Saturday, January 9, 2016

Aurèle Émile Joliat « Litte Giant »

Friday, January 8, 2016

Friday's Ride - Volkswagen BUDD-e Concept World Premiere at CES 2016

Whatever your impression of my political views are…. You are wrong

I am not NDP, Liberal or Green. I am not Conservative and of that you can be certain.

First and foremost I believe in facts….. Conservatives do not. I do not believe in misleading others whereas the Conservatives do. I believe in medicare and the value of taxing the masses to provide services to all Canadians regardless of their status, Conservatives do not. As a former foster parent I know the value of welfare, Conservatives do not.

I am a bleeding heart and damn proud of it. My goal in life is the eradication of the CPC and their corporate policies of destroying the middleclass for profits.

As a senior I sat and listened to the Conservatives as they berated me and millions of other elders for not doing enough to secure their future. I watched as they slashed and gutted their own tax revenues to the benefit of corporations while ignoring the economy. I watched as they cut services, medicare transfers and pension funding in an effort to impress their base. I watched as they denied our service personnel their rightful pensions and medical services in the name of economic prudence.

It is past time for Canadians to recognize that this is NOT the Conservative Party of the past but rather a group who would destroy all that Canada was and still could be without them.

Poor decision making and political posturing equals more fails

Turnover at top of DND; marathon election hammer military purchasing plans

OTTAWA — A sampling of the former Conservative government's planned military purchases shows two-thirds of the projects are behind schedule.

And a defence expert says Justin Trudeau's Liberals face an tougher job than previously expected because 2015 was a lost year for decision-making at National Defence.

A report, to be released Tuesday by the Global Affairs Institute, says part of the problem was the revolving door in the defence minister's office — and among the senior bureaucracy.

"It just wrote off a serious chunk of time," said Dave Perry, who wrote the study.

He says the extraordinarily long election campaign also meant plans to buy urgently needed aircraft, ships and armoured vehicles were left in holding patterns.

The 73-page study, obtained in advance by The Canadian Press, shows 63 per cent of 59 projects listed in the Conservative government's often-hyped defence acquisition guide have slipped from their anticipated timelines. Thirty-four per cent are on schedule and three per cent are early.

Navy supply ships, fixed-wing search and rescue planes and armoured patrol vehicles are among the significant delays. The acquisition guide was supposed to bring predictability to the procurement process by listing hundreds of defence items — big and small — that the government planned to buy in the coming decade.

The delays will inevitably lead to higher costs for the delayed projects and unspent budget allocations.

Perry says the sampling was fair because it looked at projects on the immediate horizon.

The Conservatives made the bottleneck worse by holding back decisions on some key projects in order to have political window-dressing for the run-up to last summer's election call, Perry added.

http://www.metronews.ca/news/canada/2016/01/05/turnover-at-top-of-dnd-marathon-election-hammer-military-purchasing-plans.html

Bad joke, Bad idea: Trickle down economomics also known as Reaganomics

The IMF Confirms That 'Trickle-Down' Economics Is, Indeed, a Joke

"Trickle-down" economics began as a joke. Seriously.

If there’s one person most often associated with the origins of of trickle-down economics, it’s President Ronald Reagan. Few people know, however, that the phrase was actually coined by American humorist Will Rogers, whomocked President Herbert Hoover’s Depression-era recovery efforts, saying that "money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes it would trickle down to the needy."

Rogers’ joke became economic dogma within two generations, thanks in large part to Reagan. At the center of Reagan’s economic doctrine was the idea that economic gains primarily benefiting the wealthy—investors, businesses, entrepreneurs, and the like—will "trickle-down" to poorer members of society, creating new opportunities for the economically disadvantaged to attain a better standard of living. Prosperity for the rich leads to prosperity for all, the logic goes, so let’s hurry up with those tax cuts already. The legacy of Reaganomics continues to shape modern debates over macroeconomic policy in the United States, from the Bush tax cuts of the mid-2000s to the deficit hawks waging war over the federal budget in Congress.

Now, nearly 80 years later, Rogers’ quip is getting the punchline it deserves: A devastating new report from the International Monetary Fund has declared the idea of "trickle-down" economics to be as much a joke as he'd imagined.

http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/trickle-down-economics-is-indeed-a-joke

"The IMF report, authored by five economists, presents a scathing rejection of the trickle-down approach, arguing that the monetary philosophy has been used as a justification for growing income inequality over the past several decades. "Income distribution matters for growth," they write. "Specifically, if the income share of the top 20 percent increases, then GDP growth actually declined over the medium term, suggesting that the benefits do not trickle down."

On Site with Lueb Popoff

Thanks Sue Fran

Liz Leggett Photography

With permission of Liz Leggett

Carol Burnett Show outtakes - Tim Conway's Elephant Story

Dog Adopts Baby Opossum - Animal Friendship

Thursday, January 7, 2016

Thursday's Ride - Low Level Mosquito FB.26 fly-bys

Stop spreading the lies about immigrants to Canada getting special financial treatment

"However, the Canadian Council for Refugees says that most resettled refugees end up in debt because they are expected to repay the cost of their transportation to Canada and other related expenses – with interest. The council says that more than 90 per cent of refugees repay their loans.

Privately-sponsored refugees are not entitled to federal or provincial government assistance during the period of their sponsorship. Asylum-seekers who apply for refugee status upon arrival in Canada also can’t receive resettlement assistance."

Fact check: Do refugees get more financial help than Canadian pensioners?

As Canada’s new Liberal government moves forward with its plan to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of the year, false claims about how much money will be spent to support them have been circulating online.

The federal government is debunking claims that refugees receive nearly $2,500 in monthly assistance – more than the maximum amount Old Age Pension recipients can collect.

An infographic that has been widely circulated by email and shared on social media claims that Ottawa gives refugees a “monthly pension” of $1,890, plus $580 in social aid, for a total of $2,470 per month or nearly $29,000 per year.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/fact-check-do-refugees-get-more-financial-help-than-canadian-pensioners-1.2670735#_gus&_gucid=&_gup=Facebook&_gsc=oWLnaFS

The truth and nothing but the truth..... this is NOT a Liberal rebuke but it is a Federal government rebuke that was in place under previous governments but the ignorant promoters of bigotry choose to ignore the facts and promote hatred.

Stupidity still reigns supreme in the Conservative Party

Just who are you trying to kid, Rona?

Rona Ambrose is turning into the best stand up comic in Canada, though the joke seems mostly on the official opposition.

Like a mosquito at a nudist colony, Rona thought being opposition leader would be easy work. There’s so much exposed flesh in the government’s spending plans, the only question should be where to begin drilling? Instead, she hit a dry vein. She and her advisors opted for electoral reform as the juiciest morsel to try to tear into.

So we’re now to believe that the Conservative Party of Canada has suddenly discovered democracy, you know, the kind of thing the Reform Party once promised but promptly forgot when they emerged from the wilderness to take power. The CPC seriously wants Canadians to accept that it will do anything to block electoral reform unless Justin Trudeau and the Liberals submit any plan to revamp the electoral system to a national referendum.

And anything, folks, apparently really means anything.

Ambrose says she is ready to use the CPC’s majority of hacks, bagmen and shills in the Senate to block legislation. (Hmmm, sound familiar, Michael Chong?) Yes, the Leader of the Opposition is prepared to scupper legislation using the unelected and now ethically compromised Senate — even though it will have been passed by a majority in the elected House of Commons.

That’s how deep her commitment to democracy.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Ambrose is just like her predecessor. Stephen Harper’s view of democracy roughly approximates that of the latter day Joseph Stalin. Remember, this is the crowd that responded to one access to information request by redacting portions of an already published biography of Barack Obama. Thank you Lawrence Martin.

http://ipolitics.ca/2016/01/03/just-who-are-you-trying-to-kid-rona/