Friday Post

Aaahhhhh, the week-end....



Kevin Vickers is a man who accepts a limited amount of nonsense:

Or none.

You decide.




The Liberals deliver their first deficit which they say proves that the former government left Canadians in debt:

The Liberals say the latest figures from the Finance Department — which show a small deficit in the last fiscal year — confirm that the Tories left the books in the red when they lost the election last fall.

However, the Conservatives place blame for the deficit squarely on the Liberals — continuing a war of words over the state of the government's finances.

The Finance Department said Friday there was a $2-billion deficit for fiscal 2015-16, based on preliminary estimates. The result comes before any year-end adjustments as well as a $3.7-billion commitment to benefits for veterans.

 

Yes, about that:

For months now, Tories have pressed the Liberal government to admit it inherited a surplus. Interim Tory Leader Rona Ambrose (link is external) urged Morneau to concede that "undeniable fact" Monday, days after the Finance Department released a report showing Ottawa ran a surplus of $7.5-billion over the first 11 months of the fiscal year.

Trudeau promised he would have THREE deficits and this is a promise he has not failed to deliver. In order for the budget to be balanced, the spend-happy Liberals will have raise taxes and inflate the dollar.

And let's not forget those gold reserves that were sold off.

But, hey! Let's just blame everything on the previous government while Trulander (the cheap b@$#@rd that he is) gives his spoiled wife an anniversary she won't forget!


Also: in case one missed it, former prime minister Stephen Harper left politics with little fanfare. No selfies for him. As Canadians slog into the mire of moral corruption and financial ruin, they may spare a thought for him as he kept the country afloat. Not a perfect man but not a blowhard whose dad was a rotten prime minister, either.




New Brunswick is set to deal its citizens a double whammy of legal stubbornness and economic collapse by appealing a court decision that limited alcohol importing and keeping its moratorium on fracking.

Good times, New Brunswick. Good times.




While Obama feigns concern over North Korea, investigators have linked the rogue regime to security breaches in Asian banks:

Security researchers have tied the recent spate of digital breaches on Asian banks to North Korea, in what they say appears to be the first known case of a nation using digital attacks for financial gain.

In three recent attacks on banks, researchers working for the digital security firm Symantec said, the thieves deployed a rare piece of code that had been seen in only two previous cases: the hacking attack at Sony Pictures in December 2014, and attacks on banks and media companies in South Korea in 2013. Government officials in the United States and South Korea have blamed those attacks on North Korea, though they have not provided independent verification.

On Thursday, the Symantec researchers said they had uncovered evidence linking an October attack at a bank in the Philippines with attacks on Tien Phong Bank in Vietnam in December and one in February on the central bank of Bangladesh that resulted in the theft of more than US$81 million.

“If you believe North Korea was behind those attacks, then the bank attacks were also the work of North Korea,” said Eric Chien, a security researcher at Symantec, who found that the identical code was used across all three attacks.

Researchers are conducting tests to see if brain-damaged patients will regain consciousness:

Researchers from Yale University In America discovered that measuring how much glucose the brain uses is a good indicator of how much damage has been done, and whether a patient will recover awareness within a year.

Currently there is no way of telling how long it will take for someone with brain damage to regain consciousness, and families are often forced to take the heartbreaking decision of switching off life support systems.

(Sidebar: let one hope that pulling the plug does not happen.)