The Sun : How to bend statistics to say what you like and avoid the truth

National Arts contest launched in ottawa to combat hate, confront Islamophobia


"Of them, 48% were motivated by hatred of a race or ethnicity,35 per cent were motivated by hatred of a religion, and 11 per cent were hate crimes targetting sexual orientation.

...and a part of the rise is due to an increase in incidents targeting Muslims."

Hmph. "A part of the rise" ... if there was one incident that would be sufficient to be "a part of the rise." That's good bending of statistics.

Suspiciously absent from this article (which you cannot copy and paste from , luckily I'm a touch typist) is any mention of exactly how many incidents of islamophobia occured. Or how many incidents of christiania-phobia (muslims targetting non muslims, as is REQUIRED by their holy book)

You want to stop the hatred against muslims ? How about you STOP KILLING the non-muslim ?

No, that would be too much to ask for , wouldn't it ?

Much as we love joking about Harper as the closet prime minister who hid in a closet when a muslim came calling with a machine gun , still, A MUSLIM CAME CALLING WITH A MACHINE GUN , AFTER THE PRIME MINISTER !!!!

Get a grip. You are not the wronged party here. You muslims are the ones doing all the killing.

USA is Watching You

Personal info of nearly 200 million U.S. voters sat exposed on a public server for 12 days

 

 Really ? And who would even have such a database in the first place ? 

Data was collated by Deep Root Analytics, which worked for the Republican National Committee last year

 

Wait ? A wack of politicians ? What exactly was in this database ? 

 "It included "names, dates of birth, home addresses, phone numbers, and voter registration details," plus best guesses at voter ethnicities and religious beliefs, according to..."

 

Wait... it knows who you are, where you live, and who you're likely to vote for ? And this is ALREADY in the hands of politicians like Ferguson Missouri Mayor James Knowles III , who terrorized every black he could into staying home in the last election (14% voter turn out in a town with a 30% white population) so he could get re-elected ? 

 

America truely is a dictatorship. 

Unbelievable that such a database even exists.  Never mind already being in the hands who will use it for the most harm.

 

'Please don't do this': Why Sony's plan to sanitize movies could be a 'slippery slope'

The entertainment company's home entertainment wing launched "clean versions" earlier this week, offering digital downloads of sanitized family-friendly versions for two dozen of their movies — including White House Down, Moneyball and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Even the kids book series-turned-Jack Black film Goosebumps made the list.


My vote is for proper labling. You should have a list of things on the back of the box like ...
Contains Gore
Contains Sex
Contains Violence
Contains Drug Use
...etc etc etc 

And people can make up their own minds. 
Let them sell "clean versions" and "Dirty Versions" and "Full versions" all they like. 

Just properly label it. 

Liberals' citizenship bill to proceed with some Senate amendments

Far more people lose their citizenship because it was obtained fraudulently, and the Senate wants to amend the bill in order to give those people a chance at a court hearing before their status is stripped away.



Important Notice to All Immigrants. 
Feel free to lie on your application to Canada. If you get caught lying , the government will NOT hold it against you. 

Anti-immigrant protesters accused of 'fear-mongering' at Red Deer school following fight

Equality for all

When a guy holding up a sign that says Equality for All gets called Anti-Immigrant, we have a problem.

'I'm the victim and I'm in shackles': Edmonton woman jailed while testifying against her attacker

 

On a Monday afternoon in June 2015, Angela Cardinal was led into an Edmonton courtroom handcuffed and in leg shackles. Metallic rattling echoed as a sheriff escorted the 28-year-old to the witness stand.
She was not the accused, but rather a victim — called to testify at a preliminary hearing after she was savagely attacked and sexually assaulted by a notorious sexual predator.
...
...
Ganley said she has already formed a special committee to look at the case to review policies,...

---- ---- ----
Confinement without consent is kidnapping. (assuming she comitted no crime, which in this case, they openly acknowledge is the case)

The penalty for kidnapping is (up to) Life in Prison.
Every cop, every judge , every social worker who particiapted in this act of kidnapping should be in jail.
But no , they're going to hold a committee...they're going to look at policy.No one is to be punished.

Alberta is Canada's "Ferguson, Missouri" where they do as they please and give you the finger if you don't like it. These people should all be rounded up and tossed in jail , but instead, they'll just do it again. and again , and again , and again. I mean why not ? All that ever happens is someone shakes a finger at you , gives you a wink , and says "Play Nice Now"

Same thing happened in Toronto , Ontario. Hundreds of people rounded up and arrested by the cops, who they knew had done no crime. Eventually , many years later, the cheif police officer got a 30 day fine and that was it.  Hell , why not do it again and again ?

I'm sorry. This is canada. Your constitutional rights are merely optional suggestions.

UPDATE : Turns out she was stoned in court from abusing drugs the night before, and they put her in jail to try and dry her out so she could testify. But she was stoned there as well.

:)
Man ...some people !

Do unpaid debts ever disappear?

 

Statute of limitations

Canadian legislation sets a statute of limitations on unsecured debt. This prevents creditors or a collection agency from taking debtors to court after a certain amount of time has elapsed. The clock starts ticking from the time you last made a payment on the debt, with the the number of years varying across provinces and territories as follows:

• British Columbia = 2 years
• Alberta = 2 years
• Saskatchewan = 2 years
• Manitoba = 6 years
• Ontario = 2 years
• Quebec = 3 years
• New Brunswick = 2 years
• Nova Scotia = 6 years
• Prince Edward Island = 6 years
• Newfoundland and Labrador = 6 years
• The territories = 6 years

---- ----- ----

 

 "Unsecured" means credit cards, etc. A loan against your house or car or other property is another matter.  Ditto any money owed the government. (taxes, student loans, fines, etc etc). They still want it 50 years later. (My student loans did get forgiven when the NDP came to power many years ago , but that was a one shot deal, just because they were feeling nice)

But wow, I can tell the credit card agencies to go fly a kite. I like that. Of course the credit agencies that harrass you will still harrass you , and they'll never take you to court anyways, but it's nice to know they haven't got a leg to stand on and I can just throw that stuff out as junk mail. 

I don't have an "estate". No house, no car, no property , so that's pretty much the end of that. 

2 years in Ontario. Wow, what a relief off my mind. I'll never get another credit card again , but guess what ? I dont' want one. It was quite a nightmare and I aint going through that again. 

 

NASA's latest mission could crash the world economy

 NASA has set the date for a trip to an asteroid that could be worth “quadrillions” of dollars.

It's not going to crash the world Economy.

 Think about it. The value of such a nickle iron rock is that it's already up there in space, you don't have to lift it up, you can make ships out of the asteroid and send them on their way without having to lift out of earth's gravity field. 

It's prime value is that it's already up there. Bringing it down to earth would be a huge waste.

 

 

 

 

Price tag for fixing Phoenix pay system now tops original cost

Repair bill has risen to about $402M — more than $309.5M payroll implementation cost in the 1st place

 

Couple calls on Ontario government to ban Indigenous logos, mascots in schools

 

"We are asking that they ban all offensive First Nations logos and names from all Ontario schools as the effects of these logos/names are harmful to our children. This also includes a total ban of all clothing/accessories that bear these logos," Courchene wrote on Facebook.

Considering it is the intention of these organizations to hold up these logo's as something good, even heroic , you will have serious difficulty demonstrating that the logo's are racist or insulting. 

:)

 

 

DVD with tax information of 28,000 Yukoners lost, says Canada Revenue Agency

 

 (Population of Yukon is 37 000 , so that's basically all the tax payers)

This is the major problem with collecting information you don't really need. It gets stolen and winds up on the dark net and then you find out next year when the bill collectors come calling that you have two houses and three cars you never knew about and everybody wants to be paid in full right now. 

Plus you can no longer actually buy a house or car because the record shows you already have some and ripped off the crediters (or the scammers did in your name).

Lets not even start down the road of the NSA wanting to build a profile on every human being on the planet, and how they have laws specifically targetting non-USA Citizens who have never set foot in the USA (Julian Assange is the poster child for this)

Agile bat-shaped robot may change the face of drones 

WASHINGTON — Holy drone, Batman! Mechanical masterminds have spawned the Bat Bot, a soaring, sweeping and diving robot that may eventually fly circles around other drones.

Because it mimics the unique and more flexible way bats fly, this three-ounce prototype could do a better and safer job getting into disaster sites and...
 --- ---- ----

Owl swoops in , grabs and wrecks the three ounce drone , flies away.
(do a search for "what eats bats" owls are high on the list)

:)

 

CBC Investigates

'I want someone to take my pain': Woman set on fire by husband denied home insurance payout

 What kind of happy horse crap is this story anyways ? It says right there in the title someone set the house (and her) on fire deliberately. No insurance company is going to pay for an act of arson. 

Yet this article goes on and on about how evil the corperation is for not doing so. 

Yeah right. You want to burn down half the city ? Start paying people for committing arson and it will burn real quick. 

No thank you. 

 

Unfair Trade Practices

U.S. announces duties up to 24 per cent on Canadian softwood lumber

 

The U.S. Department of Commerce announced late Monday it will impose “countervailing duties” of up to 24 per cent on Canadian softwood lumber, opening a new round in the long-running trade dispute.
The Department said it had “preliminarily determined that exporters of softwood lumber from Canada received countervailable subsidies of 3.02 per cent to 24.12 per cent.”
“As a result of today’s determination, Commerce will instruct U.S. Customs and Border Protection to collect cash deposits based on these preliminary rates,” it said.

...
Transport Minister Marc Garneau, who chairs the cabinet committee on Canada-U.S. relations, said earlier that Canada has always acted fairly -- which has been proven repeatedly in trade rulings.

 An obvious political move.
They lost the last couple of rulings when they accused Canada of this , but the American Corperations cleaned up in the mean time, and Canadian corperations started going belly up as the court cases dragged on for years before they were exonerated. Those that were still around, that is.

The Free Trade agreement is worthless in the face of such tactics. Tear it up and kick all the american corperations out.

Time to start making all our stuff with 3D printers.
Who the heck wants an american car or computer anyways ? Now that NSA is drafting every american corperation into the intelligence game ? There have been reports of them trying to use new model computerized cars as "untraceable" assassination tools, and everyone knows Google is in bed with the NSA ,whether they like it or not.

And that doesn't even begin to cover the issue of "illegal immigrant labour" helping out everywhere in the american economy. You think they actually declared that some illegal helped them produce that product cheaper ? I don't think so.

American has been ripping off the world for decades. 

Kick 'em all out.

Thanks for nothing, Wynne !

Three Ontario cities to test basic income pilot project

 

HAMILTON  - Ontario is launching a basic income pilot project this spring, aimed at providing financial stability for low-income residents in a time of precarious work and a changing economy.

Premier Kathleen Wynne announced the details of the province’s three-year basic income project during a speech in Hamilton Monday.

...

The pilot will launch in the Hamilton area — including in Brantford, and Brant County — and the Thunder Bay-area late this spring, and in Lindsay this fall, with a minimum payment of nearly $17,000 for an eligible single person

 In this age where rent controls have been discarded, EVERY  land lord in Ontario would now like to thank Kathleen Wynne , premier of ontario , for giving people more money.

And all rents in those target cities just DOUBLED.

Thank you so much ! Here's my contribution to your election fund to make sure you don't decide to undo those rent increases.

PS: Every land lord outside of those cities is pushing up the rent as well , by as much as they think they can get away with , and then funding organizations demanding you give everyone more money in their cities as well.

Tell the truth, you did this on purpose because it means more money in your political war chest, didn't you ? 

 

Online Gaming is Doomed

Article = none , personal experience

I can't log into Wow. (World of Warcraft, an online game) . Or Diablo III.

Two different games ? Yeah , they didn't crash. It's a DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack. Been trying for a few hours now, checking back every now and then.

This brings me to one of my rants, that I can't remember if I wrote about this before or not.

Online gaming is doomed. 
Seriously. The entire world is on one network , and you're trying to run a business (selling access to your game across the internet) and every hacker in the world wants money or they're going to shut you down ? You don't dare pay them, because if you do ten other hackers will start up , and demand twice as much as the first guy did.

I heard about some game developer going to make a "serverless" game. Basically anyone who starts up the game takes on some server duties, and so the game is distributed across all the players, rather like the block chain that bitcoin used to use. (is bitcoin still around ??? Are there still suckers willing to give away their money ? Apparently yes. Such people are with us forever. ).

Trouble is , I got a six megabit down , one megabit up connection. Meaning if I ran a server , it would be the slowest , most worthless server out there. And of course, most internet providers don't want you running servers, because it causes too much network traffic. Traffic they don't get paid for ! They just want their users to access someone elses server, that's far less traffic than the world beating a path to your doorstep.

Which means ...

Online gaming is doomed. 

These attacks will get worse and worse , until the games literally cannot function. Why ? Because crackers want money and they think this might maybe get them some. Because religious fanatics think games are evil. Because some idiot is selling the services of his hacked computer network to shut down anyone you like so every business man in the world can decide to shell out a few bucks and hit the competition.

Switching to national networks is really the only solution.
I mean , if the hacker is inside of my nation , the cops can go after him. If the hacker is in the middle of china , guess what ? Nothing the cops can do for you.

I've mentioned this a few times on various forums, but all I get are "stupid no's". As in , that would be bad for my business so I'm going to make up some excuse that doesn't actually make any sense to say NO DON'T DO THAT IT'S IMPOSSIBLE DON'T EVEN TRY .

I suppose I should run through the usual arguments.

The Technology Doesn't Support  That.

The TCP/IP stack doesn't support security , period. A new protocol needs to be written from scratch. Since you're writing a new protocol , you can include all sorts of security features, like , say , the routers attaching information to each data packet (I came from this router !) that cannot be accessed by the user (and thus not faked).

This would allow you to decide "I don't speak chinese, I don't want any data coming or going from my computer to china". (All the chinese data comes from these particular routers when they enter the country, you just block traffic that came from those routers , and no foreign nation can do anything about it because they're CANADIAN routers, other nations don't have access to them, and can't stop them from saying "All my data comes from china" )

They'll send the data to some other country first and then to Canada
Lame.
The "new protocol" routers aren't on the old internet. That's kind of the point of making a new local to Canada only internet. The only other countries you exchange data with are those with a similar secure protocol , even if you have to build a "translation" server if the protocols aren't identical.
Plus your users should be able to specify a list of countries they'll accept data from. (the chinese student at school wants to skype home of course, but I don't speak chinese so that nation is off my list !) There's less than 250 nations in the world, so modern computers and routers can easily track that.

Selecting which countries you will and won't communicate with would be a primary function of the new protocol.


They'll just set up a proxy and get in anyways

Lamest excuse ever.
A proxy will have a lot of data flowing through it , lots more than a regular user. Which means they stand out like a bonfire compared to the rest of the network , and it won't take much to write a routine (with your brand new secure protocol) to automatically detect the high traffic, notice all the packets come from out of country , and cut it off from your network.

Someone will build a bridge between the old internet and the new 

And we're back to the proxy argument. Such a bridge would generate a lot of traffic and be shut down fairly quickly.

I want to connect my computer (or home network) to both networks so I don't miss out on anything
Obviously disallowed. The whole point of the new network is to leave the old behind. Go buy an old second hand clunker of a computer and have one on each.

Windows / Microsoft / other corperations demand I use the old internet and want nothing to do with the new since it's bad for their business

These corperations, and government security agencies are the worst offenders against the security of computers ever. The answer is , the old internet is crashing ! I'm writing this because right now , at this moment, I can't access my favorite online business (world of warcraft) and this situation is only going to get worse ! Their demands that you stay with the old internet will become meaningless when the old internet starts having way too much down time and you can't access those services anyways.

It Would Be Bad For My Business

Your business is dead if the internet crashes under the weight of all those hackers smashing everything in sight and demanding money , spreading virii, etc etc.  Adapt to the new system. Besides, the current internet is bad for your business. Sony Entertainment got hacked and a movie stolen and released across the internet. Which means they blew millions making it and got not a single dime in return.  A hospital in Beverly Hills got hacked, and it shut down all their medical records and scanning equipment . That was pretty bad for business too.

Google Filters

Article = none , personal experience

So , my girlfriend moved to a new place, I just got out of the hospital , and I had to go do blood tests once every two weeks, which meant I needed to find a new blood test place.

So I went to google. And it recommended dynacare.
But the only Dynacare place close to where I live was for students of Ottawa University only. So I tried other places on Google. No luck , they were all across town far far away.

That's strange. I saw a sign for blood testing just down the street near a pharmacy.
Tried to find it , and couldn't for the life of me. All I got were "prefered search results" and "advertising results" (now adays it's just a green box that says "Ad" , who knows what it will be next week)

So I gave up , and walked down the street to the pharmacy, and he said it's just around the corner , about 20 paces away.

Place is literally three blocks from home. But they don't do advertising , they don't show up on google search results because they don't pay google a shit ton of money (that they pass along to the consumer).

This brings up the phenomenon known as "search filtering" .
Search engines are not your friend. They're out to make money . Pay them and your search results show up (and you pass the costs onto the consumer in the form of higher prices) , or don't pay them and as far as the world is concerned you don't exist.

This renders using the internet to search for stores as USELESS !!!! I'm not looking for the high priced stuff. I'm looking for the cheap deals. And if they aint there on google, then I guess google is of no use to me.

Hospital Woe's

Article = None, personal experience

Do I want to go over my various serious but boring medical conditions that landed me in the hospital for a week ?

Not really ,no.

Do I want to talk about the evil corruption of the Ottawa Civic Hospital on the corner of Parkdale and Carling Avenue ?

Well...yes.

I had some medications on Hold. What does that mean on hold ? They'll get them later in a day or two ? I was there seven days, it took them four to tell me "On Hold" means that's really pricey stuff and the hospital can't afford it, you have to provide your own.

Seriously ? It took you four days to tell me I gotta bring my own ? I don't care that the hospital can't afford it , because I'm getting it for free from my insurance, but my girlfriend was there twice, she could have brought the stuff in if I had known. But no, they have to play games with phrases like "On Hold" and "We're working on it" before they finally fess up that you aint getting any. There's an actual note on my chart saying I have to provide my own supply. But do they tell me about that ? No , it's embarrassing or something, they can't be bothered.

So I have SOME meds with me, I brought the bag because it had a full list of every med I had from the pharmacy which hospitals are always asking for, and I gave them ten pills , which should be plenty since it was one pill a day kind of thing.

Yeah, they promptly lost the meds. Didn't give me any. Stuff was gone , endless explanation of maybe it was put here, maybe they did this or that ... basically no one knows what happened the stuff is gone and the hospital doesn't provide replacement because it's "On Hold" they can't afford that stuff.

Failed to tell me to provide my own meds, and then stole them when I did.

Not impressed.

Ontario creating service to help people access medically assisted dying

 

 My opinion on this matter is unchanged. 

If you don't have the guts to climb to the roof and jump , then you're not suicidal enough , and the medical establishment should assume you want to live and do their best to accommodate that wish. 

We're all going to die soon enough. There's no need to rush it.

WikiLeaks claims to expose CIA's ability to 'weaponise' smartphones, TVs and computers in mass leak

Article


WikiLeaks also claims the CIA has been trying to be able to remotely control vehicles so they could carry out "undetectable assassinations."


Wow. And I was just worried hackers from China would do that. USGov is trying to get on the ground floor with that ? 

The documents claim to show the CIA's ability to turn computers, smartphones and TVs into surveillance devices or "covert microphones" even when turned off.

 I've always said "Two People can keep a secret, but only if one of them is dead" (ok , that's actually a quote from Robert Heinlein , picky picky) . 

What , exactly , makes intelligence agencies think they'll never get caught ? No one will EVER find out what they're  up to ? What exactly do they think is going to happen to american made smart phones and TV's after this ? You think sales will go up ? What about sales of computer controlled american made smart cars ? You think they're going to be popular world wide ? 

I think they simply don't care. They're just thinking "Me First ! Everyone Else can go hump themselves ! It's not my problem !"

Ha ha. You just blew a wad buying up investments in corpertions so you could demand changes to their products, and now your targets don't want anything to do with those products. I think it really is your problem. 

Go find some patsy to blame, and keep telling yourself "We were not supposed to get caught. Who do we throw in jail for thirty years to make sure this never happens again ?" When everyone else outside of washington already knows it WILL happen again and again and again , no matter how many martyr's you throw in the slammer, or execute. 

Opiads Made Simple

The fresh, young face of Ottawa's opioid tragedy

I really don't understand the problem of these fake prescription drugs 14 year olds are buying from dealers (instead of pharmacies). 

Fast talk a few kids into wearing a wire, have them make a few buys, start arresting people. Whats the hold up here ? This is classic police work , you see it every day on every cop TV show, which is written by writers who have an ex cop on the payroll explaining to them that yes, this is how we do it in the real world. 

What are you waiting for  ?

Reality check: Are asylum seekers ‘queue jumping’ and other key questions

 

Are asylum seekers ‘queue jumping’ when they cross illegally?

No, and officials say this is a critical point.

Insert long explanation that basically amounts to 'Yes, they are, we can't kick them out because they lied about where they came from , lost all their documents, and we have to support them for years while their case is processed'

 

Orwellian "Good Facts" ride again. 

 

Nice. 

Bad Bank Records

Article = None , personal experience


Feb 27, 2017

	PR	LOBLAWS ELMVALE	$5.24		$30.56
Feb 27, 2017	PR	LOBLAWS ELMVALE	$4.09		$26.47
Feb 27, 2017	PR	LOBLAWS ELMVALE	$0.38		$26.09

Exerpt from my bank records
Notice the Date / Feb 27th ?
Notice todays date, or the date of this post is Feb 26th ?
Yeah ...it doesn't like sundays, it pushed it back to tomorrow.
Does that on holidays as well.
Not very accurate ?

And they use this stuff in court cases ? Sheesh !

EDIT : Yes, I really did make a 38 cent purchase. Gotta love unlimited transactions no extra charges. 

It's About Time : New York Times, CNN, BBC among media outlets barred

New York Times, CNN, BBC among media outlets barred from White House briefing

 

Journalists from the New York Times, CNN, the BBC and other media outlets say they were denied entry to a White House press briefing Friday.
Other outlets affected included the Los Angeles Times, Politico and BuzzFeed News.
The reporters were barred from the briefing in the office of White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

 ---- --- ----

It's about time. 

Once upon a time a long time ago there were these news papers , small organizations, that reported a little news, caught a few politicians and movers and shakers doing nasty things, and it was decided, half by them , and half by the other politico's , that they would become part of the "democratic process". A foundation of democracy. 

But things changed, and the news papers grew into massive chains of news papers that controlled the news in half the nation. They became the very movers and shakers they were supposed to be watching. They bought and sold politicians, they openly supported one particular political party over another, they made no beef as to which corperations (albeit , newspaper corperations) were their friends, and which were their enemies. They "decided" when news stories would run  , and when it was time to stop (the princess diannia assassination story, the newsies mutually agreed they'd had enough of the public blaming them ) . 

They no longer are a "pillar of democracy" as they like to call themselves. And it's about time this was recognized. 

Someone needs to send them back to where they started. They need to be broken up into smaller papers again , and a size limitation imposed on them. Say , a million subscribers and no more, kind of thing. 

They have lost their way, and their job is too important to go undone. 

and that's my two cents.

Alternate Hell Dimension

I swear , we must have slipped into some kind of alternate hell dimension somewhere ... and we need to get back home. But I can't tell which home is which ?

Google adds voice-activated shopping, taking on Amazon

Article

Google announced Thursday it was launching voice-activated shopping from its artificial intelligence-powered Home speaker, in a direct challenge to Amazon's Alexa devices.
Users can simply tell the speaker to order items -- diapers, paper towels, or trash bags, for example, and get delivery from any of dozens of participating retailers.
"If picking up paper towels or stocking up on coffee is on your list, consider it done," said Google Assistant product manager David Wang in a statement.

Allow me to educate you as to the five scariest words your child could learn if you have Google voice activated shopping. 

"Google, buy me an iPhone"
 

RCMP bracing for more border crossers amid community concerns

 Emerson resident Tim Hoffman says he does not pay much attention to "the commotion" of asylum seekers crossing the border into his town.  

But he wants it to stop.
Looking at refugee claimants making the dangerous journey, through snow drifts and frigid temperatures, Hoffman says he would actually like to see stricter vetting of the potential refugees — perhaps in the same vein of U.S. President Donald Trump's measures on refugees and immigration south of the border.

 --- --- ---

 

 America is a land of easy access to guns.

First immigrant to cross the border and shoot someone , that border is going to slam shut, guarenteed. 

First immigrant to be caught smuggling guns or drugs, same thing. 

Temporary phenomenon at best. 

 

How to make NAFTA Horrible

How to Make NAFTA Great Again


Mexico enjoys a trade surplus through NAFTA and exports significantly more goods and services to the U.S. than it receives. That must change says Trump.
But the opposite is true for Canada.
In 2015, with two-way trade between Canada and the U.S. valued at $662 billion, the U.S. had a healthy trade surplus of more than $6 billion.
Almost two million American jobs are supported by exports to Canada.


 ==== ==== ====

So , if some other nation has a surplus , that's bad for us. But if we have a surplus it's good ? 
And USA has a surplus from trading with us ? (I admit 6 billion out of 662 billion is like 1% , but still a surplus is a surplus)

And two million american jobs are "supported" by exports to canada, whatever the heck "supported" means. 

I know this article doesn't mean to say it , but it is stating that we'd be better off if NAFTA died. Since we're losing 6 billion a year to the united states, we'd be 6 billion dollars richer if it died, by his own figures. And 2 million "supported" jobs come to canada, which I have no idea translates into how many real actual jobs, but it sounds like a lot. 

It wasn't his intention to say "We'd be better off if NAFTA died" , but it is what his reasoning adds up to. 

I wonder if he realizes that. 

But Canada should not start the discussion with talk of greenhouse gas emissions, carbon taxes or climate change. This would not be helpful to our long-term relationship with the U.S., given the current administration.


And the only thing that matters, the land we live on still being here in the future, we shouldn't talk about that at all , oh noes !!!!!

Typical accountant logic. 

Run the numbers through a spread sheet, these are the results. Never mind that the results say we should let everyone on welfare starve to death and cancel national healthcare, because that just costs too much , and cancel old age pensions and let them all starve to death , these are the numbers ! 

This kind of nonsense just highlights the difference between intelligence (the ability to run numbers) and wisdom . And that difference is huge. 

Trump wishes to renegotiate NAFTA

So Trump wants to renegotiate NAFTA ?

Well, what is NAFTA anyways ?

NAFTA is a trade agreement. Basically , you can sell your products in another country. Ok , right ?
Wrong.  Business men look at the numbers. They will produce where the costs are lowest (like wages) and go there. They will play one nation off against another to drive down costs, like wages, and outlaw minimum wages , under threat of going elsewhere if you don't comply.

And if you do comply, usually it's a disaster for the hosting nation. Suddenly everyone's living in rooming houses, or there's four people in a two bedroom apartment because that's the only way you can afford the rent.

Add to this the up and coming 3D printers, where by manufacturing is going to come back to the western nations, in the form of robots making stuff, instead of human hands. In other words, no jobs for the common people, just a small handful of jobs for the technicians maintaining the machines.

NAFTA is a bunch of business men bribing the government (excuse me, making legitimate, perfectly legal political donations) to give them a good deal and crud over the rest of the population , and of course, any businesses too stupid to make similar bribes to the government. And our standard of living drops through the floor and into the sewer.

Add to this Mexico was added to NAFTA  , and that's a dollar a day country , and all the jobs that could be relocated to Mexico have been. Which means jobs for canadians suddenly became scarce, and only the low paying ones remained.

So . Trump wants to renegotiate NAFTA ?

I think we should take a hard line with Trump and get him to break NAFTA. This way we get out of it without paying any penalties.

I think NAFTA , and similar trade agreements, are an evil thing, and in the coming age of 3D printers , no one is going to be shipping any product across any borders. We're all going to wind up with a big work shelf full of several 3D printers in a closet somewhere , one for making stuff out of plastic one for metal  , one for electrical stuff (fans, clocks, etc ) one for computer stuff (cell phones, computer devices) . And we'll only buy the big stuff that lasts forever (a full blown computer that lasts for many years, furnature that lasts for 20 years, fridge stove etc) .

Manufacturing is already on life support, and soon it will vanish. Trade agreements are todays chimney sweeps. They are no longer needed.

The age of Uncle Owen's Farm (warning : Star wars reference) is soon to be upon us. We will maintain the machines , and the machines will do all the work. 

History Repeats Itself

WARNING - SARCASTIC POST AHEAD
/sarcasm on
How dare these black boys deny "The Great Klu Klux Klan", as Thomas Woodrow Wilson properly put it ? Don't they know Thomas Jefferson offered a solution to this problem by offering to send the blacks back to "barbaric" africa ? Except for his own slaves of course, that could hurt his business. Of course sending them back could be problematic since James Monroe actually conquered strips of Africa, liberating it from the blacks, and so calling it "Liberia" , so I guess we're not sending them back there.
And on the subject of "incidery publications" like that painting , we should follow Andrew Jacksons lead in 1835 completely prohibiting such thigns under severe penalties. Free speach is only for white folk ! Just like the right to bear arms !
In the words of the immortal Donald J Trump “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys wearing yarmulkes… Those are the only kind of people I want counting my money. Nobody else…Besides that, I tell you something else. I think that’s guy’s lazy. And it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks,”
Truely , this guy is in touch with the common man.

/sarcasm off
yep. Those are real quotes from real presidents. USA presidents, even.

Trump and the TPP , a modern day parable

   Once upon a time a guy named Obama made a beautiful horse drawn wagon , full of luxury , but only for his business friends, not for the common people, and he called it TPP. And he extolled the virtues of his wagon , TPP, and how it would make business people like them rich , while not saying much at all about the poor people who would suddenly find that all the business men had left town and stopped employing them.
   But the business men couldn't agree on where to steer their wagon to. Oh they had their leaders, called Japan , and Canada, and Australia, who all wanted to go this way or that , who all spoke for big groups of businesses, but they all wanted to go in different directions.
   But , after a while, Obama decided he had family matters to deal with , and had spent way too long with these bickering business men , so he said "I have to go , but I'm going to leave a replacement here, to represent all the business men of my people. Keep up the good work !"
   And the new guy was named Trump.
   And Trump looked around at all these bickering business men and asked "How long have you been arguing about this ? Years and years ? " And so he climbed down off the wagon , which had been sitting there for years and years going no where, and he went up to the horse that was supposed to pull the wagon.
   And he shot the horse in the head, and walked away.
   Now the business men didn't like that. They said "It could still work ! We can still ride this wagon and it will be good for our businesses. "
   And the other business men looked at him and said "But the horse is dead. "
   "It can still deliver ! We just need to give it a little more time. Trust me ! Time will tell on this , you can count on it !"
   And they looked at him , and they looked at the dead horse.
   And they said "Yeah , we made all sorts of promises , didn't we ? We'd hate to be caught out failing to deliver. All right. We'll give the horse more time. "
   And so they stood around looking worried at the dead horse , as blood pooled under neath it, and told every one "It will be a little more difficult , but it's still possible. "
   And Trump looked back at them , from the top of a hill , and shook his head in disbelief. And kept on walking away.

Ferguson Protest Painting

They put it up , they take it down , they put it up , they take it down ...

Wow , these cops and politicians really get uptight when they get caught acting like highway bandits. You're not even allowed to call them out on it.

I'll just keep this copy in my blog, in case the USA news sites mysteriously misplace it.