iden has made the record books, but probably not for the reason he had hoped. The New York Post reported that the president is the least popular leader in the last 70 years, below Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon.

The Gallup Poll mentioned that Biden, who is 81 years old, has a staggering 38.7 percent job approval rating for the first quarter of 2024.

Biden currently sits three points lower than the one-term George H.W. Bush at the same point in his presidency.

The pollsters said that "with about six months remaining before Election Day, Biden stands in a weaker position than any prior incumbent."

To be clear, unsustainably high annual immigration levels are the main culprit causing a housing shortage. But,urban land use restrictions is a contributing factor.

QuoteNot so long ago, house prices tended to be around three times household incomes in most housing markets in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. But over the past half-century, many local and provincial governments have tried to stop the expansion of urban areas (so-called "sprawl") by means of urban growth boundaries, greenbelts and other containment strategies.

Though pleasing to planners, the results have been disastrous for middle- and lower-income households, sending housing prices through the roof, lowering living standards and even increasing poverty. International research has associated urban containment with escalating the underlying price of land, not only on the urban fringe where the city meets rural areas, but also throughout the contained area.
Canada's current housing affordability crisis is centred in "census metropolitan areas" that have tried containment. Vancouver, which routinely places second or third least affordable of 94 major metropolitan areas in the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability report, has experienced a tripling of house prices compared to incomes. In the third quarter of last year, the median house price was 12.3 times median household income. In less than two decades, the Toronto CMA has experienced a doubling of its house price/income ratio, to 9.3.

Like Canada, New Zealand has seen its house prices grow much faster than household incomes, also mainly because of urban containment policies. Auckland routinely ranks as one of the world's least affordable markets. But in what may be a watershed moment for housing policy worldwide, New Zealand's recently elected coalition government is giving up on densification and instead, with its Going for Housing Growth program, is aiming at the heart of the issue by addressing the cost of land.

Under new proposals, local governments will be required to zone enough land for 30 years of projected growth and make it available for immediate development. According to the government, local governments' deliberate decision to restrain growth on their fringes has "driven up the price of land, which has flowed through to house prices," and it cites research indicating that "urban growth boundaries add NZ$600,000 (C$500,000) to the cost of land for houses in Auckland's fringes."

New Zealand's government believes guaranteeing plentiful access to land will result in an increased supply "inside and at the edge of our cities ... so that land prices are not inflated by artificial planning restrictions." The same strategy could help here. Unlike most urban planners, most Canadians do not want higher population density. A 2019 survey of younger Canadian households by the Mustel Group and Sotheby's found that on average across four metropolitan areas (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary) 83 per cent of such families preferred detached houses, though only 56 per cent had actually bought one.

Households that move from the big city to Kitchener-Waterloo, say, or Chilliwack not only want to save money, they also want more house and probably a yard. Detached housing predominates in these affordability sanctuaries, compared to the Vancouver and Toronto CMAs.

Urban planners continue to complain about urban expansion , but that is how organic urban growth occurs. Toronto and Vancouver show that the cost of taming expansion is unacceptably high: inflated house prices, higher rents and, for increasing numbers of people, poverty. It is time to prioritize the well-being of Canadian households, not urban planners.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/opinion-zealand-housing-free-more-100043001.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall

Maybe not supporting him. But, he is not making him out to be Lucifer like his Hollywood friends do.

This opinion is that of Jonah Goldberg. I am not confident at all of Trump winning the election. And for some of the reasons that Jonah Goldberg mentions.

QuoteThere's bad news and good news for those who want to see Joe Biden win in 2024 (or who really just want to see Donald Trump lose).

The bad news is that, in the era of modern polling, no president has ever won re-election with approval ratings as low at this point in their first term. For fairly obvious reasons, incumbent presidents generally need to get at least close to 50% favourability by election day to win. Biden's approval has been stubbornly low — around 40% in polling averages — despite an improving economy. Getting to 50% looks daunting, though hardly impossible.

The good news is that approval numbers may not matter.

You may have noticed that a lot of the old rules of politics have passed their expiration dates. It's important to note that none of them were ever "iron laws," so much as rules of thumb. Still, it's been a bad time to rely on those rules of thumb.

In a polarized electorate, most voters vote against the other party more than they vote for their own. A recent Quinnipiac poll finds that among voters who dislike both candidates, Biden has a commanding 13-point lead. If that holds, it could be all Biden needs.

A second reason why approval ratings might be unreliable is that Trump is essentially running as a Republican incumbent.

Normally, presidents who lose don't run again. And they certainly don't claim they didn't lose.

Presidential approval ratings have tended to be predictive because a re-election bid is a referendum on an incumbent's first term: Do voters want more of the same or change? But voters already know what a Trump presidency would be like — or they can be reminded with a barrage of negative ads the likes of which we've never seen. Trump left office with an approval rating of 34%. This is why Nikki Haley tends to do better than Trump in hypothetical match-ups with Biden: She's a change candidate in a way Trump can't be.

It's true that Trump is beating Biden in many hypothetical match-ups in battleground states. That should worry Democrats and anyone else who doesn't want Trump in the White House. But Trump's unfavourable ratings are still higher than Biden's. Indeed, Trump has always had a high floor of support — about 34% — but also a very low ceiling at about 48%.

Unlike Biden, Trump has never actually been popular.

In a general election, when partisans reluctantly "come home," basically to vote against the other party, Biden probably has a much larger pool of "hold your nose" voters to rely on.

The expiration — or temporary suspension — of other rules is relevant too. Republicans in 2022 were expecting a "Red Tsunami" given Biden's unpopularity and the struggling economy. Democrats did shockingly well because they ran, in effect, against Trump and Trumpism and for abortion rights.

Indeed, the old rule that the abortion issue helps Republicans got turned on its head after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. As recent state initiatives suggest, Biden could be carried by abortion rights voters alone.

Biden is already opening a massive gender gap with Trump. Abortion surely explains much of it, although his trials for assaulting and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, and for allegedly paying hush money to a porn-star mistress, probably didn't help. Attacking Taylor Swift, as his most ardent supporters have done recently, won't fix that.

All of that said, if you believe a second Trump presidency would be a disaster for the country, re-running a very unpopular incumbent on the hunch that the old rules no longer apply seems like a risky bet.

Australia's health-care system outranks Canada on a range of performance indicators while characterized by a deep integration between its private and public sectors.

In 2021/22 in Australia, 41% of all recorded care episodes occurred in private hospitals. Of the total number of episodes of elective care, 58.6% occurred in private hospitals. For elective admissions involving surgery, 70.3% occurred in private hospitals.

Private hospitals are also involved in the delivery of fully publicly funded care, via contracted care or through the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA). In 2020/21, fully publicly funded episodes of care made up 6.4% of all care in private hospitals and 2.6% of recorded care, whereas 73.5% of care paid for by the DVA occurred within private hospitals.

Because privately financed and delivered care is publicly subsidized, the extent of the public-private partnership in Australian health care can also be viewed through the lens of private hospital expenditures. In 2019/20, 32.8% of private hospital expenditures came from government sources.

Australia's health-care system demonstrates that the goals of universal coverage can be successfully balanced with a pragmatic approach that involves the private sector as a partner in the delivery of care.
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/role-of-private-hospitals-in-australias-universal-health-care-system

There is also little evidence that the federal government is achieving its goal of boosting the labour force participation of women with children.

The total labour force participation rate for women was 61.5 percent in September 2023 compared to a high of 61.7 percent in 2015.

And recent increases in the size of the female labour force were concentrated in Quebec and among women with adolescent children, both groups that are unaffected by the new federal program.
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/is-the-federal-daycare-program-achieving-its-stated-goals

A Gallup poll in Honesty and Ethics conducted at the end of 2023 asked 800 respondents to rate the ethical standards of and their overall trust in a series of professions.

"How you would rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in these different fields?" the survey asked. In terms of "very high" trust, all professions but one took a hit compared to previous years.

The poll measured the downward trends dating back to 2019, showing that medical doctors, pharmacists, bankers, and journalists have lost the most trust.
https://twitter.com/VirtualAshok/status/1751256145316995420?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1751256145316995420%7Ctwgr%5E8dff0de8e772744f5ecdea43a5e7e5bf73ea5ef6%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theblaze.com%2Fnews%2Famericans-losing-trust-in-professions

Jo Jo and I were cuddling and talking after sex this morning. We are so proud the Canadian Tories have a leader who was adopted by a gay male couple. And the Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada is a lesbian.

Jo Jo and I are so proud of our Conservative party's inclusivity of the LGBTQ community.

If only once a year the rest of us met to decide THEIR future.

Next Monday, Americans will enjoy a national holiday in honor of a man who helped shape the second half of the 20th century and American history. So important was Martin Luther King Jr.'s contribution to American life that he is one of only three people to have a national holiday in his honor — the other two being George Washington and Christopher Columbus.

King never operated on any patients because he wasn't that kind of doctor. He was a doctor of the academic variety, earning a Ph.D. in theology from Boston University in 1955. Prior to that he earned a bachelor of divinity degree from Crozer Theological Seminary.

His father, Martin Luther King Sr. received a bachelor's degree in theology in 1931 and led the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta as its pastor for 40 years.

His birth name was Michael, as was his father's. A 1934 trip to Germany, the birthplace of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, prompted King Sr. to change his first name to Martin. He changed his son's name, too. His son was 5 years old at the time.

MLK Jr's first job was pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. After preaching there for six years, King Jr. served until his death as a co-pastor at his father's church in Atlanta, the city he called home until his assassination.

Climate change is an emergency. The planet is boiling. Fossil fuels are evil and they are publc enemy number one. Any slight divergence from that and you are a heretic. That is a religious cult.

The climate change cult: 10 warning signs

1. Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.

The leading advocates of the Climate Change movement are politicians, entertainers, and even children. Climate preachers such as Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio lack any formal scientific training whatsoever, and live personal lives of unparalleled luxury while prescribing carbon austerity for the masses. Yet no one is permitted to point out their scientific ignorance or call attention to their hypocritical lifestyles.

Add Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Greta Thunberg to the list of climate preachers without any formal scientific training.

Child advocates such as Greta Thuneberg and the crudely indoctrinated children of the "Sunrise movement" are essentially sock puppets for their shameless activist handlers. Refuse to bend the knee to these tiny fascists, as Diane Feinstein most recently did, and the mainstream left will relentlessly attack you as an accessory to mass murder.

2. No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.

The conclusions of the Climate Change movement may not be challenged or questioned under any circumstances. Those who dare scrutinize the conclusions, methodology, or prescriptions of "climate scientists" are categorically dismissed as a "Climate Denierk" an excommunicated untouchable whose opinion is no longer valid on any subject.

3. No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget, expenses such as an independently audited financial statement.

Hardly anyone knows just how much money is spent on "Climate research" every year. The cost is spread out among laughably useless study grants, wind and solar farm subsidies, carbon offset credits, "green" building code evaluation and enforcement, salaries for bureaucrats solely dedicated to "climate concerns"......you get the idea, it's a lot of hazy money.

4. Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.

This one is pretty obvious. The Climate Change movement always shouts out revised and updated apocalypse predictions, eerily reminiscent of the stereotypical bum on the sidewalk with that "The End Is Near" sign. "The world will end in X years if we don't do X" is the constant refrain. The years always pass, and the apocalypse never happens. Interestingly, this is a characteristic of multiple religious cults (such as the Seekers of Chicago, and the Order of the Solar Temple). At the moment, we apparently have 12 years to nationalize the entire economy and phase out fossil fuels before we all die a fiery death.

5. There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.

Climate alarmists who leave, step back from, or even lightly criticize the movement are immediately subjected to vicious smear campaigns. Dutch professor Richard Tol experienced this phenomenon firsthand when he removed his name from an IPCC climate report and criticized the reports excessively apocalyptic predictions.

6. Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances.

Professor Tol is not an anomaly. Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, and countless other former IPCC in-crowd climate experts were subjected to smear campaigns from their colleagues and the news media for the crime of throwing cold water on the outlandish predictions of the Climate Change movement.

7. There are records, books, news articles, or television programs that document the abuses of the group/leader.

The abuses of the Climate Change movement are loud and proud. They vociferously attack their perceived enemies for public consumption, and are cheered on by fellow travelers in the journalism class. Most recently they brainwashed a bunch of kids and marched them into an octogenarian Democrat Senator's office to beg not to be murdered by a 'No' vote on impossible legislation.

8. Followers feel they can never be "good enough."

The atonement process for Climate warriors always demands more. It started with using a recycling bin and grocery bags. Now, in 2019, being a good follower means imposing veganism on the masses and issuing fatwahs against innocuous objects such as plastic straws and grocery bags. Despite all the efforts of the faithful, Climate minions maintain a constant state of dread and despair, knowing they can never truly do enough to stop the coming doom.

9. The group/leader is always right.

When have the climate leaders been called wrong for their failed predictions? Regardless of the weather, they are always intrinsically correct.

Flood? Climate Change. Drought? Climate Change. No Snow? Climate Change. Too much snow? Climate Change. Hurricane? Climate Change. Lack of hurricanes? Climate Change.

See how this works?

10. The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible.

The path to discovery for the Climate Change movement is an intentionally vague discipline referred to as "climate science." Did you carry out a study on gender and glaciers? Climate Science. Did you think up the worst possible scenarios that have no actual chance of happening (actual portion of latest National Climate Assessment)? Climate Science.

Any "science" that confirms the tenets of the Climate Change movement is deemed "climate science," while actual scientific research that disputes their conclusions is derided as "denialism."

The Verdict: It's a cult

According to the established, scientific guidelines developed by cult experts, the Climate Change movement fits the bill for a potentially unsafe group. Rather than debating Climate Change activists, it may be time to start staging interventions.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-climate-change-cult-10-warning-signs/

In 2023, Americans moved from their states(usually blue) to these red states.

1) Florida +194,438
2) Texas   +196,767
3) North Carolina +97,264
4) South Carolina +82,562
5) Tennessee +63,417

The United States and Britain launched military strikes against targets in Houthi-controlled Yemen, two U.S. officials said Thursday.

They targeted multiple locations with fighter jets and Tomahawks fired from Navy ships.

Biden said the strikes, which were supported by Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands, targeted ares used by Houthi rebels to "endanger freedom of navigation in one of the world's most vital waterways."

Big minimum wage increases are very populist, but also very costly.

A minimum wage proposal by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would cut the number of impoverished people by hundreds of thousands but cause even more lost jobs, according to a new analysis from Congress's scorekeeper.

The plan, which Sanders introduced in May, would hike the minimum wage over time, with the wage finally increasing to $17 by 2029. The Congressional Budget Office found that the Sanders plan would cause about 0.4% of the entire U.S. workforce to be cut.

The CBO said the minimum wage proposal would help alleviate poverty, reducing the number of people in poverty by 400,000. But, because employers would be forced to pay workers more, they would end up cutting some 700,000 jobs across the economy.

The ambitious proposal, which has essentially no chance of passing during this Congress, would affect a wide swath of the workforce, the CBO found.


"In an average week in 2029, the year when the minimum wage would reach $17 per hour, 8.9 million workers whose wages would otherwise be below $17 per hour would be directly affected; many of the 9.7 million workers whose wages would otherwise be slightly above that wage rate would also be affected," the report reads.

The plan would also result in higher budget deficits. The bill would increase the deficit by nearly $60 billion over the next decade.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/sanders-minimum-wage-bill-reduce-poverty-kill-jobs-cbo

The ministers from 196 countries, their entourages of staff, UN bureaucrats, and corporate executives flew to Dubai in private jets and on first-class tickets. They stayed in 5-star hotels, ate beef in the finest restaurants, and were chauffeured in expensive C02 belching luxury limousines to and from the talkfest at taxpayers' expense. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be wasted on this extravagant display of corrupt excess. And don't forget their massive greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change. Never forget that.

China's foreign minister said Saturday that Israel has gone too far in responding to last week's invasion by Hamas, China's official news agency reported.

Speaking to Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Israel's actions have extended beyond self-defense.

As if China would show restraint if a neighbouring state slaughtered innocent Chinese attending a music festival.

I follow Jerry Agar. I had to share this.

Accept that Canada needs to do its part to stem global warming, even though the carbon tax hurts poor people the most at the grocery story and gas pump.

When necessary goods rise in price, the increase takes a higher percentage of a poor and low income person's disposable income than that of a high income person.

Good Canadians of low-income status don't complain. They do their bit proudly, on rations.

Canada is less than 2% of the global problem, as it is defined, but Good Canadians know that more and more tax will fix that, in part because the leaders of China and India wake up every morning looking to see what moral high ground Canada has taken so they can follow along.

The fact one of them may have interfered in our elections and another one may have sanctioned a murder on our soil doesn't detract from how much they are willing to follow our lead in keeping poor people down.

A Good Canadian knows that whenever there is a crisis in Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau didn't know anything about it, so there is no reason to blame him.

A Good Canadian knows that otherwise, Trudeau is fully engaged, in charge and taking any worry they have as his top priority. He thinks about our problems even when he is surfing.

A Good Canadian knows something human beings didn't know for tens of thousands of years — a girl can have a penis and further, it is none of her parents' business.

Yet even today, when they hear someone they know had a baby, Bad Canadians immediately blurt out: "Did they have a boy or a girl?"

We don't know yet, you Neanderthal. Wait a few years and the child will tell us.

But don't the parents know?

Why tell them? Get the child into a public school as quickly as possible. That's the safe place. Government cares.

With 8% of Canadians unable to muster up an opinion, Angus Reid found 78% feel parents have a right to be informed about gender issues — perhaps any issues — leaving us with only 14% of our population up to speed as Good Canadians.

This poll was completed May 19 and before DeSantis entered the race.



Former President Trump leads President Biden by a 7-point margin in a new survey shared Friday with The Hill from Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll.



Separately, the poll found Biden and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) deadlocked in a tie when those surveyed were asked who they preferred in a head-to-head matchup.



The survey found 47 percent of respondents said they would vote for Trump if the 2024 election was today and Trump and Biden were the political parties' respective candidates. Forty percent backed Biden, while 13 percent said they did not know or were unsure.



Forty-two percent of respondents picked Biden and and equal percentage picked DeSantis in that matchup. Sixteen percent said they did not know or were unsure.

He can feel the chemistry between us. He wants me as much as I want him. I think he is nervous because he has never had a conservative boyfriend before.