Canada's Future-Failed Prime Minister

Mark Carney will be worse than Trudeau. Polling in Canada for the leftist Liberal party has soared in response to president Trump's tariff threats to Canada. What was inevitably going to be our version of Trump (Pierre Poilievre) this year is in definitely jeopardy. 

Should Mark Carney continue as Prime Minister past the election, Canada is destined to fail. Fast. Canada's failure would not be because of Trump, but rather failed and disproven Liberal socialist policies. Trump may be the boogeyman to Canadian media but the real monster is the power hungry, socialist monsters running our nation for the last decade.

CNN's brilliant move

Are they patting themselves on the back?  They're now prepared for a Trump run and/or presidency, having rehired George Costanza Brian Stelter. I guess antagonism is their aim?

Here's the issue, his ratings, like that of everyone else at CNN, were abysmal. By shedding the partisan nature of their 'news coverage' they were looking to recover from their downward spiral. The problem has been that despite firing some of their more obvious political hack staff, they only ever went half-measure into it.  There was pushback from the partisan hack staff, and they never really got very far. 

With Stelter's reappearance, it would seem that the partisan hack side of the company is emerging victorious. That spells more failure for CNN. Their fate most likely, is sealed. 

Maine is an idiot

Maine has gotten into the act of trying to ban president Trump from the 2024 ballot. This too will fail.

Sweden's failed multiculturalism

Below is a good review of Sweden's failures, for when you have to discuss diversity with a leftist who claims Scandinavia is an example of the positive impact of multiculturalism. 

Video evidence of Hamas rocket fail

The left is so delusional that many won't accept video evidence or even that Let's Go Brandon and U.S. intelligence say it was a failed rocket launch from within Gaza by either Hamas or a splinter group that caused the accident in Gaza.  I say accident because it's no longer even clear it hit a hospital.

Gotcha video works in reverse

 Via Bill Whittle,

Republican Congressman caught on hidden camera video makes the stunning confession that he'd like to do what Trump-backing Republicans have been saying publicly for a long time. Anti-Trump PAC founder Scott Dworkin retweets it in an attempt to "make it go viral". At this writing, it has 375 views.

Why?  Because in the undercover video exposé, conservative Congressional Representative David Schweikert (R-AZ6) who is a member of the Congressional Freedom Caucus, said privately exactly what he says publicly.  No scandal, only him telling the truth about his public opinion being truthful.  How that is scandalous is a mystery.

This will end up entrenching voters in Arizona who support David Schweikert and upsetting voters who already despise him. That's a gotcha fail.

Is China really crumbling?

 At least their semiconductor industry seems to be.  Here's Peter Zeihan:

Mainstream media fail (again)

This is not being shared (by me) as a black/white issue, just to help point out that there's a double standard in the media.  Paul Joseph Watson talking about the Brooklyn subway attacks.

Implosion in Congress

 Pelosi fail:

More on the California fail

 This result is disheartening but frankly, not surprising: 

But wait, it gets worse

Today has been a sad, SAD day for Taliban news. But wait , it gets worse.  Afghan's future leader has significant ties to Obama failures.

American "leader" backs Cuban communist thugs

 AOC is proof America is falling apart.  She's not the problem, she's a symptom.

Proof media liberals are uneducated

Basic math people, come on!  I now get why media liberals support impossible Medicare for all proposals - basic math escapes them.

This is as dangerous as it is sad and pathetic.

Dictator Watch: North Korea

Kim Jong Un had officials executed after the failed last summit with the U.S.

Communism: Doomed to failure

Go away Nostradamus, you are not needed here.

Those who argue that the Soviet Union failed because it was communism done improperly, and there are a multitude of them, would be wise to heed the warning "Insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result".

Communism failed, and will fail every time, because human nature does not change. It will fail because power corrupts, not only absolutely but inevitably. Those in power will eventually, inevitably resemble Stalin, Mao or Castro and not Mother Theresa. It will fail because the notion of freedom, of self are inherently anathema to subjugation to a centralized planning authority. It will fail because with a defined outcome, what each individual must input into the system becomes less of a driver for that individual - there is no lasting motivation to put in effort.  It will fail because centralized planning is not infallible and one thousand different plans improves the odds of just one (or more) succeeding over only one plan being available/allowed.  There are numerous other reasons communism will fail every time it is tried but each of those alone ensure that outcome.

Letting California secede

In an article about the disloyal opposition of both the media and the Democrats, Michael Goodwin opines briefly on the idea of California secede (leaving the union). If you're a conservative, don't tell me you've never considered this one yourself;

If California secedes and its 55 electoral votes come off the board, Dems will never win another American election. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton could become president of the breakaway state and the rest of us would be free of the Clinton stain.

Secession is one way the swamp could drain itself. Sally Yates’ way is another.

Well - I hadn't considered the first paragraph's latter sentence, it does have it's appeal. Nevertheless, to do so would be to abandon the state's conservatives as few and far between as they may be, to a fate worse than no border wall.  Otherwise the electoral math bears out.  California currently holds a massive 55 electoral college votes and is no longer contested by Republican candidates at many levels. President Trump won 306 of 538 electoral college votes.  Hillary Clinton won 232, 55 from California.  Without California, president Trump would have beaten Hillary Clinton 306 to 177 of 438 electoral college votes (an electoral college margin of 69.8% to 30.2%).  And he would  have won the popular vote as well - rather than losing by 2.8 million votes (a 2.2% margin), he would have won by 1.4 million votes (a 1.2% vote victory).

It's stark how much the nearly bankrupt state matters to elections - that's a remarkable difference in the results should California not be part of it.  As a conservative it would be tempting on so many levels to just let California sink into an ocean of debt and fail miserably.  Make no mistake, with current policies it is inevitable that California will fail. It's an inviting thought to imagine California going it's own way, failing, and then realizing in dramatic fashion how progressive liberalism has destroyed the newly created nation.

But then there's reality.  At 30+ plus residents, when California leaves, does it take with it its share of federal tax revenue? What about the national debt? Does it take it's fair share of that too? And Medicare and Medicaid?  And what is it's fair share?  Is it based on California's percentage of the population  (~12%), or it it's share of GDP (~13%), or it's share of the national geography (4.3%)?  These things matter.  The national debt is approximately $20 trillion, 13% of California's debt obligation would be $3 trillion but 4.3% would mean less than $1 trillion.  What would California be willing to take on, given it's relative insolvency?

And what about other considerations - military contracts based in California?  Military bases?  Families now split geographically by nation?  How might interstate commerce change as it becomes the purview of international trade deals? And think of the flag.  49 stars?  America would have to grant Puerto Rico statehood and then be on the hook to bail out that new state (granted at a much lower cost).

Here in Canada we've had this debate many times every time Quebec threatens to leave the country.  It never gets too serious because no one ever thinks its going to happen, even though it has come pretty close.  The logistics of a separation of state from state are nightmarish in a peaceful departure, but the last time a few states decided to leave and form a Confederacy in the United States, you know what happened.

As appealing as a California exit might be on the surface, it's just not a good idea for the country.  And for Republican-leaning conservatives in California and indeed across America, maybe you are better served by using this opportunity to try to split California into two states (North and South, East and West?) in order to grant Republicans a chance in congress, the Senate, the presidential elections and the state legislatures, a chance at actually having a voice and some wins. In the end really, it's about America anyway - not economics, not the impossible intricacies of a split.  This is not BREXIT. Unlike the EU, America still matters and California is part of that.  That's more important to remember than any other consideration.

That's government for you

Here in Ontario Canada, today was the day students in Grade 10 were supposed to write the provincial literacy test.  I'm not sure if this was the first year it was online or not, but why a government would have every student in the province login to write the test at the same time is beyond me.  Oh wait, it's the government.

The website crashed.

Ontario's Grade 10 literacy exam was cancelled

Obamacare's long slow fail

Every day insurance providers are closing up shop in states. More and more people are not able to keep their plan, or their doctor, as president Obama AND every single Democrat promised. Costs are skyrocketing for the insured. A long slow collapse that started DAY 1, is really picking up steam now.

At the heart of the problem for Obamacare is that insurers are leaving the program en masse. Part of it has to do with the failure of the risk corridor to adequately protect money-losing insurers, while the dynamics of Obamacare are driving other insurers to the sidelines.

For instance, of the 23 healthcare cooperatives approved by Obamacare, 16 have announced that they're closing their doors this year. Healthcare cooperatives are low-cost, consumer-focused options, but practically all co-ops have been losing money. The risk corridor was expected to protect insurers that priced their premiums too low, but a mere $362 million of the $2.87 billion requested was paid out. There are too few overly profitable insurers, so the risk corridor simply didn't get enough funding, dooming more than two-thirds of the low-cost co-ops to failure -- and more co-op closures could be on the way.

But that's exactly what Democrats wanted all along: A full-fledged, socialist, single-payer health care system, devoid of innovation and teeming with bureaucratic decisioning on who gets what treatment (in its most extreme form - death panels). And anyone who gets in the way can be damned.

Trusting what a Democrat tells you is like standing in front of a bull and facing the wrong way: There's a lot of bull coming at you and it's not inclined to stop.  So not paying attention is the worst thing you can do.

Some of us saw this all along.  We jumped, shouted and pointed at facts.  It's tempting to say 'we told you so'.  Very, very, very tempting.

Krauthammer Gold

Krauthammer gold:

President Obama's Foreign Policy Pivot Fails on Many Levels (Part 1)

The president today made a speech at West Point today to a graduating class that was full of problematic statements. The speech was so full of...misinformation, that I've been forced to break down my breakdown of it, into more than one part. in this part I will focus on the president's cherry picking of facts in his speech.  But that's just the starting point.

In order to support his positions, the president, no stranger to cherry-picking facts to support his positions, did not disappoint in this speech, if cherry picking is something you were looking forward to hearing.

Here's the first example of cherry picking his facts:

Al Qaida's leadership on the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan has been decimated, and Osama bin Laden is no more.

True - but al Qaida is still an existential threat worldwide. The president has selected a narrow window to define success, because beyond that window, the problems are nowhere near being fixed.  Of course, the president tries to minimize the geo-political threats, because it helps justify a minimized military, enabling more social engineering programs.

In fact, by most measures, America has rarely been stronger relative to the rest of the world. Those who argue otherwise, who suggest that America is in decline or has seen its global leadership slip away, are either misreading history or engaged in partisan politics. Think about it. Our military has no peer. The odds of a direct threat against us by any nation are low, and do not come close to the dangers we faced during the Cold War.

He has parsed his words carefully -"rarely" been stronger. Yet relative to China, America is losing it's military superiority advantage. And while no nation has any reason or power to invade the United States, North Korea and Iran are both working diligently towards long range nuclear missiles capable of reaching the United States. Russia and China still do of course. The threats faced today are not the same as they were during the Cold War.

Wasn't it president Obama who chided Mitt Romney when he stated that the 1980's called and wanted their foreign policy back during the presidential debates? Mitt Romney was of course right that Russia is the biggest geopolitical threat (you could argue China is a bigger threat now). And while Russia is poised to indulge in a nefarious landgrab in the Ukraine, Obama argues that the world is a different place. Well, if it is, then comparing the dangers of today to the different dangers of a different era is most definitely cherry picking.

But there's more egregious examples.

And when a typhoon hits the Philippines, or schoolgirls are kidnapped in Nigeria, or masked men occupy a building in Ukraine -- it is America that the world looks to for help.

Exactly what is America doing about the kidnappings in Nigeria or the violent unrest in the Ukraine? Effectively, zilch.  The world may have looked to America, but with missing leadership from an American president, that is not likely to continue.  At least it will not until someone else comes along who can create a sense of global leadership that an apology tour and obvious disinterest didn't do.

When the president bases his speech on selectively choosing facts, or portions of the whole picture to act as a foundation for whatever else it is he has to say, you know his arguments have started on shaky grounds.

Next I'll take a look at the implications of the president's pivot and vision for America's future beyond Afghanistan and Iraq.