Mid-Week Post

Your central point of the work-week...



France charged man involved in terrorist attacks:

France on Wednesday charged the main suspect in a foiled attack plot with membership of a terrorist organisation after police found an arsenal of weapons and explosives at his home.

The move comes as investigators stepped up efforts to smash a tangled web of Islamic State-linked extremists blamed for both the November Paris attacks and last week's suicide bombings on Brussels airport and metro that killed 32 people.

French national Reda Kriket, 34, was arrested near Paris last week and a police raid on his apartment netted a cache of assault rifles, handguns and TATP, the highly volatile homemade explosive favoured by IS jihadists.

State prosecutor Francois Molins said Wednesday that "no specific target" had been identified for the foiled attack but that the cache of weapons showed an imminent act of "extreme violence" had likely been prevented.

The stacking of the vote continues:

The Liberals are committing to finding new ways to get Syrian refugees to Canada and into other countries as the United Nations seeks nearly half a million spaces for Syrians by the end of 2018.

Wouldn't it be embarrassing if these migrants left before the next election?



Also:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington Thursday bearing two significant domestic achievements to reduce nuclear terrorism amid worries the Islamic State is pursing nuclear or radiological attacks.

At this point, one wants Trudeau get Gerald Butt's hand from out of his @$$ and justify that conclusion with some hard evidence.

Would-be terrorists don't necessarily need to obtain highly-enriched uranium for dirty bombs when radiation therapy materials are readily available.

And did everyone forget how not at war Trudeau is with ISIS?




A bittersweet tragedy:

James Cain learned only last Tuesday, following the airport bombing in Brussels, that his daughter was married.

The secret emerged as he and his daughter, Cameron, searched anxiously for news of Alexander Pinczowski and his sister, Sascha. Cameron disclosed to her father that she and Alexander had wed in 2013.

Alexander and Sascha, Dutch citizens who lived in New York, both died in the attacks.

On Tuesday, Cain said the revelation that he had a son-in-law was "the bright spot in our otherwise anguishing week."

He said his daughter and Alexander kept their marriage quiet because they "wanted to have all the immigration paperwork done, and Alex's career path more stabilized, before coming to us and planning a traditional Southern Church wedding in North Carolina."

Alexander and Sascha had been heading home to the United States when they died. Alexander, 29, was on the phone with his mother in the Netherlands when the line went dead.

Maybe these carriages would not be necessary if one did not let "refugees" into the country in the first place:

A German train operator has decided to introduce a women-only carriage in the aftermath of mass sexual assaults blamed on migrants from the Middle East and North Africa.

After yet another devastating attack, Pakistani Christians carry on:

As bad as the attack in Lahore was, it was not the deadliest of the many assaults on Pakistan’s three million Christians. Three years ago, two suicide bombers killed 127 worshippers at All Saints Church in Peshawar.

The deaths in Lahore followed the execution of Mumtaz Qadri, a police officer, convicted off assassinating Salman Taseer, Punjab’s governor. Taseer was targeted because he tried to change the country’s blasphemy laws and defended a Christian woman whose death sentence for insulting the Prophet Muhammad was eventually overturned by the courts.

Immediately after Sunday’s attack, thousands of Islamists marched from Rawalpindi to nearby Islamabad, commemorating what they regard as Qadri’s martyrdom. When they reached the capital without any intervention by police, they went on a rampage before beginning a sit-in outside the offices of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. 

They have threatened more violence if, among other things, the government does not implement their draconian interpretation of Shariah law and call off an army campaign against them in tribal areas near the Afghan border. ...

Christianity in Pakistan is a resilient force. One of the reasons may be that most Christians are unusually pious and few more so than Patrick. He sprinkles his conversations with constant references to the Almighty. I am not at all devout, but that has never bothered Patrick. That I was a Christian was enough for him.

The couple of times I attended mass with Patrick, dozens of army troops lined the streets leading to Our Lady Fatima Church. Despite the risks, the services, which were mostly celebrated in Urdu, were packed.

 First-Worlders, observe what real problems look like.




Another famine for North Korea?

North Korean state media has warned the country to prepare for a new “arduous march” as international sanctions take effect.

The term was coined by the North Korean leadership in 1993 as a metaphor for the famine that killed as many as 3.5 million people over four years.

The famine was brought on by economic mismanagement, natural disasters, the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the consequent loss of aid, combined with the regime’s insistence on continuing a life of luxury and feeding the military.

Now, less than one month after the UN Security Council voted in favour of new sanctions against North Korea for its recent nuclear and missile tests, Pyongyang has announced a nationwide campaign to save food.

Sanctions, I think, are not the reason why North Koreans will continue going hungry. The issue is always the leadership and its morally corrupt backers.

See OFK for concise and spot-on assessment on the Korean Peninsula.


Also: photos smuggled out of North Korea.




And now, a yogurt place one must simply frequent:

Monday Post

Back to the grind...



Wasn't I saying this?

President Obama said that ISIS is not "an existential threat to us" in a news conference today in Argentina ....

Yes, about that:

Pakistan's prime minister on Monday vowed to eliminate perpetrators of terror attacks such as the massive suicide bombing that targeted Christians gathered for Easter the previous day in the eastern city of Lahore, killing 70 people.

**

An Indian Catholic priest who was believed abducted by ISIS-linked terrorists weeks ago was reportedly crucified on Good Friday.

There has been no official confirmation of the heinous execution, other than reports from the Mother Teresa Sisters in the Yemeni capital Aden, as reported in Austrian media.
Four gunmen allegedly kidnapped Father Tom Uzhunnalil, 56, from a retirement home in early March in southern Yemen.

The gunmen posed as relatives of one of the retirement home residents then killed at least 16 people, including nuns, before taking the priest hostage.

No one claimed responsibility for the assault, but officials who spoke to media said the jihadists are likely linked to ISIS.

The Islamist-in-Chief may wish fervently to make others believe that ISIS, the Taliban and all other incarnations of Islamist terror are not an existential threat but the deceased and maimed feel otherwise.





He'll be released in no time:

The RCMP has made a “preventive” arrest of an Ontario man for the first time under the new provisions of the Fear of Terrorism measure in the Criminal Code.

Kevin Omar Mohamed, 23, was taken into custody by police on Friday and charged with possession and concealment of a weapon — a knife, according to his lawyer, Anser Farooq — but has not been charged with any terrorism-related offences. ...

This type of arrest was made possible due to last year’s changes to the Criminal Code, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act under Bill C-51 — introduced by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper. Bill C-51 passed into law early May 2015.

I'm not a military expert and I never said I was but surely bullets should be in guns of soldiers and police assigned to protect synagogues from those restive peaceful masses:

Rabbi Menachem Hadad of Brussels’ Shomre Hadas haredi Orthodox community said that soldiers who were posted outside a synagogue and the city’s Chabad House following the slaying of four Jews in Brussels’ Jewish Museum of Belgium in 2014 told him that for months, they used to guard the area with no bullets in their rifles. “It was just a show."

 



If there is ever a zombie apocalypse, these people should be tripped:

Last Monday morning, students at Emory University here in Atlanta were emotionally triggered by messages scrawled in chalk throughout the campus. The messages were so horrifying and terrifying that by the afternoon a gaggle of 40 or so students stormed the Administration Building and began desperately chanting:

You are not listening! Come speak to us, we are in pain!...We have nothing to lose but our chains.

What exactly had sent them into such blind, flailing, fearful fury? Well, it wasn’t exactly Kristallnacht, but let’s call it “The Chalkening”: A vandal had scrawled “TRUMP 2016” on signs and stairs and walkways throughout this tony campus where parents waste a quarter-million dollars to send their progeny for a four-year course in how to be a soft-boiled ovum or a walking mangina.
A blogger for snopes.com claimed that numerous reports of students’ hysterical reactions to The Chalkening were “MOSTLY FALSE,” but I’ll provide some direct quotes from the quivering pupils themselves and let you decide: ...

“I’m supposed to feel comfortable and safe [here]. But this man [Trump] is being supported by students on our campus and our administration shows that they, by their silence, support it as well….I don’t deserve to feel afraid at my school.”

Who thought a sign could be a catalyst for such unfounded fear?

Having been sheltered from their infancy and whipped into a paranoid frenzy since their helmeted bike-riding days, these pansies will only serve to slow one down during a catastrophic breakdown of society, something they probably helped start.

That can't be allowed to happen.

Save us, Rick!

Never let an inflammatory yet imaginary crisis go to waste:

The ongoing protest in front of Toronto police headquarters expanded on Saturday — closing off College Street for much of the day as demonstrators continued to call for charges against the police officer who shot and killed Andrew Loku.

Speaking of crisis:

Doctors dispatched to a northern Ontario reserve to treat children with skin conditions say remote communities are dealing with an ongoing medical crisis, the result of a shortage of medical services.

I lived in a northern community some time ago. Kids always had skin conditions because they were dirty, their homes were kept in disrepair and any clinic that could treat them was broken into.

If urban-dwelling Canadians can't get medical care that they have already paid for, why should money be wasted on people who live in the middle of nowhere and won't appreciate tax-funded succour?




And now, animals who love Easter:

(Merci)

Happy Easter

A merry Easter to all y'all....

He has risen.


Let us engage in mirth.

And now we know the rest of the story.

Heh.

The epic battle

From Easters past.

Holy Week: Воскресение

 

Still darkness, darkness everywhere.
And still so early in the world,
Innumerable stars appear
And each so bright in the night air
That if the earth could count them there,
It would sleep through Easter, lulled
By chanted psalm and chanted prayer.

("In Holy Week", Boris Pasternak)



The darkness being broken by light isn't only a meditation for Christmas but for Easter when the darkness of death is lifted.

When that day comes, the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins, who went to bring the bridegroom and his bride home, taking their lamps with them.  Five of these were foolish, and five were wise;  the five foolish, when they took their lamps, did not provide themselves with oil, but those who were wise took oil in the vessels they carried, as well as the lamps. The bridegroom was long in coming, so that they all grew drowsy, and fell asleep. And at midnight the cry was raised, Behold, the bridegroom is on his way; go out to meet him. Thereupon all these virgins awoke, and fell to trimming their lamps;  and now the foolish ones said to the wise, Share your oil with us, our lamps are burning low. But the wise ones answered, How if there is not enough for us and for you? Better that you should find your way to the merchants, and buy for yourselves. And so, while they were away buying it, the bridegroom came; those who stood ready escorted him to the wedding, and the door was shut. Afterwards those other virgins came, with the cry, Lord, Lord, open to us.  And he answered, Believe me, I do not recognize you.  Be on the watch, then; the day of it and the hour of it are unknown to you. 

Behold the Bridegroom, the human voice heralding the magnificence of Christ the Bridegroom and the light He brings:

Holy Week: Good Friday

Today, a two-fer.


One musical interlude focuses on Jesus' Mother, Mary, and her enormous pain.

And Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary his mother: Behold this child is set for the fall, and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted;
 

And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Johnny Cash.

Holy Week: Draw Me Nearer

It is You Jesus, stretched out on the cross, who gives me strength and are always close to the suffering soul. Creatures will abandon a person in his suffering, but You, O Lord, are faithful...

(Saint Faustina) 



Draw me nearer...
 

For A Thursday

Lots to talk about...



I firmly believe that neither Obama nor Trudeau want ISIS to be defeated.


Proof positive:

The Liberal government says Canada is not at war with Islamic militants — a view not shared by ally France.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion rejected the "at war" label just one day after the bombings in Brussels that killed more than 30 people and injured 270.

And what would be wrong with being at war with people who rape children, crucify Christians, burn men alive, kill women, run children into the desert, destroy churches and smash artefacts?

 Ah, but the term war is "outdated" says Israel's UN-Friend, Stephane Dion.


What does ISIS think about this?

In a new video released by ISIS, which purports to show another cruel execution, the jihadists warn Saudi from cooperating with the coalition of "Crusaders."

**

Following the beheading, the spokesperson appears again, saying:

“We will conquer Rome.”

**

The Islamic State has emerged over the past two weeks as one of the world’s most aggressive state sponsors of terrorism. If its claims are to be believed, its members carried out sophisticated mass casualty attacks against two of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — France and Russia. The carnage in Paris on Friday was the worst attack in France since the end of World War II; the downing of a Russian plane after its takeoff from the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh on Oct. 31, one of the worst terrorist attacks on Russian civilians since the fall of the Soviet Union. For good measure, the Islamic State also carried out synchronized suicide bombings in Beirut on Nov. 12, killing dozens of civilians in a Hezbollah-controlled neighborhood.

**

The Islamic State group has trained at least 400 fighters to target Europe in deadly waves of attacks, deploying interlocking terror cells like the ones that struck Brussels and Paris with orders to choose the time, place and method for maximum chaos, officials have told The Associated Press.

If I didn't know better, I would think that ISIS has not only declared war on the world but has carried and is still carrying it out.


One could conclude that Trudeau and Dion's stances are due to cowardice, stupidity or sympathy.

Perhaps a combination of all three.

Canada will soon find out how not at war we are with ISIS.




Radovan Karadzic has been sentenced to forty years in prison for genocide:

A U.N. court convicted former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic of genocide and nine other charges Thursday and sentenced him to 40 years in prison for orchestrating Serb atrocities throughout Bosnia's 1992-95 war that left 100,000 people dead.

As he sat down after hearing his sentence, Karadzic slumped slightly in his chair, but showed little emotion. He plans to appeal the convictions.

Is that so?

Health Minister Eric Hoskins complained Wednesday about the billing practices of some Ontario doctors, who he said were taking hundreds of millions of dollars away from home care and other services.

Yes, about that:

Ontario’s network of agencies that co-ordinate home and community-based care spend over $930 million dollars per year on administration — 39 per cent of their total budget — the provincial auditor has found.

**

The McGuinty Delisting of OHIP Covered Necessary Health Services - Where after Dalton McGuinty promised not to decrease any health services covered by OHIP, and also not to raise taxes, he did both on the same day by implementing the Ontario Health Premium and delisting coverage of Optometry (Eye), Chiropractic and Physiotherapy Services for Ontarians.

**

A scathing report on the eHealth Ontario spending scandal charges that successive governments wasted $1 billion in taxpayer money.

The law is an @$$.

Cases in point:

The court ruled by a 7-0 margin Thursday that an Alberta woman who tossed two of her newborns into the garbage is not guilty of second-degree murder.

The decision upheld the earlier findings of an Alberta trial judge and the province's appeal court and agreed with the proposition put forth by lawyers for Meredith Borowiec of Calgary, who argued that she was guilty of the lesser offence of infanticide.

The court was ruling for the first time on the infanticide provision of the Criminal Code, which turns on the definition of what constitutes a disturbed mind for a new mother.

(Sidebar: except that she did it TWICE.) 

Jian Ghomeshi has been acquitted of sex assault charges, but his days in court aren’t over.

The former CBC radio personality — who was found not guilty on four counts of sexual assault and one count of overcoming resistance by choking on Thursday — will stand trial in June on a separate charge of sexual assault dating back to 2008.

(Sidebar: granted, it doesn't help that witnesses against him were - how shall one say? - less than credible.)

We can't all be D.B. Cooper:

A man who robbed a sandwich shop was caught when he unfriended the victim on Facebook shortly after the heist, a Moncton court was told this week.

Ryley Smith, 20, was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison, prosecutor Jessica Lavoie said.

Smith admitted robbing a Subway franchise with a knife, his face masked with a bandanna, on Nov. 12, 2014. He vaulted the counter and demanded the approximately $1,000 in the register.

Soon afterward, the victim noticed Smith had unfriended him on the social media site, which got him thinking that perhaps Smith was the robber, Lavoie said in an interview Thursday.

The victim told police, who obtained a warrant for a DNA sample, and matched it to a bandanna found in the Subway parking lot after the robbery, said Lavoie. Smith was arrested last November in Calgary, where he was then living.

Holy Week: Getting Right

She was a woman, a sinner. Her hair was long and she did not attempt to brush it back. As she came toward the table, and in those days everyone reclined at table on the left arm leaving the right arm free to eat, she came and stood over the feet of our Blessed Lord and let fall upon the sandaled harbingers of peace, a few tears like the first warm drops of a summer rain. Then ashamed of what she had done, she attempted to wipe away the tears with her hair. All the while Simon was thinking to himself,

“If He only knew what kind of a woman she is.”

How did he know?
She took from about her neck, a small vessel. In those days women carried precious perfume about the neck in a bottle and when they attended funeral rites, they would break the bottle over the remains and then after allowing the perfume to fall upon the corpse, they would throw even the remains of the bottle onto the body. And she releases from her neck, this vessel of precious ointment but does not do what you and I do, pour it out gently drop-by-drop by drop, as if to indicate by the slowness of our giving, the generosity of our gift. She broke the vessel… gave everything. For love knows no limits. 

(Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen)



Now is the time of getting right...

 

Mid-Week Post

The time draws nigh....

While the world proceeds with its usual shallow displays of sympathy, self-flagellations and pronounced refusals to get medieval on a barbaric culture in its midst, the manhunt for terrorists who killed thirty-one people in Belgium goes on:

Long before blowing themselves up in crowds of innocent people, suicide bomber Ibrahim El Bakraoui and his brother Khalid lived the lives of the classic Brussels hoodlum.

Carjackings, robberies and shoot-outs with police were just some of the convictions collected by the Belgian brothers who took part in the metro and airport assaults in Brussels claimed by the Islamic State group.

Both were said to have links with top Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, while the third identified Brussels attacker, Najim Laachraoui, was the suspected bomb-maker for the November rampage in the French capital.

Baby-faced Ibrahim, 29, who blew himself up at the airport on Tuesday along with Laachraoui, had been given a nine-year sentence in 2010 after a gunfight with police, according to local media.

He took part in a bungled robbery at a Western Union office in which a police officer was injured in the leg.

Turkey said it had detained Ibrahim in June last year as a "foreign terrorist fighter" and then deported him to the Netherlands.

President Recept Tayyip Erdogan said the Belgian authorities had failed to confirm his links to terrorism "despite our warnings" and had later released him, although it is not immediately clear when he crossed to Belgium from the Netherlands.

A familiar pattern of known links to terrorism, crime, anti-social behaviour and then completely disregarding these things once again emerges.

Get used to to these attacks, Westerners. Blame whomever you wish but the truth is the fault lies with you and not in the way you think. You've been soft all of your lives. You've never defended your culture and now you won't defend your lives. It's not "xenophobic" or "Islamophobic" or any -phobic to merely suggest that a seventh-century culture revisit its aspects or that newcomers assimilate, pull themselves up from their bootstraps and dispense with the ridiculous notion that wilful murder merits heavenly rewards or that any other religion likewise behaves that way except for the one religion that isn't violent until it is.



Because Mark Steyn:

This time round the government official with direct responsibility for dealing with today's slaughter, a slice of ham with the absurdly Tintinesque name of Jan Jambon, issued the usual halfwit apologia the day before the atrocity. As M Jambon, the Belgian Interior Minister, told CNN on Monday:

Jambon says the majority of young Muslims are well integrated into Belgian society, but admits his government has more to do to make some feel "at home" in their own country, given that a sense of alienation can leave them open to the threat of radicalization.

"We're talking about third- and fourth-generation [immigrants]; these youngsters are born in Belgium, even their fathers and mothers are born in Belgium, and still they are open for these kind of messages. This is not normal -- in the U.S., the second generation was the President; here, the fourth generation is an IS fighter -- so that is really something we have to work on."

As I said, he gave that interview on Monday - the day before the attacks. So "British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow's Train Bombing" is now joined by "Belgian Cabinet Minister Says Tomorrow's Train Bombing Is All Our Fault".

So "we" have to work on it. That means you, the Flemish frequent flyer poking your head up from the rubble at the airport concourse. And you, the Walloon strap-hanger blinking into the dust and chaos and wondering where the lower part of your left leg went. You are going to "have to work on" it, harder and harder and harder.

Yep.



Also:

The Newfoundland reverend who persuaded officials to fly a Christian flag that drew outrage as a perceived anti-gay symbol says he's sad to see it come down from government buildings.

"It has been a real storm of controversy," Rev. Howard Hynes of St. Stephen the Martyr Anglican Church said Wednesday as the flag was removed from the provincial legislature and St. John's City Hall.

"I didn't expect it to be so prolific, but there it is," he said in an interview.

He was among other church leaders who hoped the flag would be flown during the holy week of Easter to recognize Christians persecuted for their faith around the world, Hynes said.

(Sidebar: insert own First-World selfishness and wilful ignorance comment here.)

 Do you know what else is an "anti-gay" flag?

This:

I'm waiting for Big Gay's statement on this:

Fresh from mourning the late Rob Ford, MP Jim Hillyer has also passed away:

A day that normally would have seen parliamentarians pulling out their sharpest partisan darts was instead replaced Wednesday by a rare coming-together of MPs after the sudden death of Alberta Conservative MP Jim Hillyer.

The 41-year-old died in his office after returning to Ottawa this week following surgery to treat an infection in his leg.

It doesn't matter that veterans have no pensions:

The Liberal government’s $1.9-billion investment in Canadian arts and culture over the next five years as outlined in the federal budget signals a commitment to maintaining the sector, the head of the Canada Council for the Arts says.

You voted for it, Canada.

 

And now, a dog and a duck in perfect harmony:

Holy Week: A Way Back

Still, dust and ashes as I am, allow me to speak before thy mercy. Allow me to speak, for, behold, it is to thy mercy that I speak and not to a man who scorns me.  ...

And all the things of tomorrow and the days yet to come, and all of yesterday and the days that are past, thou wilt gather into this thy day. What is it to me if someone does not understand this? Let him still rejoice and continue to ask, “What is this?” Let him also rejoice and prefer to seek thee, even if he fails to find an answer, rather than to seek an answer and not find thee!  

(Saint Augustine)


A way back...

Tuesday Post

Oh dear....

Rob Ford, a man simultaneously adored by his fans and abhorred by his foes as his scandal-packed term as mayor of Canada's largest city propelled him to international infamy, has died.

Ford, 46, succumbed to cancer Tuesday, 18 months after doctors discovered a softball-sized malignant tumour in his abdomen, his family announced in a statement.

"A dedicated man of the people, Councillor Ford spent his life serving the citizens of Toronto," the statement said.

Now that the CBC has $675 million in funding from the disastrous Liberal budget, it can carry on with how "polarising" the man was well before he is buried.

God forbid that they should mention his effectiveness or generosity.

Burn in hell, CBC.

Rest in peace, Rob Ford.




Only hours after ISIS claimed responsibility for murdering over thirty people in Belgium, the West's most powerful response to this outrage is not targeting homegrown Islamists, not deporting known criminals, not even stamping out poisonous ideology; it's a cartoon:

(Sidebar: soon, this cartoon, like all others before it, will disappear. There's the West's resolve for you.)

For the refreshing honesty, I would like Western leaders to tell their citizens to brace themselves for more attacks and even to get used to them. There is no will to fight the inbred horrors that scourge all parts of the globe. Not any more.




Now, the budget.

PM Trulander promised to run THREE deficits and put anyone earning over $200,000 into a higher tax bracket during the election. Somehow forgetting that deficits are debt, rather like maxing out one's credit cards, and that running deficits is a tremendously stupid idea and that not even half a million of tax-paying Canadian citizens earn over $200,000, people voted for this barmy policy anyway. Now, they get to own the following:

“It’s a classic soak the rich scheme,” said Aaron Wudrick, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. “When you talk about the one per cent, a lot of these people are living in Toronto and Vancouver. Making $100,000 or $150,000, you’re not starving but you’re not one of these people with a yacht or Rolls Royce and that’s disconcerting: These people are essentially middle class and they are not benefitting from these measures.”


One of those measures is the new Canada Child Benefit, which will provide families with a single, tax-exempt payment every month, replacing the current system of combined National Child Benefit Supplement, Canada Child Tax Benefit and Universal Child Care Benefit. Higher income Canadians, generally families with incomes of $150,000 or more, will receive lower benefits under the new system.

**

Regions where unemployment has increased by two percentage points since the oil price crash will have Employment Insurance benefits extended by an additional five weeks — providing relief to areas including Newfoundland and Labrador, southern Ontario and much of Alberta. From Jan. 1, the waiting period for workers to receive benefits drops to one week, from two.

(Sidebar: the provinces that handed Liberals seats.)

**

The Liberal government revealed Tuesday that it will not be fulfilling its election promise to reduce the small business tax rate, proposing that the rate should remain unchanged at 10.5 per cent for the foreseeable future.

**

The Liberal government is expected to face an uproar from disabled veterans after backing off its promise to reintroduce lifelong pensions for those injured in the line of duty.

The last time the Iranians picked a favourite for a president, they got Reagan:

As Iranians see it, Hilary Clinton is more realistic and has a better understanding of the Middle East. On the other side, some of her viewpoints and the influence of Arabic-Jewish lobbyists are her losing points. So her approach towards foreign policy and especially Iran is colored by uncertainty.

They might get Cruz and then cruise missiles.

Monday Post

A busy week...



Oh, dear:

Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's doctors are "very concerned" about the reappearance and progression of his cancer, his chief of staff said Monday.

Doctors are still hoping Ford, who remains in palliative care, can fight back and undergo further treatment, Dan Jacobs said in a statement released on behalf of the Ford Family.

Jacobs also said Ford has not been transferred to any kind of palliative care unit — contrary to some media reports. Rather, Ford's palliative treatment, which includes sedation, began more than a year ago to alleviate pain and stress brought on by his battle with cancer, Jacobs said.

Ford's condition has not changed since the family issued a statement Thursday that said Ford is continuing to fight cancer at Mount Sinai hospital "with his family beside him."

 

Wow, things have to be really bad when even the real French think your policies suck:

Marine Le Pen may be among France’s most popular politicians — polls suggest she has enough support to make the run-off stage in the country’s next presidential election — but she has yet to secure a meeting with a mainstream political figure in Canada.

That hasn’t stopped her from wading into federal and provincial politics, sending politicians scurrying for cover.

At a news conference in Quebec City on Sunday, Le Pen criticized Canada’s immigration policy, calling it an “error” to admit 25,000 Syrian refugees.

“A multicultural society is a conflicted society,” she said during the news conference.

Le Pen described the current situation in France as warning for Canadians.

“We put out a welcome sign, but what conditions await them? The slums of Calais? This is a policy that makes no sense and is dangerous,” she said referring to a large informal refugee camp near the tunnel underneath the English Channel.

I expect Trudeau to chuff off the same blather about not living in fear and hatred but he is also someone who has never had to rub elbows with the proles and doesn't have to live with enclaves of potential rapists with no marketable skills and plenty of Jew-hatred. Hell, he's a trust-fund kid. What would he know about how the rest of the country lives?

Didn't his handlers ever mention that to him?




The Tories worry that the Office of Religious Freedom will shut down:

The Opposition Conservatives will try today to force an answer from the government on the future of Canada's Office of Religious Freedom, the diplomatic post whose mandate and funding is set to expire this month.

Of course it will.

There should be no need for any such office nor should expense be added to what could amount to be a hollow gesture.

But for a government that wants to the antithesis of Harper's administration, shutting down this office is personal.

Speaking of pieces of crap:

U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro are working on patching up relations between the two nations during an historic visit by the American leader.

Once again, Americans can use Cuba as a Third-World playground the way they did BEFORE the revolution.

With scant regard for [Hubert] Matos' previous exemplary conduct as a freedom fighter, [Fidel] Castro subjected him to a Moscow-style show-trial in Havana and intervened personally against his former ally. Castro stood up in court and brought tremendous pressure to bear on the judges, say: "I'm telling you that you must choose: it's Matos or me!" He also prevented witnesses for the defense from testifying. Matos received a twenty-year sentence, which he served to the last day. Several people close to him were also sent to prison.

 
And nothing has changed.




But... but... Mike Duffy!

One senator stayed overnight in Toronto to have breakfast with a reporter — seven times. Another repeatedly spent an extra day at a ritzy Fredericton hotel just in case constituents wanted to meet, but there's no evidence they did.

A third flew himself and his wife to Ottawa for a staff Christmas party, then to Toronto for more family fun.

None of those expenses should have been charged to taxpayers, a former Supreme Court justice said Monday even as he slashed the total amount owed by 10 senators whose claims were flagged last year by the auditor general.

Ian Binnie chalked the problem up to the senators' own lack of knowledge about the rules governing their spending, and the belief within the Senate that outsiders lack the background necessary to fairly adjudicate their expense claims.

Oh, I am sure. 

Some may be quick to dismiss some people as snobs but I will wager some have never been left alone with a meth addict:

Hundreds of Maple Ridge residents rallied Saturday in opposition to the planned conversion of a vacant hotel into a homeless shelter.

The provincial government is in the process of buying the Quality Inn Hotel along Lougheed Highway near 217 Street for $5.5 million. The facility would then be run by B.C. Housing as what's termed a permanent low barrier shelter — meaning addicts would be able to use drugs on the premises. 

That has area residents concerned about what it will mean for their community. 

"It's going to enable them. It's going to make it easier for them to do what they do and continue doing it," said area resident Sandra Trainer. "It's not a solution."

Other residents say the province should have done a better job consulting with them on the plan. 

"There has been no process for public input. No impact study," said Caroline Madsen. "And, no neighbourhood consultation."

Why are there quotation marks around the word "rescue"?

Are there quotation marks around the word "rescue" in the Entebbe raid?




A word on the paranoia of the left and its limited vocabulary they use to express it: 

As someone who traffics in words, particularly how people toss them like rocks at one another in the culture wars, I’ve noticed that two of the left’s favorite words over the past few years—“problematic” and “unacceptable”—have yielded to the starker and more panicky “horrifying” and “terrifying.”

At least “problematic” and “unacceptable” imply a sense of being in control—well, these are obviously problems, and we clearly refuse to accept them, so let’s snuff them out and they won’t be problems anymore.

But if you find yourself constantly horrified and terrified, this implies you’ve lost control and are making a hasty retreat.

Just read the whole thing.




 The emotions....

A rescue dog now spends his days staring at a blank wall after his would-be adoptees pulled out at the last minute. 

I'm not crying....




Just in time for Easter:

Customers at Newport Mall in New Jersey witnessed a strange fight Sunday evening involving the shopping centre’s Easter bunny and some patrons waiting to get a photo with him.

Not angry but very disapproving.