows millions in attack ads from Paxton allies, citing Talarico's 2025 vote against Senate Bill 17, which barred foreign adversaries, including China, from buying Texas land. Talarico's campaign notes he supported an amendment specifically banning Chinese purchases near military bases, and separately voted against SB 667, which restricted state investment in CCP-tied companies.

. . . Does running a direct-denial ad address voter concerns effectively, or does repeating the accusation, even to deny it, risk reinforcing the very claim it's trying to dispel?

This followed a summer of attacks from Paxton:

After Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won the state's Republican Senate primary this week, he delivered a run of insults directed at his general election opponent, Democratic Texas state Rep. James Talarico.

"He goes by a few names that you all may have heard of. Some people know him as tofu Talarico. Some people call him six-gender Jimmy. I've even heard some people call him James Talafreako," he said to laughter and cheers. "And others refer to him simply as Low-T Talarico."

Paxton also quickly released an ad that ends with an image of Talarico next to the words: "Radical Talarico: too low-T for Texas."

. . . White House advisor Stephen Miller used "transgender" as an insult, telling Fox News that Talarico is the Democrats' "first transgender Senate candidate." Talarico is not transgender.

"He's clearly transitioning into a female," Miller said. "When Talarico goes in for a blood test, when he gets a physical, blood doesn't come out. Soy milk comes out."

According to USA Today,

With 10 days until early voting starts in Texas for the midterm elections, a new poll suggests momentum may be shifting back in Republicans' favor in two key races.

A new UMass Lowell/YouGov poll, released Oct. 8, shows Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico tied at 45%, with 7% of respondents undecided.

“The last time Democrats won a U.S. Senate race in Texas, Ken Paxton didn’t yet have a law degree and James Talarico wasn’t even born. With the race tied, anything can happen between now and the election,” said John Cluverius, director of survey research for the Center for Public Opinion at UMass Lowell.

Talarico has led Paxton in most September and October polls, sometimes by margins outside the poll’s error.

Videos showing Talarico in his Austin festival reappearance suggest he took a gingerly approach, flanked by two lady staffers, with security surrounding him farther from camera range, and of course, Austin is very friendly territory for him. If I were to theorize, I'd say that his campaign's internal polling has shown a much bleaker picture, and that the various low-T, vegan, and trans attacks have been effective.

The campaign must have come to recognize this late last month, and it gave Talarico himself the vapors. In this context, of course, his disppearance will only give those attacks more credence. Whether his people can ger him fully back on the trail will be interesting to see.

posted by test @ October 10, 2026   0 Comments

Friday, October 9, 2026

Nidal Hasan Firing Squad To Be Livestreamed

Several days ago, according to the UK Guardian:

Donald Trump has approved the execution by US army firing squad of Nidal Hasan, who was sentenced to death for killing 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, the chief Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said in a social media post.

. . . Hasan, a US-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, opened fire on 5 November 2009 at a medical facility in the sprawling military base, which served as a staging point for soldiers to deploy to combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Twelve of the dead and 30 of the wounded were soldiers. Hasan was shot and partially paralyzed by a civilian police officer who responded to the attack.

The court that convicted Hasan was told that he was opposed to the US military’s occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and that Hasan had spoken online with the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaida propagandist and American citizen subsequently killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.

This AP article appears to be generally incorrect in what it claims about the Army's execution protocols:

In a post on social media Tuesday, acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle said he scheduled the execution for 1 p.m. on Dec. 3 at Fort Hood — the site where Hasan opened fire killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 others.

Telle confirmed in his post on X that Trump had approved the execution on Oct. 2, starting the clock in Army regulations that requires an execution date to be set no sooner than 60 days and no later than 150 days after that approval.

Telle also noted that the execution would be carried out by firing squad, but did not offer details of where on base the execution would take place, what personnel would be a part of that squad or what procedure they would follow.

. . . The procedures for execution in Army regulations do not contain specific protocols for particular methods of execution. Experts said in previous iterations of the firing squad — nearly 80 years ago — one shooter would be given a blank so they all could plausibly believe they had not fired the fatal shot.

. . . Before Hasan’s execution was set for Fort Hood, there was speculation the Army might reach out to one of the handful of states that have recently reinstated the firing squad for use in executions — particularly South Carolina or Utah, where they’ve renovated facilities and established protocols.

. . . It’s unclear if the Army will borrow from the state’s protocol, but it sets out for three volunteer shooters to stand 15 feet (4.6 meters) from the condemned prisoner, who is strapped to a chair. A medical professional uses an X-ray to find the prisoner’s heart and place a target over it. A hood is placed over the prisoner’s head after his final words, and a shade is lifted so the shooters can see their target.

At 3:53 in the YouTube video embedded above, Ryan McBeth discusses the most recent Army protocol for execution by firing squad, which dates from 1944. The firing squad has 12 members and a sergeant. From one to four of the 12 rifles are loaded with blanks. If the initial volley doesn't kill the condemned, the sergeant administers a coup de grâce to the head with a sidearm. The condemned is normally tied to a post, but since Hasan was paralyzed by gunsbhots during his capture and uses a wheelchair, exactly what will be done in his case is unclear. Via CNN, the execution will be livestreamed:

The Pentagon said Thursday it will livestream the military’s first firing squad execution in decades, allowing the public to watch as the man who killed 13 people in a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood is put to death.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed in an interview this week to let the public watch a firing squad execute Nidal Hasan at the same base in Texas where he carried out the massacre.

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth told far-right podcaster Jack Posobiec in an interview aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on Wednesday, drawing swift backlash from both sides of the aisle.

. . . A public livestream of Hasan’s execution could potentially violate the Army regulations governing military capital punishment. Army Regulation 190-55 specifies the types of people permitted to witness a military execution, and it also bars minors from watching the punishment. But the Army’s provost marshal general — a general who oversees military law enforcement — is permitted to waive provisions of the regulation so long as the waiver doesn’t violate the law or a higher binding regulation.

The President of the USCCB reacted predictably:

“It is with shock and great sorrow that I have learned of the Department of War’s decision to publicly livestream the execution of Nidal Hassan. Our God is the God of life. In no way can Hassan’s actions be condoned but this decision is a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered,” Archbishop Paul Coakley said in a statement released Friday.

The problem I see is that it's increasingly plain that the enemy is Islam, which is seeking to override Western cultural history, much of which has been influenced by Catholics and Jews. Often it operates via grandly violent massacres, as it did on 9/11, or indeed as Hasan himself undertook. I think one counter to this strategy is equally vivid imagery; this was certainly done in the elimination of Osama bin Laden, and I think it's entirely appropriate in this case.

posted by test @ October 09, 2026   0 Comments

Thursday, October 8, 2026

UK Immigration And Class

The post above raises yet again the class question in the UK that I keep puzzling over: the upper classes in the UK seem genuinely to resent, maybe even to hate, the working class. As I've noted here several times, this goes back at least to the General Strike of 1926:

The General Strike began on 3 May 1926 when the Trades Union Congress (TUC) called on workers across key industries to stop work in support of coal miners who were facing severe wage cuts and longer working hours.

After the First World War Britain’s coal industry was struggling. Mine owners wanted to reduce miners’ pay and increase working hours to keep their businesses profitable.

Miners’ unions resisted, warning that the proposals would push already hard-pressed workers into deeper poverty.

There was a general fear among the upper classes that a general strike was more than just a labor action, it was a threat of revolution. According to Wikipedia,

The leaders of the Labour Party were troubled about the proposed general strike because they were aware of the revolutionary elements within the union movement and of the damage that they might do to the party's new reputation as a party of government. During the next two days, frantic efforts were made to reach an agreement between the government and the mining industry representatives.

It appears that the Labour Party, which was the creature of the bourgeois Fabian Society, feared the potential revolutionary influence of the general strike, as did the TUC, which essentially lost control of it. At the same time,

the government put in place a "militia" of special constables called the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies (OMS) of volunteers to maintain order in the street.

The volunteers, who were bourgeois, also tried to replace the unionized rail workers, although they had no experience at that type of work. Nevertheless, the attitude seems to have been that if the middle and upper classes coulld pitch in if needed, there was no need for the working class, and they saw the whole thing as a lark.

On 6 May 1926, there was a change of atmosphere. The government newspaper, British Gazette, suggested that means of transport into London began to improve compared to the first day with volunteers, car sharing, cyclists, private buses, as well as strikebreakers. A statement on the front page indicated 200 London General Omnibus Company buses 'on the streets'. Only 86 LGOC buses, however, were operating.

The TUC, whoch never had much heart in the strike, nevertheless made a show of "negotiation" with the governnment, but it eventually called off the strike without getting any deal, and the UK bourgeoisie came away with the idea it had won.

Labour gained its first full majority government in 1945, and in succeeding years, it instituted national health care and socialized the coal and transport industries. The problem, though, was that Labour never represented the working class; it was always a bourgeois movement that convinced itself it was promoting working class interests. Thus its first instincts were to keep working class wages down, and it did this by importing workers from the former empire to replace native workers in the newly socialized medical, coal, and transport industries.

There's now discomfort in Piddington, the upscale village that, reacting to the government's plan to locate 1250 male migrants in a nearby former military facility, voted symbolically to leave the UK and become part of the US. One one hand, they don't want to be associated with the working-class anti-migrant movement, especially

the arrival of Daniel Thomas, who prefers to be called Danny Tommo, the leader of the new balaclava-wearing anti-migrant movement Patriot Platform, with an offer to rally his masked supporters, if the site is opened, “to protect women and children” locally.

. . . Andrew Smith, a Network Rail employee from Bicester, was less upbeat: “We don’t want to see masked people like there were in Dover – that’s not really the view of the local people; we are concerned to do the right thing. These people have got to go somewhere, but it has to be properly resourced with the proper facilities.”

Thus bourgeois oppositiun to migration exists only insofar as the migration impacts their lifestyle directly; if the government wants to put them somewhere other than migrant hotels, that's fine, just not near upscale villages. That the government should on one hand stop the boats and on the other send the migrants back is a whole separate issue that doesn't concern Piddington.

It's hard not to conclude the UK will handle this issue no differently than it handled the 1926 General Strike. You can only kick the can so far down the road.

posted by test @ October 08, 2026   0 Comments

Wednesday, October 7, 2026

Quebec Election

Almost unnoticed in this week's news was a provincial election in Quebec. Politico had a somewhat obtuse take:

As much of Canada unites against U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war, Quebecers have elected a Parti Québécois government promising a referendum on independence that most of the province doesn’t want.

Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon won a five-party race on Monday night, earning a minority government with just 28% of the vote. The governing Coalition Avenir Québec, which won back-to-back majorities after taking power in 2018, was wiped off the electoral map, a rarity in Canadian history.

. . . Voters in the province wanted change, though they did not give St-Pierre Plamondon the 64 seats needed to secure a majority government, awarding him instead a minority mandate — the fourth in the province’s history.

Carney is Quebec’s most popular politician, with the Angus Reid Institute measuring his personal appeal at 61%. The province’s industries are among the most exposed to Trump’s tariffs. The combination may give the new separatist premier a reason to play nice with the federal Liberals — at least for the short term.

But St-Pierre Plamondon’s arrival could also complicate Carney’s attempts to keep Canada’s premiers united against Trump’s tariff agenda.

I've pointed out here that referenda on secession in Canada are actually a non-issue, because the Clarity Act lets Ottawa set the rules for any proposed secession:

Although the law applies to all provinces, the [1999] Clarity Act was created in response to the 1995 Quebec referendum and ongoing independence movement in that province. The content of the act was based on the 1998 secession reference to the Supreme Court of Canada made by the federal government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.

It gives the House of Commons in Ottawa the authority to determine whether the questions on any referendum are sufficiently clear, as well as whether any majority vote to secede is sufficiently large. It also requires an amendment to the Canadian constitution for a secession to take place. So far, polling in both Alberta and Quebec suggets that neither province would have a majority of any size in favor of secession, but Parliament would be able to override any such vote in any case.

Such coverage as legacy media has given misses the main point, which the Quebec commentator in the YouTube video embedded above outlines clearly:

People in Quebec. . . understand that they are already a linguistic minority within Canada, and they have been subnjected to mass immigration that is fundamentally changing the makeup of the province. The argument for Quebec independence today, and the argument that will likely be made in the referendum, will be one of nationalism, aka, do we want to continue importing people from the third world who do not share our values and who continue to cause havoc that continues to threaten the French language in Canada?

Quebec is becoming less and less French every day. You go to Montreal now, most people speak to you in English instead of French. Or do we want to preserve the Quebec nation? This is something that concerns people of all poltical stripes in Quebec. The example I often give is I have people in my extended family. . . that are very, very leftwing Quebecers, but that also believe that we need to ban the burka, that teachers should not be wearing hijabs in schools, that police officers should not be wearing turbans. . .

I noted this a month ago:

This parallels another question that's come up in the Canadian trade dispute: Prime Minister Carney insists he was protecting Francophone Canada by rejecting the recent trade agreement -- but observers have made the point that Canadian immigration policy, which involves widespread immigration from India, threatens to flood out Francophone Canada. The Century Initiative, a project with widespread support from the Laurentian Elite, aims to increase the population of Canada, currently 41 million, to, 100 million by 2100. While it has not been passed by the Canadian parliament, current immigration policy there seems generally consistent with it.

In effect, with the native birth rate stable but current residents leaving, this would add 60 millon migrants from India to the current population of 41 million, with roughly 9 million whose first language is French. This would create a far larger language group whose primary language is Hindi or Punjabi, although Canadian Charter Rights (a weaker version of the US Bill of Rights) currently recognize only English and French as official languages.

So current unspoken policy in Ottawa is to dilute the French population anywhere in Canada beyond recognition by importing migrants who speak neither English nor French. It appears that French Canadians have few options to protest this policy -- which seems to be pushing the limits of implied French rights under their "constitution" -- beyond proposing secession referenda, which are feckless enterprises. This is the same non-option that Albertans have. Meanwhile, Like it or not, Canada isn't going to be able to continue on its current path.

posted by test @ October 07, 2026   0 Comments