It’s impossible for this American NOT to envy Canada it’s nerdily handsome prime minister. Unlike the orange fart cloud stinking up our Oval Office, Trudeau is capable of stringing together a coherent sentence and doesn’t seem to hate women, minority groups, immigrants or foreigners. But this, which came to my attention via the Twitter, is just unfair:
Look closer:
Even closer:
He’s wearing Chewbacca socks. ::swoons:: ::picks self up:: ::shakes fist northward:: Damn you, Canadaaaaaa!!!!
kindness
Obiwan or go home.
Still, sure wish he represented us.
Yutsano
He’s also ripped as fuck. So there’s that too.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
The definitive “the CIA is not your friend” argument
MelissaM
That’s beautiful!
MjOregon
I saw this too and my first thought was where could I get a pair for myself!! Amazon has them but not for women, darn it!
TenguPhule
Trump is going to respond with Moff Tarkin Slippers.
Ohio Mom
About fifteen years ago we took a trip to Niagara Falls and then onto Toronto.
We were waiting for the light at some random crowded street corner on our way from the Toronto art museum to lunch, and I was surveying the passing scene when it suddenly struck me: we were the only three people there who had to worry about health coverage.
I know Canada isn’t perfect but they appear to be considerably smarter about governing themselves than we are.
Major Major Major Major
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): I don’t get it.
Corner Stone
Blame Canada! Blame Canada!!
d58826
Speaking of Canada, or at least their medical system. Just wasted 90 minutes trying to get a pneumonia shot. I got my flu shot at the local chain pharmacy and they were pushing the pneumonia shots as well. Check with my doc and he said would be a good idea. So stop in today to pick up a script and get the shot. 90 minutes later i have the script but no shot. Seems my company plan only wants to have the shots administered in the doc. office. So rather than making the trip a complete bust I asked how much would the shot be out of pocket – ready $219.00.
And this is before the GOP finishes its hatch job on Obamacare.
trollhattan
@TenguPhule:
What, Jar-Jar socks too obvious?
And this, from the opposite end of North America.
TenguPhule
@Ohio Mom:
What do you mean appear?
TenguPhule
@trollhattan:
Jar Jar was the Jill Stein of the Republic.
Corner Stone
When I saw the second picture I thought, “Hmmm, well he does have a nice manicure. Oh and a sock tribute to maybe a passed shih tzu pet?
edited because
TenguPhule
“We must blame them and cause a fuss
Before somebody thinks of blaming us!”
geg6
Think Canada would be willing to lend him to us after they’re done with him? I’ll take sloppy seconds in this particular case.
Rob in CT
@trollhattan:
Freeeeeeedumb.
Roger Moore
@TenguPhule:
Nah, he’ll go with Chewbacca slippers. I’ve heard wookie skin is ideal for footwear.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
Honestly, more of a “don’t get too invested in your heroes” thing. The “CIA is not your friend” phrasing is a jab at left/farther-left articles that semi-frequently push this point — which are generally preaching-to-the-choir* at best and blatant concern-trolling at worst. Also: In case this article wasn’t clear, Gilardi has a history of rabid anti-Semitism.
*That said: The obvious counterpoint would be the post-election upswing in Mensch’s popularity.
Roger Moore
@TenguPhule:
That’s totally unfair. Jar Jar managed to get elected to an important office.
Just One More Canuck
@trollhattan: should be Jabba the Hutt
Miss Bianca
@Ohio Mom: I remember that moment in Toronto when I realized I hadn’t seen any trash on the streets, *until* we got to the art museum. To this day I wonder if it wass meant as an exhibit. “American, Artist Unknown” or something….
Sab
Haven’t read the other comments yet, so probably repeating. Canada had twelve phucking years of S. Harper, so let’s not get too excited about their wonderfulness.
geg6
@Roger Moore:
Heh. You said it before I could. My exact thoughts, though.
wjs
MATCHING Chewbacca socks. MATCHING what he’s wearing.
Trump can’t even match jackets and pants.
#WASF
opiejeanne
@Corner Stone: Hahah! I just told my husband I thought initially that it was a shih tzu with a really bad overbite. Glad she told us it was Chewie.
Just One More Canuck
@Just One More Canuck: couldn’t add the link while editing:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Jabba_the_Hutt:_The_Art_of_the_Deal
Betty Cracker
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): To her credit, she apologized for the tweet, and not one of those “sorry if anyone was offended” non-apologies. But it’s incomprehensible to me how anyone could have even skimmed that article, as Plame claimed she did when walking it back, and not realized it was for the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” set. When I first saw it, I assumed Plame’s account had been hacked.
Cacti
Another great part of living in the Pacific northwest is that in addition to Seattle and Portland, you also have Vancouver, BC, probably the most beautiful city in North America.
trollhattan
@Rob in CT:
Thought that occurred on first reading the article–was the first cop pissed at the arriving cop for “getting his kill?” Think I’ve hit max-cynicism and I’ve checked, the dial doesn’t go to 11.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Betty Cracker: Or his other articles for fucking Unz.
Corner Stone
And those cap toe oxford’s. Somebody’s buff game is on point.
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker: I don’t know Plame’s politics exactly, but the European left is no stranger to antisemitism and that sometimes leaks into lefty discourse over here. Somebody who reads a lot of that stuff might not have noticed, at first glance, that the article was insanely antisemitic. It’s only one step removed from the sort of language I’ve heard in private conversations.
Being charitable.
ETA I gather that it’s a right-wing publication but her Twitter feed makes her seem liberal
sharl
@Betty Cracker: I assumed a hack as well. But then Ashley Feinberg did her usual digging in dark and creepy corners of online, and came up with this 2015 winner:
I get surprised by these on occasion to this day, when I really shouldn’t be at this point. There are a number of folks who have been correct about One Big Thing, but upon further inspection found to belong somewhere on the sometimes horribly wrong —> unhinged continuum. Justin Raimondo (the antiwar.com guy) is my first personal recollection from those days, but since then there have been Sibel Edmonds, Coleen Rowley, and now Plame-Wilson; who knows how many others I’ve forgotten. Oh well…
Major Major Major Major
@sharl: It’s not actually that hard to be correct about One Big Thing, alas. It’s not a very good predictor of future sanity.
smintheus
Brown shoes with a grey suit? Canada still has a ways to go.
sharl
@Major Major Major Major: Yep.
TenguPhule
GOP Leaders Confident They’ll Have Cruelty Necessary To Pass Healthcare Bill
JPL
@TenguPhule: Sounds about right. They are trying to bribe Lisa Murkowski.
Major Major Major Major
@smintheus:
Yeah, they like just got cronuts over there. Very backwards country.
Mnemosyne
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
She has now apologized, FWIW. She says that she just skimmed the article and didn’t take the source into account.
This is why I’m always wary of the people who urge us to make common cause with, say, Ron Paul, because he’s anti-war. No. If someone is anti-war because they’re racist fucks, then they are not my allies. Ever.
eemom
Not to be a killjoy, but liberal Canadians I have spoken to say Trudeau is all schtick and no substance.
To state the painfully obvious, however, his socks themselves would be better than what we’ve got in the oval office. Even a pair of uncool ordinary socks, unwashed, would be better.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: The headline should have given the game away.
@eemom: He’s a horrible neoliberal sellout petro-monster by Canadian standards.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
Like I just said, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is a very bad organizing principle. Apparently the guy said sneery things about neocons and she didn’t bother to check to see why. Dumb mistake.
Corner Stone
@smintheus: The ’50s called, wondering where you’ve been.
Just One More Canuck
@eemom: We have a lot of purity ponies up here too
Amir Khalid
@Major Major Major Major:
I tried a cronut once. I wasn’t convinced. I don’t think Canadians will be, either.
Kay
It’s as if they TRY to make it horrible to live here:
If you want health insurance they expect you to sue the state to get it. OMFG. People have jobs! And families! They just want to buy health insurance! They’re supposed to “obtain an injunction” to get it?
I sometimes wonder if they’re opposed to immigration not because they worry about people getting in, but because they worry about people getting out.
Major Major Major Major
@Amir Khalid: Maybe it just wasn’t a good cronut.
JPL
I wonder what Melania thinks when she looks at Trudeau.
Mnemosyne
@JPL:
She thinks he’s not rich enough for her. That was her sole critereon for choosing a husband, and she doesn’t get to whine about the fallout from her poor choices now.
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: How do you excuse Plame going on RT?
Kay
If Canada had “ope borders” month you wonder how many people would take them up on it. Why not live in a competently managed country instead of an insane asylum, where your health care can be snatched away at any moment depending on the whims of some idiot in the Senate?
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: Definitely one of the major problems with the American health care system is that chronically sick people spend too _little_ time navigating byzantine bureaucracies and fighting deep-pocketed adversaries. It’s just too _easy_ for them to get treatment, and they need some toughening up. :/
Major Major Major Major
@Gin & Tonic: Looking at her Twitter feed she really strikes me as a lefty who is soft on anti-Zionism and uncritical of Russia.
Betty Cracker
@Gin & Tonic: I don’t excuse her for anything!
d58826
@TenguPhule:
also known as adding a few more zeros to the pay-off
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
“what are you whining about? Go get an injunction!”
People are like “what? Why do I have to go thru all this to get health insurance?” The truth is they want us to leave. They must! They work as hard as they can to make every day life as miserable as possible.
8 years we have been trying to just get a bare-bones subsidy to purchase private health insurance. We can’t even do that.
Mrearl
@smintheus: Those are cordovan oxfords, not brown. Perfectly fine with a gray suit.
NotMax
By Grabthar’s hammer, those are some fugly socks.
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: This sure sounds like an excuse.
d58826
@FlipYrWhig: read my comment above about waiting 90 minutes and still not getting a simple pneumonia shot. The pharmacy folks tried but they were beaten by the system
Yutsano
@Kay:
This comment cuts to the quick. The Canadian Senate is pretty much a joke of Parliament. The House of Commons has all the fun.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
They want to buy health insurance,these people!
Republicans say “no, I’m afraid that’s impossible”
Really? 8 years and we can’t even solve that ONE problem? Meanwhile Canadians are cruising along, just a couple miles north, doing whatever they do without all those endless bullshit.
No Drought No More
As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Northern Exposure may as well be wearing blinking, multi-colored neon socks. All he needs now are clown shoes and a twirling bow tie..
NotMax
@NotMax
BTW, look at ’em without shoes. Even more fugly. And a sawbuck per sock, too.
trollhattan
@Kay: Once read a formal Libertarian statement that held EPA as unnecessary because anybody harmed by environmental pollution can simply sue the polluter.
Betty Cracker
@Gin & Tonic: Because I pointed out that she’d issued an actual apology rather than a bullshit “sorry if anyone is offended” non-apology? And then went on to express astonishment that anyone could tweet such insane antisemitic garbage without realizing it? That’s making an excuse? Not according to my understanding of the word.
bmaccnm
@Ohio Mom: I had this same revelation about fifteen years ago on a train from Copenhagen to Stockholm. I suddenly realized nobody else on the train who had to worry about what would happen if I broke my leg and couldn’t work for 2 months. Nobody else had to worry about how I would send my very bright son to college. Nobody else had to worry about what woud happen when I was 60 years old and didn’t have the physical strength to be a labor and delivery nurse any more. Nobody on the train seemed to be suffering under the weight of all that socialism.
zhena gogolia
He and Hillary would have looked so cute together.
Yutsano
@Kay: It’s no surprise that Tommy Douglas gets named the Greatest Canadian in history over and over.
NotMax
@trollhattan
Willing to chip in to send those folks on an all expenses paid holiday to Lake Karachay.
Brachiator
@TenguPhule:
Yeah, the Onion actually nails it. The GOP is pretty much destroying health care in order to “save” it.
Corner Stone
How does one even look at the article headline and read anything after that?
You put “Jews” in the headline because why exactly?
smintheus
@Mrearl: Not a hint of cordovan, those are brown shoes.
Corner Stone
@Kay:
The original sin of America will never stop haunting us.
catclub
@MjOregon:
sock repair pun.
NotMax
@smintheus
Anemic oxblood?
:)
randy khan
@trollhattan:
I’ve heard that before, but of course it’s ridiculous on many levels. Besides the point that suing other people just generally is hard and expensive, the likelihood of winning would be extremely low. One reason we have environmental laws in the first place is that the courts tended to find (following rules that are perfectly reasonable in other situations, like when you get hit by a car) that a victim of pollution couldn’t prove that the pollution actually caused the harm except in the most extreme cases.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Corner Stone: A lot of headlines seem to work on the same principle as Pen & Pixel album covers – namely, that the ideal headline/cover is one that makes even the mere adequacy of the inside product look like a coin flip.
Of course, you don use blatantly bigoted headlines like that unless the underlying article is already loathsome — you wouldn’t title an article with a racial slur unless you already thought that doing so was an acceptable thing to do, for example.
Corner Stone
Ezekiel Elliott looks like a character in a DragonBallZ animated film.
ruckus
@trollhattan:
Except, tort reform.
mak
Every Trudeau thread requires a reference to the time he literally beat the snot out of an allegedly bad-ass conservative MP. For charity, of course. Vice has a funny write-up, along with the video.
https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/53844q/five-years-ago-today-justin-trudeau-beat-the-shit-out-of-a-senator
catclub
@Kay: OTOH: Winter
OTOOH: Vancouver Island
OTOOOH: Vancouver Island and Vancouver way too pricey.
Elmo
Y’all are looking at the colors of his shoes, and his suit, or just squeeing about the socks, and all I can think about is: Both Chewbacca faces are correctly lined up! They’re both facing front, at the same angle – neither one is twisted sideways. How much effort does that man put into getting dressed?
schrodingers_cat
@Elmo: I like a man who does that. unlike a senator who shall not be named who seems to think that using a comb and an iron is elitist.
ruckus
@Elmo:
Enough to not look like a color blind wino in a suit he stole off the rack at 99 Cents Every Day.
ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t use a comb either. Of course for you to see the end of my forehead I have to turn around, so it is pretty useless for me.
Lulymay
@JPL:
Hate to bring this up, but, Melania already sold out to the highest bidder.
chris
@Sab: Now, now, nine years was bad enough.
schrodingers_cat
@ruckus: So you have a good reason, unlike Senator BedHair.
catclub
@Elmo:
Enough to identify the heel reinforcement in the socks and line it up with each heel? Does not seem like rocket surgery. Maybe I am sartorially gifted.
Ohio Mom
@smintheus: oh god, it’s that “What color is this dress?” thing all over again.
I don’t know or care what color his shoes are, I trust his judgement.
sukabi
@Roger Moore: you are both wrong. In keeping with his “do the absolutely worst thing possible” he’ll go with red, whit and blue swastika socks.
KS in MA
@mak: @mak: Hadn’t heard about that. The video is hilarious!
Corner Stone
@Elmo: If you do not put the toe line in the right place you will be miserable all freaking day. Not saying it’s not a nice touch to keep them straight, but lining up the heel and toe line is essential.
NotMax
Looking at the full sock, unshod, you’d have to go to some lengths to convince me that’s not a patch of Wookiee pubes just above the toes.
Jay
@Major Major Major Major:
Nope, not a horribleneoliberal sell out, just a typical center right politician like Obama.
Funny thing, is when the Right take Politics further to the Right, ( Harper), everybody moves right, even the Dippers,
And when the Center get’s elected, the Politics return towards the center, but they still remain to the right of where they were.
Jay
@Major Major Major Major:
Getting Crucified by the State, while serving the State, for crass political purposes, tends to change your world view.
Consuming alt-left and left alt-media and writings is often tricky for many people to navigate. Unlike the racist, mysoginist, fake news alt-right, there is subtlety there, that requires often, a non-binary approach, and little of it is “light reading”.
Reading and understanding that the ARDA is a cross between an Islamic Terror group, Nepali Maoist forced collective action group, and not a traditional Mymarese Ethic Self Defence Army, and that their recent attacks against the Mynemar State, ( including Royhingya Elders), is what sparked the current round of ethnic cleansing,
Is not the same thing as endorsing the Ethnic cleansing or trying to “smear” the Royhingya refugee’s.
Binary minds don’t see that.
More complex world views understand that most issues, other than “punching Nazi’s”, are very complex, and that the 2010 round of Myanmarese/Royhingya Conflict, the Royhingya Citizenship situation, Bangladeshi Royhingya Migration, and the refugee situation,
Created a situation that outside actors, through the Royhingya expat community, and the Radicalisation of Islam, a violent minority are “taking advantage of”, to the cost of the Rohingya majority.
During Bush II’s reign, “NeoCon” became a pejorative. Unless an alt-left or left article documents a person’s involvement in established neo-Conservative politics or policy, I kinda just ignore it.
It’s sadly, really easy for a lot of people to get sucked into binary thinking, shallow reading and this tends, on both the right and the left, to a certain amount of radicalization.
Jay
@catclub:
And the Southern Interior triangle from Osoyuse east to Christina Lake, and North to Salmon Arm, an area the size of Texas,
and the Sunshine Coast, the Gulf Islands, and the east coast of Vancouver Island as far north as Nanimo.
Sasha
@TenguPhule: Heh. I’m assuming you know the story behind that.
Tim in SF
Site comment: why are these images PNG files instead of JPGs? That’s not good. PNG files are much larger. Mobile users need smaller files.
Rebecca L Marks
On May 4th, he wore R2-D2 and C-3PO socks to an official meeting with the Irish PM.