For a Friday

On days like today, I envy that dog.

Like I said, the party of failure:

Make no mistake, the Liberals will use the trade war with Donald Trump as a campaign issue. Who needs to get an actual deal when you can just wrap yourself in the flag and fight Trump.

Along the way, anyone that doesn’t bow to Trudeau will be branded as a traitor and not defending Canada. Which is ridiculous.

The Conservatives have been part of the push to secure a new NAFTA, as have the NDP. MPs from all the parties have traveled to Washington to lobby lawmakers there to get behind a deal that is good for all.

Conservative MP Erin O’Toole told me last week that his party even offered to Team Trudeau to go on American TV to sell Canada’s message on tariffs. O’Toole said there were even specific offers to put up Conservative MPs on conservative outlets like Fox News to make Canada’s point.

The Liberals were not interested.

God forbid someone should stabilise the situation. Why, there would be nothing for these emotional retards to run on!




Definitely not this issue:

Toronto has been filling up with the overflow of refugee claimants from Montreal, where the situation has already passed the crisis point. Unable to deal with the continuing flood crossing the border from the U.S., Quebec closed off its shelter system to new refugee claimants in April. While Ottawa fiddled with a “triage” plan to begin diverting claimants elsewhere, hundreds headed off to Toronto, which is no better prepared than Montreal to handle them all. As of May, the shelter system was at 96 per cent capacity. More than 3,000 claimants are being housed, with more arriving every day. Some 800 have been stuffed into dormitories at two colleges, which have to be emptied by August for use by students.

Not unlike these damn reindeer!:

Norwegian Agriculture Minister Jon Georg Dale on Wednesday said he would take measures to cull Swedish reindeer crossing the border as Sweden has been hesitant to ratify an agreement signed almost a decade ago. Until Sweden does so, grazing in the Nordic hinterland is governed by the Lapp Codicil from 1751, which gives rights for herders from Sweden, but also Norway, to largely ignore the border.

It's just a failed payment scheme:

A new federal report confirms the much-maligned Phoenix pay system has already cost taxpayers upwards of $1.1 billion and could cost up to $2.5 billion more to fix over the next five years, but the minister responsible is promising that it won’t take that long.

Quelle surprise:

This week, while attending the World Gas Conference in Washington, D.C., federal Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr told Reuters construction could not begin until the federal government officially owns Trans Mountain. That wouldn’t happen until “mid to late summer” when Kinder Morgan’s shareholders vote whether to accept Ottawa’s offer or not.

“We think that construction and staying on schedule is important,” Carr admitted. “But that will be up to Kinder Morgan as long as they are the owner of the pipeline.”

 
If the US leaves the Korean Peninsula without a regime change in North Korea, it will be like running back to Busan all over again:

The United States formally ended seven decades of military presence in South Korea's capital Friday with a ceremony to mark the opening of a new headquarters farther from North Korean artillery range.

The command's move to Camp Humphreys, about 70 kilometres (45 miles) south of Seoul, comes amid a fledgling detente on the Korean Peninsula, though the relocation was planned long before that. Most troops have already transferred to the new location, and the U.S. says the remaining ones will move by the end of this year.

The U.S. military had been headquartered in Seoul's central Yongsan neighbourhood since American troops first arrived at the end of World War II. The Yongsan Garrison was a symbol of the U.S.-South Korea alliance but its occupation of prime real estate was also a long-running source of friction.

Kim Jong-Un had his half-brother murdered. Trump failed to point that out in Singapore:

Two Southeast Asian women on trial for killing the estranged half brother of North Korea’s leader are trained assassins who used “criminal force” to rub the toxic VX nerve agent on Kim Jong Nam’s eyes and face, prosecutors said in their closing arguments Thursday.

The women’s claim that they were duped by North Korean agents into thinking they were playing a harmless prank for a hidden camera show was an “ingenious attempt … to cover up their sinister plot in order to obscure the eyes of the public and the court,” prosecutor Wan Shaharuddin Wan Ladin told the court.

Indonesia’s Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong of Vietnam, who face the death penalty if convicted, have pleaded not guilty to murdering Kim in a crowded airport terminal in Kuala Lumpur on Feb. 13, 2017. Kim died within two hours. The women are the only suspects in custody, although prosecutors say they colluded with four North Korean suspects who fled the country on the day of the assassination.

South Korea will tighten its asylum laws just as an influx of Yemeni migrants come into the country:

South Korea will tighten laws governing the arrival of refugees, the Justice Ministry said on Friday, after a rapid rise in the number of Yemeni asylum seekers sparked anti-refugee sentiment in the racially homogeneous country.

More than 552 people from Yemen arrived on the southern resort island of Jeju between January and May, more than the 430 Yemenis who had ever applied for refugee status in South Korea, the ministry said.

The country has granted refugee status to just over 800 people since 1994. The sudden surge in Yemeni arrivals has fueled concern that many could be seeking economic advantage rather than protection and that they could lead to an increase in crime and other social problems.

More than 540,000 South Koreans have signed an online petition to the presidential Blue House in the past two weeks, asking the government to abolish or amend no-visa entries and the granting of refugee status to applicants.

The Justice Ministry said it will revise the Refugee Act to prevent abuses.

And now, something that renews one's faith in humanity:

Bystanders leapt into action to rescue a blind man who accidentally fell onto TTC subway tracks, a witness said Friday.

Julie Caniglia said in an interview that a man on her eastbound train jumped down to the tracks Thursday afternoon and crossed over to the westbound platform to help the man.

“You just don’t know if there’s another train coming. He didn’t even think about it,” said Canigila, adding the man had “guts.”