Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week joy...



Every time people malign these guys, they become more and more attractive:

Video showing Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch at a meeting with members of a group that protested outside a Toronto mosque last month was called “deeply troubling” on Wednesday.

(Sidebar: was Iqra Khalid's presidency of the Muslim Student Association and her meeting with Islamist lobbyists not at all troubling? Is the Trudeau Foundation's sponsorship of a Liberal MP and its foreign donations in any way a concern?)


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The Trudeau Liberals, it seems to me, have been having a slightly tougher time finding that ‘hot button’ sweet spot. Until the 2015 election, their go-to hot button was Stephen Harper himself.  But now, in power, they need a new bad guy to get their base upset enough to make a donation. Well, hello there Brad Trost. Trost is a Conservative who has been returned in five general elections by the voters of the riding now known as Saskatoon–University to be their member of Parliament.

Ask him — as I’ve done — and he’ll describe himself as to the right of Attila the Hun. He is a proud social conservative and a constant presence in the annual right-to-life anti-abortion demonstrations on the Hill. And, as my colleague Marie-Danielle Smith reported this week, he’s “not entirely comfortable with the whole gay thing.” 

Oh — and Trost is also running to be the next leader of the Conservative Party of Canada which, one assumes, would be his first step to running for Prime Minister of Canada. 

That, pretty much,  is all the brain trust at Liberal Party HQ needs. Trost could not be more of the exact opposite of everything the Liberal leader (and prime minister) Justin Trudeau stands for. And when you get that kind of polarity, well, time to fire off a hot button fundraising email.

Seriously, just have a billboard saying vote for these guys or anyone like them. The more they are savaged, the more they appeal to people whose patience for corruption - both political and moral - has run out.




Why bother? Will it bring Phoenix Sinclair back from the dead?

The federal government is giving the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs $550,000 to consult with First Nations communities across the province on how to reform Child and Family Services.

Manitoba has more than 10,000 children in care and apprehends an average of one newborn baby a day. The vast majority — around 90 per cent — of children in care are indigenous.

Also:

Indigenous Affairs bureaucrats are deliberately flouting ATIP requests by not putting information in email. We know this because they said it themselves—in emails.

In documents obtained exclusively by The Rebel on an investigation into the audit of the Nunavut Planning Commission, there were a number of examples of staffers citing ATIP laws as reasons not to do or say certain things.

And:

A killer father in one of Canada’s worst cases of child abuse has won escorted temporary absences for six months.

“I know I’ve been described as a monster and I’m not quarrelling with that,” Edward (Tony) Dooley said at the conclusion of his parole board hearing at the Beaver Creek Institution — a minimum- and medium-security jail.

Dooley, 51, has been a model inmate while serving a life sentence for murdering his seven-year-old son, Randal, in 1998.

According to the parole board, Dooley will be able to go out on a series of day-passes which enable him to work on a supervised inmate crew doing painting, carpentry and general labour work at some non-profit community agencies.

“I loved my sons and I failed all of them miserably,” Dooley said at the hearing.

“We are the biggest contributors to the dysfunction in our families — absentee fathers — who are emotionally disconnected,” said Dooley.

The murderer added he spent long periods dealing drugs in the southern United States while he left his young sons with pregnant Marcia Dooley in Scarborough.

Another son, Teego, 26, lives in Brampton and the Dooleys’ youngest, Tyreek, was adopted.

Randal was born in Jamaica and came to Canada with his brother to live with his father and stepmother in Toronto in November 1997, 11 months before his death.

He had wasted to just 41 pounds and had 13 fractured ribs, a lacerated liver, four brain injuries, and head-to-toe bruises when he died in 1998.

 
This is bullsh--.




If North Korea can deliver Japan its third nuclear payload, why should a lightweight like Canada carry on with the pretense that it can avert that potential crisis?

A former Canadian ambassador for nuclear disarmament is accusing the Trudeau government of “irresponsible leadership” as Canada skips out on “historic” talks at the United Nations this week.

Douglas Roche, also a former parliamentarian, said in an interview Tuesday that if Canada wants a seat on the UN Security Council, it shouldn’t be so “fearful” of the United States. He also said the issue should be debated in the House of Commons, a sentiment echoed by an NDP MP who is in New York for the proceedings.

More than 100 countries are sitting down this week to negotiate “a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination,” according to a General Assembly resolution passed in December. The United States, United Kingdom, France, China and other nuclear powers are not participating.

By not having Canada in the room, the Liberal government has “turned their back on the track record that Canada itself has established in nuclear disarmament, over many years,” Roche said.

You over-estimate the Liberals' ability and concern, sir.




If it generates so much money for the city, it can generate money to run itself:

A Toronto councillor concerned over the exclusion of police officers from the Pride parade is looking to strip the event of its city funding unless organizers reconsider.

John Campbell said the city provides a $260,000 annual grant to Pride, as well as an estimated $750,000 in free services, the bulk of that policing costs.

He wants that funding tied to Pride’s agreement to welcome police participation.

“The motivation is for council to make a statement, I hope, that they do not agree with the tactics that were used to exclude the police from the Pride festivities,” the councillor said Tuesday. “When we issue grant money to organizations, there should be certain conditions and stipulations tied to that, and one of those is values of equity and diversity and inclusion.

“In fact, one of Pride’s core values is inclusivity. So this is hardly acting in an inclusive manner when they’re excluding the police,” he said.

A woman is in custody after a bizarre incident near the Capitol:

U.S. Capitol Police officers have apprehended a female driver after she struck another vehicle and nearly hit several officers near the Capitol, police said this morning. 

At 9:22 a.m., Capitol Police officers observed an "erratic and aggressive driver" in the vicinity of 100 Independence Ave., according to Eva Malecki, the communications director for the United States Capitol Police, who briefed reporters near the scene at Bartholdi Park in Washington. 

As the officers tried to stop the vehicle, the driver made a U-turn and fled the scene, apparently striking another vehicle and nearly hitting officers. A brief pursuit ensued. Her car was stopped at Washington and Independence avenues, near the U.S. Botanic Garden and the Rayburn House Office Building, and the driver fled on foot, police said.

The Center for Medical Progress has been charged with fifteen counts of recording private conversations such as this one:

There are often times when words fail to adequately convey the disgust one feels watching these videos or even referencing the system that penalises those who report on things like this.

Related: Stem Express dropped its lawsuit against the Center for Medical Progress. In case those still defending these baby-eating organisations are baffled.




Oh, burn:

Declaring “the start of a new era” in energy production, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that he said would revive the coal industry and create jobs.

The move makes good on his campaign pledge to unravel former President Barack Obama’s plan to curb global warming. The order seeks to suspend, rescind or flag for review more than a half-dozen measures in an effort to boost domestic energy production in the form of fossil fuels.

 
Dismantling Obama's legacy one bit at a time.




I keep saying things like this:

But what Putin and his fellow oligarchs consider Russia’s national interests are probably not what ordinary Russians think they are. For all its military might, Russia is a very poor country with huge demographic problems. A year ago, nearly 20 million Russians (13.4 percent of the population) were reportedly living in poverty, on less than $139 a month. Last year saw a spike in labor protests, mostly related to unpaid wages. Some 82 percent of Russians say they can feel the effects of their country’s economic decline, up from 61 percent in 2014.

In this context, do ordinary Russians think that propping up the Assad regime in Syria, or preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, or meddling in other countries’ elections, are core national interests? Probably not, although we’ll never know because Putin’s Russia, like any run-of-the-mill autocratic regime, isn’t all that interested in what ordinary people think.

Conservatives are fooling themselves if they think that they have a friend in Putin.

 Also:

He added, “What makes the Podesta case clear is there was a transfer of money and there was a transfer of a lot of money that stood to make John Podesta a lot of money. That is unique and that’s extremely troubling because at the time that transfer is taking place he is advising Hillary Clinton at the State Department. We know that from the Podesta emails that he is helping her make personnel decisions, speech decisions, policy decisions. He is meeting with her monthly. It’s a transfer of money from a foreign government, at the time that he is advising America’s chief diplomat, Hillary Clinton.”

Too late, France. You had your chance:

A new Ipsos poll finds that 61 percent of adults say Islam is incompatible with French society, compared to just 17 percent who say the same about Judaism and 6 percent who believe Catholicism is incompatible with French society.

If they get rid of periwinkle, I shall be most displeased:

The world’s most famous crayon-maker is planning to make this year’s National Crayon Day—which arrives on Friday, March 31—one for the record books. As TIME reports, Crayola is planning to retire a classic color from its 24-pack crayon box for the first time in a century.