Kevin Bell

The biggest problem with Ontario is how many people are failing to realize the PCs have stumbled so badly for the past eight years. Aside from having booze everywhere, how have they improved the economy, education, environment, and housing? Is life better in Ontario?

This is the trade-talk equivalent of Trump threatening to end the Persian civilization: bluster to conceal weakness. insidetrade.com/daily-news/dep… The US benefits from Cda-US trade as much as Cda does, Trump's political base is crumbling, and US business won't let him blow up CUSMA. /2

That his fellow cabinet officers find this acceptable, that the Vice President, the GOP Speaker, and the GOP Senate Majority Leader find this acceptable. Is despicable. It is a cult.

@DrJStrategy This would be more convincing if living standards in the U.S. were rising, autocracy and kleptocracy were declining and a secret police force was not routinely violating First and Fourth Amendment rights. Who wants to side with that?

For the record. Sec of War sets the record straight. The Era of Free Riding is over. Welcome to the new great game. The era of free riding is over. For three decades, US power underwrote global security, open sea-lanes and cheap energy while allies and rivals alike built comfortable welfare states, outsourced industry, and moralised about American politics. That world died in the Strait of Hormuz, where Washington’s refusal to automatically reopen the oil spigot made clear that US protection is a choice, not a law of nature. The new organising principle is the New Great Game: a contest over energy, chokepoints, data and money in which America seeks to de‑risk, not decouple, from China. That means reshoring or friend‑shoring critical production, hardening maritime power, and modernising dollar rails so that capital, not just carriers, projects strength. Countries that continue to assume someone else will guarantee their security, energy and growth will find themselves squeezed by tariffs, supply shocks and conditional protection. Those that invest in productive capacity, real defence and credible alliances can share in a new peace dividend: lower geopolitical risk, faster innovation and rising living standards. The message from Washington is blunt: contribute, or be treated as a bystander. Welcome to the New Great Game.

KASPAROV: As long as this Russian Empire exists, threat will remain. We need regime change, which won't happen without Ukraine winning. War has cost. I’m annoyed listening to complaints of Western Europeans. Yes, you have to pay more for oil. Ukrainians pay in blood every day.

The other leaders should stay away in that event. Make it a G-2. Or, more accurately, a G-1.5.

@FoodProfessor Geez, this guy thinks you can threaten Canada’s existence and then just make a deal on Trump’s terms because we shouldn’t want to antagonize the senile president. The U.S. wants Canadian servility.

Told ya... Mexico gets Trump. Canada doesn't, not even trying.

@cbcwatcher Trump has said he wants to cripple Canada economically so its takeover will be easy. His initial negotiating position is to present a list of demands and expect Canada to roll over. He doesn’t see Canada as a sovereign nation, but as a voiceless supplicant. Carney says No.

ABSOLUTELY MUST WATCH CLIP... Deputy US Trade Representative Rick Switzer on USMCA "They can have a weak economy that is underperforming and not doing well, and Carney can feel superior." "Or they can have an economy that participates with as a partner of the U.S. economy." "And Carney can do what a grownup should do, which is figure out." "...It's my job as a person who's supposed to protect Canadian jobs and Canadian citizens and the Canadian economy to not let my ego and my feelings dictate what's best for my own economy." Q "Do you think this will have implications for the USMCA?" Switzer "Yeah, of course it is..." "Look, was Ambassador Greer in Canada? Did he meet with Carney? No." "...The grownups are in the room talking because there's a grown up in the presidency in leadership there, and I would argue there's not a grown up in Canada in charge there." "You don't go out of your way to antagonize the leader of the country that you are absolutely existentially tied to." "It's just political malpractice." @markjcarney

@glennbeck The U.S. literally has a network of concentration camps for the unwanted and a secret police that has executed citizens in the streets and kidnapped people from their homes. Compared to that, Canada is a beacon of freedom.

Canada is not a democracy. It's not even a free nation anymore. How could it be when Parliament is sidelined for eight months, allowing the executive branch to reign unchecked? Or when foreign interference is ignored and elections are gamed? Or when courts rule that the government broke the law and nothing changes? Or when the state controls your speech, your property, your energy, your news, your guns, your healthcare—and offers you assisted suicide when the wait times get too long? Canada has become something else: a managed oligarchy with democratic trappings, where the individual exists to serve the state. Look how far Canada has fallen. Because this could be America's future overnight.

The insult didn't start in a Canadian liquor store. It started at a podium in Washington. It is insulting to call one of the oldest allies, a country that sent soldiers to Normandy, Korea, Afghanistan, a state of the Union that should be absorbed. It is insulting to threaten economic warfare against a neighbour whose economic integration with America runs so deep. It is insulting to interfere in the internal politics of a sovereign ally - funding preferred candidates, amplifying separatist movements, treating a democratic election as an opportunity for destabilisation. It is insulting to stop traffic at the Friendship Bridge, a structure Canada literally built and named after the relationship being dismantled by the people now calling it insulting. It is insulting to charge entry fees to citizens of a country that shares the world's longest undefended border, a border that has been a symbol of peaceful coexistence for two centuries. It is insulting to revoke Canada's invitation to the Board of Peace for the crime of defending its own sovereignty at Davos. Canada didn't remove American spirits from shelves unprovoked. It removed them after the US spent eighteen months removing every assumption of mutual respect that made the relationship worth maintaining. #Canada #Trump

Absolutely disgusting and immoral decision. This is based on racism and bigotry. We owe our allies and this Administration is pursuing an agenda of hate.

HERTLING: Ukrainians conducting terrific operations. They’re regaining territory in very unique ways. They carried out assault using nothing but robotics. Not just unmanned aerial systems, but also ground robots, forcing bunch of Russians to surrender and taking piece of land.

LT. GEN. HERTLING: Ukrainians have proven themselves to be the ultimate fighting force in Europe right now. And it’s not just the combination of their new technologies and their evolutions on the battlefield. It’s continued grit and leadership dynamics of the people in charge.

These heroes risked their lives for our country. Donald Trump doesn't care. Call it what it is: cruel, heartless, and racist.

@ReichlinMelnick Yes, the U.S. under Trump is well-practised in stabbing friends in the back. It started with the Kurds early in his first term and has grown to include nearly all allies, including NATO countries and Ukraine.

This is the kind of betrayal a nation carries out when its leaders don't believe in the concept of allies and views promises as something for suckers. It also makes our armed forces less safe. No nation will ever trust us again. Why should they? We stab our friends in the back.

What a truly evil way to treat people who risked their lives for the United States

@ronmortgageguy I guess the deafeatists and cynics like Ron Butler say ‘don’t do anything.’ Let Trump have his way, agree to his terms, forget about diversifying and accept U.S. dominance over Canada?

Here's How You Know You're Screwed: Trade With The USA Is Ruptured But Trade With Luxembourg Is Hot As Hell I am saving this one for nomination to the Dipshit Posts Hall Of Shame Luxembourg for the love of God

You know, the conquest and enslavement of Ukraine -- with its natural and human resources, its geographic position in Europe, its brains, its access to the sea, and its extraordinarily rich breadbasket -- was in the 18th century one of the key factors that enabled tsarist Moscow to proclaim itself the Russian Empire. Through control over Ukraine, it achieved unprecedented power and remained, in its various forms, a scourge of Europe right up to very 1991. Today, looking at these photographs (and this is the Russian oil port of Tuapse burning again tonight) I find myself understanding clearly that the Russian Empire in many ways began with Ukraine, and it is Ukraine that will bury it. And that will be the ultimate act of historical justice for all the centuries of enslavement, Holodomors, savage bloodshed, and isolation from the civilized world.

During talks between U.S. and Iranian delegations in Pakistan, the topic of Ukraine unexpectedly came up. While discussing U.S. guarantees in the event that Iran halts uranium enrichment and abandons the development of nuclear weapons, the Iranian side asked how the United States is fulfilling the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which it pledged to respect and protect Ukraine’s sovereignty. The U.S. delegation left the question unanswered.