Monday Post

Let's start the week off right...


Oh, dear. The Dream is falling apart:

British Columbia's premier says the Trudeau government's plans for a more independent, non-partisan Senate will make the much-maligned institution even worse than it already is.

Christy Clark says the new process for appointing senators on merit will give legitimacy to an unelected, unaccountable upper house in which her province will remain grossly under-represented.

B.C. gets only six senators in the 105-seat chamber, although it's the third largest province with a population of about 4.7 million.

By contrast, the three tiny maritime provinces, with less than two million people combined, are entitled to 24 senators, as are Ontario and Quebec.

**

The Liberal government is making good on its election vow to cut federal income taxes for middle earners by raising the rate on the richest Canadians.

However, it now acknowledges the tax tweaks, introduced in a motion Monday in Parliament, won't be revenue-neutral.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau conceded Monday that an array of new tax adjustments will have an annual net drain on the federal treasury of about $1.2 billion in each of the next five years, starting in 2016-17.

The headliner of the new measures is the one to lower the income-tax rate to 20.5 per cent, from 22 per cent, on Canadians earning between $45,282 and $90,563 per year.

To help offset that change, the Liberals have added a 33 per cent tax rate on income earned by Canadians in the top one per cent — those who make more than $200,000 per year.

(Sidebar: that's PM Trulander's tax bracket, by the way.)

I put the blame of this squarely on...THE VOTERS.

Liberal voters, if you are too stupid to do some basic math or demand that Hair-Boy do some basic math on the spot, you have failed in your civic duties.


Also: Trudeau gets beaten up by a girl (he usually runs away from them):

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose and NDP Leader Tom Mulcair used debate on last week's throne speech to refight some of the same election battles, with sparks flying between Liberals and Tories in particular.

Ambrose issued a scathing critique of the new Liberal government's throne speech, which was itself a recap of Trudeau's election promises.

Echoing the same criticisms levelled throughout the campaign, she called the Liberal plan a recipe for intrusive government that thinks it knows best how to spend Canadians' money.

"What we did hear was a recipe for big government and big spending. So the question that every taxpayer wants us to ask this government is: where will the money come from to pay for all of this?" Ambrose told the House of Commons.

"It only comes from one place and that's out of the pockets of Canadians."

Oh, so now everyone is sure that they were "radicalised":

The San Bernardino killers had been radicalized "for quite some time" and had taken target practice at area gun ranges, in one instance just days before the attack that left 14 people dead, the FBI said Monday.

In a chilling twist, authorities also disclosed that a year before the rampage, Syed Farook's co-workers at the county health department underwent "active shooter" training in the very conference room where he and his wife opened fire on them last Wednesday.

Maybe they got "radicalised" here:

The Canadian branch of an Islamic foundation distanced itself Monday from the woman who carried out last week's mass shooting in California following reports she had attended one of the group's schools in Pakistan.

(Sidebar: you can run to Canada but you can't run away from the truth.)

Heh:

Now, let's replace hashtags with bouncing Betties.
 


And now, some Hanukkah recipes. Enjoy.