On A Monday

Time to get the week rolling...


Justin Trudeau has offered to somehow compensate the charities he has taken money from:

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau remained under fire Monday for taking hefty speaking fees from charitable groups after becoming an MP, despite promising to pay back any organization that was dissatisfied.

The Conservatives maintained Trudeau should never have accepted any money from any charity — before or after becoming an MP.

And they expanded the definition of a charity to include all non-profit groups, universities, municipalities and other public sector organizations.

"What is it about the ethical standard of giving money to charities rather than taking money from charities that he does not understand?" queried Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore in the Commons.
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair didn't go quite so far.

But he said Trudeau should return "every penny" paid by all charitable and non-profit groups since he was elected in 2008 — not just those who ask for their money back.

So far, only one charity, the Grace Foundation in New Brunswick, has asked Trudeau to give back his fee, claiming it lost money on an event aimed at raising funds for a seniors' home last year.

"I think it's a mistake for a sitting member of Parliament to be accepting money from a charity to do what is essentially part of your job, which is to talk to Canadians about your priorities and how you see things unfold," Mulcair said outside the Commons.

(Sidebar: you know it's a big deal when even the NDP is disgusted with wasted money.)


First of all, who wants to hear Trudeau speak? His father was a crappy prime minister (and a Nazi sympathiser) and the fils has as much philosophical sway as a dung beetle who just realised what he is and has become disgusted with himself. Has Trudeau said anything that is particularly memorable or helpful? This is akin to Kennedy worship. The name means so much that further digging into their sordid lives is discouraged. Furthermore, Trudeau is independently wealthy. He doesn't need "speaking fees", particularly as a sitting Member of Parliament whose job it is to speak to the electorate. Why he would even think of taking money from charities and the like is a gross display of greed. Everything he says and does now is an attempt to buy back some good will.

As for the school, clubs and charities, if they have the empty-headed desire and ability to pay to hear Trudeau give some meaningless blather, they need their heads examined big-time.


Russian President Vladimir Putin has criticised other Western nations for their support of Syria:

After months of deliberations, Washington decided last week to send weapons to the rebels, declaring that Assad's forces had crossed a "red line" by using nerve gas.

The move throws the superpower's weight behind the revolt and signals a potential turning point in global involvement in a two-year-old war that has already killed at least 93,000 people.

It has also infuriated Russia, Cold War-era ally of Syria, which has sold arms to Assad and used its veto at the U.N. Security Council to block resolutions against him.

Russia has dismissed the U.S. evidence that Assad's forces used nerve gas. The White House says President Barack Obama will try to lobby Putin to drop his support for Assad during this week's G8 summit hosted by British Prime Minister David Cameron.

After meeting Cameron in London, Putin said Russia wanted to create the conditions for a resolution of the conflict.

"One does not really need to support the people who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their intestines in front of the public and cameras," Putin said.

"Are these the people you want to support? Are they the ones you want to supply with weapons? Then this probably has little relation to the humanitarian values preached in Europe for hundreds of years."

The incident Putin referred to was most likely that of a rebel commander filmed last month cutting into the torso of a dead soldier and biting into a piece of one of his organs.

Both sides have been accused of atrocities in the conflict. The United States and other countries that aid the rebels say one of the reasons for doing so is to support mainstream opposition groups and reduce the influence of extremists.

The word is лицемер (hypocrite). Who has been arming Syria for years, Mr. Putin? For him to take the proverbial high road in this would be laughable if it weren't so terrible. Obama's decision to arm the rebels does not surprise anyone who has been paying attention to his presidency. The object should be not to side with either Putin or Obama but watch where the chips may fall. There are no ethical winners here.

Related: no one loves Obama:

President Barack Obama's approval rating is plummeting in the midst of American dissatisfaction with the recent privacy controversies and other scandals.

The president's approval rating is 45 percent, marking an 8-point drop in the last month, according to a CNN survey. Weighing down on the Obama administration are the revelations of government domestic spying programs, the Justice Department's secret pursuit of journalists' phone records, the Internal Revenue Service's inappropriate scrutiny of conservative political groups seeking tax-exemption status, as well as the lingering questions over the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, last fall.

This also might have something to do with it. What a cretin.

He's sullied America and Ireland enough. Impeach this bozo.

(thumbs up)

I'll say. Is he aware that they are stealing industrial secrets?

Human rights activist Chen Guangcheng has confirmed in a statement that New York University is forcing his family out of their campus home by month's end, warning that his case shows the power of a totalitarian regime halfway across the world to affect U.S. higher education policies.

"The work of the Chinese Communists within academic circles in the United States is far greater than what people imagine," the blind activist said in a statement released by his lawyers, the Washington-based Bancroft PLLC.

Seven thousand, six hundred Canadians died liberating Holland:

Despite infanticide still being murder under (the rarely enforced) Netherlander criminal code, the Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) has issued an ethics opinion holding that doctors may euthanize dying babies to end the parents’ suffering. From the story (Google translation):

When parents [of a dying child] can not stand it anymore, physicians may hasten death, the KNMG decided. On this issue existed for years ambiguity. Doctors should accelerate death in a dying child [using] muscle relaxants if the death takes so long that it is better for the parents not to see severe suffering.
It’s about real life without newborns for whom further treatment by doctors is seen as meaningless.In these infants, the ventilator stopped. Most children then die quickly, but some will remain a life time and suffering. Once a doctor administering muscle relaxants, however, the baby dies within minutes. Criteria are established in the report Medical-life decisions in newborns with severe abnormalities of doctors organization KNMG, published today.

The KNMG also okays dehydrating dying and severely disabled babies to death by withholding milk. It is also worth noting that under the infanticide bureacratic check-list–the Groningen Protocol–Netherlander doctors may euthanize babies who would live with serious disabilities if the doctor thinks the life would involve too much suffering.

And that's what they did it for.


People are aware that this chick isn't a NASA consultant, right?

The Miss USA contestant for Utah, Marissa Powell, may have impressed the judges with her talents and her stunning gown, but her stumbling answer to a question about income inequality has drawn her more attention than the new Miss USA.

This is cool:

Using a system called Lidar — Light Detection And Ranging — which is similar to radar, but uses laser pulses instead of radio waves, a team from the University of Sydney's archaeological research centre in Cambodia have located the ancient city of Mahendraparvata.

Mounted on a plane, the lidar made sweeps of the jungle below, and the data that was gathered was used to create a detailed terrain map of the area. Like the work done in Honduras showed, as the laser scans swept over the jungle, the light beams were able to penetrate through the jungle canopy, effectively allowing the researchers to 'remove' the canopy and see a detailed view of the jungle floor.

Holy metal thunder:

Hundreds of bikers took a break from hell-raising on Sunday to be blessed by Pope Francis.

Wearing black boots, jackets and vests, the tattooed Harley-Davidson riders stuck out among the nuns, priests, school children and shorts-wearing tourists at an open-air Mass in St. Peter's square.

As part of a three-day celebration of the 110-year anniversary of the U.S. company that produces the "hog", riders parked their bikes along the broad avenue that leads up to the Vatican, and engines were still rumbling when the Mass started.

It was unclear whether Francis's homily about celebrating life could have been aimed at the obsessive Harley fans.

Francis cautioned that "power and pleasure", among other things, lead to God being "replaced by fleeting human idols which offer the intoxication of a flash of freedom, but in the end bring new forms of slavery and death."