The World Is Taking Crazy Pills

Prove me wrong ...




The scandal that just won't die:

 

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“Canadians now have the necessary information to arrive at a conclusion.”

Given the Liberals on the justice committee released those words about their ‘investigation’ into the five-alarm fire that is the SNC-Lavalin scandal on the very day that Michael Wernick was claimed as another of its victims—based largely on his serial immolation in front of their committee—we’re going to need a new word for “chutzpah”.

Justin Trudeau has now lost his top aide, two of his top ministers, and the country’s top bureaucrat because of SNC, and the Liberals are asking us to “arrive at a conclusion”?

What conclusion do they think anyone can draw from trying to shut down inquiries into this clusterf–k, other than ‘these people definitely have something to hide’?

It’s breathtaking.

So bravo, Liberal Party of Canada; congratulations on achieving in three years a level of cynicism and contempt for the electorate most governments only reach at the tail end of their third mandate. It’s about the only thing the Liberals have managed to deliver that’s under-budget and ahead of schedule.

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4/ Trudeau just appointed Anne McLennan to investigate the SNC Lavalin corruption scandal. In addition to everything above, SHE IS PART OF THE TRUDEAU FOUNDATION. https://t.co/aIA57EMqPp RT THIS THREAD IF YOU FIND THIS OUTRAGEOUS

— Michelle Rempel (@MichelleRempel) March 18, 2019

 

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The child of Canada’s chief public servant worked on the 2015 Liberal Campaign, and worked, until very recently for a Liberal MP who would go on to snuff out the last attempts to shine the light on this national scandal.

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Ian Shugart, the man tapped to replace Michael Wernick as Canada’s top civil servant after Wernick’s resignation on Monday in the wake of the SNC-Lavalin scandal, is a longtime public servant who once served in Brian Mulroney’s Tory government.

He has served as deputy minister of Foreign Affairs since 2016, and has also held top spots at Employment and Social Development Canada and at Environment Canada, working with Conservative and Liberal governments.

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Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of “thumbing his nose” at Canadians, and said the official Opposition would use “every tool available to us” to hold the government accountable in Parliament.

(Sidebar: do something about it then, Andy.)



(Merci)




That's nice. Now, how are you going to pay for it, Bill?:

In 2015, Justin Trudeau ran on an election platform that said his government would run three small deficits of $10 billion a year for three years and balance the books in the fourth year.

In the fourth budget delivered by Finance Minister Bill Morneau, the deficit is set to ring in at $19.8 billion, up from $14.9 billion for last year.

And in the years to come, it is deficits as far as the eye can see. ...

The government will spend $500 million year on a fund for prescription drugs that target rare diseases and will establish an office to look at setting up a national pharmacare plan but won’t actually establish a national pharmacare plan.

They will establish a program through Canada Mortgage and Housing that will commit $1.25 billion over three years on home affordability.

And they will even offer up what they call “universal high-speed internet.”

Yes, high-speed internet is now a government program and the Trudeau Liberals will spend $5 billion-$6 billion over the next 10 years to build out internet services that meet government standards to rural, remote and northern communities.

There is even a program to help you get skills training — even if the training you take has nothing to do with your current job.

 
Rachel Notley announces that April 16th, she will be looking for a new job:

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has called an election for April 16.

Notley asked cheering supporters standing behind her in Calgary this morning if they are ready to fight for an Alberta that benefits everyone.

She began her attack on the leader of the Opposition United Conservatives immediately.

“The question is this: do Albertans stick together or do we turn on each other?” she said.

“Jason Kenney wants two Albertas — one for the wealthy and one for the rest of us. He wants two Albertas divided over people’s rights.

“I want to continue to build one Alberta.”

Oil in the ground, Rachel. Oil in the ground.




If you're going to put sanctions on North Korea, you have to make them stick:

In a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Republican Cory Gardner and Democrat Ed Markey called for a recommitment to robust enforcement of U.S. and United Nations sanctions on North Korea.

The senators, the chairman and ranking member respectively of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, complained that the pace of sanctions designations on North Korea had "slowed considerably" in the past year of U.S. diplomatic engagement with the country.

They cited research by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank saying that the Trump administration had sanctioned 182 persons and entities for North Korea sanctions violations since March 31, 2017, but only 26 since Feb. 23, 2018, "despite ample evidence of illicit behavior from Pyongyang and its enablers."

The letter pointed to a 2019 U.N. report which found that North Korea had continued to defy U.N. sanctions with a massive increase in smuggling of petroleum products and coal and violation of bans on arms sales.

 
Why, it's communism all over again:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a set of bills that will make it illegal to spread “fake news.”

The legislation seeks to punish the distribution of information that “exhibits blatant disrespect for the society, government, official government symbols, constitution or governmental bodies of Russia.”

Prosecutors can direct their complaints about online media to the state, which can block access to websites if the offending material isn’t taken down.

This, experts say, is new. “The Prosecutor’s office may now block such fake news sources prior to the judicial decision. It gives the Prosecutor’s office an extremely high authority and almost completely eliminates the Russian (albeit completely non-free) courts from the game,” Maria Snegovaya, an adjunct fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, wrote in an email.

“In other words, it significantly expands the repressive power of Russia’s repressive apparatus. This may be compared to the Stalin’s Troika, a commission of three for express judgment in the Soviet Union during the time of Joseph Stalin who issued sentences to people after simplified, speedy investigations and without a public and fair trial,” she added.

Trolling level - master:

הבושם שהשמאלנים פחות יאהבו. pic.twitter.com/vaQCtkT4Cr

— איילת שקד ayelet shaked (@Ayelet__Shaked) March 18, 2019