For A Thursday

So much to talk about....



The RCMP is treating a plane crash in Peterborough as a "national security issue":

Twenty-year-old Mohammad Hassan Chaudhary of Markham, Ont., was killed after the small Piper Tomahawk aircraft he allegedly stole from the Markham Airport crash landed just before 1:30 a.m. Friday near the Landsdowne Place mall in Peterborough’s south end about 140 kilometres east of Toronto.


His father, Afzal Chaudhary, says his son lived with schizophrenia and is shocked he was able to steal and fly the plane without a “single minute” of flight training.

Just like Aaron Driver... eventually.




The mere idea of public consultation to a Liberal energised by undeserved entitlements must strike one as an offensive yet necessary evil which is why this particular consultation went almost under the radar:

The meeting was billed on Mr. Aldag’s website as an opportunity to learn, ask questions and have your say on the issue. 

The meeting began with an hour-long presentation by a local professor of political science, who was clearly biased against the current “first past the post” system, but who struggled to explain how the alternatives work or why they would be better.

He explained how the “first past the post” system we use now is bad because Candidate A with 40 per cent of the vote could beat Candidate B with 30 per cent. He then explained that the “alternative vote” system is better, because then Candidate B with 30 per cent could beat Candidate A with 40 per cent, if Candidates C’s voters thought Candidate B was less objectionable than Candidate A. Got that?

Or, he said we could have the “single transferable vote”, which would mean ridings much larger than we have currently, but they would elect three or five MPs after a similar process of reallocating second-choice votes. He didn’t explain how giving MPs five times as many voters but making them share those voters with other MPs would improve our representation.

Or, he said we could have a “list proportional representation” system, in which people who aren’t elected — even after all the gyrations of the vote reallocation of the other systems — could still be appointed to Parliament based on lists provided by the leaders of their party. Oh great, unelected people appointed to Parliament. Isn’t that what we have a Senate for? ...

Eventually, the audience was invited to ask questions. We were told we needed to limit our comments to two minutes. In other words, no referendum because we are going to consult, which we’ll do the night after the August long weekend, and the issue is too complex for you bozos to understand, but tell us everything you think about it in two minutes. Now, smile, you’ve been consulted!

Mr. Aldag was asked repeatedly by speakers if he would go back to the prime minister and tell him that the people of his riding think they should be consulted by referendum before our electoral system, which has served us well for centuries, is overturned and replaced by something that apparently works well in postage stamp-sized countries in Eastern Europe. We didn’t get an answer.

By the end of the night there had been 20 speakers. Of those, 11 were opposed to any change to the electoral system without a referendum, while seven were in favour of change without any consensus from them on which of the alternatives we should adopt. They were just in favour of changing to something or other without a referendum. I couldn’t quite make out what the final two meant to say. 

Interestingly, of the seven in favour of anything but what we do now, four were from outside of the riding. This leads me to believe the electoral change advocates are making the rounds, attending meetings in multiple ridings, to make it seem as if there are more of them than there actually are. Great, the “consultation” version of double voting.

Immigration Minister John McCallum insists that Canada needs more tourists and workers from Trudeau Senior and Junior's favourite country despite its human rights record.

But China expects that Canada is sufficiently whipped to object:

If there is another plausible explanation for McCallum’s surprise “request” last week that Beijing allow the tripling of visa application centres in China with a view to radically boosting the number of Chinese students and temporary foreign workers in Canada, that explanation has not come from McCallum. All we’ve heard is the usual treacle about Canada’s openness to the world.

An acceleration of the availability and volume of Canadian visas accessible to Chinese citizens that the authorities in Beijing would encourage to sojourn in Canada was one of the many demands enumerated less than three months ago by Wang Yi, the Chinese Foreign Minister who made an international spectacle of himself at a press conference by barking at Canadian journalists that they had “no right” to raise questions about human rights in China.

Now we’re expected to believe that Wang’s little-noticed demand that Canada boost the supply of visas available to Chinese citizens who are in good standing with Beijing was actually a Canadian idea. We will all be expected to believe a great deal of claptrap like this in the coming days, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s visit to China approaches in advance of the Sept. 4-5 G20 Summit in Hangzhou. So be alert.

If peace-keeping is Canada's great global pride, why have there been so many needless deaths?

In 1994, under the UN’s and Canada’s watch, Hutu Rwandans clubbed, hacked and as a last resort shot to death thousands of Tutsis every day for 100 days. “The worst eyes that haunt me are the eyes of those people who are totally bewildered,” mission commander Roméo Dallaire told PBS’s Frontline in 2004. “They’re looking at me in my blue beret and asking ‘what in the hell happened? How come I’m dying here?’ And they’re absolutely right.

“How come I failed? How come my mission failed? How come, as the commander, I did not convince (higher-ups to take action)? I lost soldiers, and 800,000 people died.”

That’s a big part of Canada’s recent peacekeeping history.

Not long before, under the UN’s watch, a ceasefire in Somalia fell to pieces. Canada’s contribution was the ill-suited at best, psychotically racist at worst Canadian Airborne Regiment, two members of which tortured Somali teenager Shidane Arone to death for kicks. When the ensuing inquiry started poking its nose up the chain of command, prime minister Jean Chrétien and his ministers discredited it, shut it down in the lead-up to the 1997 election, and then declared its damning findings old news.

You can't object to abortion because it kills male or female babies but then be gung-ho about it in other situations. Either abortion is the deliberate killing of a human being or it isn't:

Feminists will tell you a fetus isn’t a baby and it’s always the mom’s choice to carry the baby to term, or not and for any reason. Do they still support the mom’s choice to not have that baby for actual sexist reasons?

George Smitherman would like it very much if people stopped pointing out that anti-gay activists infiltrated the pervert pride parade because it's embarrassing. So stop talking about it or he and his friends will sue you:

Former Ontario MPP George Smitherman, the province’s first openly gay provincial representative as well first openly gay cabinet minister, told Daily Xtra that he joined the lawsuit to “do all we can to stamp this hateful individual out.”

Jim Hughes, president of Campaign Life Coalition, has also received a notice of threatened legal action for his organization’s supposed publishing of the original LifeSiteNews report on Whatcott’s activities and for linking to the “offensive literature” that was distributed at the Pride Parade. The notice demands that Campaign Life Coalition remove the original news report or at least remove the link to the Whatcott blog. However, contrary to the letter’s claim, Campaign Life Coalition does not operate LifeSiteNews, which is a separately incorporated and managed organization.

Last month half-a-dozen Christians led by Whatcott paid the $100 fee to the Toronto Pride Parade organizers to register "Gay Zombies Cannabis Consumers Association" so that they could move more easily along the parade route to deliver their message. 

While recipients thought they were being handed free condoms and sex tips they were actually receiving a pamphlet that showed graphic images of diseases associated with same-sex behaviors, including anal warts and AIDS.

“I asked them if they wanted ‘Zombie safe sex,’” Whatcott told LifeSiteNews at the time.  “Everyone loved it. But, if you try to give out a Gospel pamphlet, they swear at you and throw slushies on your forehead. But, give them some wackadoddle thing that looks like a condom, and they really can’t grab it fast enough. I had three thousand out in 20 minutes,” he said.

Stop attempting to diminish the dignity of half-naked people in body paint with sex toys and BLM manifestos crammed up their backsides.

Stop it!



Also: the Right Honourable Creep.




But... but... peace in our time!

The State Department has been investigating how and why a 2013 video showing then-Spokeswoman Jen Psaki admitting that administration officials have lied about the Iran deal to gain public support was edited to remove the comments. The edit was first noticed by reporter James Rosen, who asked Psaki the question about the Iran deal. 

Today, State Dept. Spokesman John Kirby revealed they’ve concluded that the video was intentionally edited, but they still have no idea why it was edited or who ordered it to be done...

Oh, I'm sure they don't.


Also:

The Obama administration said Thursday that a $400 million cash payment to Iran seven months ago was contingent on the release of a group of American prisoners.
 
It is the first time the U.S. has so clearly linked the two events, which critics have painted as a hostage-ransom arrangement.

How embarrassing for George Soros:

A leaked memo from left-wing financier George Soros’s Open Society Foundations argues that Europe’s refugee crisis should be accepted as a “new normal,” and that the refugee crisis means “new opportunities” for Soros’ organization to influence immigration policies on a global scale.

**

The troubling ties between Soros and Clinton extend to her tenure as secretary of state. An email released by Wikileaks revealed that, in 2011, Soros instructed Clinton to intervene in Albanian politics—advice she acted upon. Soros directly benefited from Clinton pushing for the 2011 Panama Free Trade Agreement, as several of Soros’ holdings were implicated in the recent scandal there. That deal opened up the country for billionaires and millionaires to exploit as a tax haven, which was exposed in the Panama Papers leak earlier this year.

If this had been George Bush, there would be burning effigies by now:

Nope, there’s been no statement from Obama on Louisiana, although he did sign an order declaring the flooded parishes a “major disaster” area.

He’s made no comments about Milwaukee either, although he was briefed on the situation by Valerie Jarrett (not a joke).

So, what has he been up to? Well, he recently golfed on an “organic” course at a country club that charges a $350,000 initiation fee, and he spoke at a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton.

Obama's red line:

Further proof that political multiculturalism is a failure in that it does not invite unity but does foster discord and lets duplicate failed cultural practices and norms:

Recent crimes involving refugees have brought national focus to Twin Falls, as some local residents worry that the refugee resettlement program has been forced on Twin Falls without proper oversight or public debate. From the sexual assault on the five-year-old girl allegedly perpetrated by refugee boys said to be from Iraq and Sudan, to the the recent charges that an African molested a 33-year-old retarded woman and the arrest of a refugee for coming back to Twin Falls to kill people that he’d met in the refugee program, people are asking who these refugees are. ...

Idaho is one of fourteen states that have withdrawn from the federal refugee resettlement program. Refugees are currently resettled there by voluntary agencies (VOLAGs) and their local affiliates (College of Southern Idaho and Idaho Office for Refugees) under the statutorily questionable Wilson-Fish alternative program. ...

The brochure also provides a culture-by-culture description that explains to employers how they need to adjust to the refugees. Rather than reassuring future bosses that the refugees they might hire have been told that since they are in America, they need to adjust to America society, the brochure—worth reading in its entirety—makes it clear prospective employers are going to be dealing with workers who view the world very differently.

Take, for example, the description of the Sudanese, one of the groups that Twin Falls has been importing:

Cooperation within the group is critical, and it is considered taboo to promote one’s self interest above the community interests. One Sudanese case manager notes that the most important cultural note for the Sudanese is to learn the importance of time in the U.S. (e.g., making and keeping appointments and following schedules). A Nuer source said the Sudanese do not accept the concept of “no.” They may need guidance setting realistic goals, managing time and making decisions.

How does that description of “doesn’t understand the concept of no” work out in practice?

Twin Falls has also been importing refugees from Eritrea and Burma…but don’t look them in the eye. As the official brochure from the Idaho Office for Refugees warns you:

Eritrea
Roughly half of Eritreans are Muslims and half are Christians. Eye contact in the first encounter is generally viewed as a sign of disrespect; avoiding eye contact and looking away are considered as virtues equated to reverence.

How about the Burmese?

Direct eye contact can be another cultural difference, as looking a speaker in the eye can be considered an act of challenge.

Okay, so we won’t look them in the eye. Let’s just keep it friendly and ask about the wife and kids, yes? No. Bad Move.

In the section on Iraq’s culture, which they describe as valuing “patriarchal” society, the brochure states:

In Muslim society, there is a much greater difference between public and private behavior than in Western societies. In traditional families, it is an invasion of privacy, for example, for a man to ask another man how his wife is; one asks instead how his family in general is, or how his children are.

So, don’t ask an Iraqi about the wife. And REALLY don’t ask an Afghan. In the section on Afghanistan, it says:

It is considered a breach of manners among liberal Afghans, and an act requiring revenge among conservatives, for a man to express interest of any sort in another man’s female relatives.

Mr. Chinook is up a creek:

Leonardo DiCaprio’s eco-charity the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, has been linked to donations from a Malaysian playboy embroiled in a vast money-laundering scam, it has emerged.

Millions of dollars in donations are said to have been made to the foundation by businessman Jho Low, who is among those at the centre of a scandal involving the embezzlement of $3 billion from a Malaysian wealth fund called 1MDB.

It’s said that 35-year-old Low, a friend of DiCaprio, used some of the stolen money from the fund at lavish LDF galas thrown by the star, like one in St. Tropez in July, which saw guests flown in via helicopter.

Can you feel the Bern?

To go with places they already own in Washington and their hometown of Burlington, Vermont, the Sanders family has purchased a vacation home on an island in Lake Champlain. Price: $575,000, nearly triple the average cost of a house in the Green Mountain State.

ISIS has claims that it is responsible for attack on a Russian traffic post:

Islamic State on Thursday claimed responsibility for an attack on a traffic police post outside Moscow a day earlier in which both of the attackers were killed.
The militant group made the claim via the Amaq news agency, which it regularly uses to issue statements.

The Amaq statement said: "Two fighters of the Islamic State assaulted Russian policemen in the Balashikha area, east of Moscow".

Russia's Investigative Committee said two unidentified people armed with a firearm and two axes had attacked a traffic police post outside Moscow on Wednesday.

One of them was shot dead while attacking the post while the other was killed when he tried to put up armed resistance, investigators said.

Two police were injured in the attack, one seriously.

Now Russia knows who to bomb.




A school refuses to let parents drop off lunches for irresponsible students:

Let's say your 10th-grader forgets his lunch. So you receive a telephone call at work.

“Mom, I left my baloney sandwich on the kitchen counter,” he tells you. “Can you bring it to me, pretty please?”

So, what would you do? I’d be willing to bet a Moonpie that many parents would drop everything and rush to the school to personally deliver their little snowflake’s brown bag lunch.

But that sort of coddling is not allowed at Catholic High School for Boys in Little Rock, Arkansas. As a matter of fact -- it’s outright banned.

Catholic High School prides itself on teaching reading, writing, arithmetic and problem-solving.

“Come, boys, so that you can become men,” is their challenge -- engraved in a monument attached to the school’s bricks.

There’s also a big sign plastered on the front door -- a message to moms and dads.

“If you are dropping off your son’s forgotten lunch, books, homework, equipment, etc., please TURN AROUND and exit the building. Your son will learn to problem-solve in your absence.”

And now, a depressed dog finds friendship with a duck:

(Merci beaucoup pour tout)