For a Friday

Lots to talk about...



It's just money:

Canada's decision to lift the visa requirement for Mexican travellers is expected to cost about $262 million over the next decade, in part to deal with a potential surge in asylum seekers, according to an internal government analysis.

A regulatory impact analysis statement, just published on a Canadian government website, pegs the overall cost of the policy change that kicks in today at $433.5 million over 10 years due to extra enforcement resources and added costs associated with a potential spike in refugee claims.

The analysis predicts those costs will be partially offset by an estimated $171.6 million in economic benefits through increased tourism from Mexico and a boost in trade and investment opportunities.

Incompetence, you say?:

Progressives like to insist concerns about government waste and spending are overblown, or at least hardly unique to the public sector. And indeed it’s important to remember that many projects do get built competently, on budget and on time.

But what we see here is a failure to implement or enforce even the most basic management controls or safeguards over public money. With the gas-plant stench of political shamelessness and corporate donations hovering over Queen’s Park, it is only logical for people to be furious.

Lysyk’s exhausting 800-page report also found, notably, that the government was spending millions on advertising that promoted itself; and that it still hadn’t managed to roll out electronic health records completely after 14 years and $8 billion spent. It would be remarkable, surely, if it ever got a chance to declare mission accomplished on that file — but these Liberals have won remarkable elections before.

Oh, now they want a referendum:

Liberal minister Maryam Monsef accused a special committee studying electoral reform of not doing its job Thursday, even as committee members called their 333-page report an unprecedented show in cross-partisanship — and accused Monsef of either lying or not understanding the process.

... says the known liar.

During a raucous question period, the Minister of Democratic Institutions reiterated there’s “no consensus” on reform, drawing ire and mockery from the opposition. One MP said, incredulously, “people aren’t stupid.”

Damn right. People don't want a rigged system that allows corrupt autocrats like the Liberals to rule ad infinitum.


(Merci)




Oh, dear:

The National Science Foundation has agreed to provide medical evacuation from the South Pole for 86-year-old Buzz Aldrin, a former astronaut who in 1969 became one of the first people to walk on the moon.

Ted Cruz is being Ted Cruz:

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas eviscerated President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday for their statements following the death of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Speaking from the Senate floor, Cruz said "we are thankful" for "this brutal dictator's" death. He said Trudeau and Obama "should know better" than to offer up the statements they did.

"Let me be absolutely clear: We're not mourning the death of some revolutionary romantic or a distinguished statesman," said Cruz, who is of Cuban descent. "We're not grieving for the protector of peace or a judicious steward of his people. Today we are thankful, we are thankful that a man who has imprisoned and tortured and degraded the lives of so many is no longer with us."

The Texas Republican said he wanted to pay tribute to the "millions" who "suffered at the hands of the Castro regime."

Does anyone have a t-shirt for them?

Filthy SOB:

A man suspected of fatally shooting a veteran Tacoma, Wash. police officer was shot and killed by authorities early Thursday after an hours-long standoff in which he was using two children as shields ...

 
Parents in Utah stop their son from further shooting:

Two fast-acting parents disarmed their 15-year-old son at a Utah junior high school Thursday after they noticed the teenager acting peculiarly in the morning and realized he had taken the family's shotgun and handgun, police said.

The mother and father arrived shortly after the boy entered a classroom in the northern Utah city of Bountiful and fired one round into the ceiling, injuring no one but leaving a hole the size of a small plate, Bountiful Police Chief Tom Ross said.

The suspect also pointed the shotgun at his own neck, Ross said.

The boy didn't say a word as a teacher and one of 26 students tried to talk him out of firing again, giving his parents a few extra second to arrive at the classroom and take him into the hallway, Ross said.

If Trump is serious about making NATO members pay for their defense, does Putin really take this as Trump being malleable?

Mr. Putin did not mention Mr. Trump by name, saying only that Russia wanted to work with the incoming United States administration “to normalize and begin to develop bilateral relations on an equal and mutually beneficial basis.”

Identity groups are symbols of political narcissism, of people so willingly isolated from the majority that they become the intolerant and narrow-minded mouth breathers they claim to despise. The replacement (not the elimination) of anything higher or more noble than one's self with the coddled ego hasn't just destroyed a culture; it has turned political tides against it.


Case in point:

In this portion, Santorum gives it right back to the hecklers:

I suspect that all of the people who just stood will walk around this campus and talk about tolerance, and all of them will tell you you have to celebrate what? Diversity. Celebrate diversity, preach tolerance, but when it comes to anybody who disagrees with them, there is no tolerance.

This public rudeness has cemented Mr. Santorum's point than anything else he could have said.




 SEE: REAP, SOW:

Turning Point USA, a conservative organization made up of high school and college students, has compiled a website database of more than 200 professors at universities across the nation that “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”

The website, professorwatchlist.org, doesn’t list just any professo­r — TPUSA requires proof.

“This watchlist is an aggregated list of pre-existing news stories that were published by a variety of news organizations,” the website states. “While we accept tips for new additions on our website, we only publish profiles on incidents that have already been reported by a credible source.”

The website also says that TPUSA is not attempting to silence the professors on the list, but instead they are exposing “specific incidents and names of professors that advance a radical agenda in lecture halls.”

 
How many people have been publicly humiliated or attacked for their beliefs by childish leftists?

It's in the ear now.




And now, get solemnly festive...



He's mad as hell and not going to take it any more!

The beaver was apprehended at a dollar store in Charlotte Hall, Maryland, the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement, apparently after browsing the selection of artificial Christmas trees and trashing the place.

The “suspect attempted to flee the area,” as the sheriff’s office put it in a statement, but it was apprehended by animal control and released to an animal rehabilitator — hopefully not just to be released into the wild, but to be taught basic shopping etiquette.

Facts about Nathaniel Hawthorne's, The Scarlet Letter: 

The Puritans Really Did Make People Wear Letters For Adultery.

Hawthorne must have known there was historical precedence for The Scarlet Letter. According to a 1658 law in Plymouth, people caught in adultery were whipped and forced “to weare two Capitall letters namely A D cut out in cloth and sowed on theire vpermost Garments on theire arme or backe.” If they ever took the letters off, they would be publicly whipped again. A similar law was enacted in Salem.

In the town of York (now in Maine) in 1651, near where Hawthorne’s family owned property, a woman named Mary Batchellor was whipped 40 lashes for adultery and forced to wear an ‘A’ on her clothes. She was married to Stephen Batchellor, a minister over 80 years old. Sound familiar?

Birthdays in December:

EMILY DICKINSON: DECEMBER 10, 1830