The Libranos: Bad Randys

Uncategorized 9 Comments

Western Standard;

Global Health Imports Corp., an Alberta-based medical supply company co-founded by Liberal MP Randy Boissonnault, has been barred from bidding on federal contracts for five years.

Blacklock’s Reporter says the Department of Public Works placed the firm on its Ineligibility And Suspension List following an investigation into its business practices.

“We continuously assess the risk a supplier may pose to the federal government,” testified Catherine Poulin, assistant deputy minister, at a Commons ethics committee hearing.

She said multiple sources, including civil and criminal lawsuits, factored into the decision. A recent Edmonton Police investigation, she added, met the threshold for action.

“Volodymyr Zelensky plays Triumph the Insult Comic Dog”

Art Of The Deal Trump Ukraine 182 Comments

Taibbi;

Forget the WEF, the WTC, and WHO. After Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Washington today, the new reigning international body is WTF! Did that really happen?

Zelensky’s much-anticipated meeting with Donald Trump and J.D. Vance Friday afternoon led to one of the weirdest Oval Office scenes in history. What started as nervous diplomacy ended as a Three Stooges pie-fight, with the black-costumed Ukrainian leader leaving as two eyeholes covered in cream.

Trump and Vance fared better, but were clearly taken by surprise. Both were expecting Zelensky to sign a deal forking over $500 billion in rare earth development rights in exchange for American funding during the the last three years of war. Not until early into the photo op did they realize they’d been punked.

This was the beginning of the end of the Zelensky legend. He came to Washington as the tough-talking spokesmodel for the “rules-based international order,” and left as a costumed pre-teen sent home with an empty trick-or-treat basket:

It’s paywalled, but you can read it with a free trial.

And Mark Steyn: The Beltway rumour is that, on his flight to DC, Zelenskyyyy was telephoned by Victoria Nuland, She-Wolf of the Donbass, plus Susan Rice and Anthony Blinken and advised to get tough with Trump. If true, that’s gotta be the worst episode of “Phone-a-Friend” since the plucky little Ukrainian started playing Who Wants to Be a Billionaire (in Euros)?

Down The Primrose Path

Art Of The Deal Trump Ukraine 30 Comments

A pretty good observation from Jay Currie

Reaction to today’s Oval Office activities are an absolutely accurate indicator of the pro or anti-Trump sentiments of those reacting. From Euro astroturf in support of Z to subsidy journalists rising as one to condemn the bullying, they all hate Trump.

For those of us who are not particularly offput by Trump 2.0 and his team, it was a rare glimpse into the way serious politicians are able to spot and slap down a phoney if he goes off script.

There was a mineral deal on the table and there were 40 minutes of conversation of which only a few had Zelensky wandering into dangerous ground. For the TDS brigade the fact there was any dangerous ground was obviously Trump’s fault.

Zelensky occupies a strange position. If you don’t support him you are a Putin puppet and, now a Trump tool. The idea of Peace in Ukraine on anything but Zelensky’s terms is unthinkable to the blob. That would be conceding to Putin.

Trump telling Zelensky that he had no cards to play offended every Eurocrat, USAID recipient and deep stater. There are some truths we just don’t talk about, you brute.

Trump’s a realist. He knows Ukraine is not winning. It’s losing (and after today’s Zelensky tantrum, has probably lost.) Not winning is getting in the way of Peace. Which Trump is not willing to put up with.

Supporting Zelensky ensures that the pointless, unwinnable war continues. A Peace Treaty which conceded the eastern, Russian speaking, parts of Ukraine already occupied by Russia, ends the war on about the best terms Ukraine can hope for.

You may hate Trump and think Putin the devil incarnate, but prolonging a futile war for even one day longer is evil. A fact which Trump knows but which blob members are willing to live with in order to signal a bizarre, pointless, sort of virtue.

With luck Zelensky’s behaviour in the Oval Office today will end any but humanitarian aid to Ukraine. At that point the final pretense that Ukraine can “win” will disolve and with it, I suspect, Ukraine’s Army. Why die in a lost cause.

The Euros will breathe a sigh of relief, they did not want to take on the military and monetary responsibility of Ukraine. They can’t afford it. Zelensky will, if he’s lucky, go into exile. Then we’ll see what can be salvaged. It will be a nasty business but not as nasty as war.

Give him a bump.

Related.

Down The Primrose Path

Art Of The Deal Ukraine 94 Comments

And now, for the rest of the story.

I watched the entire press conference with Zelensky. There was 40 minutes of discussion up to the argument. Most people saw at most the last ten minutes. The whole video gives the proper context.

When I first watched the argument without the proper context, I thought it was possible that Trump and Vance ambushed Zelensky or were even trying to humiliate him. That’s not what happened.

You had 40 minutes of calm conversation. Vance made a point that didn’t attack Zelensky and wasn’t even addressed to him, and Zelensky clearly started the argument.

In the first 40 minutes, Zelensky kept trying to go beyond what was negotiated in the deal. When Trump was asked a question, it was always “we’ll see.” Zelensky made blanket assertions that there would be no negotiating with Putin, and that Russia would pay for the war. When Trump said that it was a tragedy that people on both sides were dying, Zelensky interjected that the Russians were the invaders.

For his part, Trump made clear that the US would continue delivering military aid. All Zelensky had to do was remain calm for a few more minutes and they would’ve signed a deal.

The argument started when Trump pointed out that it would be hard to make a deal if you talk about Putin the way Zelensky does. Vance interjects to make the reasonable point that Biden called Putin names and that didn’t get us anywhere.

The Zelensky/Trump dynamic was calm and stable. It was when Vance spoke that Zelensky started to interrogate him. Throughout the press conference to that point, everyone was making their arguments directly to the audience. Zelensky decided to challenge Vance and ask him hostile questions. He went back to his point that Putin never sticks to ceasefires, once again implying that negotiations are pointless. Why on earth would you do this? Then came the fight we all saw.

Zelensky was minutes away from being home free, and he would have had the deal and new commitments from the Trump administration. The point Vance made was directed against Biden and the media, taking them to task for speaking in moralistic terms. This offended Zelensky, and that began the argument.

I’ve been a fan of Zelensky up to this point, but this showed so much incompetence, if not emotional instability, that I don’t see how he recovers from this. The relationship with the administration is broken. Ukraine should probably go with new leadership at this point.

You know it’s bad, when Senator Lindsay Graham has bailed.

He did look mad. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has terminated U.S. support for restoring Ukraine’s energy grid immediately after Zelensky was kicked out of the White House.

Read this, too:

Zelinsky tried to “pre-suade” POTUS (“you will feel it in the future,”), which POTUS immediately recognized and pushed back on, HARD.

Neurolinguistic jousting with the master. Didn’t go well.

Full length video is here.

Down The Primrose Path

Trump Ukraine 195 Comments

Zelensky just shat the bed.


Full exchange.

I wonder if Ukraine wishes now that they’d kept that prosecutor.

Y2Kyoto: State Of Anorexia Envirosa

More Pavilions At Folkfest Y2Kyoto 24 Comments

Achieving Net Zero may be easier than we thought: Kelowna’s Development Future In Jeopardy Due To Insufficient Electrical Capacity

In what can only be described as a shocking letter, the Urban Development Institute said this week that development in Kelowna may come to a standstill as a result of insufficient electrical infrastructure.

“Kelowna’s real estate development industry is facing significant uncertainty as FortisBC has indicated it cannot guarantee power availability for new projects over the next several years,” the Okanagan chapter of the UDI, which represents the development industry, said in the letter. “In recent weeks, several developers have been informed that power cannot be assured for projects until 2027 to 2029.”

FortisBC serves as the regional electricity provider for the Southern Interior region of British Columbia. In Fall 2024, FortisBC said that it plans to spend $157 million towards electrical infrastructure in the region over the next three years, but that is still pending approval from the British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC), the Province’s regulatory agency for utilities, and UDI Okanagan said the investment was “neither sufficient nor timely to accommodate Kelowna’s rapid population growth.”

“Without a reliable electricity supply, development in the region is at risk of stalling, with some projects potentially being abandoned altogether,” they said. “This has the potential to disrupt the City of Kelowna’s ability to meet its provincial housing targets.”

That which cannot go on forever will stop.

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