Monday Post

The story so far....


As Canadians, we are fortunate enough to see how disastrous electing an incompetent, stuttering, self-indulged creation of the popular press really is by looking no further than the American experience. The memoirs of an unaccomplished empty-suit do not detract from one's transparent ambitions:

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair said it was premature for Justin Trudeau to say the Liberals would take away a Conservative tax cut that doesn’t yet exist.

Mulcair reacted on Monday to comments over the weekend by the Liberal leader, who said, if elected, the Grits would rescind the promised income-splitting tax cuts.

Mulcair said his party doesn’t like income splitting because it doesn’t benefit a large enough percentage of the population. Income splitting allows couple to pool incomes in order for the higher earner to fall into a lower tax bracket.

However, Mulcair wouldn’t say if his party would take away the tax cut if they win the 2015 federal election.

While the benefits of income splitting are not unanimously praised in the Conservative Party, there has been no indication the government will renege on its promise to offer the tax-cutting measure if the spring budget is balanced and there is a surplus.

Trudeau said over the weekend that he’ll rescind income splitting and use the surplus to pay for education, innovation and other projects to benefit the middle class.

(Sidebar: as the NDP is no longer the far-left, Mulcair almost becomes a voice of reason. Almost.)



Related: Justin Trudeau's popularity falls after he fails to condemn ISIS as normal thinking, feeling human beings should do:

The Abacus Data poll, released on Monday afternoon, suggests that the federal Liberals have taken a six-point drop since last month. 

The respected pollsters still have Justin Trudeau’s party in the lead with 32 per cent support, but now have the Tories on their heels with 30 per cent and the NDP not far behind at 25 per cent support. 

Abacus’ David Coletto says the ”road for the Liberals may not be as smooth as appeared last month.”

"For the first time in our tracking this year," Coletto wrote, “we have seen some movement. Liberal support is down, NDP and Green support has ticked up, while Conservative support is holding at 30 per cent.”

A lot of people dismiss mid-term opinion polls, arguing that they don’t provide much value months or even years before an election.  

But this latest poll is interesting for a couple of reasons. 

It’s one of the first major polls conducted after the parliamentary debate about Canada’s mission in Iraq. It’s also the first poll after Trudeau’s latest gaffe when, during a Q&A, he inappropriately said that Canada can do better than “trying to whip out our CF-18’s” and show the international community “how big they are.”

This poll might just give us a glimpse of how much voter support a Justin Trudeau-gaffe can cost his Liberal party – at least in the short term. 

(Sidebar: "short term" relates to low-information voters who don't know or care that ISIS is a band of savages and that Canada has had humanitarian aid in place since before the debates that Trudeau often did not take part in.)


Ontario Liberal voters are getting more of what they happily voted for:

 A plan to "optimize" major public assets is a recipe for higher booze and electricity prices in Ontario, Interim PC leader Jim Wilson says.

The Ed Clark-led government assets council is proposing that the LCBO increase the service charge levied on beer producers to cover distribution costs, effectively giving the provincial treasury a greater share of the profits as a result of the government-sanctioned Beer Store monopoly.

"The way I read that part of the report is they're looking to squeeze beer customers," Wilson said Monday.

"They're not talking about reducing the size and the cost of the bureaucracy at The Beer Store, they're not talking about really selling it."

Clark's group of advisers is reviewing publicly owned Hydro One, Ontario Power Generation (OPG) and the LCBO to determine if there are ways to maximize profits for taxpayers.

On Friday, Clark said in a major speech that he does not recommend selling off the assets, except for a majority share in Hydro One's distribution business.

Wilson said he supports keeping the assets public but believes Clark should have been given freer rein to look at all options.

Clark made it clear that the Kathleen Wynne government was not interested in selling Hydro One or OPG outright, or breaking up the monopolies of The Beer Store or LCBO.

It doesn't end there:

The Liberals are also facing demands from the opposition parties to release documentation surrounding a $224-million loan made years ago for the MaRS Phase 2 tower. MaRS and the developer have been unable to repay the loan and the province is now paying interest of up to $7.1 million a year on it until an agreement on the future of the new tower is finalized.

I could almost live with this if I knew for a fact that Liberal voters lived in such squalor that one had to put their faces on UNICEF boxes.


Good:

A Muslim woman wearing a niqab has been forced to leave a theatre in France after the cast refused to perform in protest against her attire.

The niqab is a traditional Muslim garment which covers the head and chest, with the exception of the eyes. It is illegal in France.

The incident occurred during the performance of La Traviata at Opera Bastille in Paris, the opera house's deputy director Jean-Philippe Thiellay told AFP.

The episode is believed to have happened on 3 October. However, French media did not report it until Sunday [19 October].

The woman, from the Gulf State, was visiting France with her companion. She was asked to remove the veil or leave the theatre as "performers said they didn't want to sing," Thiellay explained.

After the deputy-director was made aware of the cast's request, an usher approached the woman.

"He told her that in France there is a ban of this nature, asked her to either uncover her face or leave the room. The man asked the woman to get up, they left," Thiellay said, adding that it was unpleasant "to ask someone to leave."

 
At no point should Western culture tolerate the intolerable. In Islamic countries, women have had acid thrown in their faces or were abused if they didn't cover up. The desire for modesty is a fraud perpetrated on multicultural apologists who don't understand that wearing niqabs or any other covering is a thumb-in-the-eye of the popular culture where such adolescent reactionary garb-wearing is tolerated.


Just like ISIS, Saudi Arabia also beheads people:

A sudden surge in public executions in Saudi Arabia in the last two months has coincided with a U.S.-led bombing campaign against Islamic State. This has led to inevitable comparisons in Western media between Islamic State's beheadings and those practiced in Saudi Arabia.

Defenders of the Saudi death penalty say beheadings, usually with a single sword stroke, are at least as humane as lethal injections in the United States. They deplore any comparison between the kingdom's execution of convicted criminals and Islamic State's extra-judicial killing of innocent hostages.

But rights activists say they are more concerned by the justice system behind the death penalty in the kingdom than by its particular method of execution. And critics of the Al Saud ruling family say the latest wave of executions may have a political message, with Riyadh determined to demonstrate its toughness at a moment of regional turmoil.

Saudi Arabia beheaded 26 people in August, more than in the first seven months of the year combined. The total for the year now stands at 59, compared to 69 for all of last year, according to Human Rights Watch.

“It’s possible the executions were used as intimidation and flexing of muscles. It’s a very volatile time and executions do serve a purpose when they’re done en masse,” said Madawi al-Rasheed, visiting professor at the Middle East Centre of the London School of Economics.

“There’s uncertainty around Saudi Arabia from the north and from the south and inside they are taking aggressive action alongside the U.S. against Islamic State, and all that is creating some kind of upheaval, which the death penalty tries to keep a lid on.”

For some reason, the West seems dependent on this house of sand.


The city of Richmond is considering a ban on Chinese-language signs:

The hottest language debate may no longer be in Quebec but rather British Columbia, where a city in Vancouver’s suburbs is again embroiled in a battle over whether English should be included on signs targeting the city’s Chinese community.

And thanks to the impending municipal election, the language debate has received a higher profile than ever before, with several council candidates weighing in for and against mandating the use of English.

Richmond, B.C., has one of the most significant Chinese communities in Canada, with more than half its population of 205,000 descending from the country.

As a result, companies are targeting the Chinese community through billboards and other advertisements written entirely in Chinese.

The debate routinely draws comparisons to Quebec, where “language police” have garnered headlines for seeking and destroying company signs posted exclusively in English.

Last week, the City of Richmond voted to seek a legal opinion to determine what, if anything, they could do about Chinese-only signs. ...

Independent candidate Janos Bergman, however, told the Post that Chinese-only signs “serve to exclude the rest of the community and this is very un-Canadian.”

On his Facebook page, council candidate Henry Yao says that it is important for cultures to remain unique in a multi-cultural society, but that harmony relies on communication.

"This is why I wish to emphasize the importance of English on all signs in Richmond," he writes. 

“Having a common language will help people to communicate and understand each other. If we all live together and do not share a common language, we will become an exclusive society of strangers.”

 
It is not always easy to learn another language or adapt readily to new surroundings. That being said, failure to do so in an environment as welcoming and affluent as the West suggests that there is an unwillingness more than an inability.


And now, fifteen tales of female ghosts to curdle the blood.