Tag: tariffs

CANADA’S MILITARY PROCUREMENT

What a beating Canada’s military capacity seems to be taking.  And it’s a beating coming at us from our erstwhile friends allies, nations with short memories who ought to know better.

These are important considerations for us to keep in mind as we spend our way to the 2% of GDP threshold we committed to as part of our membership in NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Some European countries question our reliability as an ally if we can’t seem to reach that 2% threshold, which is bonkers.  Canada has a much higher GDP — Gross Domestic Product — than all but three of our European NATO allies, those nations being Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.  The first we defeated in battle (twice), the second we fought to restore their territorial integrity (twice) and the the third we came to the rescue of (twice).

My point is the higher the GDP, the more money on defence spending that 2% represents.  Which means that, despite spending less than that percentage, Canada spends more in real dollars than 26 of our European allies.

So stuff it.

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TARIFFS, PENGUINS, AND DOCTORS

By now, everyone knows we’ve taken a 25% tariff hit from our erstwhile friends and compadres the Americans for the sole reason of, well, I don’t know because they make no sense to me.  That puts me roughly on par with all the economists and tariff experts out there who are pretty-much all saying the same thing.

There’s no doubt that there’s something afoot about what Trump and his acolytes are up to something nefarious., including the possibility that he and they are all Russian puppets bent on weakening America and its western alliances, which if true, would mean they’re doing nothing less that one hell of a job.

I think that, as Canadians, we’ve also done one hell of a job of absorbing these hits to our economy and our sovereignty.  Yes, we’re mad, in fact mad as hell.  But I still hold on to the belief that what we’re seeing is another example of that famously stereotypical Canadian restraint.  But our restraint is nothing compared to that shown by the inhabitants of Heard and McDonald Islands.  Sure, they were only hit with 10% tariffs from the Trumpers, but still they’ve been victimized like seemingly everywhere else, and one would think that they’d show some sort of disinclination, disappointment, or outright rage.  But they don’t.

Because they’re penguins.

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STICKING UP FOR CANADA

When you’re at war, you usually find out pretty quickly who’s-who and what’s-what.  It’s in moments of high import, or a crisis, where you find out a lot about the people in your life, whether they be family or your circle of friends and associates.  Your colleagues at work fall into this as well.

We’re at war with the United States.

Economically, yes, but just like any shooting war, they aim to cause us harm, are doing it intentionally, and have as their end-goal the weakening of our own country to the point where we desperately request to be officially absorbed by them, or annexed if you will.

Whether it be done with bullets and missiles or tariffs and dollars matters little.

They have intentionally set out to cause us existential harm.  That, to my mind, meet the criteria for a declaration of war.

Never mind their nonsense involving hordes of undocumented immigrants pouring over the Canadian border into the United States.  And ignore their stated intention to stop the dangerous flow of fentanyl across that same border, a peril of epic proportions, what with 43 pounds of the stuff having crossed in the past year, about one one-thousandth of the amount sneaking into America through Mexico.

This is the casus belli of the American attack, their justification for being the jerks that they’ve become.  But it really has nothing to do with any of that, since the real problem at the Canadian border has to do with hard drugs and guns that flood across in the opposite direction, as in into Canada from the U.S.

It appears that, when it comes right down to it, they’re the problem at the border, but that doesn’t sell at home, so they blame us for their own failings and use it as a pretext to come after us and our country.

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AMERICAN TOURISM INDUSTRY TAKES HIT

A number of American tourist groups within the industry are hurting because large numbers of Canadian tourists are turning their backs on America and finding other places to go spend their tourism dollars.

So these tourist people are determined that a reasonable course of action would be to form roving groups of industry representatives and ambassadors and come to Canada to beseech us to reconsider, and to run once again into their welcoming arms.

Um, no thanks.

They’ve decided to come to Canada and tell us how much they love us, how much they miss us, and how much they understand our plight in the face of damaging tariffs imposed by their government.  You know, the one they elected.

Um, no thanks.

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THE RESURGENCE OF JUSTIN TRUDEAU?

It wasn’t that long ago where Justin Trudeau took his own version of his dad’s famous “long walk in the snow” and determined that he could no longer be Liberal leader, and by extension, prime minister.

Then Donald Trump came along.

The impact was immediate.  Suddenly the Liberals start to rocket up the polls, as Canadians coalesce around their political leadership in response to an unprovoked war with the United States.  And in a twist of cruel, ironic fate, it’s Justin Trudeau that seems to be the choice of Canadians in dealing with a dangerous mad man.

Are these the machinations of the political gods, keen to find opportunities for their own personal merriment?

That woke, feminist, communist traitor with his stupid socks and pretty eyebrows is now Winston Freaking Churchill?

Man, I thought that I had seen it all in my life, but apparently there’s more, much more.

Justin Trudeau is back.

Until later today.

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WHERE DID ALL THE GOOD PEOPLE GO?

VISUAL PRESENTATION

Phil McGraw is proof of one indisputable fact.  That is that America has never met a jerk it didn’t ’t want to embrace.

Phil, also known as Dr. Phil, is another one of those Frankenstein’s monsters that Oprah Winfrey is responsible for foisting upon us, taking a small beer grifter and elevating him into a national phenomenon, much as she did with that other huckster Dr. Oz, or Mehmet Oz, purveyor of fine dietary supplements proven to do absolutely no good other than to line his very own pockets.  And for the record, Phil makes Oz look like a choirboy when it comes to the art of sleaze.

At his very core, Phi McGraw is nothing short of creepy, right down to the hand-holding exits from set that he makes with his wife, who seems to be thrilled with her own fame accrued by sliding through life on her scuzz-ball husband’s coattails.

This is America writ large.  We’ve been begging for replacements since Jerry Springer, Morton Downey Jr., and Judge Judy went the way of the Dodo, as in dead or just plain gone.  But as soon as we knock one down, another rises from the muck.  Now they have one as a president, again.

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CHINA’S MAKING SOME REALLY NICE EV’S. AND YOU CAN’T HAVE ONE.

China has emerged as a blockbuster producer of electric, or EV, vehicles.  So much so that they can get one into your driveway for as low as $18,000 Cdn.  What a steal!  And they aren’t even crap, in case you’re thinking that.  They actually have technology that would make North American car-makers blush, so that old bird don’t fly in this case.

So why aren’t more Canadians buying these things?  Why are Canadian roadways not awash with Chinese EV’s similar to when the Japanese, and then Koreans, entered our market and took it by storm back in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

It probably has a lot to do with the 100% tariff the Canadian government has slapped on these vehicles, the intention being to specifically prevent them from entering our market.

Say what?  The Canadian government is purposely inhibiting our freedom to choose whatever vehicle we want?  Oh my God, get out the battle flags and fire up the big rigs!  We’ve got ourselves a convoy!  Okay, maybe a little dramatic there, but it was fun to say.

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