For a Monday

Lots to talk about ...



With poll numbers so low that she could be an Antarctic heat wave, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has conceded defeat before the June 7th provincial election but not before issuing one last bit of spite:

After months of polls showing lacklustre voter support for the Ontario Liberals, the leader of the party said she was “sorry, not sorry” for what the Grits have done in the province. But the numbers suggest the race is coming down to the Tories or the NDP, so Wynne took matters into her own hands.

“On June 7th, voters will elect a new government. I don’t know who voters will choose but I am pretty sure that it won’t be me. After Thursday, I will no longer be Ontario’s premier. And I’m OK with that,” Wynne said Saturday. 

Clearly emotional with her voice breaking at times, the Liberal leader admitted it was a “hard thing to do.” After all, the provincial election was only five days away. However, she insisted it was the best move for her party to make the case for supporting local Liberal candidates.

“The more Liberal MPPs we send to Queen’s Park on June 7th, the less likely it becomes that either Doug Ford or the NDP will be able to form a majority government,” Wynne told reporters. “By voting Liberal, you can keep the next government, Conservative or NDP, from acting too extreme — one way or the other.”

No one likes a sore loser, Kathy.




Speaking of sore losers:

Trade frictions between the United States and Canada are a "family quarrel," President Donald Trump's economic adviser said on Sunday, brushing aside concerns expressed by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as an overreaction.

The Trump administration said on Thursday it was moving ahead with tariffs on aluminum and steel imports from Canada, Mexico and the European Union, ending a two-month exemption and potentially setting the stage for a trade war with some of America's top allies.

Trudeau responded on Thursday by calling the tariffs an affront to the longstanding security partnership between Canada and the United States, and Canada announced retaliatory steps.

Trudeau, in an interview aired on Sunday by NBC's "Meet the Press", said it was "insulting" to hear the U.S. claim that Canadian steel and aluminum posed a national security threat.

(Sidebar: Insulting? Really? A country defending its interests is insulting? Well, if you say so. you ought to know insulting, Hair-Boy.)

"I think he's overreacting," White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said of Trudeau on the "Fox News Sunday" program.

Kudlow said steel and aluminum tariffs on U.S. allies "may go on for a while" or "they may not," because the matter is subject to negotiation.

But melodrama is what Justin does best. He doesn't even need a script for it.


Also:

Not only were Canadian officials scrambling to limit problems for travellers, they were simply trying to grasp what was going on when the Trump administration issued an executive order last year banning people from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States.

Newly released internal notes from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reveal Canadian government officials fired off a list of 16 detailed questions with the aim of figuring out the order's impact on everything from refugee claims to biometric tracking.

The records were recently released to The Canadian Press in response to a February 2017 request under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, asking for materials used to brief then-homeland secretary John Kelly in advance of phone calls with Canadian Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale.

Some 400,000 people and more than $2 billion worth of goods and services cross the Canada-U.S. border every day.

The order — officially the Executive Order on Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States — applied to people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. As soon as it was signed on Jan. 27, 2017, confusion erupted about who was allowed into the U.S., as did persistent headaches for some travellers from Canada.

The Nexus trusted-traveller cards of about 200 Canadian permanent residents were suddenly cancelled. There were several reports of minorities being turned away at the U.S. border. And a surge of would-be refugees coming north through remote border points continues to this day.

A week after the executive order, Goodale told the House of Commons the Liberal government was trying to ensure Canadian dual-nationals could still use their Nexus cards at the border.

Back to the election in Ontario ...

If Andrea Horwath wakes up as Premier of Ontario on June 8, she may have a shadowy foreign-funded group out of Vancouver to thank for her win.

Leadnow was set up in British Columbia in 2011 by a pair of young Canadians with the full support of a Tides Foundation backed group that sought to organize for left-wing causes.

In the 2015 federal election, Leadnow targeted 29 ridings held by Conservatives and took credit for dumping the Tories from 25 of them.

Now this group, which runs shadow campaigns to get their prefered candidate elected, is working the Ontario election.

Leadnow is working to make sure Doug Ford isn’t elected Premier with their #NeverFord campaign. They are even targeting Ford in his own riding of Etobicoke North to block his local win.

The Liberals and the NDP do not differ here. Both are willing to take foreign money, even if the country's economy were to suffer, in order to win.


(Merci)


Also:

But now, it has been revealed that Ontario NDP candidate Joel Harden – who attacked people who disagree with Andrea Horwath’s ‘sanctuary province’ scheme – said he looked to socialist Venezuela “For inspiration.”

The Ontario PC Party released an excerpt of a doctoral thesis by Harden, in which he said this about Venezuela:

“For inspiration, then, this thesis ends by reviewing the ‘socialism of the twenty-first century’ currently espoused by Venezuelan radicals. Their Bolivarian revolution, it is argued, despite its contradictions, suggest clues for global radicals elsewhere.”

So, we have a candidate from the socialist NDP seeking power in Ontario while taking his inspiration from a brutal socialist regime.

This Venezuela:

Kenyerber Aquino Merchán was 17 months old when he starved to death.

His father left before dawn to bring him home from the hospital morgue. He carried Kenyerber’s skeletal frame into the kitchen and handed it to a mortuary worker who makes house calls for Venezuelan families with no money for funerals.

Kenyerber’s spine and rib cage protruded as the embalming chemicals were injected. Aunts shooed away curious young cousins, mourners arrived with wildflowers from the hills, and relatives cut out a pair of cardboard wings from one of the empty white ration boxes that families increasingly depend on amid the food shortages and soaring food prices throttling the nation. They gently placed the tiny wings on top of Kenyerber’s coffin to help his soul reach heaven — a tradition when a baby dies in Venezuela.

When Kenyerber’s body was finally ready for viewing, his father, Carlos Aquino, a 37-year-old construction worker, began to weep uncontrollably. “How can this be?” he cried, hugging the coffin and speaking softly, as if to comfort his son in death. “Your papá will never see you again.”

It's just money:

In a recent exchange during Question Period, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was again asked about a Fraser Institute analysis of how federal tax policy changes have increased the amount of income tax paid by the vast majority of middle-class families in Canada. The prime minister did not refute our findings about a growing income tax bill, but instead noted that the analysis did not account for government transfers to families.

This is a worrying response because it conflates taxes and transfers — which are not the same thing — and completely misses the point that most middle-class families are paying more in income taxes despite what his government promised.

For the Trudeau government, the promise to cut taxes for middle-class families featured prominently in the 2015 election campaign, and since coming to power, the prime minister and his top government officials — including the finance minister — have repeatedly claimed that the government fulfilled this commitment. As just one example, this government’s first budget claimed “the government cut taxes for middle class Canadians everywhere.”

When testing this claim, however, we found it was not true for the vast majority of middle-class families.

Here’s why. The claim rests on the reduction of the second-lowest personal income tax rate from 22 per cent to 20.5 per cent. But for most middle-class families, other changes to the personal income tax system made by the government more than wiped out the gain from this tax rate cut. (Keep in mind that this tax rate cut only applies to individual incomes over roughly $46,000.)

By eliminating a number of tax credits (provisions in the tax code that reduce a person’s income taxes, if they qualify) Ottawa increased income taxes for Canadians who previously claimed such credits. Specifically, the government eliminated the income-splitting tax credit for couples with young children, the children’s fitness tax credit, the public transit tax credit, the education tax credit and the textbook tax credit.

When all the income tax changes are considered, 81 per cent of middle-class families pay more in personal income taxes — $840 more, on average — due to the government’s tax changes.

**

He repeatedly said he was being ‘straight and honest’ with Canadians, then turned around and betrayed the country. Instead of three ‘modest’ deficits, we have huge deficits as far as the eye can see.

**

According to the National Observer, both Kinder Morgan Canada president Ian Anderson and Trans Mountain Expansion vice president David Safari are going to be getting $1.5 million bonuses.

The announcement comes after Justin Trudeau announced that he would spend $4.5 billion of Canadian taxpayer dollars to nationalize the Trans Mountain pipeline.

Ahmed Hussen is such a g-d- liar:

Since the border crisis began, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have been happy to let tens of thousands of people pour across the border unchecked. That might be changing.

At least anyone that wants sanity in our immigration policy should hope so.

Less than a week after admitting that crossing at Roxham Road in Quebec is illegal, Justin Trudeau’s immigration minister, Ahmed Hussen has said he wants to think about making the safe third country agreement apply to the whole border.

When the Conservatives have proposed such an idea the Liberals have mocked it.

In fact both Hussen and Ralph Goodale have said it is an unworkable idea. They have mocked Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel for proposing it.

He didn't stab the priest. The priest's chest just got in the way of his knife:

The Muslim man sexually harassed a female Christian pilgrim. The Priest rushed the female into the Churchyard with her group and asked the Muslim to stop harassing the lady. In response, the Muslim stabbed the Priest and injured him badly.

 
(Paws up)




How "moderate" could this guy be? :

All of North Korea's three top military officials are believed to have been replaced, an intelligence source said Sunday, in a move that could be aimed at taming the military ahead of a denuclearization deal with the U.S.

No Kwang-chol, first vice minister of the Ministry of People's Armed Forces, replaced Pak Yong-sik as defense chief, while Ri Myong-su, chief of the KPA's general staff, was replaced by his deputy, Ri Yong-gil, according to the source.

(Sidebar: read - executed.)

These changes are in addition to Army Gen. Kim Su-gil's replacement of Kim Jong-gak as director of the General Political Bureau of the Korean People's Army. The replacement was confirmed in a North Korean state media report last month.

Earlier in the day, a Japanese newspaper carried a similar report.

"The North appears to have brought in new figures amid the changes in inter-Korean relations and the situation on the Korean Peninsula as the previous officials lacked flexibility in thinking," the source said. "In particular, No Kwang-chol has been classified as a moderate person."

Kim Jong-Un just doesn't replace people and usher them into retirement unless one means killing them off.


Also - but I thought that peace with North Korea was imminent:

Ahn Cheol-soo, a Seoul mayoral candidate, said Monday that the United States should maintain its troops in South Korea "for a considerable period of time" even if a peace treaty to end the Korean War is signed.

(Kamsahamnida)




And now, dogs prove once more how selfless they really are:

Authorities in Washington state say a hiker was killed in a fall from a cliff near Snoqualmie Pass — and the hiker’s companion avoided a similar fate thanks to a dog.

King County sheriff’s Sgt. Ryan Abbott says the victim’s companion heard him go over the 200-foot (61-meter) cliff Sunday in the Pratt Lake area.

When he went to investigate, the companion’s dog — a Husky — pulled him back before he went over the edge as well.

Abbott says the companion told authorities that the dog was the only reason he didn’t fall.