Hard Numbers

90,000: The "Yellow Vest" protests are catching on in western Canada where fuel fears come in a different form, namely low prices hurting domestic oil producers and their employees.

A Facebook group for protesters, Yellow Vests Canada, drew 90,000 members in its first two weeks.

14,000: President Trump announced this week that ISIS has been "defeated" in Syria and that US troops will soon be withdrawn from that country. The plan continues to draw criticism from a number of US lawmakers, including Republicans, in part because the US military reported recently there were still as many as 14,000 ISIS militants in Syria as recently as June and a similar number in neighboring Iraq.

2008: As of yesterday's close on Wall Street, the Dow and S&P 500 are on track for their worst yearly performance since 2008. We can't remember what happened that year, but it must have been bad.

1: A calendar that features only pictures of Vladimir Putin is the #1 best-selling 2019 calendar in Japan. Because the Japanese love Putin? Doubtful. Because Russian bots are brainwashing Japanese holiday shoppers? We're not going there. Because the Japanese love kitsch? That seems more likely.