Mid-Week Post

It’s the mid-week-iest!

What the Tory Fair Elections Act entails:

Protect voters from rogue calls and impersonation: The government is calling for a new CRTC registry of voter contact service providers which will have access to call scripts. Moreover, anyone caught impersonating a candidate, a political party or Elections Canada will face tougher fines and even jail time.

Separating the Elections Canada Commissioner from the Chief Electoral Officer: The government is separating the administration of elections from the enforcement of election law. The Chief Electoral Officer will continue to oversee elections while the Commissioner — who will be appointed to a non-renewable 7 year fixed term — will now be will be within the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

No more vouching: The government proposes the elimination of “vouching” for other voters who lack proper identification at the ballot box.

Repealing the ban on premature transmission of election results: The bill will lift the ban on sharing election results on election night. So, starting the next election, voters in the west will get to know the results when polls close in the east.

Raising the limit on donations: The bill raises the political contribution limit — the amount of money an individual can donate to a federal political party in a given year — from $1,200 to $1,500. The overall spending limit for national and local campaigns will also increase by 5 per cent each.

This is not suitable according to the parties which have used donations to repay unions  or won’t be transparent.

This can be resolved if she tells the government she’s making cupcakes for gay weddings:

An 11-year-old Illinois girl has been left "a little bit bummed" after the state Health Department forced her to close her cupcake business.

In the vein of David Ahenakew:

Like Cathy and Davin, Nicole Lebrasseur is another person who was active during Occupy. Nicole leads Decolonize North America, a shoot-off of Occupy that mixes indigenous issues with Truther anti New World Order ideology. Much like con-artist Kevin Annett claimed to do (but never did) Lebrasseur’s group filed an actual lawsuit against the Queen and the Pope in 2011, only to learn that it’s not possible to sue the Queen or the Pope- both have immunity.

Earlier this afternoon Lebrasseur posted an article on her Facebook page, celebrating the fact the SodaStream corporation’s stock had fallen by 3.3 percent (it’s since bounced back) after the company was criticised by Oxfam for locating their factory on disputed Palestinian territory. The radicals have been on an outright crusade against SodaStream for several months now- even though they employ 400 Palestinians (who the radicals want to put out of work).

It didn’t take long for Cathy Walker to jump into the conversation and post her response:

“Islamic group [sic] need to start taking Hollywood away from the Jews”

Surely one is not that surprised.

(two paws up)

Screw you, Kaiser Bill:

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio will not be marching in the nation's largest St. Patrick's Day parade, deciding to skip one of his city's signature celebrations because the event organizers refuse to let participants carry pro-gay signs.

De Blasio will become the first mayor in decades to sit out the traditional march along Fifth Avenue.

"I will be participating in a number of other events to honor the Irish heritage of this city," said de Blasio on Tuesday during an unrelated press conference at City Hall. "But I simply disagree with the organizers of that parade."

(Sidebar: the hell you will, de Blasio.)

Never send a liberal to do an Irishman’s job.

"This is for you, Kaiser Bill. For Paddy and and Seamus..."

Is anyone seeing a pattern of defeatist behaviour on the part of the Liar-in-Chief?

The bridge over the Detroit River a couple of kilometres downstream from the aging Ambassador toll bridge is a little different. Obama has already issued the presidential permit for the $2-billion project, a move welcomed by Ottawa last April. But since then, the administration hasn't lifted a finger to facilitate progress towards building it.

Canada is bankrolling almost all of the cost of the project, hoping to recoup its investment via bridge tolls. Pretty much the only U.S. obligation is construction of a US$250-million customs inspection plaza on the Detroit side of the new bridge. So far the U.S. government has not earmarked any money for it.

The stalling has frustrated supporters of the project on both sides of the border.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, whose voters endorsed the crossing in a 2012 referendum despite well-funded opposition led by Ambassador Bridge owner Matty Moroun, chewed out Washington for stalling.

“The U.S. government has largely taken a position that they don’t think they should pay anything for a facility for the United States government,” Snyder told the Detroit Free Press editorial board in mid-January.

From World Hijab Day to this:

Sheikh Abdullah Daoud, who is not affiliated with the government of Saudi Arabia, made his controversial edict during an interview on the Islamic al-Majd TV that aired six months ago but recently went viral on social networking sites.

According to Daoud, dressing infants and children in the traditional Muslim veils would reduce the sexual molestation of minors, though the cleric did not cite any evidence for his view.

(Gracias)

An Oklahoma teen-ager testified that he believed his co-accused shot “blanks” at Christopher Lane:

One of three Oklahoma teenagers charged with fatally shooting an Australian student athlete who was jogging in a small town in August testified on Tuesday that a co-defendant had pulled the trigger and later said he thought the handgun held blanks.

James Edwards Jr., Chancey Allen Luna and Michael Dewayne Jones were charged as adults with first-degree murder in the shooting of Christopher Lane, a Melbourne resident who was attending university in Oklahoma on a baseball scholarship.

The teenagers are accused of tracking Lane, who police said was shot in the back on August 16 while jogging in Duncan, Oklahoma, a town about 80 miles south of Oklahoma City. Lane, 23, was a student at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. No date has yet been set for the trial.

Edwards testified on Tuesday in a court hearing to determine whether Luna and Jones should stand trial in the case, and prosecutors said Edwards would face a lesser charge if he continued to testify through trial.

Edwards testified that Luna had fired the shot that struck Lane. He said he was in the front passenger seat that day and rolling a marijuana cigarette while Jones was driving the car and Luna was in the backseat.

He saw a jogger on the side of the road ahead, looked down to roll the joint and felt the car swerve, Edwards said.

"I heard a gunshot," he said. "I heard it from the right side of the car."

Edwards said he looked in the mirror and saw Lane lying on his stomach, and that Luna, with a "shocked and cold expression," said he thought there were supposed to be blanks in the gun.

Afterward, Luna's attorney, Jim Berry, said Edwards' testimony that the car swerved showed that the gun could have gone off accidentally and noted that Edwards also testified that Jones and Luna thought they were shooting blanks.

"I think that shows an absence of malice and that there was no planning or premeditation," Berry told reporters. ….

According to police, Jones had said the teens had decided to kill someone "for the fun of it." Police have said Jones told them they saw Lane jogging, decided to target him and then followed him in their vehicle before shooting him.

I’m sure a jury will find that believable.

I’m not sure how anyone can misunderstand deliberate deprivation of basic rights, show trials, gulags and murder:

Denying the evil of communism is morally and historically equivalent to Holocaust denial. Most of Myerson's arguments are of the "capitalism is bad, too" variety, arguing the absurdly obvious point that non-communist governments have also committed human rights abuses, and that they rarely live up to purported ideals of freedom. The fact that communism almost always requires such abuses is one Myerson prefers not to notice.

Here is how Myerson defends the millions of murders in the Soviet Union: "For one thing, a large number of the people killed under Soviet communism weren’t the kulaks everyone pretends to care about but themselves communists." (That makes it all right, somehow--perhaps they were just as willing to commit murder, except that Stalin got to them first.) He also likens the violence in the American Revolution to the Stalinist purges.

Myerson argues that American communism would not be as bad today, and offers this pearl of political realism: "[C]ommunism is an aspiration, not an immediately achievable state."

Withdraw from the UN today:

The UN watchdog for children's rights denounced the Holy See for adopting policies which allowed priests to sexually abuse thousands of children.

In a report, it also criticised Vatican attitudes towards homosexuality, contraception and abortion.

The Vatican responded by saying it would examine the report - but also accused its authors of interference.

There really is no point in letting this travesty drag on. Not that the UN truly cares about the world's suffering (RE: Rwanda, North Korea, sexual abuse in Congo, hatred of Israel and free passes to Islamist states) and especially it does not care about abuse victims but its true agenda is more eugenicist. They can go to hell.

And now, this is a real thing: traffic robots in Kinshasa:

While red light and speed cameras are increasingly common in the United States, we’ve yet to see machines enlisted that look like actual robots. In Kinshasa, the capital city of Congo, two large robots are being used in place of police officers to direct traffic and pedestrians.

While a traditional traffic light could serve the same purpose, the hulking robot may benefit from an intimidation factor. So how has it been received? Commuter Demouto Mutombo told CCTV Africa through an intrepreter: “As a motorcyclist I’m very happy with the robot’s work. Because when the traffic police control the cars here there’s still a lot of traffic. But since the robot arrived, we see truly that the commuters are respectful.”

(There must be a Robo-Cop joke in here somewhere)