Your middle-of-the-week schadenfreude ...
Schadenfreude for the deliberately clueless, inept, awful sponges:
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday blamed hard times for the loss of a longtime Liberal seat in a Toronto byelection. Conservatives won Toronto-St. Paul’s for the first time since 1988: “Can the Prime Minister still stay on?”
Is that so, Chrystia?:
MPs yesterday agreed to spend months reviewing Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s proposal to raise capital gains tax revenues by $18 billion. New data show tax filers who report gains from the sale of farms, commercial buildings, vacation homes and other equity typically show profits under $50,000: “The government in an effort to start a class war has made a mistake.”
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Statistics Canada reported Tuesday that grocery prices rose 1.5 per cent in May, slightly higher than in April when they rose 1.4 per cent. It marks the first acceleration in grocery prices since June 2023.
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Even the word "arrogant" cannot cover the mind-numbing refusal to reflect on one's self and policies.
The thing is that Justin has always been a vile narcissist and creep. Voters tolerated Justin's woeful inadequacies as a human being because they believed the juvenile mud-slinging the Liberals did to former prime minister Stephen Harper.
Do you see where failing to use reason will get you?
Now, after nine years, the public might have an inkling that a failed substitute drama teacher whose dad was a rotten PM himself might not be leader material.
What failures could have led them to that conclusion?
Any other leader would realise that a major loss signified a failure to handle things. They would at least have the good grace to step aside and let the party take another direction.
Take, for example, Andrew Scheer.
He did something wrong, accepted the blame and resigned for it.
Self-effacement, contrition and atonement are things that Justin, the master of unforgivable hubris, does not do.
To wit:
Facing new questions about his political longevity, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed resolve after a by-election loss Monday in one of the safest Liberal seats in the country.
“This was obviously not the result we wanted, but I want to be clear that I hear people’s concerns and frustrations,” he said of his party’s results in Toronto-St. Paul’s riding. “My focus is on your success and that’s where it’s going to stay.”
(Sidebar: no, you f---ing don't.)
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**Trudeau talking about the results of St.Paul’s by-election.
— Ryan Gerritsen🇨🇦🇳🇱 (@ryangerritsen) June 25, 2024
He’s not going anywhere & the guy doubles down on this “results” crap.
We don’t want the carbon tax - doesn’t care
Capital Gains tax affects more than claimed - doesn’t care
Immigration - doesn’t care
It’s infuriating pic.twitter.com/IGZG1rHt0s
And there are many people who have argued persuasively that fearing for their seats, his backbenchers will throw him out. In this fantasy, Chrystia Freeland then takes over as prime minister, and they still have a chance in 2025. (It is more likely that Ms. Freeland would become a Kim Campbell to Justin's Mulroney.)
However, the prime minister could take refuge in the old argument that byelections don’t count. Voter turnout is low, and voters are just venting. They return to their senses at general elections.
In this case, voter turnout was just 43%; at the last election it was 65%. Liberal voters just stayed home you see, but they’ll be back when it matters. They always do. (That’s not to be assumed; this is the third election in Toronto St.Paul’s where the Liberal vote has trended down, from 32,500 in 2019, to 26,400 in 2021 and now to 15,500. Trudeau-fatigue has already set in.)
The problem with that analysis is that it doesn’t factor in the enormous sense of self that has defined Trudeau’s entire tenure of office.
Voters in the 905 may properly dismiss him as unserious, relentlessly trivial and focused on the wrong things. His behaviour however, and the priorities upon which he has been focused suggest that he has a messianic sense of mission. He believes he is just too important to a greater cause, to be thrown off by a byelection.
Results suggest that it was always his mission to take this prosperous, well-ordered Anglo country and following an undeclared agenda, make it ashamed of its past, strip it of its sense of national identity and define moral excellence as living a carbon-neutral life. It would become a new kind of country, post-national and governed according to Chinese standards of public administration.
If the collateral damage is massive debt, impoverishment by inflation and growing homelessness, so be it. That’s the price people — other people — have to pay for his dreams.
And in his mind, this great commission is not accomplished. “There is work to do,” he declared recently.
So it is possible — likely, in my view — that he won’t accept the judgment of Toronto St. Paul’s.
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As local residents went to the polls in the usually safe Liberal riding of Toronto-St. Paul’s on the day before, Freeland had warned them they faced a stark choice “between two visions of Canada, two sets of values.”
“I really want to encourage people to vote for our outstanding Liberal candidate, Leslie Church. What she stands for is the values we are talking about here today,” she said on Monday.
Values like investing in Canada. Working as a team. “Where we all work together to defend and support the national interest.”
The alternative, she warned, was “really cold and cruel and small. The alternative is cuts and austerity, not believing in ourselves as a country, not believing in our community and our neighbours.”
(Sidebar: and why would there be a need for austerity, O "Journalist" Sent to Do An Economist's Job?)
Toronto—St. Paul’s, it seems, went for cold and cruel. Just before dawn, when the final numbers were tallied, Conservative candidate Don Stewart was declared the winner by 590 votes, not a great margin but a momentous result in political terms given Liberals had racked up easy wins in every election for 30 years.
Freeland’s official reason for appearing at a news conference on Tuesday was to announce yet another Liberal spending plan. Last year’s deficit alone came to $50 billion thanks to the proliferation of spending plans. This time the Canada Infrastructure Bank would be “investing” more than $2 billion in internet providers. “This investment is supporting high-speed internet projects, connecting 430,000 more rural and remote Canadians households,” she announced.
(Sidebar: where will you get the money from, Chrystia?)
None of the journalists on hand cared about the Internet bit. They wanted to know if Justin Trudeau would resign.
Freeland obviously knew what was coming and was doing her best to brace for it.
“Everyone we’re hearing from behind the scenes believes that the result last night means catastrophic losses across the country,” the Globe and Mail told her right off the bat. “If you cannot win in Toronto under Justin Trudeau, why should anyone believe you can win anywhere else under him?”
Freeland took a breath. As is usual with Trudeau team members, the deputy prime minister ignored the question and delivered a pre-prepared talking point.
(Sidebar: not another pre-prepared remark! How typical!)
“Our government is focused on working hard for Canada and Canadians, and on delivering results for Canada and Canadians,” she said. “That is what the prime minister is focused on, that is what we are all focused on. The prime minister is committed on leading us into the next election, and he has our support.”
(Sidebar: are the results poverty?)
Next question. iPolitics wanted to know if, given the beating they’d taken, “a new leader in the party might be a necessary change.”
“I just answered that question,” Freeland replied, going on to cite a number of Liberal initiatives and the need to keep up the hard work for the good of Canadians.
Wow.
Just ... wow.
The only hard work Chrystia is doing at the moment is running interference for her boss, a wiener glad to let a woman take the hit for him.
This is who Canadians voted for: greedy and incompetent pencil-pushers who lack even the most minute element of scruples and will never let go of a pension they clearly don't deserve.
The poll shows that millennials and Gen Z also aren’t in favour of more government spending, something the Liberals had promised in the April budget. The poll shows that 56 per cent said the government shouldn’t spend more money than it is currently spending.
Thirty-four per cent of Gen Z and millennial voters say want the government to spend less money, agreeing that they are “worried about generations like mine being overly taxed in future to pay for today’s debt.” Another 22 per cent say spending should stay at current levels.
And they’re not particularly enthusiastic about the Liberal government’s massive subsidies for electric vehicles and battery plants. Only 32 per cent of Gen Z and millennials agreed the handouts for auto and battery makers will “be of significant benefit” to their generation.
Vaguely related - South Korea, get out of the battery industry while you can:
South Korean companies are aggressively expanding their portfolios in the electric vehicle (EV) battery sector, developing new materials and technologies beyond their primary products to meet the growing demand for advanced and efficient batteries.
According to industry sources on June 26, Lotte Energy Materials is developing solid-state battery electrolytes and LFP (lithium iron phosphate) cathode active materials in addition to their main business, copper foil.
In February, they began constructing a pilot facility at their Iksan 2 plant, which is capable of producing up to 70 tons of solid-state battery electrolytes annually. Lotte Energy Materials plans to test and stabilize the facility by the end of this year, obtain performance verification from customers, and enter into supply contracts next year, with mass production slated to begin as early as 2026.
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The recent devastating fire at a lithium battery manufacturing factory in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, has starkly revealed the gaps in safety management for battery fires. Within 15 seconds of ignition, white smoke from the batteries filled the factory. An employee’s attempt to extinguish the fire with a regular extinguisher proved futile. Lithium reacts with water, causing heat and explosions, and requires metal fire-specific extinguishers or sand, none of which were available at the factory. There are no regulations mandating such equipment in factories. While the battery industry has rapidly advanced, fire preparedness remains practically nonexistent.
This is a country that lets people wander in unvetted and then supports them financially:
A video posted online shows Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, being handcuffed by two plain-clothed police officers.The 41-year-old is told he is the subject of “an outstanding immigration warrant” and he is then led away.Robinson was arrested shortly after giving a speech in Calgary, Alberta on Monday.He has since been released but had his passport seized, according to his social media channel.Robinson wrote online: “OK I’m free, well, sort of. None of this makes sense, I’m now detained in Calgary, prevented from leaving the city, these conditions stop me from continuing my tour of Canada and meeting with guests for podcasts.“I’m not even allowed to leave to travel home.”
Hamas stood firm Tuesday against global pressure that it accept the proposed three-phase deal, stressing that any deal which did not guarantee a permanent ceasefire from the start “was not an agreement.”
The Qatar-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh released the statement after his sister was killed during an IDF airstrike in Gaza, accusing Israel of deliberately targeting her to pressure the group to take the deal.
“If [Israel] thinks targeting my family will change our position or that of the resistance, they are delusional,” he said.
Why would you put your family in harm's way, @$$hole?
Kenya shows us how it's done:
Kenyan President William Ruto on Wednesday withdrew planned tax hikes, bowing to pressure from protesters who had stormed parliament, launched demonstrations across the country and threatened more action this week.
The move will be seen as a major victory for a week-old, youth-led protest movement that grew from online condemnations of tax rises into mass rallies demanding a political overhaul, in the most serious crisis of Ruto's two-year-old presidency.But some demonstrators said on social media that despite Ruto's climbdown they would go ahead with a rally planned for Thursday, with many reiterating demands that he resign.
Magatte Wade doesn’t mince words. She tells you what she thinks clearly and right off the bat. And right now, one of the messages the well-known African entrepreneur is most passionate about spreading is that the activists who are looking to shut down the expansion of natural resources are harming low-income people and people in the developing world, particularly her fellow Africans.
The Senegalese businesswoman firmly maintains that expanding access to natural gas is vital to help those in need. “And if you’re not able to come to that simple conclusion, then I want to ask what kind of a human being are you?” Wade said in an interview. “Do you want people to die today to save the planet years down the line?”
The interview was conducted as a follow-up to a presentation she gave to the International Gas Research Conference, which was held last month in Banff, Alta. But her message isn’t geared towards energy-sector experts — it’s aimed at a general audience and the anti-energy activists who sometimes hold sway over the public debate.
Wade hasn’t always voiced these concerns. It was through her experiences as an entrepreneur in the beverage and beauty-care industries that she saw first hand how the climate activists’ anti-energy agenda was making life more difficult for people struggling to bring prosperity to various parts of the world.
“We live with constant — and I mean constant — power outages,” said Wade, speaking of the energy grid in her West African country. “Sometimes the power within a frame of five minutes will go on and off maybe five or six times and in the process ruin our material.”
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