kimmy

Yes, kudos to President Trump for taking the only possible action available. Tomorrow's headline: "Michael Flynn, You're Fired." Alternate headline: "Trump has mole excised." Also kudos to low-energy fake news outlet Washington Post for breaking this story. Of course, the House Oversight Committee could have done that as well, and were asked many times to investigate Flynn, but they refused. In fairness to the House Oversight Committee, they had their hands full investigating more important issues, like Sid The Science Kid. -k

oh, big deal. It's not like he's letting people take selfies with the nuclear launch briefcase at the Mar-a-Lago club, right? -k

Yep. He dead. -k

No doubt President Trump watched the video of Trudeau beating the living crap out of Patrick Brazeau and immediately concluded that Trudeau is High Impact, High Energy, a WINNER! Trump loves winners. -k

I am pretty sure that if someone, regardless of race or religion, went on a rampage of fondling teenage girls at a swimming pool, it would be news. The fact that in this case it was a Syrian refugee is pertinent because our government has bent over backwards to bring these people here and scoffed at the idea that they pose any threat to Canadians. But in light of this incident and others, that discussion should be revisited. Countries like Germany and Sweden have seen assaults on women follow the arrival of large number of migrants from Muslim lands. Now we may be seeing that pattern here in Canada as well. If Muslim migrants just don't know any better, what steps are our government officials taking to make sure they learn? If Muslim migrants do know better but don't respect women, then maybe our government is doing Canadian women a disservice by bringing more and more people who don't respect women to Canada. If it's just "a few bad apples", then maybe better screening, as Ms Leitch suggests, would be a good idea. -k

So Michael Flynn might be finished as NSA chief after getting caught lying about his conversations with Russia. An interesting question now is, did Flynn lie to Vice President Pence about those conversations? Or did Flynn tell the truth to Pence and Pence lied to the American people when he went around the media circuit defending Flynn? One of those things must be true. My bet is that Flynn lied to Pence, and Pence thought he was telling the truth when he defended Flynn on TV. -k

This notion that Americans must rally together and stop dissenting, for the safety of America, seems to lead to the conclusion that Trump supporters view dissent as a threat to the country. Is that the case? ...so if I get what you're saying, people need to stop protesting, because a handful of miscreants broke windows during the Trump inauguration? -k

It's from the Fox Superbowl interview, with Bill O'Reilly. Not a first for Trump, though: Putin's a killer, but we've got a lot of killers. Tremendous killers, high-energy killers. Some of the best killers, believe me folks. -k

...and this will cause Terror Attacks, because of ...reasons? -k

You can say whatever you wish, but nobody is required to provide you a venue. Example? When did a protest group ever accomplish that, aside from the Moral Majority getting music and TV shows yanked? -k

This is quite interesting. There was allegedly a showdown between John Kelly, James Mattis, and Rex Tillerson on one side, and Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller on the other, regarding the travel ban. DHS did a legal analysis and concluded that permanent residents should receive a waiver on the travel ban. Bannon overruled that, resulting in chaos at airports and stranded people who couldn't get to their homes and jobs. Later DHS chief John Kelly decided to issue the waiver anyway to end the chaos, but not before Bannon marched into his office and ordered him not to. Kelly replied that he only takes orders from the President. The President never weighed in, the waiver was issued, and a couple of days later the White House confirmed that permanent residents are exempt from the travel ban. This makes one wonder how much power Bannon has in the current administration. It had been assumed by many that Trump would be a figurehead while Mike Pence did most of the work, but maybe it's actually Bannon calling the shots. -k

Infighting is now a permanent feature of United States politics. It has been this way since at least the mid-1990s and hasn't stopped since. The notion that this is some new crisis is quite funny. -k

No it isn't. -k

uhhhhh srsly? -k

hmm. They should put up billboards, like the Smokey The Bear ones. "Only YOU can prevent terror attacks! SUPPORT TRUMP!" but maybe with Sean Hannity pointing at the viewer, instead of Smokey. -k

I see... so if there's a terror attack, it's "the left's" fault because they wouldn't rally behind the Great Orange Leader? -k

I think you have that backwards. Trans people have been discretely using opposite public restrooms for decades with extremely minimal impact on anyone. But in 2016, in response to nothing at all, the North Carolina Republicans decided to make a law against it anyway. Their law is utterly unenforceable, and doesn't even prescribe penalties in the unlikely event that somebody somehow figures out how to enforce it. All it did was manage to create a bunch of hype and hysteria over a menace that didn't even exist. It doesn't make any cis-gendered person safer... the hysteria the law created did manage to make at least one cis-gendered person less safe, as a genetically female woman got attacked in a restroom because some redneck chicks thought she might be a dude. And while the law became infamously known as "the bathroom bill", it actually contained a lot of stuff that didn't relate to bathrooms at all. It contained provisions banning municipalities from implementing other anti-discrimination measures. It prevents municipalities from implementing minimum wage laws. It prevented people from suing for discrimination-- later overturned. It prevented municipalities from not hiring contractors with discriminatory practices. There was a considerable amount of stuff aimed at making sure that municipalities couldn't set employment standards that exceeded the state employment standards, whether it be in wages, hours, sick leave, or anti-discrimination protection. It's somewhat Orwellian that this generalized attack on worker protections became known as "the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act". The freedom of speech? When was that in jeopardy? The freedom of speech is doing fine. The rights of gay people or trans people aren't on quite as stable of ground as the right to free speech. Especially in some parts of the US, where lawmakers are constantly on the attack. That's why the protests. You can ask "well it only affects a small portion of the population so why is it a big deal?" but to me the idea that it's ok to attack people if you pick a vulnerable enough target doesn't sit well. -k

Has Breitpravda ever NOT liked something Trump has done? Imagine how much more choice and cost-effectiveness we could have in our food purchases if our food producers weren't burdened with all this excessive regulation to make sure that their products aren't poisonous or contaminated! -k

The latest Executive Orders will snuff Wall Street regulation and kill a rule that would require bankers to act in their clients' best interests. http://thehill.com/policy/finance/317698-trump-to-sign-executive-actions-targeting-obama-financial-regulations Remember how Trump was going to stand up for "Main Street" against "Wall Street"? Seems pretty hilarious in hindsight, doesn't it? -k

Well that's certainly not true. Lots of people are self-employed, lots of people are working part-time or multiple part-time jobs, and people like me are working for an employer that (for whatever reason...) just doesn't offer any sort of benefit plan. The notion that everybody will just have benefit plans (if they don't they can simply change jobs and go to an employer who offers one) just isn't realistic anymore. One of the sticking points in the recent Canada Post labor showdown was a plan to phase in less generous benefits for new employees, while long-time employees existing benefit plans would be "grandfathered in". Employers are claiming they have to offer less just to stay competitive or stay financially viable. With benefits, as with pension plans, people are increasingly on their own... tax law should reflect that reality. I don't have a pension plan either, but at least with retirement savings, I can use my RRSP contributions reduce my taxable income at tax time. Why not treat medical expenses the same way? If you don't have to pay income tax on the money that goes to fixing your teeth, how come I have to pay income tax on the money I spend fixing my teeth? -k

"Workplace benefits? What are workplace benefits?" -millions of Canadians my age and younger. I gather that most people used to have things like dental and defined-benefit pension plans and so on... but those are going the way of Blockbuster, unless you work in the public sector. I pay for pharmacy and optical and dental care out of my own pocket. If I earn $50,000 a year and spend $1000 of it on things that Civil Servant Sarah gets given to her on top of her $50,000 salary, is it fair that I am paying income tax on money I have to spend on dental and medicine, while she gets those things for free? At present that's how it works. If my medical and dental expenses exceed some ridiculously large number (I think it's 3% of my income) then the amount over 3% becomes a tax deduction, but I've only reached that level once, in a year when I had costly dental work done... and I think the grand total tax deduction I got for it was under $200... in a year when I spent well over $2000 on medical and dental. Well I don't see that happening any time soon. I don't care if Civil Servant Sarah has to pay a tax on her benefits, but if they wanted to pretend they give a crap about the middle class, they could at least lower the threshold for medical and dental expenses. -k

The question isn't whether he can get into Canada, it's whether he can get back into the US if he leaves. -k

Zibanejad is probably of little importance to anybody aside from the Rangers and their fans, but it illustrates a larger problem. When my dad worked at Nortel, one of the senior engineers there was a man of Middle East descent, and he and dad sometimes traveled together to meet with people at US branches and potential customers and suppliers and things like that. Today, that guy might not be able to enter the US for business. There might be senior people at US companies who can no longer travel internationally to do business. That could be a huge headache for US companies doing business internationally. -k

Just hearing that Mika Zibanejad of the NHL's New York Rangers may not be able to get back into the US if he leaves to play games in Canada. Zibanejad has dual Swedish/Iranian citizenship. -k