Friday Post

The first for September ...





Terrible:

A week after Harvey came ashore as a Category 4 hurricane, leaving a trail of devastation on the Texas Gulf Coast, the search for the missing has become more desperate and funerals have begun. Authorities say 39 people are confirmed dead so far from Harvey and 19 are still believed to be missing. But more bodies are likely to be found.

Trudeau waited for Brad Wall to be out of the picture before he pitched his carbon Ponzi scheme, just as he wishes to appear for only one day in the House of Commons, muttered insults under his breath and was out of the country before a controversial deal to reward a convicted terrorist is leaked. What a coward:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau touched on the thorny issue of carbon pricing in a fundraising speech in Saskatoon on Thursday night.

Outgoing Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall has threatened to challenge the carbon pricing plan in court, saying it would be disproportionately punitive to Saskatchewan and doesn’t take into account measures already taken to reduce emissions such as the province’s carbon capture facility.

“We’re taking action on a number of issues I know mean a lot to people here in Saskatoon and across this great province. That includes moving forward with our plan to put a price on carbon pollution,” Trudeau said in a speech to the Laurier Club.

Couldn't he defend that eco-charlatanism while facing Brad Wall?




Also in "smoke and mirrors" and "shameless pandering" news:

The case of former Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr was expected to be back in an Edmonton courtroom on Thursday but was adjourned until mid-September.

The hearing would have seen Khadr seek to ease his bail conditions, including a prohibition on contacting his controversial older sister. However, on Thursday morning Khadr's lawyer Nate Whitling said the federal Crown wasn't ready to proceed.

**

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says now, more than ever, Canadians must stand together against racism and Islamophobia.

Trudeau made the comments in Saskatoon while delivering remarks recognizing the beginning of Eid al-Adha, a Muslim holiday.

**

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in Saskatoon for two days to make remarks at a Liberal donor event, and meet with community groups and government officials.

Thursday evening, Trudeau spoke at a Laurier Club donor appreciation reception. 

The prime minister spoke for 15 minutes, and thanked those present for their donations, volunteering, and fundraising efforts.

Then, he touched on "widening chasms" between the political left and right.

"Canada didn't happen by accident, and it won't continue without effort," he said

"it's about people who realize we all have a role to play."

Friday morning, he is scheduled to deliver remarks with Employment, Workforce Development and Labour Minister Patricia Hajdu to recognize Eid al-Adha at Prairieland Park at 9 a.m. CST.

Then, at 10 a.m., Trudeau and Hajdu are scheduled to meet with the Saskatoon Tribal Council at White Buffalo Youth Lodge on 20th Street.

The two are then expected to meet with co-op students for a roundtable discussion at Gordon Oaks Red Bear Student Centre at the University of Saskatchewan at 1:15 p.m.

(Sidebar: it wasn't a very well-attended fund-raiser.) 

Oh, this must be embarrassing:

Calgary MP Darshan Kang resigned late Thursday from the Liberal caucus after sexual harassment allegations from a second woman became public.

In a written statement, Kang said he's leaving the governing party's caucus because "I wish to focus my efforts at this time on clearing my name."

The statement was issued shortly after The Hill Times reported that a woman who worked in Kang's constituency office when he was a member of the Alberta legislature has come forward alleging that Kang sexually harassed her.

The woman alleged in an interview with the parliamentary precinct media outlet that Kang grabbed her breasts, among other inappropriate behaviour, and would not desist in the harassment despite repeatedly being asked to stop.

Kang, who was elected federally in 2015, is already under investigation after a young woman who worked in his federal constituency office complained in June of sexual harassment.

The woman's father told the Toronto Star earlier this week that Kang allegedly offered the staffer as much as $100,000 if she didn’t tell her parents about the harassment. The Star cited the woman’s father, who was not named, alleging that Kang repeatedly harassed his daughter over a period of four or five years.

China has been keeping very busy:

Beijing is on a rampage. The regime is an increasingly belligerent and malignant force in world affairs, an ever heavier boot on the necks of the Chinese people, and an admitted enemy of what remains of the liberal global order. Usefully, the ruling Communist Party of China makes no bones about it anymore. At least there’s that. So, right about now would be a very good time for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and quite a few of his ministers and advisers to offer us all a good old grovelling apology for the stupidities they have been fobbing off on us about China as a potential free-trade partner, a friend in the cause of coping with climate change, and a generous provider of guilt-free capital investment.

For years, the Liberal party establishment and its friends in the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Canada China Business Council have mocked Canadians who have taken the trouble to point out that China’s state-owned enterprises are not the fictional “profit-driven to their core” corporations that Margaret Cornish (Trudeau’s senior adviser on China going into the 2015 election) claimed them to be. Trudeau himself was an ardent champion of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s $15.1 billion oil patch acquisition of Nexen Inc.; Sinopec’s $2.2 billion takeover of Daylight Energy, and its $4.65 billion purchase of a big chunk of Syncrude; CNOOC’s $2.34 billion gobbling over Opt-Canada, and on and on. Hey, they’re corporations like any other, Trudeau said, Canada should be open to the world. And on and on.

Well, they’re not, they never were, and nowadays, China’s state-owned enterprises don’t even pretend to be anything less than the Chinese Communist Party’s instruments of overseas acquisitions policy that they were all along.The corporate boards of Beijing’s state-owned enterprises were always subject to directives from the corporations’ Communist Party committees. Beijing’s political objectives supersede any considerations about profit. A new directive, which came into effect Aug. 1, requires the party committees’ powers to be written into the enterprises’ articles of incorporation.

More than 30 of Beijing’s state-owned enterprises listed in Hong Kong—including Sinopec and CNOOC—have already amended their incorporation documents to place the Communist Party at the pinnacle of their corporate structures. The new control rules also apply to nominally private Chinese corporations, vesting party committees with vetting authority in overseas investment decisions, foreign-exchange matters and dividend distribution. And the requirement to formally empower internal Communist Party committees is now being extended to foreign companies operating in China. 

Hungary simply isn't having any of the EU's nonsense:

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been something of a thorn in the side of the EU for quite a while now when it comes to the refugee crisis and questions over terrorism and illegal immigration. While most of the rest of the union has been bending over backwards to keep pace with Angela Merkel’s plans for unlimited immigration and open borders, Hungary has taken a hard line in keeping the illegal migrants out. This has led the EU to recently consider imposing penalties on Hungary for their failure to get with the program.

Orban came up with an even better response of his own. He just sent the European Union a bill for $476 million to cover half the cost of the razor wire fence he put up to keep the flow of immigrants out.

And now, something uplifting:

In his senior year, Walsh said he went through some “dumb high school stuff” that seemed earth-shattering at the time, and he fell hard into depression.

“I resolved to take my own life,” he said. “(I) wrote a note and went to where I planned to end things.”

Somewhere between five and 10 seconds before he would have committed suicide, his phone rang. He checked the caller ID (he said couldn’t die not knowing) — it was a number he didn’t recognize, so he picked it up and it was her.

“I asked her what was up and she said she just felt like she had to call me. At that point it had been a year since we had spoken, and at that moment she just had to call. Long story short, she pried, I spilled the beans and she talked me out of it. I mean she literally said ‘What? Don’t do that.’ And that was that.”

“She made me promise to call her the next day, and we hung up. That night I started writing the words which, ten years later, I’d propose with.”

His story has since gone viral. And to the joy of readers, Walsh shared some wedding photos of him and his wife — the woman who literally saved his life 10 years earlier.