Category Archives: canada
Donald the Truther
The Donald is now The Truther. He blames Bush for 9/11.
I like Trump because he’s politically incorrect. That doesn’t mean he’s getting a valuable Bokbluster endorsement, but as a cartoonist you gotta admire anybody with the guts to take on the pc movement. Well, maybe not all cartoonists feel that way.
Anyway, birthers believe Obama is a foreign born Muslim and ineligible to be president. His father was a foreign born Muslim (according to some, that makes Barack an apostate eligible for beheading) but he has a Hawaiian birth certificate and an American mother. Cruz was born in Canada of an American mother and Cuban father.
Donald the Truther
Truthers believe 9/11 was an inside job. Trump claims it was Bush’s fault because because he didn’t act on intelligence to prevent the attack. The 9/11 commission says that’s not so. Further, the Clinton administration had established a wall between the FBI and CIA that prevented information sharing that might have helped prevent the attack.
Canadian Dynasty
Stephen Harper led Canada safely though the 2008-2009 financial crisis. He cut taxes, the Canadian dollar reached parity with the U.S. dollar, and the economy boomed with high commodity prices.
Now the price of oil is in the tank and there’s no Keystone pipeline to ship it anyway. On Monday Canadian voters decided they’ve had enough of Harper after nine years as prime minister. They dumped him for Justin Trudeau.
The charmed Trudeau was toasted by Richard Nixon as a future PM at the age of four months. He’s also the son of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, two time Canadian prime minister from 1968-1979 and 1980-1984.
The ruling dynasty lives.
Workplace Violence in Ottawa
Prime Minister Stephen Harper called Tuesday’s attack on the Canadian Parliament what it was – terrorism. The only “workplace violence” came from Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers. The former Mountie was just doing his job when he dispatched the Islamic terrorist to his multi-virgin rendezvous. All in a day’s workplace.
Grateful Members of Parliament on both sides of the aisle thanked Sergeant-at-Arms Vickers with a long standing ovation.
Arctic Sea Ice Challenge
UK Mail Online published satellite photos that show this summer’s arctic sea ice increased from 2012’s all-time low. Slate was quick to point out, with its usual annoying habit of answering a question you didn’t ask, that “No You Can’t Claim Arctic Sea Ice is Recovering”.
Sea Ice Challenge
The increase represents a change in weather not climate. Like the Lake Superior ice that wouldn’t leave until June. Or the drought in California. Oh wait, that’s climate not weather.
Anyway, maybe you can’t claim arctic sea ice is recovering, but you might say polar bears are. 
Economic Patriotism
President Obama’s favorite billionaire is making a run for the border. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway will finance Burger King’s purchase of Canadian donut dynamo, Tim Hortons.
Economic Patriotism
As a Canadian operation, Burger King will still have to pay US corporate taxes on earnings inside the United States. But earnings outside the US will only be taxed at the rate of the country where they occur. US companies have to pay taxes in the countries where they operate and also must pay IRS the difference between those rates and the US rate. The Obama administration calls this economic patriotism.
Burger King’s move is called a tax “inversion”. Matt Levine gives a great explanation in this Bloomberg article.
The US corporate rate, including state and local taxes comes to about 40%. That’s the highest in the world outside the Islamic State jizya. Roberto A. Ferdman provides a nice chart in the Washington Post showing the tax rates of the 34 OECD countries.
The nominal corporate tax rate in the U.S., which combines national, state, and city-level tax rates, is nearly 40 percent—the highest across all 34 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries. Canada’s, by comparison, is just over 26 percent.
