ALEPPO

Maybe We're Racists Alliterate.

I cannot imagine the destruction of Alleppo happening in a White Nation without bringing down the Wrath of the West.

And yet, since it is in Syria ...everyone, including the self claimed pious Progressives are uncharacteristically silent. 

I am going to do a series of a few Blogs on this tragic happening ...beginning with a stellar op piece by Terry Glavin of the National Post daily newspaper.    

Unless one is totally heartless, it would be most difficult to be unmoved by Glavin's account of what has just transpired. 

Aleppo has fallen.

The last and sturdiest bastion of the Syrian uprising is gone. The Battle of Aleppo is over, the revolution is finished, and the Syrian mass murderer Bashar al-Assad has won. Russia has won. Iran has won. Hezbollah has won. The United States has lost. The United Nations has lost, and the bloody war in Syria, already having taken nearly half a million lives, goes on.

Aleppo mattered, it should go without saying, but it’s worthwhile enumerating what did not matter. You can start with Aleppo’s 31,000 dead and proceed from there through each and every statutory war crime codified by the International Criminal Court.

Mass murder by chlorine gas. Massacres of innocents. Bombardments by Russian jet fighters. The deliberate targeting of hospitals and clinics. The firing of mortar rounds into crowded neighbourhoods. The terror of barrel bombs dropped from Syrian army helicopters. The starvation siege that followed the city’s encirclement by Shia death squads and Assadist militias on Sept. 8.

None of that mattered, not the hourly imagery on Instagram and YouTube and Twitter of corpse-strewn streets and decapitated infants, and not the gut-wrenching final goodbyes uploaded to mobile phones or sent by text from the survivors in the rebel-held ruins of the Old City, the al-Shaar district, and the backstreets of Sheikh Saeed.

Leaning against a wall, his tattered Adidas hoodie drawn against the rain, the young English teacher, reporter and activist Abdulkafi Al-Hamdo managed to use his cellphone camera to upload his goodbye to the video-streaming service Periscope on Monday night.

“What I want to say is, Don’t believe anymore in the United Nations. Don’t believe anymore in the international community. Don’t think that they are not satisfied with what’s going on. They are satisfied that we are being killed, that we are facing one of the most difficult, or the most serious, or the most horrible massacres that is in our history. --- We wanted freedom. We didn’t want anything else but freedom. You know, this world doesn’t like freedom, it seems.”

There is no plausible defence any of us can mount against Al-Hambdo’s plainspoken indictment. In the world’s citadels of democracy, there are no popular constituencies sufficient to the task of commanding our elected leaders to put their backs into the emancipation of the Syrian people from their tormentors. After all, you know, quagmire and all that. Broach the subject of NATO enforcing a modicum of order in the Syrian abbatoir by means of, say, a no-fly zone, and you’ll be denounced as a warmonger in the mould of the archvillains George W. Bush and Tony Blair. 

The truth of it is we’d just rather not take the trouble. We aren’t prepared to suffer the sacrifices demanded of the commitments to universal rights we profess, so we absolve ourselves by talking about “the Muslim world” as though it were a distant planet. We talk about Arabs as though they were a different species. It is easier on the conscience that way.  Between the drooling bigotries of the isolationist right and the clever platitudes of the “anti-imperialist” left, the only place left to address the solemn obligations we owe one another as human beings is in negotiations over the codicils of international trade agreements, or in the rituals of deliberately unenforceable resolutions entertained by the United Nations General Assembly.

The UN human rights office later announced that it had received credible reports that hundreds of men who crossed into Aleppo’s regime-controlled districts had gone missing. Young men were being pulled out of the line at the corridor checkpoints. The Consultative Council in the Levant Front, one of Aleppo’s main rebel groups, reported that the men had been taken to “warehouses that look more like internment camps.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reckons that 60,000 Syrians have been starved to death, tortured to death or executed in Assad’s prisons since the non-violent democratic uprising began in February, 2011. Relying on regime defectors and insiders, the Observatory has verified 14,446 deaths at a single facility, Sednaya prison, near Damascus.

And now Aleppo is undergoing what UN humanitarians spokesman Jens Laerke calls “a complete meltdown of humanity.” The still-living lie with dead in the rubble of bombed out buildings. You can hear them screaming. Regime militias are carrying out mass executions of civilians. In one case, 11 women and 13 children were shot “on the spot.” Women are committing suicide rather than face the prospect of rape and murder.

A planned evacuation of perhaps 100,000 civilians and rebel fighters from East Aleppo was heralded as a breakthrough on Tuesday, following the abject surrender by all of Aleppo’s remaining rebels — hardline Islamists and democratic patriots alike. By Wednesday morning, the Russian-Turkish understanding had fallen through, the glimmer of hope had flickered out, the barrel bombs and mortar shells were raining down on Aleppo again, and from the people, those gut-wrenching final goodbyes — “Pray for us,” “I hope you can remember us” — were going out to the world again.
                                                                       --------------

All the little guy in the White had to do to avoid this slaughter was to impose a no fly zone at the time he was drawing his imaginary red line in the sand.

As he fades into the woodwork he puffs out his chest and proclaims what a good guy am I ... look at all I have accomplished... he says.

You certainly did sir.

As I see it...

'K.D. Galagher'

STUDENTS OF THE 2000s... Vs THE STUDENTS OF THE 50s & 60s

Hardly a day goes by without an article in the media exposing some atrocity which has devastated the delicate feelings of Today's Student.

One of the most recent examples occurred when a University Teacher dealing with the issue of Ethics mentioned in passing that some people today believe abortion to be morally wrong even though it is legally permitted.

Naturally, the Teacher was immediately fired while several of his students were placed on a combination of smelling salts - oxygen therapy to recover from the trauma caused by his intemperate remarks.

Poor Little Dears.

Before I go further into this piece I want to make it perfectly clear that I have the utmost respect and admiration for our Millennials.

The ones I know and hear about are hardworking and remarkably good-natured despite having to hold down numerous..often menial.. jobs and work long hours.

Rather, my focus today is on our Institutions of Learning which are pedaling nonsense and drivel when it comes to Politically Correct Thought (PCT).

And in doing so, I am going back to my youth in the days before PCT.

We started our school experience in grade 1... that is to say, before the days of daycare schooling, (aka 4 & 5 year old kindergarten). 

The school yard was a battle zone - we kids had to prove our toughness.  Ripped Shirts and Bloody Noses were de-rigueur. 

Even in the lower grades corporal punishment flourished.

I remember our Grade 3 and 4 Teacher who did not hesitate to use her weapon of choice - a yard stick... now known as a metre stick.  

I remember three in particular who were regular recipients of her wrath...Ralphy, Jimmy and Kenny.

The reason they stick out to me all these years later is because each one had a different approach to their pending punishment.

The dastardly deed was administered out of sight of the main class taking place as it did in the cloakroom walled off behind the teacher's desk at the front.

Ralphy would always be crying when he began his perpetrator's walk.  When he came out though, his tears had miraculously changed into a big smile.

Jimmy was the exact opposite - he went in laughing and came out crying.

And finally, Kenny.  Kenny went to his fate with a stone face and came out the other side with that self-same visage.  Kenny was tough which I respected even then. 

Those were the days when the real strap - a version of a Barber's Leather Belt used to sharpen razors - was administered efficiently by our School's Principal.

Although I never did receive whacks from either the yard stick or the Principal's strap... I once came close.  I was caught fighting an older student at recess and the two of us were hauled unceremoniously into the Principal's office. Our Principal had one of those looks that instilled terror in the hearts of the most intrepid so I fully expected that our meeting would not end well ...but it did.

He gave us a dressing down ...but no strap. 

It took a while before my knees stopped shaking.

And what did our parents say about all of this?

Why nothing of course since none of us were dumb enough to let them in on our misadventures.

As we progressed into the higher grades - 6, 7 and 8 the punishment changed... at least by the male teachers.

They would simply grab you by the scruff of the neck and launch you across the room.  Boys only...since I cannot recall a Girl ever being manhandled so. 

And from what I understand, the manhandling was even greater in the previous century if Mr. Hodges was to be believed.  In grade 11 I worked in Donny's Menswear where at the back of the store a partition shielded from sight a number of leather chairs. It was there that retirees like Mr. Hodges - then in his eighties, would wile-away the hours smoking and reminiscing about bygone years.

Some like Mr. Hodges smoked cigars which was probably why business at Donny's was not brisk ... the clothes on sale were all drenched in smoke.

He would recall with humour the discipline meted out by his notorious Principal / Teacher - Smith Langdon. Their's was a one room school house situated north of our village.  Apparently it was not unusual for Langdon to physically throw his students...including Mr. Hodges from time to time... from inside the classroom, out the door and well into the school yard for the slightest transgression. 

Unfortunately for Mr. Hodges, Smith Langdon was one of Donny's regular customers.   Well into his 90's, he stood ramrod straight and towered over 6 feet in height.

On the days that Langdon came into the store I would carefully watch Mr. Hodges' reaction: he would first sit up straight and then extinguish his cigar. The colour would fade from his face with his usual smile long gone. 

I felt sorry for the guy... Mr. Hodges that is.  

His reaction made me thankful for the state of discipline in my own school some 60+ years later.

By the time I reached High School (grades 9 to 13) in the 1960s, the discipline had moved beyond the corporal and had morphed into standing outside the classroom or the ubiquitous detention.  

Again, even with this more humane approach, our parents were given no place in this...at least by us.  Had we included our parents they would have sided with our Teachers and we'd have been in even more trouble. 

Unlike today.  It seems that not only are Professors, Teachers and Students wrapped up in nonsensical Politically Correct Claptrap... but so are Parents. "Our little Jack and Jill are just too sensitive to experience anything other than Progressive Thought."

In the face of this, what continues to encourage me is what I mentioned at the beginning of this Blog...Millennials, when faced with the realities of life, post their education, appear to be adapting quite well.

As such, I believe there is hope for our Society yet.

As I see it...

'K.D. Galagher' 

   





  

DONALD TRUMP...A MAN FOR OUR TROUBLED TIME...Or is he?

My Hero, in History, is the late Winston Spencer Churchill.

Churchill, as some of you may remember, Cried out in the Wilderness days of the 1930s warning the world of the rise of Hitler and Fascism.

Sadly it fell on deaf ears until it was too late to avoid World War Two.

We now find ourselves in a similar but even more dangerous time given the existence of Nuclear Weapons which only came into being in the final stage of that war.

Trump has talked about keeping the US out of world conflicts but fortunately for us, he often changes his mind.  If he does honour that commitment though we are in big trouble realizing of course we are in big trouble either way.

I suspect that Trump will not be pushed around and even if he fails in the end, at least we in the West will go down fighting.

Take Taiwan for example.

For years Taiwan has been the Leper of the World - countries do not want to recognize Taiwan for fear of upsetting Red China despite the fact that Taiwan is a Democracy and Red China a Dictatorship. 

Trump though after his Election Win was quick off the mark in telling the new President of Taiwan that she could count on the States' supporting her tiny island nation. 

The Lefties went wild.  'This is going to infuriate China at a time when relations between it and the West are strained'.

So true.  But why Dear Reader are they strained?

You got it - because China is flexing its muscles, by claiming great portions of the South China Sea.  The Chinese have even been creating land in that sea to extend its territorial borders.

In doing so, they have defied the olde realtors' adage that land is a great investment because 'they are not making any more of it'.

Not true in that part of the world.

They are also reneging on their promise to Hong Kong to allow it to self-governt.  

The list of human rights violations by Red China are too numerous to list but one is worthwhile repeating ...you can order by catalogue any body part you wish and are guaranteed a two week turnaround time.

So yes relations are strained but they are strained entirely as a result of China's own doing.  

It's about time China's bluff was called.

And that goes for other China-like nations --- more particularly Russia and Iran.

Below I have reproduced an article written by Charles Krauthammer arguably the best political commentator the world knows today.  He sets out far better than I, the position we in the West find ourselves as we are about to enter 2017:

Twenty-five years ago — December 1991 — communism died, the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union disappeared. It was the largest breakup of an empire in modern history and not a shot was fired. It was an event of biblical proportions that my generation thought it would never live to see. As Wordsworth famously rhapsodized (about the French Revolution), “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/ But to be young was very heaven!”

That dawn marked the ultimate triumph of the liberal democratic idea. It promised an era of Western dominance led by a pre-eminent America, the world’s last remaining superpower.

And so it was for a decade as the community of democracies expanded, first into Eastern Europe and former Soviet colonies. The U.S. was so dominant that when, on Dec. 31, 1999, it gave up one of the most prized geostrategic assets on the globe — the Panama Canal — no one even noticed.

That era is over. The autocracies are back and rising; democracy is on the defensive; the U.S. is in retreat. Look no further than Aleppo. A Western-backed resistance to a local tyrant — he backed by a resurgent Russia, an expanding Iran and an array of proxy Shiite militias — is on the brink of annihilation. Russia drops bombs; America issues statements.

What better symbol for the end of that heady liberal-democratic historical moment. The West is turning inward and going home, leaving the field to the rising authoritarians — Russia, China and Iran. In France, the conservative party’s newly nominated presidential contender is fashionably conservative and populist and soft on Vladimir Putin. As are several of the newer Eastern Europe democracies — Hungary, Bulgaria, even Poland — themselves showing authoritarian tendencies.

And even as Europe tires of the sanctions imposed on Russia for its rape of Ukraine, President Obama’s much touted “isolation” of Russia has ignominiously dissolved, as our secretary of state repeatedly goes cap in hand to Russia to beg for mercy in Syria.

The European Union, the largest democratic club on earth, could itself soon break up as Brexit-like movements spread through the continent. At the same time, its members dash with unseemly haste to reopen economic ties with a tyrannical and aggressive Iran.

As for China, the other great challenger to the post-Cold War order, the administration’s “pivot” has turned into an abject failure. The Philippines has openly defected to the Chinese side. Malaysia then followed. And the rest of our Asian allies are beginning to hedge their bets. When the president of China addressed the Pacific Rim countries in Peru last month, he suggested that China was prepared to pick up the pieces of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, now abandoned by both political parties in the United States.

The West’s retreat began with Obama, who reacted to (perceived) post-9/11 overreach by abandoning Iraq, offering appeasement (“reset”) to Russia and accommodating Iran. In 2009, he refused even rhetorical support to the popular revolt against the rule of the ayatollahs.

Donald Trump wants to continue the pull back, though for entirely different reasons. Obama ordered retreat because he’s always felt the U.S. was not good enough for the world, too flawed to have earned the moral right to be the world hegemon. Trump would follow suit, disdaining allies and avoiding conflict, because the world is not good enough for us — undeserving, ungrateful, parasitic foreigners living safely under our protection and off our sacrifices. Time to look after our own American interests.

Trump’s is not a new argument. As the Cold War was ending in 1990, Jeane Kirkpatrick, the quintessential neoconservative, argued that we should now become “a normal country in a normal time.” It was time to give up the 20th-century burden of maintaining world order and of making superhuman exertions on behalf of universal values. Two generations of fighting fascism and communism were quite enough. Had we not earned a restful retirement?

At the time, I argued that we had earned it indeed, but a cruel history would not allow us to enjoy it. Repose presupposes a fantasy world in which stability is self-sustaining without the United States. It is not. We would incur not respite but chaos.

A quarter-century later, we face the same temptation, but this time under more challenging circumstances. Worldwide jihadism has been added to the fight, and we enjoy nothing like the dominance we exercised over conventional adversaries during our 1990s holiday from history.

We may choose repose, but we won’t get it.

• 
  
  
  

AIR CANADA'S SPECIAL YEAR 1988....

BUT IT IS OF SIGNIFICANCE ONLY TO AIR CANADA.

That was the year Air Canada ceased to be a government operation and became a private company.

Nothing of significance changed then and nothing of significance has changed since ... Air Canada (AC) is still the bureaucratic, sclerotic organization it has always been.

Canadian law protects AC from outside competition and it is just as well - at least for Air Canada...otherwise it would have been out of business years ago.

In a sense though it is not fair to centre AC out since I find that most airlines today abide by the same motto - make air travel as inconvenient and as unpleasant as possible for the flying public.

But given AC's bureaucratic start as a government agency - and its insistence to stubbornly adhere to its original princeps, it places them well in the race for worst airline ever.

Take our recent flight with AC...please.  (My thanks to Rodney Dangerfield)

Let's just bypass the terrorist-like shakedown otherwise known as surviving airport security and get right to the boarding process.

Since most airlines - including AC, charge for checked bags - the number, trying to camouflage bags in need checking as 'carry-on'... has grown exponentially.  Indeed, if you are not fortunate to be in the first third boarding you can fully expect that all overhead bins will be bulging at the seams well before you cross the plane's threshold.  

And you are left to jostle with the remaining two-thirds - most of whom are laden down with overgrown back-backs - in an attempt to reach your seat.  Not a pretty sight.

And speaking of seats - Airlines - including AC are now charging for them as well.  You would think the exorbitant ticket price would suffice...but oh no..pay-up or walk.

Almost ...pay-up for a seat or take your chances on where you sit.

As for me - I am 6 foot 2 inches and large framed - my greatest fear in flying is not crash landing ...rather it is being placed in the middle seat in a three seat row.  And guess what - that is exactly where I ended up in my recent flight. 

My wife Anne too was awarded the 'middle seat treatment'.

Whatever happened to placing a husband and wife next to each other? 

And speaking of children ...all of ours are fully grown but a younger couple came to our attention recently who had their family farmed out into a series single seats.  One of their toddlers ended up beside a strange man.  I will not mention the name of the airline since I got this information second hand. 

And continuing on with our discussion about seats - they really cannot be placed any closer to one another.  There is no way my legs can fit behind the seat in front and the seats we sit in are so close to the ones beside us we end up sharing an armrest with our neighbour. Hopefully they do not have BO.

I fully expect the next step the airlines will take is to incorporate standing room and in many respects I think that might very well be an improvement over their current offerings.

But I am not finished...not by a long shot.

It used to be that an un-eatable snack was included in the overblown price of your ticket.  Not any more.

Now if you want an un-eatable snack, you have to pay through the nose for it.

Everything has a cost and there is now a cost for everything.

As an aside I bet many airlines are still charging a fuel surtax that came about when oil prices climbed several years ago. They have bottomed out since but I would not be surprised if the surtax is still alive and well.

But I digress.

I am now talking about the food and drink carts that clog the aisles and rob the flying public of their hard-earned shekles. 

They also block passage....to the toilets.

We had over 200 souls on our recent flight and but 2 toilets at the back of the plane - i.e. for steerage. 

And Guess What.

Most of steerage could not reach those self same two toilets for over an hour.

My wife and I sat near those toilets so it was not an issue for us per se - but for most of the other steeragers - it was a big issue.  Some were literally dancing a jig...I have never seen such pained facial expressions.

One lady near the front...just behind first class, made a beeline for the first class head and was stopped cold.  She told the stewardess what she thought of her in so many words..and when we finally landed she was taken off in cuffs by the local constabulary.

I can just hear the poor woman telling her story before an impartial Judge ... Problem will be the Judge probably never travels steerage.

And one more thing - the food and drink cart never did make it to our back row seats even though the flight was some 3 hours in duration. 

Probably just as well.

As I see it...

'K.D. Galagher'

CASTRO

CUBA'S NEMESIS ...and, 

HELL'S NEWEST RESIDENT.

And yet, Canada's 'Trudeau' Prime Ministers - loved and love him.

Gives you an idea of the quality of his worldly admirers.

When fellow Canadians would tell me that they were going to vacation in Cuba because of its cheap cost, I would encourage them to be sure to drop by the prisons while there and give their best wishes to its many political prisoners.

And a friend once allowed that he just loved to visit Cuba - "it is like going back 50 - 60 years in time...why they still use donkeys in their labours'.

I asked him if he had asked any of these labourers if they too believed themselves fortunate for their regressive existence?

"I see your point", he sheepishly replied.

It is not that Cuba is all gloom and doom - in fact, it has an education system the envy of many, and other than for chronic shortages, its Medical System too is highly regarded.

So the Progressives amongst us wax eloquent about those achievements.

But in return for these two pluses - there is no political freedom, no freedom of the press, no freedom of speech... no human rights.

Scarcity is the norm with respect to everything - which is especially hard to take when it comes to the lack of food.  (That said, it always appeared that the two Castro Brothers had ample to eat).  

But of course that is just the way it is in Socialist Utopias.

All the while, Workers in Cuba get by on subsistence wages - paid in worthless Cuban Pesos.

With the Big Guy's Passing it will be interesting to see if Cuba can continue to survive in such inhuman conditions. 

Certainly it will not in the long term and my guess is that it will not even be able to do so in the short term.  

But what is clear - Cuba under Castro for the last 50 years has been an unmitigated disaster.

As I see it...

'K.D. Galagher'

Once Upon A Time There Lived A Prince and Princess In ...

Sham-a-lot.

He of nice teeth and even nicer hair - she, the female equivalent. 

Together they ruled the Great White North of some 35 million subjects.

Sadly though, these two lovely creatures came under the spell of the evil sorcerer - let's call him 'the evil sorcerer' or t.e.s for short.

T.E.S convinced the two that the world was imperilled by Climate Change also known at various times as Global Cooling and Global Warming.  And more - the culprit in all of this is a clear, colourless and odourless gas called CO2. The same compound required by plants and even humans to complete the breathing process. 

The Young Prince declared one fine day recently that in view of this apparent threat he would impose a Carbon Tax on all of his Kingdom.

He, of all people, should have known that this was the wrong thing to do since a portion of his Kingdom ruled by the dark princess known as the Wicked Witch - had already drunk of the tainted kool aid resulting in electricity prices more than tripling and hundreds of thousands of jobs fleeing to the Great America to the South. 

But being under TES' spell - he was helpless to act otherwise.

What follows is the Rest of the Story as told by popular columnist from this WoeBegone Land known as Rex Murphy:

At the critical moment of every second-rate movie ever made, when the town is under siege from the bandits, or the maiden is tied to the railway tracks and the hero is lost on what must be done, there will come a voice from the crowd: “What we need now is action!”

With that insight, the posse forms, the hero swoops, the town is saved, the maiden rescued from the onrushing locomotive, Stetsons fly into the air, and the victors ride off into the sunset.

I thought of these old and desperate melodramas when I read of Catherine McKenna, (read...the Prince's spear carrier) our environment and climate change minister, on safari to save the planet, this time in Marrakesh, Morocco, trailing her own posse.

The minister signalled to the world that Canada was, again, on the case: “We’re moving forward, as is the world. Everyone is absolutely committed to climate action.” Great news. Everyone is agreed that what we need now is action. Almost makes you wonder why in all their multitudes they went to Marrakesh at all, what with everyone “absolutely committed” to … action.

Does the everyone of which she speaks include President-elect, Donald Trump? And does that “whole world” contain the greatest industrial powerhouse of our troubled globe, the U.S.? Does Trump’s charming disinclination to heed the belief that the Earth is doomed without a carbon tax subtract from McKenna’s universalist optimism? It should.

For if the U.S. decides that Paris and its tenuous, non-binding resolutions are not of interest, is not her buoyant outburst more than a little out of key? With the U.S. out of the climate game, China multiplying coal-powered plants and free to spew emissions, India emergent as an industrial power, and half the world paying lip service to the cause, whence comes McKenna’s furious optimism? From an empty place, I would offer.

But regardless of what a Trump administration might do to the concert of consensus, McKenna soldiers on: The rest of the world “recognize(s) that pricing pollution is the best way to reduce emissions.”

The minister is playing semantic shuffle here. Carbon dioxide does not make smog. She is taking the lingo of the fight against pollution, which was sensible and has had demonstrable results, and using it for brush work on the different terrain of (contested) theories of imminent climatic disaster.

Nor is “pricing pollution … the best way to reduce emissions.” The best way would be to forbid all use of fossil fuel by diktat. Or, more congenially, to ask all countries to stop all industrial activity based on the use of oil, gas and coal. This would obviously be a huge hit in China, India, Africa, Cuba — now that it is in the sunshine again  — and, of course, Canada. Though drastic, it would at least have the merit of matching in substance the fever of the hyperbolic, apocalyptic rhetoric that trails around world climate conferences.

As ice to the fevered brow, let me offer a more contained understanding of what it means for the climate change file now that Trump will be adding Air Force One to his fleet. Brad Wall, (read...climate change realist) and premier of Saskatchewan, does not have McKenna’s gift for unmoored enthusiasms, but he does have a good eye for irresistible facts. His view is it “makes no sense for our federal government to push ahead with imposing a national carbon tax when our biggest trading partner — and our biggest competitor for investment and jobs — is not going to have one.”

Could Wall, who is not in Marrakesh, be on to something? At a time of economic stress in the Western provinces, the Alberta economy blistered by oil prices, Fort McMurray still reeling from the after-effects of the inferno last spring, Newfoundland wandering into debt hell — why impose artificial and unilateral restraints on our national economy? In particular, why impose restraints that will place us at major disadvantage with the one economy that matters most to Canada?

I doubt Wall’s more realistic take on these matters will do much to suppress Trudeau (read...The Prince) government’s enchantment with posturing on the world stage. On this file, McKenna is clearly speaking the wishes of her prime minister, who prefers to see the election of Trump as having no bearing on his beloved climate tax. Justin Trudeau insisted in a recent interview that it is he, not Trump, who is “on the right side of history,” an awkward phrase in the best of times. Being “on the right side of history,” and Trudeau should know this, has an unfortunate provenance, and is always more of a cloudy boast than a fact.

He went on to assert that “there is tremendous economic disadvantage from not acting in the fight against climate change; for not pushing toward cleaner jobs and reducing emissions.” If he really wished to substantiate that argument, Ontario provides a perfect illustration: its green energy policy is a master plan for plunging a prosperous province into lacerating debt, while financing its dream with power bills that are stirring a populist revulsion.

The rhetoric of climate change has an aversion to reality, seduces governments into ignoring the needs of their citizens, and fires the minds of politicians who imagine themselves saving the world. In other words, it tempts them to feel they are more important than they are, that they are working with “history,” rather than operating administrations faced with more immediate, if mundane, needs. That is always a snare and a delusion.

National Post

WELL THAT'S THAT... AND FOR OUR COUSINS BELOW THE BORDER - YOU ARE MOST FORTUNATE TO HAVE AS YOUR NEW PRESIDENT SOMEONE WHO DOES NOT BUY INTO THIS CLIMATE CHANGE / GREEN ENERGY NONSENSE.  YOU CAN WATCH FROM YOUR COMFORTABLE BIRTHS AS WE UP NORTH CONTINUE OUR ECONOMIC DECLINE INTO OBLIVION.

In closing, please do not miss the picture of The Evil Sorcerer directly below.

As I see it...

`K.D. Galagher

 

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A LETTER SAYS IT BEST...

I was going to write another Blog on more examples of how Donald Trump appears to be letting his followers and would have done so had I not come across the following letter in today's newspaper:

Now that Donald Trump is the president-elect, I wonder if any of his supporters realize they have been had as he is beginning to walk back many of his campaign promises. After meeting with President Obama for 90 minutes, he has started to reverse his position on Obamacare. President Obama must be persuasive. Later, Trump told “60 Minutes” that during the campaign, he had to say a lot of things and now he has to temper his rhetoric. Sure sounds like he has become a politician.

Elected to be an outsider, he has named Reince Preibus as his chief-of-staff. Preibus, the head of the RNC, is about as inside as you can get. Trump’s wall is shifting to a fence and no one will be deported until after it is built. Depending on how long it will take to build thousands of miles of a wall/fence, no one will be going anywhere for some time. If you expected less government and lower taxes, hold on to your checkbook. Trump has proposed a trillion-dollar federal program to fix infrastructure. Good; we need to fix roads, bridges and buildings. But that will be a huge government program costing, well, trillions. Where will the money come from? You can’t lower taxes and pay for such a program.

Trump was often greeted with chants of “lock her up.” On “60 Minutes,” he praised the Clintons saying, “I don’t want to hurt them; they are good people.” He backed away from his threat of a special prosecutor.

He  accused the Clintons of a conflict of interest involving The Clinton Foundation. But, Trump has said he will put his three oldest children (Eric, Donald Jr. and Ivanka) in charge of his businesses through a blind trust while also naming them as key advisers. That is a conflict of interests.

All of this occurred within less than 72 hours of being elected. Who knows what’s next? I wonder how his supporters feel now?