[housewife]

You know how hard it is to find people who fix things these days. I have to go to Woodstock to get my sewing machines looked at. And don’t even get me started on small repairs on the house no one wants to do the piddling small jobs even if I’m more than willing to wait till they are in the area on a “real” job.

[BRAH]

Canadian Officials Rush to Support U.S. Envoy After Death Threat

$1:

Top Canadian officials, led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, rushed to express support for Ambassador Kelly Craft after a package containing a suspicious substance and a death threat was mailed to the U.S. diplomat.

The incident came as tensions remain high in Canada over a brewing tariff fight, which erupted over Donald Trump’s criticism of Trudeau as “dishonest & weak,” the president’s refusal to endorse the final communique at the Group of Seven summit a week ago, and Canada’s outrage that tariffs have been applied under the pretext of national security.

White powder was found Thursday in an package addressed to Craft at the U.S. embassy in Ottawa and discovered by a mail-room employee at the ambassador’s residence, an embassy official said. The police were contacted, and tests determined the substance wasn’t harmful.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-16/canadian-officials-rush-to-support-u-s-envoy-after-death-threat
_______________________

The Tolerant Left.

[herbie]

How do you know it wasn't Rob Ford?

[Coach85]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 98096.html

The tolerant right.

Cherry picking works both ways, hack job.

[BeaverFever]

herbie herbie:

How do you know it wasn't Rob Ford?

From beyond the grave? Guess that would explain the white powder though.

[Thanos]

Should have mailed it to the head villain instead of to one of the mindless drones.

[Freakinoldguy]

herbie herbie:

Oh please, more people like you!
You know how many people are throwing out their computers and buying a new one (or going with stupid tablets) instead of fixing them? Business has dropped like 75% in 5 years.

Madison Ave has convinced the gullible that everything is disposable with a shelf life of 5 years and that we "have" to have the newest and best so is it any wonder that people throw out perfectly repairable items?

[BeaverFever]

Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:

herbie herbie:

Oh please, more people like you!
You know how many people are throwing out their computers and buying a new one (or going with stupid tablets) instead of fixing them? Business has dropped like 75% in 5 years.

Madison Ave has convinced the gullible that everything is disposable with a shelf life of 5 years and that we "have" to have the newest and best so is it any wonder that people throw out perfectly repairable items?

Yep your favourite movies, tv shows and celebrities have been subliminally messaging you for the past 40 years or so that if your TV is more than 2 years old or you don’t have a different pair of shoes for every day of the week, or you haven’t remodeled a kitchen or bathroom in the past decade, then you’re some sort of failure in life. Our culture demands we spend as much of our money as possible trying to appear ‘fabulous’ with excess clothes, gadgets, merchandise and other random shit we don’t need, disposing of anything that has even the slightest sign of wear and tear. Don’t even get me started on what people unnecessarily spend on cars

[housewife]

Would that be new cars or just cars in general? Big city thinking is one of the big reasons northern Ontario hates Toronto. Ontario government has lowered train speed instead of fixing track and got rid of the passenger train and bus service is slow. Ordering online isn’t always feasible which means you have to drive. Daughter is still muttering about having to drive to Sudbury to get work boots. And just to keep things interesting she added in a rant about the man trying to keep women from non-traditional jobs by making PPE hard to get.

[Freakinoldguy]

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:

herbie herbie:

Oh please, more people like you!
You know how many people are throwing out their computers and buying a new one (or going with stupid tablets) instead of fixing them? Business has dropped like 75% in 5 years.

Madison Ave has convinced the gullible that everything is disposable with a shelf life of 5 years and that we "have" to have the newest and best so is it any wonder that people throw out perfectly repairable items?

Yep your favourite movies, tv shows and celebrities have been subliminally messaging you for the past 40 years or so that if your TV is more than 2 years old or you don’t have a different pair of shoes for every day of the week, or you haven’t remodeled a kitchen or bathroom in the past decade, then you’re some sort of failure in life. Our culture demands we spend as much of our money as possible trying to appear ‘fabulous’ with excess clothes, gadgets, merchandise and other random shit we don’t need, disposing of anything that has even the slightest sign of wear and tear. Don’t even get me started on what people unnecessarily spend on cars

I guess once the corporations discovered how successful subliminal messaging was at getting people to buy popcorn, candy and pop at the movies they ported it over to all their advertising with massive success.

Here's an interesting read on the history of subliminal messaging along with the name of asshole who invented it.

http://www.businessinsider.com/subliminal-ads-2011-5

[N_Fiddledog]

Trudeau starts a trade war for political points. We’re the casualties

$1:

Canadians who think Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is standing up for Canadians against U.S. President Donald Trump over dairy tariffs have it wrong. Trudeau is standing up for Quebec against the Rest of Canada. It is Trump who is standing up for Canadians.

Canadians are also wrong to think the U.S. has been unreasonable in the NAFTA negotiations, as would be evident if not for our sense of entitlement. Americans don’t owe us a living and they do owe it to themselves to look after their own.

If Canada’s negotiators want to do what’s best for Canada, they should stop posturing before they do more damage to our industries. For starters, they should stop misrepresenting the U.S. position on steel and aluminum tariffs. The U.S. never claimed that Canada represents a national security threat, as Trudeau keeps repeating. To the contrary, the U.S. has specifically said these tariffs are not aimed at any one country: without tariffs to protect American steel and aluminum from foreign suppliers, these industries, which America needs for national defence, would go bankrupt.

The U.S. was delaying steel and aluminum tariffs on our industries pending the NAFTA negotiations but, instead of making our case straight-up at the negotiating table, Canada decided to lobby the U.S. Congress and U.S. media and to try to run out the clock on the Trump administration. For good measure, Trudeau called the U.S. request for a sunset clause that would require NAFTA to be renewed every five years “totally unacceptable” and in late May, Trudeau high-handedly scrapped a plan to meet with Trump because of it. The strategy backfired, damaging our steel and aluminum industries. Seeing the stalling, the U.S. imposed the tariffs.

But what is so unreasonable about building into trade deals set renewals that require the parties to renegotiate provisions that may have become outdated, particularly since we’ve seen game-changing industries such as social media and shale oil emerge from nowhere? Countries in Europe, Asia and Africa employ sunset clauses of various kinds in their trade deals, often with protections that grandfather investments should an agreement not be renewed (the Netherlands-Poland Bilateral Investment Treaty is just one example). Instead of employing “my way or the highway” tactics, Trudeau could have accepted a sunset clause that grandfathered the protections Canadian industry would need in the event a future U.S. administration decided to walk away from NAFTA.

There is also nothing unreasonable about Trump’s desire to let U.S. dairy farmers sell their goods into Canada — what is unreasonable, even outrageous, is the 270-per-cent tariff Canada imposes.

Trump is a deregulator who wants to deregulate agriculture in the same way he is deregulating energy, mining and other natural resource sectors. By lowering our dairy tariffs and accepting Trump’s doctrine of reciprocal trade, our dairy industry — which has been stagnant for decades — would have access to the vast American market and return to being an export industry, as it was before Canada adopted supply management. Canadian consumers would win from a market-based dairy industry, too. As detailed this week in a Washington Post column showing the absurdity of Canada’s supply management system, B.C. residents in border towns make milk runs into Washington State to obtain dairy products at half the cost of those in B.C. supermarkets, which under supply management obtain dairy products from Quebec, 5,000 kilometres away.

By playing to the Canadian public at Trump’s expense, Trudeau’s popularity has soared


In truth, Trudeau is the protectionist, not Trump, and the way things are going, it will be Trudeau, not Trump, who worries about trade deficits. Protectionism and the stagnation it brings haven’t served Canada well.

A decade ago, Canada had a US $78 billion trade surplus with the U.S. That surplus was more than halved to US$32 billion five years ago and it was halved again to US$17 billion last year. Five years from now, our ever-shrinking surplus with the U.S. may start to become an ever-growing deficit, particularly since the U.S. has blown past us as a producer of energy — our main exports to the U.S. We are not only at risk of losing this financial mainstay, with the U.S. no longer needing us for energy security, we are also at risk of becoming strategically unimportant.

None of that matters much to Trudeau, who faces a tough re-election next year. NAFTA necessarily thus becomes not an economic exercise but a political one. How to retain the dairy quotas needed for the Quebec vote in the face of U.S. pressure? How to reverse his sagging popularity among Canadians on the whole as the economy fades? The answer is a no-brainer: Declare war on Canada’s Public Enemy Number One — Donald J. Trump. For maximum effect, start right after genial discussions at the G7 meetings during which an unsuspecting Trump had even reportedly agreed to drop his request for that five-year sunset clause.

“Canadians are polite, we’re reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around,” Trudeau grandstanded as soon as Trump turned his back. It’s a brilliant political strategy. By playing to the Canadian public at Trump’s expense, Trudeau’s popularity has soared. But although Trudeau may be winning in the polls, Canadians are wrong to think Trudeau is winning for them. For Canadians to win, Trump must prevail and the Canadian market must open up.

http://business.financialpost.com/opini ... casualties

[Vbeacher]

Thanos Thanos:

Ford's already said he's fully behind whatever Trudeau has to do in retaliation against the US. And Ford has no choice either, considering that the massive threat to Ontario's auto sector is already in the planning stage by the Americans. If Ford did something stupid to backstab Trudeau in what's essentially a war with the US then he'd deserve to get run out of office on a rail, and right out of the country too, as a traitor.

And that would change in an instant if he cut a reasonable deal with Trump, which ignored stuff like gender parity, climate change and all the other stupid social justice crap the Liberals have introduced into the negotiations, but which promised the same access as before for our industries. Canadians would jump on it, and demand the federal government accept it.

[herbie]

housewife housewife:

Would that be new cars or just cars in general? Big city thinking is one of the big reasons northern Ontario hates Toronto. Ontario government has lowered train speed instead of fixing track and got rid of the passenger train and bus service is slow. Ordering online isn’t always feasible which means you have to drive. Daughter is still muttering about having to drive to Sudbury to get work boots. And just to keep things interesting she added in a rant about the man trying to keep women from non-traditional jobs by making PPE hard to get.

Don't gripe. They haven't taken away the bus yet....
Same thing here, all the lumber, oil, natural gas, ores hauled out of northern BC to build skytrains in Vancouver. All we hear is them bitching or bragging about home prices, not one of those shitheads would move here.

[housewife]

herbie yet is too true. I can’t tell if they are bitching or bragging either.

[Thanos]

Vbeacher Vbeacher:

Thanos Thanos:

Ford's already said he's fully behind whatever Trudeau has to do in retaliation against the US. And Ford has no choice either, considering that the massive threat to Ontario's auto sector is already in the planning stage by the Americans. If Ford did something stupid to backstab Trudeau in what's essentially a war with the US then he'd deserve to get run out of office on a rail, and right out of the country too, as a traitor.

And that would change in an instant if he cut a reasonable deal with Trump, which ignored stuff like gender parity, climate change and all the other stupid social justice crap the Liberals have introduced into the negotiations, but which promised the same access as before for our industries. Canadians would jump on it, and demand the federal government accept it.

Trump was going to do this to us regardless of the stupid things Trudeau had on his stupid little list. Trump isn't ripping up trade deals because of what someone like Trudeau thinks of trannies. It's something that Trump's been planning on doing all along.