Christmas Week: Winter Wonderland

A merry first day of winter to all y'all.

A quick reminder - Justin Trudeau is a lying sack of corrupt crap, a douchebag and a twit.


A case in point:

Justin Trudeau, who came into office vowing to set the gold standard for transparency and ethical behaviour, became Wednesday the first prime minister found to have violated federal conflict of interest rules.

More on that:

Andy's right. This is a pattern of behaviour on the part of a corrupt trust-fund baby who believes that he is entitled to everything and owes nothing to public he was ostensibly selected to serve:

Yeah, fat chance of that happening:

Opposition parties are demanding that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau repay taxpayers for all or part of the transportation and security costs for a Christmas vacation to the Aga Khan's private Bahamian island last year — which left taxpayers on the hook for more than $200,000.

Justin can first start by repaying the $10.5 million he gave to Omar Khadr and from his own trust-fund, too.




More on the most "transparent" government in the country and its capable leadership:

The number of times the phrase “Canadian values” has been uttered by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his ministers, his government spokespeople and ministry press releases in the more than two years since the Liberals were elected is a number so high that, even if it could be counted, most of us probably couldn’t wrap our head around the result. It’s too vast for the human mind to comprehend, like the number of miles between Earth and Neptune or one of those obscure really high mathematical terms, like undecillion. That’s a reliable sign that the term has become a cover-up — a form of rhetorical white noise meant to dull the senses. What it’s hiding is that the Liberals still can’t figure out what “Canadian values” actually are. That, on important questions — like whether Canada should, say, publicly condemn or not its most vital ally in the world over something like, oh, where that ally puts its own damn embassy in the territory of yet another vital and longstanding ally — the Liberal government abstains.

The Liberal government cranked the volume on its white-noise machine Thursday as it tried calling back to those unspecified Canadian values to justify its last-minute decision to sit out the vote at the United Nations meant to censure the United States. This, over Washington’s decision to finally make good on its promise, made by Congress 22 years ago, to move its embassy to Jerusalem. “Canada’s longstanding position is that the status of Jerusalem can be resolved only as part of a general settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute,” said Adam Austin, a spokesman for Global Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland. But the vote wasn’t about Canada’s position on the status of Jerusalem; it was about Canada’s position on whether the U.S. had a right to have its own position, which happens to align with Israel’s position, on the status of Jerusalem. The Liberal government couldn’t find any meaningful values to express on that.

A gaffe-prone bumbler with an agenda can offer only hollow platitudes, devoid of any meaning or application, that will placate masses as empty as he. From the outside, however,  Trudeau's government (not his Canada because this is not his country and he'll tell you so) appears weak, indecisive, irrational and antagonistic to both Israel and the US (though here one may surmise that the master bumbler can't afford to lose any more points on NAFTA nor can it upset the Islamists at large, hence the abstention) and stunningly incompetent. It is no surprise that Japan would rather go it alone than wait for Mr. Socks to make up his mind.  The Japanese are businessmen. They elect businessmen. They probably can't fathom thirty-nine percent of a population running on a sock platform. I don't think anyone in their right minds can. Today's abstention may seem a safe bet to the weakling running in the Papineau riding (and screw you, Papineau voters) but Trump's memory is long. If he is justly irritated with a pack of anti-semitic know-nothings from others countries who cannot abide a decision from a sovereign nation, he is sure as hell isn't going to forget someone who sat on the sidelines.




Oh, these things look bad:

Only days before he died, Toronto billionaire Barry Sherman was attempting to quash an investigation into a political fundraiser he held for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that allegedly ran afoul of lobbying rules.

**

A translator who accompanied Ukraine Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman on his visit to Canada in late October has been arrested by his country's state security service and accused of being a Russian spy.

(Merci)




More on yet another defection from North Korea:

A North Korean solider defected to South Korea on Thursday through the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas, prompting the two countries to fire warnings shots at each other, South Korea’s military said.

The defecting soldier made his way across the central part of the DMZ and appeared at a guard post in thick fog at around 8 a.m. The soldier is a low-ranking enlistee and carried an AK-47 rifle when crossing the border, according to the South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

South Korean soldiers spotted North Korean border guards searching for the defector at 9:24 a.m. and fired some 20 warning shots in response. Some 50 minutes later, the sound of multiple gunshots were heard from the North, the JCS said.

There were no casualties for the South Korean military and no bullets were found in southern parts of the cross-border region. As of Thursday afternoon, there was no indication of unusual North Korean troop movement, the military added.

“We have taken custody of the soldier defector safely,” a JCS official told reporters under the customary condition of anonymity. “Relevant agencies continue to conduct an investigation to figure out why and how he defected.”

Why ever would he want to leave?


Oh, yeah:

North Korea may have executed the official in charge of its nuclear test site facilities, in the second reported execution of a high-ranking party apparatchik in the space of a week.

Park In-young was the head of North Korea’s Bureau 131, a division of the ruling party’s Central Committee tasked with the supervision of military facilities such as the Punggye-ri underground nuclear test facility and the Sohae Satellite Launching Station.

Citing a defector, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reported that he may have been punished over delays to the sixth and most powerful nuclear test on September 3. It was reportedly originally planned for the spring but was postponed due to delays in the tunnel construction.

“It seems he took the blame as the prolonged mining of the nuclear facility pushed back the test date to September when it was initially set for spring,” said the defector.

But the paper also speculated that his fate may have been sealed by the collapse of a tunnel in October, which allegedly killed around 200 people, but has been officially denied by Pyongyang.

I'm sure it's nothing to worry about, China:

China signaled its economic priorities on Wednesday at the end of a meeting of top Communist Party economic leaders with a statement indicating that President Xi is fully in charge. Labeled “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialist Economy With Chinese Characteristics,” the statement called for trimming industrial overcapacity, controlling the supply of money and other moves that have been staples of China’s other recent declarations.

Barely mentioned: China’s surging debt. Despite downgrades this year by two international credit rating firms and warnings from institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the statement issued at the conclusion of the Central Economic Work Conference called for controlling borrowing by local governments, but it otherwise glossed over a vast borrowing splurge in recent years, driven in large part by Chinese companies.

“Prudent monetary policy should be kept neutral, the floodgates of monetary supply should be controlled, and credit and social financing should see reasonable growth,” the statement said.

The statement illustrates both Mr. Xi’s growing clout and what economists say is a subtle shift in how China may address its debt pile — a shift that suggests leaders may be willing to tolerate even more debt if it will help growth.

And now, old words in carols explained:

“THE CATTLE ARE LOWING, THE POOR BABY WAKES,” FROM “AWAY IN A MANGER.”

This is often misheard as “the cattle are lonely.” If you haven’t grown up in cattle country, you might not know this, but lowing is the deep, low sounds made by cattle. When a cow goes “moo,” it’s lowing.