For A Thursday

When "social justice" presidential candidate Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton, his supporters felt betrayed. I wonder how they will feel about this:

Scratch a socialist and one will find a well-heeled caviar-hound every time.




I shant be blogging that much about the vile self-congratulatory moron-fest that is the Democratic convention.


But I will highlight this:

The release of a trove of embarrassing hacked internal emails and private voice mail recordings reveal not only the unseemly dealmaking involved in recruiting high-dollar donations for political campaigns but also the role fundraising officials play in approving and denying access to President Barack Obama and other top officials.  

At least two former U.S. ambassadors called the Democratic National Committee to speak about personal meetings with the president, according to audio recordings of the calls included in the leaks. One is heard on a recording from May for now outgoing DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz seeking to confirm plans to attend a “small dinner” with Obama. Another had a staffer call DNC fundraising officials for tickets to a St. Patrick’s Day event with the president. 

“We’ve received an invitation to the vice president’s breakfast but not the White House reception,” the staffer said in a February recording. Later the staffer called back to confirm that the invitation was received.

Governance to the highest bidder.


What is worse is that people are actually voting for this.



People also voted for this:

All told, Ontario’s aborted pension plan cost $70 million before a single penny of contributions was collected, the province revealed Thursday.

Of that multi-million tally, over $2 million was spent on “golden handshakes” for the top Liberal appointees tapped to run the defunct plan, the documents released Thursday reveal. The man tapped as the plan’s CEO will, in the end, receive over $825,000 for six months’ work.

In sum, the six top executives will receive $2.8 million in compensation from the arm’s length corporation that would have administered the provincial pension plan.

Why sex education is pointless:

Actress Amber Tamblyn admitted she has much to learn about the reproductive rights of trans women, and whether men who self-identify as women can get abortions.

The real victims of the murder and maiming of a priest and his parishioners in the middle of Mass was not the aforementioned but Muslims:

The attack by two knife-wielding assailants on a church outside Rouen, Normandy, Tuesday in which the attackers killed an elderly priest by slitting his throat and gravely wounded a hostage appears to have been quite deliberately targeted at the Catholic church.  ...

The goal in going after such a provocative target? To trigger a backlash against Muslims in France and drive the country's Muslims into the recruiting arms of the Islamic State.

Yes, people who think this way actually exist.


(Sidebar: it wouldn't be the first time tyrants and bullies murdered principled people.)




Russia and Syria offer a narrow route of escape before blockading Aleppo:

After months of fighting to encircle its opponents in Aleppo, Syrian authorities backed by Russia on Thursday offered safe corridors out for residents and rebels in the northern city's besieged quarters, underlining the government's determination to seal off the metropolis and force an eventual surrender by the opposition.

The babies can stay but the parents have to go:

The internal briefing document, titled Birth by Non-B.C. Residents, was created in response to a Vancouver Sun story last year about the three-fold increase since 2009 of non-resident births.

A department in Victoria called the Audit and Investigations Branch, Eligibility, Compliance and Enforcement Unit (ECEU) knows about 26 private residences offering hospitality services to foreign pregnant women. It said the residences are used by two groups.

Changing electoral rules will be more costly than people think:

“Trading favours” and capitulation is imposed on the larger party (ies) by the smaller parties to form a coalition in PR countries that results in higher levels of government spending and larger deficits. 

For example, from 2000 to 2014, the average central government spending in countries with PR electoral systems was 29.2 per cent of the economy (GDP) compared to 23.5 per cent in countries like Canada that have a plurality/majoritarian election system. And crucially, PR countries more often finance their higher government spending with deficits (borrowing) than other countries.

 

Not that Trudeau et al care. They rule by fiat.




And now, cool off with ice creams from around the world. Enjoy:

(Thank you)