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Day: August 19, 2019

Every day, when Crime Minister Trudeau wakes up in his taxpayer-funded bed in his taxpayer-funded mansion, you might think that the next thing he does is put on his taxpayer-funded socks.  Unfortunately he can't even do that until he receives his daily transmission directly from the globalists at the UN who are trying to implement their Agenda 21 agenda to cram down more and more unfair taxes on hardworking everyday Canadians!

The innate hardwired Liberal tendency to tax makes Trudeau the perfect useful idiot for implementing the nefarious international plot to sell Canada out to the highest bidder. We already know about the Treasonous Trudeau plans to tax fossil fuels to hamper our tar sands, tax Netflix to hamper the production of "Kim's Convenience," to tax meat so that more people realize that Canadian bacon is really just ham… it goes on and on.

Since Trudeau has bought off all the journalists we can't find out what he's planning to tax next!  For all we know, he and Gerald Butts are sitting in a room spinning a great big Wheel of Fortune wheel and whatever it lands on gets taxed.  "I'd like to buy a tax on vowels, Pat!"  Except no Wheel of Fortune contestant would ever buy a tax on vowels.  That'd just be silly.

In October, Canadians need to say NO to Trudeau's biased and ideologically divisive tax-and-spend agenda and consign it to the dustbin of history!  At least until the next election, that is.  If we don't, you can be sure that Trudeau will tax these ten things at the first opportunity!

Hair Products

Just the sort of thing that Trudeau, with his admittedly fabulous hair, would like to make less affordable for Canadians so that he can buy all of them.

Podcasts

If the Liberals could take in a dollar for every bunch of Canadians who spouted off opinions into their phones, they would never run a deficit again!  Unfortunately a) Canadians are too afraid to have their opinions criticized by people, so they mostly don't make podcasts, and b) the Liberals would just spend the money faster than we could make it.  Oh, and we would have to tax foreign podcasts at a higher rate, too.  It's in the public interest!

Pot

As we've seen, just having government run pot stores isn't enough!  We must TAX the pot in order for drugs to be profitable in Canada!

Beer

So, Doug Ford thinks he's going to get away with buck-a-beer, does he?  Well, guess what: If we can have a big stupid wasteful court challenge over the carbon tax, then what's stopping a big stupid wasteful court challenge every time a provincial government tries to change the price of something?

News

High quality fact-checked Canadian news is the best in the world!  And since people don't seem to want to pay for it, it stands to reason that they must be forced to pay for it!

Being A Conservative

Now, I understand why we had to do away with the head tax, but who's to say it couldn't be brought back for the right people?  Or perhaps, as Trudeau would say, the WRONG people.

The Moon

You look at it, don't you?  It's a public good, isn't it?

Popsicles

Breaking news: The Toronto Star received 60 emails from readers calling for a boycott of the ice cream company because they won't sell popsicles anymore.  Putting flavoured water in the freezer is TOO HARD.  Can a carbon neutral popsicle with plastic straws instead of wasteful wooden sticks be in the works, followed by calls for a popsicle tax?

Contravening the Ethics Act

Noted pundit Ed The Sock says the punishment for breaking the law is a measly $500.  I guess that's why Liberals like Bill Morneau and Dominic LeBlanc  thought they could pay their fare and take their chances as well!  Well, since violations of the act are so common, there's no reason for the government to leave potential tax revenue on the table, is there?  If we taxed ethics violations, there might actually be fewer of them!

Trudeau Saying The Word "Jobs"

Yes, the Trudeau Liberals are such Tax Terminators (who can't be bargained or reasoned with) that they'll even tax the PM!  $10 every time he says the word "jobs."  Saying "Let me be clear" gets you $50, and "We will always stand up for…." nets you $40.  Saying "um" or "uh" every time he's lying?  Maybe about 5 cents?  But it does add up over time.

Written by Josh Lieblein

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.

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When doing political analysis, I rarely, if ever, quote a piece of laundry.

Yet, I'm going to do so now because I saw a comment on Twitter recently from someone who calls himself "Ed the Sock", which perfectly illustrates the mindset of what I'd call a "political tribalist."

The tweet in question was posted just a few days after the Ethics Commissioner released a bombshell report which ruled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in his attempts to influence how to prosecute a legal case involving SNC-Lavalin, was guilty of violating Canada's Conflict of Interest Act.

In short, Trudeau broke the law.

And while many in the media and in the punditry class saw this report as a big deal, for Ed the Sock it was a ho hum affair.

He tweeted, "Ethics Commissioner says #Trudeau broke rules.  I find that I don't care.  Looking at the level of lying & corporate toadying from #Scheer combined w/actions of his ideological buddies #Ford & #Kenney, this breech doesn't bother me nearly as much as their vision of Canada."

Needless to say, his viewpoint generated some negative responses.

For instance, Seyed Ali Taghva, editor-in-chief of the Post Millennial, tweeted "This sock seems to be off his rocker.  I guess some folks just love corrupt politicians."

And noted journalist and editor, Jonathan Kay, remarked on Twitter: "But the US has a 2-party system, so it makes a certain kind of reductionist sense to say 'your guy is evil, so I don't care what my guy does.'  This makes zero sense in Canada, which has >2 parties.  The parties that should be furious at this Ed the Sock attitude are NDP & Greens…"

Who knew a sock could generate such controversy!?

At any rate, the point I'm making here is that Ed the Sock's cavalier dismissal of the SNC-Lavalin scandal is exactly how a Liberal political tribalist would respond, i.e. "I'll support my side no matter what."

Please note, I'm not saying Mr. Sock is a Liberal tribalist, but he certainly resembles one.

So what is a political tribalist?

Well, it's a person who has emotionally identified with a particular political party to such a degree that nothing in the world will ever shake their loyalty; they see their political party as their community, as their family, as their tribe.

They're Liberals who will always vote Liberal, Conservatives who will always vote Conservative and New Democrats who will always vote NDP.

An American political consultant friend of mine, who worked on campaigns all over the world, once told me that depending on the society in which you're in, tribalisms usually take up anywhere from 60 to 90 percent of the vote.

If true, that means a large chunk of the Canadian electorate has already decided who they will vote for in the upcoming Canadian election and that decision is steadfast and unshakeable.

Not even the SNC-Lavalin scandal will deter Liberal Party tribalists from voting Liberal.

Indeed, I suspect they'd still support Trudeau even if a video emerged showing the prime minister throwing a weighted sack full of kittens into the Rideau Canal.

Maybe Ed the Sock would tweet something like, "Better to have a cat hater in power than a planet hater."

And ironically, tribalists rarely understand the tribalism of other tribalists.

I'd bet dollars to doughnuts, for example, that Ed the Sock is totally mystified at how US President Donald Trump's tribalists will stick by their champion despite all of his infamous flaws and scandals.

Another even bigger irony is that the loyalty of political tribalists often goes unrewarded.

As a matter of fact, every political party actually has an incentive to betray their own tribalists.

After all, since tribalists are totally locked on side, political parties will always be sorely tempted to take that support for granted and focus instead on winning over undecided or non-aligned voters, which often leads a party to dilute some of the principles their tribalists embrace.

This is the cynical reality of politics.

So maybe Ed the Sock won't be damned for his loyalty to the Liberals, but one day he might be darned.

(Get it?  Socks are darned.  OK, so it's lame wordplay but give me a break it's August.)

Photo Credit: Jeff Burney, Loonie Politics

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.

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