Tag: Canada

‘Captain Screw Loose’ Is At It Again

So there is no confusion ‘Captain Screw Loss’ is for this post referring to Little Donny and his mouth….I know it could anyone of a hundred GOPers and their demented minds…..but this is only one person.

Donny is at it again….he has such animosity toward Canada he is injecting himself into their upcoming election.

Since he came into the seat of power he has been pushing the absurd idea that Canada should be the 51st state….and he continues with his mentally deranged rants.

To be honest he has dialed back his 51st state bullsh*t (for now) but he keeps belittling Canada on other fronts.

But he could not let the Canadian elections go without his brand of stupid.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that Canada would “cease to exist” if it weren’t for the United States — comments that came just days before Canadians are set to vote in an election dominated by Trump’s remarks on the country’s economy and sovereignty.

Trump reinserted himself into Canada’s election during a signing ceremony inside the Oval Office, saying Canada “would cease to exist as a country” if the U.S. stopped buying its goods.

“I have to be honest, as a state, it works great,” said Trump, who previously threatened to make the country the 51st state through economic coercion.

Trump reiterated his claim that the U.S. doesn’t need anything from Canada — including autos and oil.

We don’t really want Canada to make cars for us, to put it bluntly. We want to make our own cars,” Trump said.

In recent weeks, Trump has dialed back his talk of Canada becoming the 51st state. He stopped saying it after a call with new Prime Minister Mark Carney last month.

Trump also suggested Wednesday that he might increase import taxes on cars from Canada. Trump has a 25% tariff on autos, although there are some exemptions related to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade, and automakers are seeking other policy changes to minimize the tariff burden. Trump has separate 25% tariffs on Canadian goods — ostensibly to address drug smuggling into the U.S.

https://apnews.com/article/auto-taxes-canada-trump-tariffs-carney-election-82848dc8973e527445eadcec85ece197

He still pretends that Canada will pay the tariffs….what idiot!

As my grandfather use to say ‘his problem is he fires off his mouth before his brain is loaded’.

Donny is making a fool of himself….as usual.

I cannot wait to see what moronic rant comes out of his mouth at the funeral for the Pope.

And you people voted for this clown….and I weep for this nation.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Can Canada Be Ours?

+++This is not a suggestion to occupy but rather a lesson in what could possibly be done+++

Trump has shown signs of wanting Panama and Greenland and even suggested that we could as a nation annex Canada.

Canada: On Canada, he said he was willing to use “economic force” to acquire the nation, reports USA Today. “Canada and the United States—that would really be something,” he said. “You get rid of that artificially drawn line and you take a look at what that looks like, and it would also be much better for national security.”

Is that even a possibility?

Well let’s look at our history……

“We take nothing by conquest…Thank God,” wrote the National Intelligencer and Washington Advertiser, an influential Washington newspaper, in February 1847.

The United States had just purchased 55 percent of Mexico for US$15 million as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The pact concluded the bloody Mexican-American War, which claimed thousands of lives.

Despite the loss of life, and American ambitions to take all of Mexico, the painted the whole experience as a rightful “cession” of land rather than a conquest.

Every Canadian needs to pay attention to this bit of American history. In one treaty, the U.S. annexed the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas and Wyoming. It subsequently illegally invaded Indigenous territory in the west.

Canada could be next—perhaps not immediately as the 51st state, but quite possibly as a U.S. territory that would deny Canadians any for Congress or the presidency, allow only some autonomy and make questions of citizenship ambiguous. The constitutional architecture exists in the U.S. to make it happen.

Impossible? Unthinkable? Many pundits dismiss Trump’s bellicose rhetoric as hot-headed bargaining. It’s just tough talk, they say. Some have argued his bluster is simply part of his favored “art of the deal” negotiating tactics.

That’s the wrong reading. How Trump could make good on the threat can be found in the U.S. Constitution. There is both potential and precedent for the U.S. to acquire territory through cession or subjugation.

https://phys.org/news/2025-01-fact-canada-american-territory.html

Like I stated before….a possibility.

Was this ever a real thought or just diarrhea of the mouth?

Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is Military Force On The Table?

After silly statements made by the president-elect I made my thoughts known on his first foreign policy statement…..

Is This Trump Foreign Policy?

The whole idea is ludicrous….but what he said after that statement sends chills up my spine…..

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has been rebuked in recent days by the leaders of both Panama and Denmark for his insistence that the Panama Canal and Danish territory Greenland must be under American control, and his latest comments on Tuesday were expected to garner more anger—and eye-rolling—from abroad.

At a press conference at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, the Republican leader refused to rule out using military force to take over the canal and Greenland.

“It might be that you’ll have to do something. The Panama Canal is vital to our country,” said Trump. “We need Greenland for national security purposes.”

He added that both the canal and Greenland, the world’s largest island and home to a U.S. military base, are needed for U.S. “economic security.”

Under President Jimmy Carter, who died late last month, the U.S. signed a treaty returning the Panama Canal Zone to Panama in 1979, and the waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans has been solely controlled by the Panamanian government since 1999.

Trump repeated a false claim that the canal is being “operated by China.”

Last month, after the president-elect demanded “that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America in full, quickly and without question,” Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino posted a video to social media in response.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/panama-canal-importance-us-history

Hopefully this is just one of his idle threats while chest thumping….like the threat to use US troops to invade Mexico back in his last admin….

There is a couple more totally absurd claims and threats issued by the clown-in-waiting…..

On Canada, he said he was willing to use “economic force” to acquire the nation, reports USA Today. “Canada and the United States—that would really be something,” he said. “You get rid of that artificially drawn line and you take a look at what that looks like, and it would also be much better for national security.”

Trump also continued to needle Mexico in regard to trade and immigration, per the Hill. “We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” Trump said. “What a beautiful name. And it’s appropriate. It’s appropriate. And Mexico has to stop allowing millions of people to pour into our country.” Ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted that she would quickly introduce legislation to make it so.

Is this the beginning of an imperial America?

If this is any indication on the policies that the Trump administration is going to follow then I say the country needs help and the world should be prepared for the stupid to come.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

More From The ‘Can’t Fix Stupid’ Files

Shall we take a break from Ukraine…..well if you insist.

The Right just cannot stop trying to out stupid the other members….this time it is not Taylor-Greene but another female member of the House, Lauren Boebert of Colorado…..she seems to think the the US needs to act more like Russia with our neighbors…..

Some Canadian politicians are unhappy with conservative firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert, who compared the invasion of Ukraine to the way Canada cleared protesting truckers from its capital. The remarks came as the Colorado congresswoman was being interviewed by Fox Nation over the weekend at the CPAC convention, reports the Guardian. Boebert praised Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky for embodying what she called a “live free or die” philosophy. “I pray for Ukraine, and I wish them the best,” Boebert said. “But we also have neighbors to the north who need freedom and need to be liberated, and we need that right here at home, as well.” More:

  • “[It] is sad to hear you compare free & democratic Canada to the invasion of Ukraine,” tweeted Anthony Housefather, a Liberal member of Parliament, per the Washington Post. “If you would like to learn about Canada please reach out.” Another Liberal member of Parliament, Ryan Turnbull, tweeted that he was “speechless.”
  • Bruce Heyman, former US ambassador to Canada under President Obama, tweeted: “Reckless, dangerous and crosses every line of diplomacy and decency. Boebert would have been expelled from the
    @GOP before Trump but now the darling of CPAC.”
  • Boebert previously expressed strong support for the truckers’ demonstration, which began as a protest against vaccine mandates, notes Insider. “The Freedom Convoy is representative of a people’s yearning for freedom—something so many thought may have been all but lost to decadence,” she tweeted on Feb. 15. “I’m glad to see the will to fight for liberty is still alive and well!”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lauren-boebert-canada-liberated-like-ukraine_n_621befeae4b0d1388f16985a

Since I wrote this draft Boebert made a bigger ass of herself at the SOTU…..

She and her idiot cohort Taylor-Green heckled Biden several times….with stupidity like ‘build the wall’…all in all they made complete asses of themselves.

Boebert is another of those far right idiots that came to DC to perform not to govern…..these people spend their time trying to out crazy each other.

I have seen nothing about her and the other ilk that says they want to govern and have the best interest of the nation at the heart of their stupidity.

They prove every time they open their mouths that ‘You cannot fix stupid”.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

NAFTA Vs USMCA

In 2016 Trump and I had something in common…..we both disliked NAFTA….the only difference was he could do something about it and I could only bitch about it.

US, Canada and Mexico have come to an agreement on trade and NAFTA…..

Canada and the United States reached a deal Sunday night for Canada to stay in a free trade pact with the US and Mexico. In a joint statement late Sunday, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said the agreement “will strengthen the middle class, and create good, well-paying jobs and new opportunities for the nearly half billion people who call North America home.” The new deal, reached just before a midnight deadline imposed by the US, will be called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. It replaces the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, which President Trump had called a job-killing disaster.

The agreement reached Sunday gives US farmers greater access to the Canadian dairy market. But it keeps a NAFTA dispute-resolution process that the US wanted to jettison and offers Canada protection if Trump goes ahead with plans to impose tariffs on cars, trucks, and auto parts imported into the United States, the AP reports. “It’s a good day for Canada,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said as he left his office. Canada, the United States’ No. 2 trading partner, was left out when the US and Mexico reached an agreement last month to revamp NAFTA. US-Canada talks bogged down earlier this month, and most trade analysts expected the Sept. 30 deadline to come and go without Canada being reinstated.

Of course Trump’s new replacement for NAFTA has a nice ring to it……USMCA

America’s free trade pact with Mexico and Canada may be alive, but the same can’t be said for the NAFTA moniker. Once the new deal was arrived at Sunday night its new name was announced: the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. President Trump weighed in on the name during a Monday press conference, saying, “It has a good ring to it.” It’s also “a great deal,” he said per USA Today, one that should “pass easily, really easily … in theory there should be no trouble.” Congress needs to approve the agreement, and it needs to be ratified in Mexico and Canada as well. As for how one should say the name, Trump didn’t read it as a word a la NAFTA but spelled the letters out: U-S-M-C-A.

CNBC reports that while much of the deal echoes that of NAFTA, there are pivots in terms of how the dairy and auto industries are handled: US dairy producers’ access to Canadian markets will increase, while Mexico and Canada scored a win in terms of an exemption on passenger vehicles, pickups, and auto parts from potential tariffs. CNBC has much more, including details on changes that will could up the price of cars made in Mexico, which could push more of these jobs north of the border.

NYTimes op-ed states that USMCA is worse than NAFTA…….

North American business leaders are breathing a sigh of relief after Canada agreed, at the 11th hour, to join the revised North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Mexico. But before they break out the Champagne, they should look at the details.

Although the revised deal brings much-needed modernization in areas such as e-commerce and intellectual property, the media spotlight on Canada has obscured a bigger problem for the region: Under the new terms, North American trade is headed off the rails and, perhaps along with it, political stability south of the border.

But leave it to the master of business, the grad from the Wharton School, to negotiate a deal that has LESS trade in it……

The United States, Canada, and Mexico have completed their renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Being nothing, if not creative, negotiators named this revamp the “United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on Trade,” or USMCA for short. While the namers get an F for imagination and creativity, they receive an A for self-evaluation skills, as they aptly removed the term “free trade” from the title. The USMCA does not advance free trade in the world.

There are more than a few labor and manufacturing provisions in this bill that will, no doubt, lead to higher prices for American consumers. There is a sourcing requirement, which mandates that 75 percent of automobile parts be produced in North America, otherwise that automobile cannot enter duty-free. Not only are the costs of auto parts already rising due to President Trump’s trade dispute with China, they will now rise even further due to the requirement that manufacturers use more expensive domestic parts that could have been imported more cheaply.

https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2018/10/02/leave_it_to_trump_to_negotiate_a_deal_that_leads_to_less_trade_103433.html

Is that a technique known only to those that study at Wharton?

How to cut a deal where there is less trade than the previous deal.

Oh Canada!

Canadian Mosque Attack

I waited almost a week to see if there would be any correction from the idiotic Right about this latest terrorist attack in Quebec…..nothing that I saw….But I did not expect these toads to do the right thing….that is not how bigotry works.

I guess maybe I should fill in the blanks about here…I would not want those confused to oft themselves for lack of understanding…..

In what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called “a terrorist attack on Muslims in a center of worship and refuge,” six people were killed and at least eight others injured in a shooting at a mosque in Quebec City on Sunday night. Police initially arrested two men—Alexandre Bissonnette and Mohamed el Khadir, according to a Quebec City court clerk—but later said just one remains a suspect, without naming him. One was arrested at the scene and another nearby, in his car on a bridge near d’Orleans where he called 911 to say he wanted to cooperate with police. Police said they did not believe there were other suspects but were investigating. A witness tells the CBC that two masked men with local accents started shooting after entering the men’s section of the mosque at around 8pm.

“They started to fire, and as they shot they yelled, ‘Allahu akbar!’ The bullets hit people that were praying. People who were praying lost their lives.” “Tonight, Canadians grieve for those killed in a cowardly attack on a mosque in Quebec City,” Trudeau tweeted. “My thoughts are with victims & their families.” Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard also called the “barbaric violence” an act of terrorism and said flags would be lowered to half-staff. The Montreal Gazette reports that the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Center is one of six mosques in the region and had a pig’s head dumped on its doorstep with a card reading “bonne appétit” last June. In a statement, the mosque urged “the Muslim community to remain calm and united and to know that the Canadian people stand with us in solidarity.”

This where the morons on the Right picked up with the story…..it all is so much “fake news”….it was those damn Muslims….why?  The report is that they were yelling…”allahu akbar” as they were shooting…..and the idiots bite on this just so they could spread their vile and their hate……

The authorities arrested a Moroccan man for the shooting……

The man mistakenly arrested during Sunday night’s attack on a Quebec City mosque says he was trying to save a friend’s life—but he understands why he ended up spending a night in jail. Mohamed Belkhadir, a 29-year-old engineering student of Moroccan origin, says he was clearing snow outside the mosque when gunfire erupted, the Toronto Star reports. He says he ran inside, called 911, and was helping an injured friend when an armed man appeared. Belkhadir says he fled, not realizing the man was a police officer, and was arrested as a suspect. “I understand,” he said after being cleared of suspicion Monday, per the Huffington Post. “I respect that they caught me. They saw me flee, they thought I was suspicious.”

He was not the shooter…..the real shooter has been identified and arrested…..

Authorities in Canada think Sunday night’s mosque shooting that left six people dead is a “lone wolf situation,” reports Reuters, and they think they’ve got their shooter: Alexandre Bissonnette, 27, appeared in court Monday and was charged with six counts of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder, reports CBC News. So far, he does not face any terrorism-related charges. Bissonnette attended Laval University, near the Quebec City mosque, and studied political science and anthropology. The AP reports that he was known to espouse “far-right nationalist views” online, and the Toronto Globe and Mail reports that this didn’t begin until March when nationalist leader Marine Le Pen visited Quebec City.

“I wrote him off as a xenophobe,” says a fellow Laval student. “He was enthralled by a borderline racist nationalist movement.” A member of a refugee advocacy group says Bissonnette had become a familiar name to those who monitor extremist groups. He was “unfortunately known to many activists in Quebec for taking nationalist, pro-Le Pen and anti-feminist positions at Laval University and on social media,

Do you think that those that were quick to blame a Muslim man would correct their lie?

Of course they won’t and in some cases will make excuses but never admit that they LIED!

These douche bags take every opportunity to spread hate and lies….someone needs to call them out….why not me?

Just FYI…..terrorism is a real threat and yet here in the US our chances of being killed by a foreign born attacker is…….0.00003%…..

I cannot wait to here the excuse the fear mongers will have with this info….

Where’d You Lose It?

My Sunday begins as I sit on the porch…early morning cool weather nipping at my nose….a cup of Colombian coffee…..it is a great day…..but not before a large plate of SOS….had to be in the military to appreciate the stuff…..

Plus I am leaving politics behind for a day….calm the mind…if you will….

Have you  noticed that whenever you tell someone that you lost something their first reaction is…”where did you lose it?”  Why do we ask such stupid questions?  Even better is the statement….”I found it in the last place I looked”  Do I need to explain the sheer dumbness of the statement?

Now the movies…..there is always a spy movie or TV show that has a nuke bomb missing and some maniacal twat has control of it….but in real life the nukes are well protected and losing one is very unlikely, right?

Time to tie the two random thoughts together……..

Think again!

Canadian waters have yielded their second strange case of the week: The CBC reports that the Royal Canadian Navy is on its way to investigate a possible “lost nuke” believed to have been dumped off the coast of British Columbia before an American B-36 bomber crashed in 1950. Diver Sean Smyrichinsky tells the Vancouver Sun that he was searching for sea cucumbers recently when he spotted a bizarre object underwater that resembled a giant metal bagel cut in half, with bolts bigger than basketballs. He says he told his buddies he might have spotted a UFO—and when he told some fishermen about the sighting a few days later, “some old-timer said ‘Oh, you might have found that bomb.'”

The bomb the “old-timer” was referring to was the Mark IV bomb missing since the Feb. 13, 1950 crash in the area of the US bomber, which was returning to a base in Alaska after a mission that included a simulated nuclear bombing of San Francisco, the Guardian reports.The bomb was packed with TNT and weighed almost 11,000 pounds, though records indicate that its core was packed with lead, not plutonium, so there is little risk of a nuclear accident, a Canadian military spokesman says. “Nonetheless, we do want to be sure and we do want to investigate it further,” he says, adding that experts will determine whether the object should be retrieved or left where it is. (Earlier this week, the Canadian military investigated a strange noise coming from the Arctic sea floor.)

The nuke program is not as “secure” as we might think….there have been stories of massive drug use among those tapped at launching them and then there was the oops moment a couple years ago when bombs were sent to places that were not on their routing list…..

Maybe we should look at re-vamping the program before we start making more of these destructive weapons….whata ya think?

After ‘Destroying’ Canada, Stephen Harper Leaving Politics

I have a few readers from the north, Canada, to be accurate……while we Americans pay little attention to our neighbors to the north…..some things are universal……like politicians that leave office and immediately set about making their fortune on their “good” name.

I mean look at the fortune that Bubba has put together with that corrupted piece of crap he calls the Clinton Global Initiative……..and now his wife has eyes on her next fortune……

Sorry I digress……looks like Canadian politicians are NO different from their American counterparts…..

News that former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper would be leaving politics presumably to “make his fortune” was met with derision and delight from his many critics who say that the conservative MP “destroyed the social fabric of Canada.”

Harper is expected to resign from federal politics before Parliament resumes in the fall. According to the Globe and Mail, which broke the news Wednesday, he plans to “pursue new interests on corporate boards and the establishment of a foreign policy institute,” which, according to an undisclosed source, “won’t be academic or domestic-policy focused…but directed largely at global ‘big picture’ issues.”

And one former policy director speculated that those issues will likely include free trade, in addition to Harper’s “geopolitical thinking” in regards to human rights, democracy, and “standing up to authoritarian regimes.”

uring his tenure as Prime Minister, which spanned from 2006-2015, Harper was known internationally for pushing through an aggressive conservative agenda which included: wholesale investment in fossil fuels, including Canadian tar sands; blocking international efforts to combat climate change; dismantling civil liberties through mass surveillance; unflinching support of Israel and attempts to outlaw pro-Palestinian boycott movements; supporting numerous wars overseas; and willfully ignoring the treaty rights of Canadian First Nations, among many other things.

After word of his imminent departure broke, critics took to social media to speculate about what may be next for the man accused of turning Canada into a “climate villain.”

(commondreams.org)

I would like to hear from my readers from the north…..please let my other readers know what is what in Canada…..all opinions welcome…..

 

Go North Young Person

Saddle up the Palomino……

My daughter is a liberal….she is always going on about this issue….like abortion and women’s health, our GOP governor or education……she is appalled at the tone of the election process this year…..she has even said, in jest, that if Cruz or Trump wins the election that she will move to Canada…..we both get a good chuckle…..

But then I read this piece and had to send it to her…….

In a common election-year lament, more than a few people on Twitter have suggested they’ll move to Canada if Donald Trump becomes the next US president. Rob Calabrese has the perfect location in mind. On Monday, the Nova Scotia radio DJ set up a tongue-in-cheek website titled Cape Breton if Donald Trump Wins to showcase Cape Breton Island’s charms and poke fun at Trump in the process, reports the National Post. “We’re living on an island where the population is decreasing. As a joke, we thought of it to maybe get the word out there that, ‘Hey, you should come here!'” Calabrese tells the Huffington Post. Among gorgeous photos of life on the island, home to 150,000, Calabrese spells out some of Cape Breton’s perks: “Women can get abortions, Muslim people can roam freely, and the only ‘walls’ are holding up the roofs of our extremely affordable houses.”

There’s also free healthcare and “nobody has a hand gun,” the site states. By Wednesday, it had received 35,000 unique visitors and Calabrese says he’s been overwhelmed by hundreds of inquiries. “I’m in disbelief,” he says. “It’s been taken seriously by some people, which is great and not intended, but I’m going to help them out as best I can,” he adds, per the CBC. One email posted to Calabrese’s Facebook page reads: “I’m actually looking for a change of climate—environmental, cultural, political—for a while now. I know this is a bit of a lark, but seriously I can’t deal with Trump.” “I know I wouldn’t want to live in a country where he’s leader,” Calabrese tells CTV News. “There are millions of people on this continent who, if they knew about the lifestyle here on Cape Breton, they would think, ‘This is for me.'” (Watch Johnny Depp mock Trump here.)

She was amused…..then pensive……

Trouble Brewing Across The Border?

Thanx to Trump you would assume that I am referring to our Southern border with Mexico, right?

Well you would be mistaken…..you see there is a problem brewing on our Northern border…..you know the one with Canada…….

It appears the the US and Canada are standing off about ………lobsters.

This might be news to Americans who don’t make their living catching lobsters, but the US and Canada have been arguing for decades now over who owns two islands in the Atlantic between Maine and New Brunswick. They’re called Machias Seal and North Rock, and the islands themselves aren’t of much use to any creatures other than puffins, explains Maclean’s. The problem is that the water around them, called the “gray zone,” is flush with lobsters, and tensions are rising between lobstermen from the two countries. It’s been especially bad lately because lobster prices are rising. “Somebody is going to get killed,” says the chair of the Maine Lobster Zone Council. “We’ve had bad years in the past and got lucky, but this is the worst year I’ve ever seen.”

Both Maclean’s and the CBC explain that locals on both sides of the border have mostly kept things under control for years. (In one high-profile exception, an American lost his thumb in equipment eight years ago while “jostling” with a Canadian over territory, notes Maclean’s.) This year, however, outsiders from Nova Scotia have moved in to fish the waters, too, and they’re reportedly ignoring long-held rules about who gets to work when. “When you’ve got Canadian guys feuding with other Canadian guys, on top of us—that’s a flare-up, too,” a Maine lobsterman tells the CBC. Both governments claim sovereignty, and neither seems willing to budge.

Could this turn into a Blood Diamond sort of thing?  Will our fave luxury become known as “conflict lobsters”?

This could dispel the old saying that Canadians are too polite for their own good?

Can America afford yet another conflict it must fight?

The battlefield will contain a couple of bureaucrats from both having an old fashion slap fight…..but will it make the nightly news?