Canada's Ice Choad Truckers Still At It

The whole damn world is turning into a Trump rally of the damned

The relatively small but utterly deranged mob of Canadian truckers who hate vaccine mandates and anyone not white have continued to be a bloody nuisance in America's Neighbor to the North, where they've annoyed local folks, shut down roads, and won the unending (or passing) admiration of American rightwingers across the spectrum from Rand Paul to Donald Trump, which to be fair isn't a lot of spectrum at all. Let's check in with the Bad Buddies of the Freedom Convoy and see how they're working to undo that old Molly Ivins joke about how being Canadian must feel "like having the Simpsons for next-door neighbors." Sorry, Molly, Evergreen Terrace is empty and all the Homers are in Ottawa.

Wingnuts Finally Close A Border

The Freedom Fuckers have now managed to block two major border crossings between the US and Canada, to symbolize how their lives have been made impossible by Canadian (and US) regulations requiring that commercial truck drivers be fully vaccinated to cross from Canada to the US and back again. Mind you, the trucking industry association, the Canadian Trucking Alliance, says that 90 percent of Canadian truckers are already vaccinated, but that's only the sheeple in the overwhelming majority, which automatically makes them tyrants. 

The BBC reports that the disruption at the two border crossings has led major auto manufacturers to slow down or stop production, since they aren't able to ship parts across the border. All told, the border closures and slowdowns are estimated to be costing $300 million a day in lost trade between the two countries.

Toyota announced it will shut down production for the rest of the week at three factories in Canada. A Ford engine factory has also temporarily shut down production, and "Stellantis," the stupidly named owner of Chrysler, Fiat, and Jeep, is reshuffling shifts at its plant in Ontario. On the US side, General Motors has cancelled two shifts at an SUV plant in Michigan. If the border shutdowns continue, automakers and other companies may have to lay off workers.

Way to go with the labor solidarity, Canadian fuckheads! [ Newsweek / BBC ]

Did We Say Two Border Crossings? Make It Three!

The Washington Post reports that in addition to the existing blockades at the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, and at the Coutts crossing between Montana and Alberta, a third blockade shut down the Emerson crossing between Manitoba and North Dakota today. Also too, the Post says a horde of trucks full of idiots yelling "Freedom!" and "Fake News" showed up at the Ottawa International Airport today, leading to traffic disruptions; a couple hours ago, Ottawa's traffic conditions Twitter account reported the "incident" had been cleared.

Police in Ottawa are also warning protesters that if they block streets, they will be arrested and charged, which is far nicer than the vehicular American Carnage sometimes meted outto road-blocking protesters in the US in recent years. [WaPo] 

Truckfuckery Goes Global

In France, authorities announced that a "freedom convoy" inspired by the Canadian dipshittery would be prohibited from entering Paris. The FrancoFuckheads are also planning to descend on Brussels, Belgium, although it's not clear whether they'll be allowed by police to snarl traffic there, either. [ Reuters ]

In Wellington, New Zealand, police arrested about 120 people in a protest camp near the country's parliament. Anti-vaxxer KiwiKooks have been parking vehicles and pitching both tents and fits on roadways to block traffic near the legislative building. A similar demonstration in the Australian capital of Canberra has been going on for 11 days, although it has so far attracted only about a thousand protesters. That may change Saturday, when a mass gathering is planned. [ NBC News ]

DHS Warns Of Likely US Idiot Outbreak

Right here in the USA, the Department of Homeland Security warns that our country may get its very own copycat protest, with a potential truck convoy that might start this weekend in Los Angeles to disrupt the Super Bowl, heading east to Washington DC in time to fill the capital with trucks for Joe Biden's State of the Union address on March 1.

A bulletin from DHS says the agency

has received reports of truck drivers planning to potentially block roads in major metropolitan cities in the United States in protest of, among other things, vaccine mandates for truck drivers.

The convoy will potentially begin in California as early as mid-February and arrive in Washington, DC, as late as mid-March, potentially impacting the Super Bowl LVI scheduled for 13 February and the State of the Union address scheduled for 1 March.

While there are currently no indications of planned violence, if hundreds of trucks converge in a major metropolitan city, the potential exists to severely disrupt transportation, federal government operations, commercial facilities and emergency services through gridlock and potential counter protests.

The warning went to US law enforcement agencies on Tuesday. It also noted that as the convoy travels east, it might be joined by truckers from Canada, who we presume would either present fake vaccination cards or even get vaccinated so they could join their brothers in harm in the USA. [ CBS News] 

Gay Cowboy Porno-Metal Anthem To The Rescue

Thank god for gay cowboy porno-metal, is all we can say. Rolling Stone reports that lefty protesters have taken to disrupting Free Dumb Convoy with the song "Ram Ranch," described as a

2012 porno-metal classic by Grant MacDonald that ascended to meme status thanks to lyrics like, “Eighteen naked cowboys wanting to be fucked/Cowboys in the showers at Ram Ranch/On their knees wanting to suck cowboy cocks/Ram Ranch really rocks.”

Why yes, it's real. Here's the song; do we need to tell you it's very much NOT SAFE FOR WORK? It is both very loud and very long, and it is kind of wonderful.

 youtu.be 

 Rolling Stone says the #RamRanchResistance

initially stemmed from Canadian counterprotesters entering chats organized by convoy supporters on Zello, a push-to-talk walkie-talkie app somewhat similar to the voice chatting platform Clubhouse. According to Katarina, a PhD student at a university in Ottawa and one of the leaders of the #RamRanchResistance (she requested that her last name be withheld to avoid being doxxed), it all started with counterprotesters going into the truckers’ Zello channels to get information about their organizing.

Out of frustration with police and local leaders' allowing the truckers and hangers on to trash the city and make life hell for ordinary Ottawans,

leftists in Canada started trolling Zello channels by blasting the song “Ram Ranch,” both as a play on the Dodge Ram insignia of many of the trucks downtown and as a subversion of the channel’s patriotism (the artist who recorded “Ram Ranch,” Grant MacDonald, is Canadian). “It’s a deeply conservative belief system infiltrating our city,” says Katarina. “And when we played this song to jam their communication, they’d get extremely angry because it’s an explicit and LGBTQ-friendly song.”

MacDonald, who lives in Toronto, told Rolling Stone he was inspired to write the song

in part by Rodin’s Thinker and in part by a Nashville radio station rejecting his LGBTQ-themed country songs. “It was to get back at the homophobia of Nashville. That was the whole foundation,” he says. [...]

MacDonald says he found out about the new life his song was taking on when his nephew texted to say people were playing it in Ottawa. “I kept saying, ‘Oh my God, I hope it’s not the truckers,'” he says. He has since seen streams of “Ram Ranch” on Spotify climb to the few hundred thousands. “I’m just elated, totally elated that my song could be used to stand up for science,” he says.

Bravo, sir, and thank you for your contribution to the culture. It appears to be achieving the goal of really pissing off the wingers. They may think they're being cutely obscene with "Way to go, Brandon," but that can't hold a candle to the raunchy ranch with all that ramming. [ Rolling Stone ]

We would tell you a lot more about the this Free Bert Convy stuff, but suddenly we are run over by an unvaccinated truck. 

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