Mid-Week Post

Justin simply isn't a kingmaker.

Case in point:

The Conservatives easily hung onto a long-time Tory fiefdom Monday, scoring a convincing victory in a federal byelection held in eastern Ontario.

With all polls reporting in Leeds-Grenville-Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, Conservative candidate Michael Barrett, a municipal councillor, had racked up 57.8 per cent of the vote.

Liberal contender Mary Jean McFall was second with 35.8 per cent, while the NDP trailed with with three per cent — just 24 votes ahead of the Greens.

This time will be no different:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has set Feb. 25 as the date for byelections in three vacant ridings — including the British Columbia riding where NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is hoping to win a seat in the House of Commons.

Trudeau has called the byelections for Burnaby South, the Ontario riding of York-Simcoe and Montreal’s Outremont.

The byelections will be a crucial test for New Democrats, who’ve been struggling to find their footing since their party was relegated to a distant third in the 2015 general election.

But the race in Outremont, left vacant after former NDP leader Tom Mulcair resigned, will also be seen as a test of whether the NDP can hang on what’s left of the orange wave that swept Quebec in 2011.

The Conservatives are expected to easily keep York-Simcoe, left vacant by the resignation of long-time Tory MP Peter Van Loan.

Trudeau has not called a byelection in another B.C. riding, Nanaimo-Ladysmith, vacated last week by New Democrat MP Sheila Malcolmson, who is seeking a seat in the provincial legislature.

The NDP don't even have a chance so there is little point on commenting on its situation. Justin is simply hoping that people will be stupid enough to vote Liberal.

One will see.


Also (RE: kingmaker, Justin, is not):

In their 1999 paper, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, David Dunning and Justin Kruger put data to what has been known by philosophers since Socrates, who supposedly said something along the lines of “the only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.” Charles Darwin followed that up in 1871 with “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

Put simply, incompetent people think they know more than they really do, and they tend to be more boastful about it.

It's like the popular press want Maxime Bernier to come out swinging:

One of the first candidates out of the gate for Maxime Bernier's new party calls the idea of gender fluidity "the greatest and most insidious assault against our children that this nation has ever seen" and says she has dedicated her life to fighting it.

A devout Christian, ardent abortion foe and former talk show host, Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson might seem like a surprising choice for a party associated with libertarian principles. But on Monday, the People's Party of Canada tweeted that Thompson had been chosen to run under its banner in the upcoming Burnaby-South byelection, where she'll try to beat NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh to a seat in the House of Commons. The official byelection call is expected any day now.

The popular press has 595 million reasons why it would attack someone who is just saying what normal people think.

Keep it up, press. Maybe one day these little people might vote to defund you.




The problem with giving special-interest groups what they want is that they will never be happy:

Dozens of pipeline protesters delayed an appearance by the prime minister in Ottawa on Tuesday afternoon, drumming and chanting in a government building where Justin Trudeau was set to speak.

Police kept the prime minister and Indigenous Services Minister Jane Philpott, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett and Environment Minister Catherine McKenna out of a Sussex Drive building in Ottawa where Trudeau was to address a forum bringing together federal officials and representatives from self-governing First Nations that have modern treaties with the Crown.

Where's the love?



Justin has no clout, influence or even good will. Anything he does either benefits him financially or - as he hopes - politically:

Nearly halfway through Canada’s 12-month mission in Mali, questions and disappointment are emerging over what some experts see as the Trudeau government’s lack of interest in the country — and peacekeeping in general. ...

The United Nations is reporting limited signs of progress there over the past three months, as slight improvements in the political and humanitarian situation have been marred by a dramatic spike in violence.

That includes a marked increase in the number of improvised explosive devices targeting peacekeepers and officials as well as several co-ordinated attacks on UN bases and personnel.

Yet several experts say they were hoping the peacekeeping mission would serve as a way for the Trudeau government to deepen its engagement in the UN, Mali and the Sahel region, none of which has happened.

(Sidebar: he wants that seat in the UN and he won't get it.)

**

Canada quietly hosted high-level officials from North Korea back in the fall — a low-profile effort to convince the police state to respect human rights and abandon its quest for a nuclear arsenal.

What would Canada do if Kim Jong-Un - whose boss, China, Justin is indebted to - should refuse to denuclearise? Nothing?

Look for Canadian companies associated with the Liberals to set up shop in North Korea.


Also - this must burn:

In India for an international summit, former Canadian leader Stephen Harper dropped in on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday for a visit.

Harper gave Modi a copy of his new book, the two strolled around some ceremonial gardens and then discussed “co-operation among democracies,” according to the office of the Indian prime minister.

The warm visit between the two comes only 10 months after a disastrous India visit by the sitting Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau.

(source)

Greedy unions caused the shutdowns of once viable industries and are loathe to let go of their benefits:

Workers at General Motors Co assembly plant in Oshawa, Ontario staged a sit-down protest that interrupted production for about two hours on Wednesday morning, a union spokeswoman said, following a similar protest late on Tuesday. 

The action came after Unifor, the union representing the autoworkers, failed to win GM’s support for its proposals to save the plant. Unifor, which has vowed to block GM’s plan to close Oshawa by the end of 2019, met with GM officials in Detroit on Tuesday. 

**

Unifor national president Jerry Dias says he is appalled with the silence of the federal and provincial governments on the impending closure of the General Motors assembly plant in Oshawa at the end of this year.

"Our governments need to stand up and fight. I'm frankly disgusted by the silence of our governments," Dias told reporters in Windsor, Ont. on Tuesday.

I'm disgusted with you, Jerry.

How many times has the government bailed out GM with taxpayer money? 

A fine example of pettiness:

 

The bipartisan package backed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had initially drawn widespread support ahead of Tuesday's vote. It included measures supporting Israel and Jordan and slapping sanctions on Syrians involved in war crimes at a time of growing unease in Congress over the Trump administration's shifts in the region. But Democrats are split over the addition of Republican Sen. Marco Rubio's "Combatting BDS Act," which seeks to counter the global Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement against Israel over its treatment of Palestinians and the settlements.

For now, the package has stalled on a vote of 56-44, not enough to clear the 60-vote hurdle needed to advance.

Coming amid the partial government shutdown, Democrats said they will block the bill until government is reopened. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer opposed proceeding to the legislation. Other Democratic senators who supported the substance of the bill followed suit.

There was once a time when no one would trade with Iran:

Iran's foreign minister said on Tuesday the European Union was moving more slower than expected in facilitating non-dollar trade with Tehran to circumvent U.S. sanctions, forcing it to explore avenues with other nations.

"We continue to work with the Europeans for the special purpose vehicle but we are not waiting for them," Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters in New Delhi. "We are working with our traditional partners like India, like China, like Russia so that we continue to work in the interest of our people."

Why are so many people being killed in clothing donation bins? For the same reason fail videos exist - people are stupid:

Her screams alerted help, but it came too late to save the 35-year-old Toronto woman trapped in the chute of a clothing donation box early Tuesday morning.

The woman, identified only as Crystal, was dead by the time firefighters were able to cut her from the League For Human Rights drop box.

The death marks the second time in only eight days that a Canadian has died while apparently trying to remove items from a clothing-donation bin.

It’s the third such Canadian death since November, and at least the seventh since 2015.

There is always something ancient being unearthed:

A mysterious cluster of decapitated skeletons, including the remains of children, was uncovered during excavations for a housing development in England.

The unusual placement of the heads of the well-preserved Roman-era remains at or between the legs or feet — in one case, tucked under a knee — makes the archeological find a curious and significant discovery, researchers say.

Despite the adjective in its name, the village of Great Whelnetham, Suffolk, in eastern England, is a small patch of suburbia set among the English countryside, about 130 kilometres northeast of London. Its population in 2011 was 849 and its primary landmark is a 13th-century church.

The place, however, has human history going much further back.

The first evidence of previous Roman settlements in the area came from found pottery shards and coins and, in 1964, a pottery kiln and Roman burials were uncovered, despite there being no defined Roman road known to have run through Great Whelnetham.