Real Estate, Author. Faithful, loyal, Dad. Tech guy. helped create the digital age.
Arizona, USA
Joined January 2016
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Patrick retweeted
The most terrifying force of death comes from the hands of Men who wanted to be left Alone. They try, so very hard, to mind their own business and provide for themselves and those they love. They resist every impulse to fight back, knowing the forced and permanent change of life that will come from it. They know that the moment they fight back, their lives as they have lived them, are over. The moment the Men who wanted to be left alone are forced to fight back, it is a form of suicide. They are literally killing off who they used to be. Which is why, when forced to take up violence, these Men who wanted to be left alone, fight with unholy vengeance against those who murdered their former lives. They fight with raw hate, and a drive that cannot be fathomed by those who are merely play-acting at politics and terror. True justice will arrive at these people’s door, and they will cry, scream, and beg for mercy… but it will fall upon the deaf ears of the Men who just wanted to be left alone.
Patrick retweeted
The social contract is simple: protection in exchange for legitimacy. Break one and you eventually lose the other.
A government that cannot protect its people eventually loses the moral authority to govern them.
Patrick retweeted
I’ve been flying a long time. Little bit of everything. I loved it.
However, I’ve watched crashes where my friends died. Too many. It’s a risky proposition, on a good day.
I lived but I completely understand that my buddies died doing something they loved. I always told Nichole that’s the way I wanted to go out.
I’m still here but Jesus please shine for those who aren’t!🙏
Patrick retweeted
It is with great concern for some of my fellow countrymen, inching precariously toward the edge of utter lunacy, that I write this post.
Prime Minister Mark Carney this week, in an interview with the New York Times, went on record saying it would be “irresponsible” not to plan for the possible contingency of a military invasion of Canada by the United States. Unfortunately, Mr. Carney didn’t misspeak or fall victim to a cherry-picked quote taken out of context. His concern was later reiterated by Defence Minister David McGuinty and Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Soloman.
We all know that Donald Trump has a colourful history of spouting off some truly outrageous whoppers from time to time, but even he has never disseminated something as fatuous, dangerous or dishonest as this. And while he seldom backs down from his outrageous claims, whenever he pushes the envelope too far, at least his entourage goes on damage control to walk back some of his excesses – Carney’s guys are doubling down.
Despite these idiotic statements, these are intelligent men. The odds that all three of them would simultaneously become afflicted by the same psychotic delusion is infinitesimally small. The only rational conclusion, therefore, is that they believe, or rather their polling data shows, that enough Canadians are so possessed by Trump Derangement that engaging in such asinine demagoguery is politically expedient.
Sadly, they may be right. The vast coalition of useful idiots and true believers after effectively having their intelligences insulted by their dear leader, are coming out of the woodwork to express gratitude online for the Prime Minister’s caution in preparing for all, including the most remote, contingencies. Others are retreating slightly to hold the line at the fall-back position articulated by Minister McGuinty that, this kind of paranoid delusion is perfectly normal and, “all militaries in the world spend time analyzing risk scenarios.”
I assure you, this is not normal.
Back on planet Earth, the situation is tense and acrimonious (and there is plenty of blame to go around for that), but this is not the more than two centuries of peace along the 49th parallel that followed the signing of the Treaty of Ghent in 1815 drawing to an end. Trump has imposed tariffs on $20 billion (or 2% of the $400 billion per year) of Canadian exports to the US. In other words, amid this unnecessary, escalatory, and foolish trade dispute, the United States will still purchase 200% more Canadian goods and services this year than the rest of the world combined. This situation is like a restaurant’s picky regular customer complaining about an overcooked steak to a prideful chef who, fortified in his own mind by the knowledge he cooked the steak perfectly, refuses to comp the entree. This is not the start of World War III. We are so far removed from a military incursion at our southern border that we may as well be strategizing the response to the equally plausible threat of Santa Claus leading an invasion of elves from the north.
If we woke up tomorrow in some parallel reality where the United States actually was contemplating a full-scale military campaign against Canada, with all due respect to our brave men and women in uniform, the only preparations to be made would be negotiating the terms of our unconditional surrender. Some brave and patriotic Canadians may refuse to submit and instead choose to conduct, as a matter of principle, a brutal and bloody guerilla warfare campaign against the strongest conventional and nuclear military force in the history of the world. Unfortunately, they would be in the precarious position of having to rely on our miserly European allies, or countries like Russia or China, whose recent actions have been significantly more hostile and provocative challenges to our sovereignty than the US tariffs, to supply us with weapons, and they would not remotely be adequate. It’s all so desperately preposterous.
But for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that Donald Trump was indeed the terrifying bogeyman haunting the dreams of the most extreme and hopeless sufferers of Trump Derangement Syndrome and its frightful sister affliction, Andrew Coyneism, a rare and especially acute form of tweet-induced psychotic maladjustment. Even in this scenario, why would Trump use the military to annex Canada? All he would have to do is offer Alberta statehood, liberation from transfer payments, excessive regulation and carbon taxes, carte blanche to exploit its natural resources, a generous welcome bonus in the form of a $100,000 tax credit to every adult Albertan and replace their Canadian dollars with equal amounts of US currency. They would effectively be acquiring Alberta for the knock-down bargain price of roughly 1x annual GDP.
Simultaneously, the US (including the newly acquired Alberta) would immediately cut off all trade with the rest of Canada. The net impact to Canada of this manoeuvre would be a cataclysmic economic collapse, while the newly composed United States would take a net GDP hit (loss of all trade with Canada, mostly offset by the acquisition of Alberta) of 0.8%. Next would come a full package of sanctions, a naval blockade, and when the rest of Canada became desperate enough, a Chinese belt-and-road style offtake of all of Canada’s resources at bargain prices, which by then, the Canadians would be desperate for. In the meantime, the US would revamp its immigration policy to recreate the brain-drain of the 1990s on steroids, welcoming the top 20% most productive Canadians to flee what had overnight become the third world. Harvard Alumnus Mark Carney might well be among those at the front of the line seeking this emigration opportunity, rejoining 91 percent of his own investments already located there.
There would, no doubt, be a fearsome contingent of Canadians refusing to bend or break in the face of American tyranny, and elbows would be flying up to vertiginous heights with such vigour that the Canadian healthcare system would be overwhelmed by millions of spontaneous emergency room visits of patriotic patients with dislocated shoulders.
I suspect many of you reading this are thinking to yourself that this is so completely far-fetched and absurd that, if serious, I must have lost my mind. Allow me to reassure you that while this is all bunk, it remains at least ten times more likely than the United States military executing a boots-on-the-ground invasion of Canada. Anyone who spends more than one second worrying about such an outcome should immediately proceed to the nearest sink to splash some cold water in their face and pull themselves together.
🤖 Made with AI
Patrick retweeted
It’s official! I’m incredibly proud to share that I’ve been selected for promotion to Colonel of Marines!
From Private to Staff Sergeant. Second Lieutenant to Colonel select. It’s been one hell of a ride.
Semper Fi!
Patrick retweeted
Canada is having a difficult conversation with itself about its economic relationship with the United States.
Much of the current Canadian political narrative treats access to the American market almost as an acquired right. When an American administration talks about reshoring manufacturing, imposing tariffs or favouring American production, Canadians often frame the issue as an affront to Canadian sovereignty.
I think that fundamentally misunderstands how our industrial economy developed.
For much of the post-war period, Canada prospered by becoming an extraordinarily effective extension of the American industrial economy.
Southern Ontario did not independently develop an automotive ecosystem disconnected from Detroit. Windsor, Oshawa, Oakville, St. Thomas and communities throughout Southwestern Ontario became deeply integrated into an industrial machine whose centre of gravity was across the border in Michigan, Ohio and the broader American Midwest.
American manufacturers established Canadian factories and supply chains for many reasons: access to the Canadian market, tariff and content rules, exchange rates, labour economics, geographic proximity and, eventually, increasingly integrated North American trade.
Canada became exceptionally good at this.
We built cars, stamped metal, machined components, produced chemicals, assembled machinery and supplied American factories. Canadian companies also became enormously successful suppliers to that system. Magna is perhaps the greatest example of what could be built from Canada's position inside the North American automotive supply chain.
The 1965 Auto Pact accelerated that integration. Free trade in 1989 and NAFTA in 1994 took it much further.
But then something else happened.
Beginning in the late twentieth century and accelerating dramatically after 2000, North American manufacturing capacity increasingly moved offshore. China became a manufacturing superpower. Global supply chains replaced many domestic ones. American industrial communities lost factories and employment, while corporations discovered that enormous amounts of production could be sourced from lower-cost jurisdictions.
For decades, Canada operated within that globalization model while retaining extraordinarily favourable access to the world's largest consumer economy.
Now the United States is reconsidering the model.
Washington increasingly views industrial capacity as more than an economic issue. Semiconductors, steel, aluminum, automobiles, energy, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and critical minerals are being treated as matters of national security and strategic resilience.
That creates an uncomfortable question for Canada:
If the United States wants its industrial production back, on what basis does Canada believe that production belongs to us?
Imagine a manufacturer that has outsourced substantial production to a subcontractor for decades. The subcontractor builds its business around that work, invests in equipment, hires employees and becomes highly successful.
Then circumstances change. The manufacturer's own facilities have unused capacity and its own employees need work.
The subcontractor may understandably be unhappy when the manufacturer brings some of that production home. But the subcontractor cannot reasonably argue that decades of receiving the work created a permanent entitlement to it.
That, in simplified form, is the uncomfortable position Canada now faces.
This does not mean Canada lacks sovereignty. Quite the opposite. Canada is completely sovereign and has every right to establish whatever trade, industrial, environmental and foreign policies Canadians choose.
But sovereignty works both ways.
Canada has the sovereign right to determine its economic policy. The United States has the sovereign right to determine how much access foreign producers receive to the American market.
Those are two different questions.
Canada has also spent decades diversifying its trading relationships, including developing a substantial economic relationship with China. There are legitimate American concerns about transshipment, rules of origin, Chinese overcapacity and goods entering the United States through third countries. Canada should take those concerns seriously rather than simply assuming that our historical relationship exempts us from American scrutiny.
That does not mean every American tariff is justified, nor does it mean Canada should simply accept whatever Washington demands.
It means Canada needs to understand the leverage in the relationship.
Nearly 40 million Canadians live beside an economy of roughly 350 million people. Geography gave us extraordinary access to that market. Generations of Canadian workers and entrepreneurs then turned that geographical advantage into one of the world's most integrated cross-border industrial relationships.
But proximity is not ownership.
Our automotive plants, stamping companies, machine shops and parts manufacturers have succeeded because they are very good at what they do. They should compete aggressively to retain that business. Canada should make itself the most compelling place in North America to manufacture.
What we should not do is confuse historical integration with entitlement.
Instead of asking, "How can the Americans do this to us?" Canada should be asking a much harder question:
Why should an American manufacturer choose to put its next factory in Ontario rather than Michigan, Ohio, Indiana or Tennessee?
If our answer is productivity, engineering talent, energy, logistics, taxation, regulatory efficiency, currency advantage and a highly capable workforce, then Canada has a compelling case.
If our answer is simply that American companies have manufactured here for the last 70 years and therefore should continue doing so, we have a problem.
The old Canadian model depended heavily on being an exceptionally attractive extension of American industrial capacity.
America is now rebuilding that capacity at home.
Canada's challenge is not to demand that history stand still.
It is to make ourselves indispensable enough that, even when America has the choice to bring the work home, American companies still choose Canada.
@ronmortgageguy @StephenPunwasi @FoodProfessor
Patrick retweeted
Canada can learn something from Trump and start aggressively pursuing its national interests. The priorities of our government should always be the improvement of affordability, the standard of living, and the quality of life for Canadians. It’s high time we started using our many advantages to become a more prosperous and influential country in the world, not just a well-liked but largely inconsequential one.
There is nothing wrong with the US actively trying to repatriate as much manufacturing as it can, and if it views Canada as low-hanging fruit for bringing back car-manufacturing jobs, there is some logic in pursuing that. Personally, it doesn’t seem the juice is worth the squeeze. Given how disproportionately susceptible auto manufacturing is to job losses through automation, any jobs they repatriate in that sector are unlikely to exist in 10 years. So it amounts to short-term pain without any meaningful long-term gain. At the end of the day, it’s their right to drive a hard bargain in pursuit of American interests in whatever manner they see fit. But we should be taking a page out of this playbook and playing to our own distinct advantages: a world-class pool of natural and human resources.
Given how important US trade is to the Canadian economy, we don’t really have the luxury of enumerating a long list of deal-breakers or demands for concessions. While I am no trade wonk, the only sticking points as I see them are supply management and the potential for China and others, after we have negotiated a preferential trade arrangement with the US, to use us as a back door to undermine whatever agreements the US has negotiated with them. These are legitimate concerns, but there’s no reason we can’t provide assurances and iron them out.
My sincere hope and expectation is that this trade war will be a temporary blip. I predict we will reach a deal sooner rather than later that largely amounts to business as usual with a bit of fine-tuning. And as a very positive corollary, Trump’s belligerence will have awoken the Liberals from their decade-long fever dream about environmental apocalypse, misplaced guilt for committing imaginary genocides that never took place, and the horrors of there not being a sufficient number of letters in the LGBT(etc.) acronym, and they will finally realize that economic growth is a priority.
Patrick retweeted
I have to admit, I always wondered what this part of Psalm 23 meant. I thought “He anoints my head with oil” was figurative language for God keeping the Psalmist healthy. I never knew this parallel.
Anoint my head with oil
“Sheep can get their head caught in briers and die trying to get untangled. There are horrid little flies that like to torment sheep by laying eggs in their nostrils which turn into worms and drive the sheep to beat their head against a rock, sometimes to death. Their ears and eyes are also susceptible to tormenting insects. So the shepherd anoints their whole head with oil. Then there is peace. That oil forms a barrier of protection against the evil that tries to destroy the sheep. Do you have times of mental torment? Do the worrisome thoughts invade your mind over and over? Do you beat your head against a wall trying to stop them? Have you ever asked God to anoint your head with oil? He has an endless supply! His oil protects and makes it possible for you to fix your heart, mind, and eyes on Him today and always! There is peace in the valley! May our good good Father anoint your head with oil today so that your cup overflows with blessings! God is good and He is faithful!!”
Patrick retweeted
America is my girlfriend.
She’s loud. She’s expensive. She has 50 personalities and every damn one of them thinks they’re right.
She steals my money, starts arguments at family gatherings, buys things we absolutely do not need, and somehow has me defending her five minutes after she pissed me off.
I’ve tried giving her advice. She ignored me.
I’ve tried staying out of her drama. Impossible.
I’ve tried saying, Baby, maybe we don’t need to fight everybody today.
She reached for the aircraft carrier.
But here’s the thing.
I can complain about America all day.
You talk shit about her?
Now I’m outside in Crocs holding a flag asking who the hell you think you are.
She’s chaotic. She’s stubborn. She’s slightly insane. She has enough red flags to qualify as a parade.
And I’d still choose her every damn time.
That’s my girl.
God bless America.
Now baby, please put the credit card down.
Patrick retweeted
Jeff Bezos @JeffBezos , I’m asking you to look at this once through the eyes of the people wearing the uniform since you own @washingtonpost.
We volunteered and accepted the bargain. Missed birthdays, broken bodies, years away from our families, hostile fire, and the possibility that if we die, our families get roughly $500,000 in life insurance. In much of America today, that barely buys a house.
We know our lot and we’re not complaining about it.
But the job is hard enough without having to wonder whether an American newspaper is going to publish classified wartime command deliberations because its newsroom despises the administration and wants another cheap political scalp.
Fight the President, the Secretary, the Pentagon. Whatever, that’s politics.
But when the ammunition for that fight is information tied to ongoing operations and the private judgments of senior commanders, you’re spending our risk to buy your headline.
That’s the part WE need you to understand.
Murphy already gets a vote. So does the enemy. Exhaustion, bad intelligence, mechanical failure and plain rotten luck all get votes. We volunteered to face those things.
We did NOT volunteer to become collateral damage in the Washington Post’s feud with an administration it hates.
Your reporters will publish the piece, watch the engagement numbers, and go home.
Some American kid will still be standing watch when they do.
Jeff, give us a fucking chance. Come on man. You’ve got to clean house at that paper. The journalists are too blackpilled to be of any use anymore. In fact, they’re literally harming us.
Our brothers and sisters are in a worse situation now due to this reporting. Don’t agree with the combat operations, fine. But come on. Leaking an SDOB? That’s objectively insane behavior.
***to my followers: share so we know he sees this.***
EXCLUSIVE: Military leaders warned Hegseth that keeping the force of more than 50,000 troops in the Middle East is unsustainable, drawing “non-concurs” from them in recent orders to extend troops. (gift link) w/ @AlexHortonTX wapo.st/4wT23bL
Patrick retweeted
For all of you chuckling at the fat-body division:
1) they won’t leave Great Lakes like that — not in Hegseth’s Navy.
2) they’ve already served more than most of you.
3) I’m proud of them for taking their shot.
4) They’re healthier today than they were yesterday.
This quoted post is unavailable.
Patrick retweeted
Today we mark the loss of Doctor Yevgeniy Petrov, who while acting as Medical Officer of a Soviet Typhoon-Class Submarine, Lead the evacuation of the crew during a Reactor melt-down onboard the Submarine.
It was thanks to his actions that saved over 100 crew.
RIP Tim Curry
Patrick retweeted
Very concerned about radiation leakage and about any one man being able to arm the missiles. A solid medical officer.
Patrick retweeted
I see all these Patriots on here and so called military supporters yet I can't even get a tenth of my followers to acknowledge me to honor my Fallen son. If any of you can even imagine for one moment the tears I have shed,.....
