Mid-Week Post

Your ephemeral eclipse of the work-week ...





Canada and Mexico cannot play "Chicken" as well as Trump can:

Mexico and Canada on Wednesday dismissed U.S. President Donald Trump's latest threat to scrap NAFTA, describing it as a negotiating tactic aimed at winning the upper hand in talks to update one of the world's biggest trading blocs. 

I would take him seriously.



Also - the failure of the popular press to highlight the other extremists in Charlottesville will not endear the public to it:

President Trump lashed out at the media Tuesday for what he characterized as unfair coverage of his response to violence in Charlottesville, Va., where a rally organized by white supremacists ended with the death of a counterprotester.

Speaking at a Phoenix campaign rally, Trump recited a portion of his initial remarks on Aug. 12, the day of the unrest, but neglected to repeat his controversial claim that “many sides” were responsible for the violence.

That line was widely panned, and lawmakers of both parties urged him to explicitly denounce the white supremacist groups, which he did after two days of silence.

In his initial statement, Trump said, “We’re closely following the terrible events unfolding in Charlottesville, Va. We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence — on many sides, on many sides.”

Indeed:

"One has to take sides," Shuja Haider wrote at Jacobin, echoing other voices on the left. "There is a side that asserts our common humanity and fights fascism, racism, and hate. It was represented in Charlottesville by the leftist groups who took to the streets to confront the far right. The other side is the one that took innocent lives on those same streets."

Take a side? You bet. But Haider and company are trying to force a false choice. They'd have you believe that advocates of free speech, open society, tolerance, and peaceful political change have to pick between fascists with tiki torches and masked "anti-fascists" clashing with them in the streets. But advocates of a free, open, and liberal society are a side—the correct side—and the left-wing and right-wing thugs battling in the streets are nothing more than rival siblings from a dysfunctional illiberal family.

And:

China’s Cultural Revolution was triggered by a group of students at Beijing University, the most elitist college in China. They called themselves the Red Guards because they worshiped China’s communist dictator Mao and his socialist/communist ideology feverishly. In their manifesto, they questioned the usefulness of knowledge, and condemned their professors and university administrators for harboring “intellectual elitism and bourgeois tendencies” and for stalling China’s progress towards a communist utopia.

Mao immediately realized that he could use these over-zealous and ignorant teenagers as a political tool to purge his enemies and shape society to his own liking. He elevated the Red Guards’ status by appearing at a massive Red Guard rally on August 18, 1966 at Tiananmen Square. This event lent Red Guards political legitimacy, and officially kicked off the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guards’ ideas quickly spread from colleges to high schools.

No one on campus dared challenge the Red Guards. Capitulations from school authorities only emboldened them. They led students to strike, refusing to take classes from people who were deemed less than ideologically pure. Professors, teachers, and school administrators were paraded and forced to make numerous public self-criticisms about “transgressions” against government-sanctioned orthodoxy. Soon, college entrance exams were suspended and many schools, from universities to high schools, were closed. The entire education system was paralyzed. ...

Like Mao’s Red Guards, some American college students and their supporters have been shouting down anyone who dares to disagree with them. These modern-day Red Guards demand that college campuses be an inclusive and safe place, but are bent on making sure the campus is an unwelcoming and unsafe place for anyone who doesn’t show unconditional support for students’ sanctioned orthodoxy. From Yale to Middlebury, college professors and administrators have caved to these students mobs’ preposterous demands. Exhibit A is Nicholas Christakis, the Silliman master at the center of Yale’s debate over Halloween costumes. His very public self-criticism probably would have won over Maoist Red Guards in China, but failed to gain sympathy from privileged Yale students.

Now that kind of zealous demand for thought conformity has expanded outside campuses to the “real world.” When James Damore, a Google employee, raised questions about Google’s diversity training in a memo, he was fired by Google. As Sumantra Maitra wrote, “Nothing could be more dystopian than the largest information, communication, and documentation hub controlling your thoughts and punishing you for wrong think.”

Speaking of China:

China demanded the United States immediately withdraw a package of sanctions on companies and individuals trading with North Korea on Wednesday, and said the decision by the Trump administration will damage Sino-U.S. ties.

How about not?





Moving on ...




We don't need to fret the way some people might. We just have to have one rule of law for everyone, one that states one cannot sneak into the country and sponge off of the system while others follow procedure:

Canada fears a huge surge in asylum seekers crossing the border from the United States, putting political pressure on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ahead of a 2019 election, sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. 

The number of migrants illegally entering Canada more than tripled in July and August, hitting nearly 7,000. Haitians, who face looming deportation from the United States when their temporary protected status expires in January 2018, accounted for much of the inflow. 

Two sources familiar with Canadian government thinking said citizens from El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras, who are slated to lose their U.S. protected status in early 2018, may also head north.

"There is concern we'll see a huge increase, mostly from Central America," said one source. 

"The question is, which group is next, and how are we going to deal with it, and what is the impact on Canadians?" added the source, who requested anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation.

But, you know, election in 2019.


Also in "the Liberals are corrupt" news:

It’s almost an absurd question to be asking: Does the leader of the federal government care about the enforcement of the federal borders? But based on his troubling statements we’ve got to ask it.

And the very fact we do is a harsh reminder about just how poorly vetted Trudeau was back during the last election.

Politicos should ask themselves this: Just what exactly does this guy believe? I’ve followed him in great detail since the 2013 leadership race and really couldn’t tell you. ...

Trudeau’s political philosophy appears more in line with the SJW blogger contingent than the socially liberal, fiscally conservative outlook of the Chretien/Martin-era that precedes him.

Maybe the prime minister does support open borders. And that would be a big problem. Too bad we didn’t ask him tough questions like this before he got into office.

**

The Department of Finance does not assess the macroeconomic impact of its proposed tax changes. The likely effect would be either offsetting increases to prices and fees or a reduction of disposable incomes available for spending, saving and investment. How does that stimulate economic growth? People who advocate income redistribution never have a convincing explanation of how economies grow in the long-term (education is not the answer; if it explained growth, Russia and its former Communist satellites would be rich). Until redistributionists come up with something other than their bedtime story that money grows on trees and needs to be redistributed from the big, bad rich wolf, they should be ignored.

**

The Liberal government’s legislation includes equal pay for part-time workers, increased vacation entitlements and expanded personal emergency leave, but the centrepiece is an increase in the minimum wage. It is set to rise from $11.60 in October to $14 in January, and $15 in 2019.

Businesses have said a 32 per cent increase in less than 18 months will be tough to absorb, and have called for a slower rise.

But the government made no changes to that timeline in the first round of amendments at a Liberal-dominated committee this week, and also voted down almost every change proposed by the NDP, such as giving all workers five paid sick days and eliminating minimum wage exemptions for servers.

**

The province and Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. are trying to block a ruling that orders former premier Dalton McGuinty, his finance minister and other senior officials to answer questions under oath about the 2012 cancellation of a lucrative slot machine revenue-sharing program.

Also -  if the NDP didn't have a history of supporting boycotts against Israel, one might see Miss Ashton's rejection of a Holocaust denier as genuine:

Federal MP and NDP leadership candidate Niki Ashton was on the defensive Tuesday night after an endorsement she received by an alleged Holocaust denier came to light.

“It has come to my attention that our campaign was shown support by a member of the public on Facebook known to hold anti-Semitic views and has made public comments denying the atrocities of the Holocaust,” Ashton’s message, posted to social media, began. “In no way do I support such views. I do not accept support from people who hold such views.”

Thank you:

Halifax civic leaders recently agreed to shroud the 1931 sculpture of their city’s European founder, Edward Cornwallis, and to strike a commission to consider removing it permanently.

That’s not good enough for activists who want the statue down before Mi’kmaq history month in October or, they insist, they will pull it down.

Why? Because a highly debatable version of Cornwallis’s history has seized the imaginations of the Maritime Mi’kmaq people and their non-indigenous supporters, and fed a narrative about “genocide.”

This half-true account has been allowed to fester because politicians have been too politically correct to see the whole truth themselves or too afraid of being labelled racists to counter it.

Cornwallis placed a bounty on Mi’kmaq warriors (later known as the “scalping proclamation”) – admittedly not a very hospitable act. But the British and the Mi’kmaq were at war at the time, and the French were paying their Mi’kmaq allies bounties for killing English soldiers.

The smarter thing to do, rather than annihilate our history, is to teach it more fully.

Teach what Cornwallis did that was noble and what he did that was less worthy; just as we should teach the full extent of Mi’kmaq suffering as well as the violence they committed.

Also - this is why teachers unions should be abolished:

That debate hit the floor of a meeting by the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario days ago, ending with a resolution to urge school boards across the province to consider removing the name of Canada's first prime minister — Sir John A. Macdonald — from public schools.

Felipe Pareja, a French teacher in Peel region just west of Toronto, is behind the motion.

Pareja says the decision was by no means unanimous, but that it passed by a substantial margin.

She wasn't screened because abortion is a leftist shibboleth and saving her from her abuser is not what social services does in this country:

The province failed a 12-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted by her stepfather, and given an abortion in 2011 without the proper counselling and screening for abuse, says Newfoundland and Labrador child and youth advocate Jacqueline Lake Kavanagh.

"[I am] saddened and shocked by what happened to this little girl," Lake Kavanagh said as her office released an investigative report Wednesday focusing on the case.

According to the report, the girl's family moved from another province to Newfoundland and Labrador for a period of five months.

The girl was sexually assaulted by her stepfather — who she believed was actually her biological father — and became pregnant.

When the stepfather brought the 12-year-old to Planned Parenthood for an abortion, the girl told a doctor she had consensual sex with her teenage boyfriend.

Lake Kavanagh said the investigation found that the stepfather's guardianship was not verified and the age of the boyfriend was not questioned.

At Planned Parenthood the girl and her stepfather were referred to Eastern Health. No screening for abuse occurred at the hospital, and there was no referral for counselling services before or after the abortion.

The procedure was performed despite two portions of the consent form being left blank, including the legal capacity of the stepfather.

(Sidebar: because Planned Parenthood.) 

Following the abortion, the girl was discharged from the hospital with her stepfather.

What? Joss Whedon is a douchebag? I'm shocked!

The ex-wife of director Joss Whedon writes in a scathing essay that the filmmaker known for holding up feminist ideals “is not who he pretends to be.”

Kai Cole writes in The Wrap that Whedon had numerous affairs during their 16-year marriage. She says Whedon used his marriage as a shield, “so no one would question his relationships with other women or scrutinize his writing as anything other than feminist.”