From Little Rock to Big Rock

There are upstanding Conservatives, staunch Republicans, proud “Never Trumpers” or perhaps we should say; “Never Again, Trumpers” and they’re hurting.  

They lay their weary anti-woke heads on their pillows at night and dream of Nikki Haley being inaugurated as president on January 20th 2025.  

 Now, gosh, we're sorry to pop your right-wing patriotic bubble… but we're afraid that the Future Felon in Chief - Donny J. is the one who who’ll be representing Republicans on election day and likely raising his tiny right hand on Jan. 20, 2025 

 So, it is not without some tenderness and sympathy that I say to you…my conservative friends – “hey, partner… y’all might want to think of bustin’ a move to Canada”. 

To all our country club Republicans: our Bush Boys, our King Ronnie acolytes, and our McCain Mavericks, the past two seasons of this podcast, Yes We Canada, have not been about you, no, in fact, you’ve been excluded.  

So, to our  anti-MAGA Republicans… this one’s for you!  Your very own episode of:  Yes, We Canada… Reactionary Edition. 

COMMENTS QUESTIONS COMPLAINTS: 
matt.zimbel@gmail.com

Transcript

YES WE CANADA EP3 -S3   FROM LITTLE ROCK TO BIG ROCK 

Lisa:  This is the Yes We Canada Podcast the Progressives Guide to getting the fuck out. 

Lisa. This Episode:  From Little Rock… to Big Rock. 

 MZ:  Hey I’m Matt Zimbel in Montreal. 

There are upstanding Conservatives, staunch Republicans, proud “Never Trumpers” or perhaps I should say; “Never Again, Trumpers” and they’re hurting.  

 They lay their weary anti-woke heads on their pillows at night and dream of Nikki Haley being inaugurated as president on January 20th 2025.  

 Now, gosh, I’m sorry to pop your right-wing patriotic bubble… but I’m afraid that the Future Felon in Chief - Donny Jay is the one who who’ll be representing Republicans on election day and likely raising his right hand on Jan. 20, 2025 

 So, it is not without some tenderness and sympathy that I say to you…my conservative friends – “hey, partner… y’all might want to think of bustin’ a move to Canada”.

To all my country club Republicans, My Bush Boys, my King Ronnie acolytes, and my McCain Mavericks, the past two seasons of this podcast, Yes, We Canada, have not been about you, no, in fact, you’ve been excluded.  

 What’s our cut line – Lisa? 

Lisa:  The Progressives Guide to Getting the Fuck Out. 

 Right.  The Progressive’s guide.  But hang on, hold up a sec… progressives are kind people, folks who like to share and not exclude anyone.   So, my anti MAGA Republicans… this one’s for you!  Your very own episode of:  Yes, We Canada… Reactionary Edition. 

Pi: And cue Lisa, cut line in 3,2, 1, cue!

 (Lisa) This is the Yep We Canada Podcast, The Reactionary’s Guide to gettin’ du fuck out. 

 Hey, I’m still Matt Zimbel in Montreal. 

 Welcome conservatives, right wingers, red necks, populists and an especially big welcome to all you crazy fucks who voted for both Obama and Trump.  Ya swingers…what were ya thinkin’? 

 If you’re conservative and thinking of bustin’ a move to Canada there’s really only one place for you. I mean you’re welcome anywhere, we don’t like, have a Brooklyn in Canada, but the natural place for you, really?  That’s Alberta.  It’s like our very own Lone Star State. 

 If what you crave is that flawed Republican um, logic – trickledown economics, institutional racism, vaguely disguised anti-immigrant dog whistles, anti-gay-anti trans family values, the bracing smell of oil refining in the morning, well that’s all widely available in Alberta. 

 Today on the pod we’re going to compare your red state of Arkansas with our blue province of Alberta – oh right, I get it, that’s confusing …you see …up here in Canadastan, red is the colour of the liberal, the pinko commie, the radical left as you call us and blue is the colour of conservatism. Your Red States and our Blue provinces are brothers and sisters in arms.  And right now, we got five Blue Provinces and 3 Red Provinces and 2 Orange Provinces.  What? Oh, yeah, the orange ones, they’re kinda, sorta, socialistical.

 Arkansas Red and Alberta Blue…Both have women leaders. The one who talks like this:

 That’s Governor Sarah Huckabee Saunders and well, she’s a Republican from Arkansas where the state cut line is Regnat Populus -which, as you know, is Latin for:  The People Rule. Oh man hit me with some sound design!

Mmmmm, delicious 

 And the one who talks like this:

 That’s Danielle Smith Premier and leader of the United Conservative Party of Alberta, where the cut line is also in Latin, man those Latins are killing the cut line business!  Alberta’s is Fortis et Liber – strong and free. 

And a smattering of engineer’s choice sound design please! 

Stirrrrrrring! 

 Alberta …661,000 square kilometers, 4 million citizens, no sales tax, no payroll tax and no health care premium… strong and free… yeah baby!  Alberta… home of Canada’s Oil Patch, a world leading producer of beef and bitumen. 

 Arkansas has a Little Rock, but Alberta has a Big Rock. Not braggin’ just statin’. 

 You could not find a finer example of Provincial Corporate Rock Yeaheyeahyeahyeah. 

 I betta ya the Arkansas theme will be a bit more rootsy…a bit more corporate hillbilly. Shall we?

 Yeeeeehaw!

 Arkansas is about a sixth the size of Alberta in land mass and it’s 3 million odd citizens are ruled by Governor Sarah Huckabee Saunders … now you may remember Sarah standing at a podium every day at the White House as Press Secretary for the Lair in Chief, Donald J. Trump.    I want you to bookmark the word podium because in a second I’m going to circle back and tell you a story about why Sarah’s a gal who loves a good podium. 

 Is Sarah coming back to you now?  No?  Hmmmm.  Perhaps you remember her dad, Mike Huckabee… started out as a southern Baptist preacher ended up as a governor of Arkansas and then ran for president a couple times?  He also wrote the book, “The Kids Guide to Fighting Socialism” which admittedly is no Green Eggs and Ham but it sold much better than Huckabee’s sequel; The Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change. 

 Um, you know we can’t make this shit up.

Now I’m sure that if Sarah, leader of the Arkansans and Danielle, leader of the Albertans bumped into each other at the Rotary Club or in Tucker Carlson’s green room, they’d be besties in no time. They both truck a kind of angry disposition towards the media and the woke left. 

 They both spew a kind of just below the surface, suppressed rage, perhaps born of a societal expectation that as women and in Sarah’s case a mother of three, they might actually support kind and compassionate political policy.

 Y’all on the radical left demand more from yer women leaders.   That’s not right.  …thought y’all considered women equals. Hold my beer. 

Well, no, women are not equals. They’re better and yes, we on the left expect them to act better than men who have for millennia started wholly unnecessary wars…because for some reason men just have to keep putting their dicks on the table. 

 Hold my Chablis.

 The reality is these two, Sarah and Danielle, are both gals who are slightly to the right of Atilla the Honey… but they like to imagine themselves as “compassionate conservatives”. 

 Danielle’s dad was an oil patch consultant and when she was growing up, the family lived in subsidized public housing. Sarah also lived in subsidized public housing… her father was Governor Mike Huckabee and Sarah lived at the Arkansas governor’s mansion.

 Sarah has been a Republican all her life. But Danielle was not always a capital C conservative. Her political roots are in a fringe party called, The Wild Rose Party.  Sounds gay, huh?  Nope, it’s just the opposite. 

 A Wild Rose is the official flower of the Province and of the Wildrose party. Started in 2008, they were to the right of the governing Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta who had been in power, uninterrupted, for 43 years – one of the longest one party runs in the world

Wildrose was a gathering of anti-federalist, mostly rural, libertarians whose cut line could have easily been: “Alberta First, Fuck the Feds”.

They harboured separatist sentiments for Western Canada and started talking about something they called Wexit. Which wecalled Elmer Fudd trying to say “exit”.  You silly wabbit!

In 2012 the Wildrose party won 14 seats in the provincial legislature and Danielle Smith became the leader of her majesty’s loyal opposition! And this is where it gets super interesting two years after being elected Danielle got an offer to join the governing Progressive Conservatives, the very party she was charged with opposing and she went from leader of her webel wexit party Wild Rose party to member of the government.  (Laughing) She crossed the floor, took a pay cut, didn’t get a cabinet post – didn’t even get a better parking spot at the legislature! 

 To put that in American terms as I know you guys love me to do - that be like Ted Cruz leaving the Republican Party in the Senate and accepting a back bencher position in the democratic caucus in the House of Representatives… in exchange for, um, nothing. 

 Well, as you can imagine Smith’s loyalty, dignity and trustworthiness was severely questioned after her dramatic floor crossing.  She became a political pariah and when she ran as a Progressive Conservative in her former riding, she got the crap beat out of her. Ouch.  Silly wabbit. 

 She returned to her job as a talk show host, lobbyist, right wing gadfly and part time traitor.  So, the fact that she now leads the former Progressive Conservative Party, (which has now been rebranded as the United Conservative Party) and she’s currently serving as the premier of a province of 4 million souls, is one of the greatest political reversals in the history of all democratic civilisation.

 My Never Trumper Republicans, after you’ve moved to Alberta and see Danielle Smith speak you will think to yourself, “man, this woman is whip smart, angry as hell and a media force to be reckoned with… she’s my kinda redneck!”  But hold the phone…  sure, she’s big bitumen but she’s also pro-choice and pro sex worker!  

What?  

 Yeah, and you’ll be comforted to know that she’s also a bit wacked on the science front…  she’s anti vax, questions Alberta’s role in climate change, and in 2003, she wrote an opinion piece in the paper that claimed that smoking cigarettes can actually have health benefits…hmmmm what would that be Dan, walking outside the office to have a butt on your break?  

 Better check my fit bit. Who knew?

 So, Sarah and Danielle would no doubt have a few cross words on abortion policy and maybe family values but these two ladies are deeply united in their hatred for the radical left and those girly boy deficits that democrats and liberals seem to love. 

 Which is why we need to talk about Governor Huckabee the 2nd, and Sarah’s love of a good podium.  After lying to the media on a daily basis for two years as press secretary during the Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice Presidency, Sarah grew tired of those big, bulky, manly podiums in the White House briefing room. And I mean, let’s face it they are a bit of a fashion buzz kill. Behind that massive podium no one can see the fashion statement while listening to the lyin’ legislative statement. Those manly podiums had to go – so when she followed in daddy’s footsteps and became the Governor of Arkansas, she sprang into action. She rose to deliver her remarks. 

 One day while throwing down yet another captivating speech on why Arkansas was ranked 45th in education in the US… she asked herself…

 Lisa: “Why… am I even wearing pants?  No one sees nuthin’ down there”. 

 And since there is no …‘pants optional’ …dress code for governors of Arkansas, Sarah decided the good lord wanted her to go forth and commission… a lady lectern. And commission she did. Gosh darn, just by coincidence one of her best friends owned an event company and designed and built her a lady lectern at a cost to the good citizens of Arkansas of nineteen thousand ninety-two dollars and twenty-five cents… American… case included, batteries extra…

 The poor taxpayers of Arkansas, the ones with the second lowest per capita household income in all of America, were now the proud owners of a stunning nineteen thousand, ninety-two dollar and twenty-five cent…podium.

British: To be clear, I do think some definition is in order here, you see, actually, a podium is an object you stand on, and a lectern is an object you stand behind. Pip Pip. Cheerio. 

 Yer damn right, and I stand behind a gender specific lectern.

 I am, pro-life, pro-gun and pro lady lectern. Hold my beer. 

Now, by appointment to her majesty the late queen, our firm has been building lady lecterns for close to a century. It’s absolutely crucial that the design and construction of the lady lectern be autonomically exact – the ‘deck’ must extend from mid vulva, outward, on a bevelled plane inclined at no more than 38 degrees.  What is technically known as the document lip, must be no less than 3 centimeters, allowing lady speakers a secure place for lipstick, mascara, and tampons.  Pip Pip 

 Well, this will come as no surprise to you political pundits but Lectern Gate was born and of course Sarah blamed ‘the media and the radical left”. 

But “poof” all of a sudden, the good people of Arkansas no longer owned a beautiful lady lectern.

 Because for some reason, after the Arkansas based lawyer and blogger Matt Campbell made a few access to information requests, and the press started howling about the expense, the Republican Party of Arkansas decided to buy decided to reimburse the government for the podium expense for nineteen thousand two hundred dollars and twenty five cents. Whoops. 

 Get me forensic accounting on line three, would ya?

 But Governor Huckabee the 2nd has no time for these petty complaints about her podium, for she has important matters of state to spew from her lady lectern. 

 In the late summer of 2023, as Sarah’s three young children, Scarlett, George and Huck slept peacefully in the governor’s mansion, the Governor was in her study putting the finishing touches on her newest legislation:  Bill HB 1410 The Youth Hiring Act. 

 Sounds terrific doesn’t it?  – productive, positive, a GDP driver to make the greatest nation on earth even greater by employing children under 16 without requiring the children to get a permit from the department of labor or from their parents! 

 The one-page youth work permit that was de rigueur until Sarah became governor, was just more pesky red tape, legislated by the radical left.  Now, upstanding American corporations in Arkansas could hire 14 year-olds without their parents even knowing about it!

 But as we all know, in America… profit first… and upstanding American corporations like Packers Sanitation Services were fined 1.5 million dollars, the maximum allowed, by the federal department of labor for employing more than 102 children in dangerous meat packing plants in states that also included Sarah’s Arkansas. 

 Then, because the education system in Arkansas was rated 45th   Sarah decided to bust a truly Democrat move – she created a new education policy called LEARNS and gave her teachers a raise, a big one. Starting salaries for teacher in Arkansas went from 36,000 dollars to 50,000!

 But, simultaneously she introduced legislation that makes it easier to fire teachers and a policy  called the; “Education Freedom Account Voucher Program” to privatize education, divert money from public schools and make education into a for profit enterprise – just the type of Republican education hocus pokus shit we always hear about from the right. Help the rich with a handout and tell the poor to pull up their goddamn socks.

 Well, damn, LEARNS sounds like an interesting bill and I’d like to read it… cept, cept, I can’t read. Cuz I was educated in Ark-kansas. Hold my tears. 

When Republicans legislate their backward, anti-humanist, regressive laws like the LEARNS act that invariably produce results that make life harder for the poor and working classes, they always say the same thing: “yep, well, elections have consequences”.  Which is the right-wing equivalent of:  nanny, nanny, boo boo. 

Just like when Republicans talk incessantly about too much government red tape and regulation. 

 Except of course when it comes to restricting reproductive rights and banning sex education, then the more regulation the better…  bring it on! Which is why Arkansas has the 3rd highest teen pregnancy rate in the United States. 

 Meanwhile back in the north - Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is in a rage, mad at the Federal government, mad at Prime Minister Trudeau and mad at his girly boy socks. She wants drill baby drill she wants no carbon tax for Albertans and now she wants to pull Alberta out of the Federal Canada Pension Plan and she wants more than half the money that is currently in the plan even though Alberta makes up only 11% of the national population.  That is not girl math.  That is bully math.

Oh yeah, and like conservatives everywhere, Premier Danielle Smith wants less red tape and regulation, which is perhaps why an unlicensed central kitchen run by a Texan daycare company that provides lunches for daycares in Calgary -served up a meatloaf in August with a bad e-coli infection that made more than 350 people sick.  39 of whom were hospitalized, some in very critical condition with hemolytic uremic syndrome, which can affect the kidneys for life. 

 Lisa:  What can I get ya?

 MZ: oh thanks, I’ll have the meatloaf.

 Lisa: And how do you like your meatloaf? 

 MZ:  Regulated.

 Despite the occasional bout of hemolytic uremic syndrome, life in Alberta is good for the anti- woke. 

 In fact, Alberta is the home of the founding grandmother of the Trucker Convoy Tamara Lich. And good news y’all… Tamara finally made bail! 

 And some time in 2024 we expect a verdict in her trial on charges of mischief, intimidation and counselling others to break the law during the 2022 Trucker Convoy aka the Bouncy Castle Revolution. Now since our pod today is specifically hand crafted for my American Never Again Trumpers, I need to tell you that during the Trucker Convoy there were many, many Canadian truckers who were flying Trump flags off their cabs. Yep, they were endorsing a candidate who was not even running for office in Canada. 

 What?  You can’t vote from Trump in Canadastan?  See, god damn, told you the election was rigged. Hold my beer. 

 Ok guys during the show I’ve been speaking to the deep state, as us woke leftists are wont to do. And there’s been a change:

 We know how you Republicans hate open borders…so we are rescinding the open invitation to  country club Republicans and Never Again Trumpers that we gave at the top of the show to immigrate to Canada.

 You’re welcome to join us up here in Canadastan, but only on an exchange basis, because frankly we don’t need any additional right-wing voters in our country.

 So, this is how it’s going to roll for every one of you Never Again Trumpers who immigrates to Canada you have to convince one Canadian Convoy Trucker to move to Arkansas.  Think of it like a prisoner swap… straight up - 1 for 1. We’ll take a Romney; you get a looney.  

 Good to go?

Lisa:  Thanks for listening to Yes, We Canada. On the pod today, sound design and mix by Pi Salin-Cutler, Doug Wilde and Matt Zimbel wrote our theme which is performed by Manteca.  My name is Lisa Evans and I’m your announcer.  

 We’re always grateful when you hit like and subscribe!  

 Until next time…