Money is the real King of the US and everyone bows down to it. Trump is just more blatant about it because he is a total malignant narcissist, not very smart and has total immunity. So the veil has been torn.
Quite some time ago someone posted a video of rumplemangoskin as toddler on a bouncy toy raging around a day care… He just continues to enhance that image.
The OWNERS of the Ambassador Bridge went to this cretin crying about losing tolls and he threw a predictable hissy fit and got out his crayon in their defense.
The love of money and all that…
At the same time the Gallop Poll is saying despondency among Americans has increased. The removal of the those who have made the whole barrel rotten is too late. The goodwill is gone. The trust is gone. The willingness to compromise is meh.
Yeah… the toddler energy is hard to unsee once you see it. 😄
But strip away the cartoon stuff and it’s really just the same old story...
Private interests whisper in the ear…
and suddenly public policy turns into a favour.
The Ambassador Bridge owners worry about tolls…
then Donald Trump starts pounding the table like it’s a national emergency.
That’s not leadership.
That’s transactional politics.
And yeah... when people feel like everything’s for sale, trust evaporates fast. You can’t run a country on resentment and tantrums forever.
Eventually folks just get tired.
Not angry.
Tired.
Which is worse.
From up here in Canada, the smartest move isn’t reacting to every outburst... it’s just quietly building solid stuff and letting the drama burn itself out.
And just imagine, once the Gordie Howe bridge has paid for itself the people of Michigan will share the profits. Wow, the public will profit, not some greedy, callous billionaire.
$20 per axle for a truck hauling a trailor. Each tractor trailer has 5 axles. That's $100 per trip. Oh, those tolls are 1 way. So all these tractor trailers are paying $200 per round trip. Most autopart hauling trucks make on average 5 trips per day.
So the average daily cost is roughly $1000.
10 000 trucks cross per day. If they make the return trip that makes the Maroun family a $1 000 000 dollars a day. Plus the 4000 cars etc a day paying $20 × 2 = $160 000.
In 2026 these border crossings will double. Which will double the $ the monopoly owning Maroun family profits.
On top of that the want a big piece of the Gordie Howe Bridge pie.
I really hope all my fellow Canadians, particularly those in the big business community, are able to process this and stop calling for us to find a way to “restore the great trade relationship”.
This should make it abundantly clear the guy with his fingers all over US trade policy is NOT rational. And it's a complete waste of our government's time and salary budgets to bother trying.
I try to avoid Twitter. (No, I won't call it a letter) Unfortunately, the bulk of my book advertising is on there. I try to avoid doomscrolling. I try to avoid the bot-ridden, pro-conservative misinformation machine that it has become. But when I saw on the feed that verbal diarrhea of a post... I just sat there, dumbfounded. Like you said, the emotional-tweeting man-child started going off on a bridge project that has been in the works since early 2000. We already had to deal with the incessant whining from the Ambassador Bridge owner about how this was going to reduce his profits. We worked it out, planned it out, funded it, paid for it, now the narcissistic moron wants us to compensate him? For what? Just like you said, he's nothing more than a spoiled brat trying to take someone else's toy and screaming 'mine!'
Then he goes off on a rant about China owning us and threatening to take away Hockey - never mind that the US does more trade with China than Canada ever will. Because we're done with his childish ranting and looking for other trade partners, suddenly they're taking us over! First the EU, now China... if we start to broker trade with Australia, will he scream about that next?
I appreciate your optimism re: Hoekstra. Don’t bet your lunch money though on his ability to do ANY of what you’ve suggested. The guy is a grade A turd.
AS USUAL….AND JUST LOOK WHAT THE EVIL MONSTERS ARE DOING INTENTIONALLY TO THE WOMEN, MEN AND CHILDREN OF CUBA !!!!!! STARVING THEM TO DEATH ?? !!! Someone, anyone…….. get these evil monsters of miller/trump LOCKED UP OR OUT OF CONTROL…Hitler 3.0 ! putrid and VILE ! How is that feeling for you Marco Rubio????
…want to call home to Cuba and wish them…well ….. ?????????
Another yawn. I laughed when I saw it yesterday.
He took a bribe from the owner of the Ambassador Bridge who’s worried he isn’t going to get all his toll candy now.
It’s always transactional with Donnie.
Exactly.
Nothing ideological about it.
Nothing “national security” about it.
Nothing patriotic either.
It’s just business… the greasy kind.
The minute you see the Ambassador Bridge owner sweating over toll revenue, and then suddenly Donald Trump starts rattling sabres about Canada…
You don’t need a PhD.
You need a calculator.
Follow the money → find the tantrum.
That’s his whole operating system.
Policy? Nope.
Strategy? Nope.
Who paid? There it is.
Hard to feel threatened when you realize it’s basically a shakedown dressed up like diplomacy.
More “mob boss,” less “superpower.”
Canada doesn’t negotiate with that stuff.
We just wait it out and keep building.
Money is the real King of the US and everyone bows down to it. Trump is just more blatant about it because he is a total malignant narcissist, not very smart and has total immunity. So the veil has been torn.
I wish dumpster fire would just go away, he is such a hateful person
I hear you.
But here’s the thing…
Guys like Donald Trump don’t just “go away.”
They burn out.
Big difference.
All that noise, all that anger, all that chest-thumping… it looks powerful for a while.
But it’s exhausting.
For him.
For the people around him.
For the country stuck cleaning up after him.
Hate is loud.
It’s not durable.
Calm, steady, boring competence wins in the long run.
Dumpster fires make headlines.
Grown-ups build countries.
We’ll be fine. He’s the one running out of oxygen.
I want to see him "go away" involuntarily. I want to see him and his criminal cadre get every punishment they deserve.
I get the feeling, Gary.
A lot of folks are just plain fed up.
But I try not to wish anything “involuntary” on anyone.
That road gets ugly fast.
What I do want is simple...
Accountability.
If Donald Trump... or anyone in power... breaks laws, abuses power, or screws over regular people?
Then the system should do what it’s supposed to do.
Investigations. Courts. Consequences.
Boring, legal, above-board consequences.
Not revenge.
Not chaos.
Just... the rules apply to you too.
Because once we start rooting for “make him disappear,” we’re not defending democracy anymore… we’re becoming what we’re mad about.
Justice works best when it’s dull and procedural.
Handcuffs, paperwork, courtrooms.
Not pitchforks.
My sentiments exactly. It’s exhausting having a neighbour like this. Makes you want to pull the curtains and pretend they’re not there.
I hear you, Ginny.
It really does feel like having that one loud neighbour who’s always yelling over the fence at 2am. 😄
After a while you just want to close the curtains and think,
“Maybe if I don’t look, it’ll go away.”
But here’s the thing…
Ignoring them doesn’t fix it.
It just means they get louder.
So I figure the better move is...
Keep our house solid.
Mind our business.
Strengthen our own backyard.
Less reacting… more building.
Because in the long run, stability beats drama every time.
And honestly?
Nothing annoys a chaotic neighbour more than you calmly thriving next door.
Quite some time ago someone posted a video of rumplemangoskin as toddler on a bouncy toy raging around a day care… He just continues to enhance that image.
The OWNERS of the Ambassador Bridge went to this cretin crying about losing tolls and he threw a predictable hissy fit and got out his crayon in their defense.
The love of money and all that…
At the same time the Gallop Poll is saying despondency among Americans has increased. The removal of the those who have made the whole barrel rotten is too late. The goodwill is gone. The trust is gone. The willingness to compromise is meh.
Yeah… the toddler energy is hard to unsee once you see it. 😄
But strip away the cartoon stuff and it’s really just the same old story...
Private interests whisper in the ear…
and suddenly public policy turns into a favour.
The Ambassador Bridge owners worry about tolls…
then Donald Trump starts pounding the table like it’s a national emergency.
That’s not leadership.
That’s transactional politics.
And yeah... when people feel like everything’s for sale, trust evaporates fast. You can’t run a country on resentment and tantrums forever.
Eventually folks just get tired.
Not angry.
Tired.
Which is worse.
From up here in Canada, the smartest move isn’t reacting to every outburst... it’s just quietly building solid stuff and letting the drama burn itself out.
Calm competence ages a lot better than chaos.
Always has.
And just imagine, once the Gordie Howe bridge has paid for itself the people of Michigan will share the profits. Wow, the public will profit, not some greedy, callous billionaire.
Crazy concept, right?
We build it… we pay for it… and regular folks benefit.
Not some guy buying yacht #4.
So it is $10 per car, motorcycle or bus.
$20 per axle for a truck hauling a trailor. Each tractor trailer has 5 axles. That's $100 per trip. Oh, those tolls are 1 way. So all these tractor trailers are paying $200 per round trip. Most autopart hauling trucks make on average 5 trips per day.
So the average daily cost is roughly $1000.
10 000 trucks cross per day. If they make the return trip that makes the Maroun family a $1 000 000 dollars a day. Plus the 4000 cars etc a day paying $20 × 2 = $160 000.
In 2026 these border crossings will double. Which will double the $ the monopoly owning Maroun family profits.
On top of that the want a big piece of the Gordie Howe Bridge pie.
This is billionaires greed out in the open.
When you actually run the numbers, it stops being “tolls” and starts looking like a cash register.
Quick math...
Cars/bikes/buses - $10–$20
Tractor-trailer - $20 per axle
Five axles - $100 one way
Round trip - $200
Five trips a day?
That’s $1,000 per truck per day.
Now multiply that by 10,000 trucks and yeah… you’re staring at roughly $1 million a day just from freight.
Add cars and everything else and it’s another big chunk on top.
That’s not “infrastructure support.”
That’s a private toll booth printing money.
And the wild part?
These aren’t luxury crossings.
They’re supply-chain arteries between Canada and the U.S.
Auto parts, food, lumber, everything.
So every extra dollar just gets baked into prices.
Meaning...
Drivers pay - companies pay - consumers pay.
It’s basically a hidden tax dressed up as a toll.
And yeah… when one family controls the chokepoint while also eyeing a slice of the Gordie Howe International Bridge?
That’s not competition.
That’s monopoly math.
Nothing ideological about it.
Just follow the trucks.
The Maroun family moves their cash in vans I guess.
Thank you for helping me explain just how corrupt this family is.
I really hope all my fellow Canadians, particularly those in the big business community, are able to process this and stop calling for us to find a way to “restore the great trade relationship”.
This should make it abundantly clear the guy with his fingers all over US trade policy is NOT rational. And it's a complete waste of our government's time and salary budgets to bother trying.
I’m with you on this.
There’s a difference between repairing a trade relationship…
and chasing someone who keeps moving the goalposts.
At some point you stop trying to “win them back” and start building alternatives.
When policy depends on the mood of Donald Trump on any given Tuesday, that’s not strategy... that’s roulette.
No serious business plans around roulette.
If I’m running a company in Canada, I’m thinking...
Diversify markets.
Strengthen Europe and Asia.
Build more at home.
Reduce dependency.
Not “please like us again.”
Trade works best when both sides are predictable and rational.
If one side isn’t?
You stop begging and start adapting.
That’s not anti-American.
That’s just grown-up risk management.
Gotta shout out to Doug Ford to change how he still calls us both ‘friends’
Yeah… that word “friends” feels a little outdated lately. 😄
I get why Doug Ford still says it... diplomatically you don’t slam the door unless you absolutely have to.
Politics is half relationship management, half poker face.
But let’s be honest…
Friends don’t...
• threaten tariffs
• insult you weekly
• mess with your economy
• then ask for favours
That’s not friendship.
That’s that neighbour who “borrows” your ladder and returns it broken.
I’m fine with polite.
Professional.
Civil.
But “friends”?
Yeah… maybe we downgrade that to “neighbours we keep an eye on.”
Gretchen is the Governor and a Democrat. She’ll be on this nonsense.
Yep... and that matters.
Gretchen Whitmer has actually been pretty pragmatic about cross-border stuff.
Michigan’s economy is welded to Canada whether anyone likes it or not.
Auto parts, manufacturing, bridges, energy... we’re basically one big supply chain with a line drawn through it.
So a governor there can’t afford political theatre.
If trade slows, Michigan gets hurt just as fast as we do.
Which usually means...
Less nonsense
More “let’s fix this”
At the state level, it tends to be adults dealing with adults.
It’s mostly the federal circus that causes the headaches. 😄
So yeah… I’d expect her to keep things practical.
Jobs beat drama every time.
I try to avoid Twitter. (No, I won't call it a letter) Unfortunately, the bulk of my book advertising is on there. I try to avoid doomscrolling. I try to avoid the bot-ridden, pro-conservative misinformation machine that it has become. But when I saw on the feed that verbal diarrhea of a post... I just sat there, dumbfounded. Like you said, the emotional-tweeting man-child started going off on a bridge project that has been in the works since early 2000. We already had to deal with the incessant whining from the Ambassador Bridge owner about how this was going to reduce his profits. We worked it out, planned it out, funded it, paid for it, now the narcissistic moron wants us to compensate him? For what? Just like you said, he's nothing more than a spoiled brat trying to take someone else's toy and screaming 'mine!'
Then he goes off on a rant about China owning us and threatening to take away Hockey - never mind that the US does more trade with China than Canada ever will. Because we're done with his childish ranting and looking for other trade partners, suddenly they're taking us over! First the EU, now China... if we start to broker trade with Australia, will he scream about that next?
I hear you.
Honestly, Twitter (yeah… still calling it that too) feels less like a town square these days and more like a broken loudspeaker in a bus station.
All noise. No signal.
And the bridge thing is what kills me.
The Gordie Howe International Bridge has been planned for decades.
Negotiated. Funded. Engineered. Built.
Adults did years of boring, competent work.
Then Donald Trump wakes up one morning and starts yelling at it like it personally offended him.
That’s not policy.
That’s a toddler seeing someone else’s toy.
Same with the “China owns you” stuff.
So let me get this straight…
If Canada trades with China, it’s takeover.
If we trade with European Union, it’s betrayal.
If we diversify at all… it’s somehow disloyal?
That’s not how trade works.
That’s how insecurity works.
No country with self-respect puts all its eggs in one basket... especially when the basket keeps threatening tariffs every other week.
Diversifying partners isn’t rebellion.
It’s basic risk management.
But yeah… try explaining “boring economics” to someone live-tweeting their feelings. 😄
You’re not crazy for feeling dumbfounded.
You’re just watching grown infrastructure collide with playground behaviour.
Also, Michigan already owns half of it and will receive half the profits once Canada recovers the cost through the tolls.
Yep... and that’s the part people keep skipping.
Michigan already owns their half and shares in the upside once Canada recovers the build costs through tolls.
So it’s not some giveaway.
It’s literally structured as...
You build your side.
We build ours.
Traffic flows.
Both sides benefit.
That’s not politics... that’s basic business math.
Which makes all the chest-thumping even sillier.
Efficient trade + shared profits + faster deliveries?
Any sane operator would call that a win.
Only in today’s world does “mutual benefit” somehow become controversial. 😄
yeah, what can you expect from that dumpster of a president
Too bad idiot, it's ours and you can't have it. 🇨🇦
Pretty much. 😄
It’s not even a debate.
We built it.
We paid for it.
We run it.
This is Canada... not a yard sale.
No threats. No tantrums. No “gimme.”
And honestly, watching Donald Trump yell “mine!” at stuff he doesn’t own just makes it feel even more playground.
Adults build bridges.
Kids fight over toys.
We’ll stick with the adults.
So typically Trump
Could Brad Marchand perhaps be requested to negotiate the matter? He would be a spirited diplomat.
Pretty much. 😄
It’s not complicated.
This is Canada.
We built it.
We paid for it.
We run it.
Not for sale. Not for threats. Not for tantrums.
Funny how “sovereignty” only seems to matter to some folks when it’s theirs.
Up here it just means...
Nope. Hands off.
Maybe Hoekstra can do a swan dive from it.
LOL… let’s keep the bridge for traffic, not diving competitions. 😄
Honestly, I’d settle for Pete Hoekstra just doing something radical like… reading the room.
Or a map.
Or the actual agreement.
Much safer for everyone.
The bridge is for trucks and trade... not political theatrics.
I appreciate your optimism re: Hoekstra. Don’t bet your lunch money though on his ability to do ANY of what you’ve suggested. The guy is a grade A turd.
It would be great to be able to file a noise complaint with bylaw enforcement. 🤣
Right? 😄
“Hi, bylaw? Yeah… there’s an orange guy south of the border yelling at bridges again. Can you send someone?”
At this point Donald Trump isn’t even politics... he’s just background noise.
Like a leaf blower that never shuts off.
Eventually you stop arguing with it and just close the window and get on with your day.
Which, honestly, is probably the most Canadian strategy ever.
Carry on. Build stuff. Let the noise fade.
Yup.
Leaf blower is an apt descriptor for the blowhard.
But even they are more useful.
Stall the opening .. just until he’s gone. My God .. how demented ..
I get the feeling 😄 … but I wouldn’t stall anything.
Why should Canada slow down a good project just because Donald Trump is having another episode?
That gives the noise way too much power.
The bridge, the trade, the work... that’s real life stuff. Jobs, trucks, families, paycheques.
Adults keep building.
Let him yell at the clouds.
We open it on schedule and carry on like a functioning country.
Honestly, nothing irritates chaos more than calm competence.
AS USUAL….AND JUST LOOK WHAT THE EVIL MONSTERS ARE DOING INTENTIONALLY TO THE WOMEN, MEN AND CHILDREN OF CUBA !!!!!! STARVING THEM TO DEATH ?? !!! Someone, anyone…….. get these evil monsters of miller/trump LOCKED UP OR OUT OF CONTROL…Hitler 3.0 ! putrid and VILE ! How is that feeling for you Marco Rubio????
…want to call home to Cuba and wish them…well ….. ?????????
I hear the frustration, Shauna... a lot of what’s happening right now feels cruel and unnecessary.
But I try not to go full “monsters/Hitler” territory.
Once we get there, the conversation usually stops being useful and just turns into rage.
What I will say is this...
Sanctions and economic pressure often hurt regular people more than politicians.
Families. Kids. Workers.
Not the folks at the top.
And that’s the part that bothers me most.
Punishing civilians rarely fixes anything.
It just creates more suffering.
So yeah... we can call out bad policy and hold leaders accountable without turning it into apocalypse language.
Calm pressure tends to work better than fury.
Steady beats screaming.
Every time.