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| A merry Hanukkah to all y'all. |
Arise, be enlightened, O Jerusalem: for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.
Liberals unethical?
Liberals followed a secretive, unethical process to nominate a new ethics commissioner and force a decision before a long winter break, opposition parties say.
“It’s just ragingly incompetent and frustrating and cynical,” New Democrat ethics critic Nathan Cullen said Tuesday.
He wondered if Mario Dion, whose work as Public Service Integrity Commissioner was panned by Canada’s auditor general, was fit for the job. But “it’s impossible,” he said, to figure that out in his allotted seven-minute question-and-answer period during a last-minute, one-hour committee meeting the day after Dion’s nomination was announced.
Conservatives agree that Liberals did not respect a legislated requirement to involve the opposition in Dion’s nomination. “We find very unacceptable the lack of meaningful consultation,” said ethics critic Peter Kent, though emphasizing that he took no issue with Dion as a candidate and “it is most important that we don’t have a lack of continuity between commissioners.”
And this is part of the problem.
Not only did Mario Dion promise not to further investigate Morneau and Trudeau but he was brought in secretively. This is how the Liberals can get away with things. No one - not a voter nor a member of parliament - ever stops them.
Because farmers and waitresses are greedy and money-grubbing:
The Liberals are tweaking a proposal that, as of Jan. 1, would tighten existing rules enabling small-business owners to lower their tax burden by distributing earnings among family members who do not make significant contributions to their companies -- a practice known as income sprinkling.
Remember - Liberal voters wanted this.
Also, they wanted this:
Canadians are eating out more and can expect to pay extra to do so in 2018, suggests a forward-looking report into food prices.
Food inflation overall is expected to rise between one and three per cent next year, says Canada’s Food Price Report, which was crafted jointly for the first time by researchers at Dalhousie University and the University of Guelph.
For an average family of four, that represents an increase of $348 to about $11,948 for the year.
About 59 per cent of the expected hike — $208 — will come from consumers eating out and opting for prepared food.
“Most of (the increase) will come from food service which would make some consumers a bit vulnerable — particularly those who don’t cook or (who) eat out a lot,” lead researcher Sylvain Charlebois said in an interview from Halifax.
“But if you are cooking and you rely mainly on grocery stores to get your food, you should be in good shape for 2018.”
Yes, about that:
If the price of gasoline goes up, the cost of food goes up, because it costs more to transport food to market.
So does the price of electricity, in any province that uses fossil fuels, such as coal or natural gas, to produce it.
To wit:
"The prime minister was the star attraction at this exclusive cash for access event with Chinese billionaires," said Tory MP Blaine Calkins during Tuesday's question period."Zhang Bin is a political advisor to the Chinese government, and after attending the event, he and his partner ... donated $1 million to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation including $50,000 to build a statue of the former prime minister."We know the prime minister's love for the Chinese dictatorship, so what exactly did he promise the Chinese for their million dollar donation?" asked the Red Deer-Lacombe MP.Trudeau did not stand to answer Calkins, having earlier addressed a broader question from interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose who wanted to know why Trudeau continues to attend fundraisers with "millionaires."
In 1998, Ji’s family decided to flee North Korea but were caught in China and immediately repatriated.
Her sister was sold to an older man, her mother was beaten and their father went missing. Ji tried to escape to China again but was repatriated and sent to a North Korean political prison.
Years later, after she eventually escaped to South Korea, Ji spoke about her horrifying experiences at the camps.
She said North Korean women who got pregnant in China were forced to have abortions when they were returned to North Korea.
“Pregnant women were forced to harsh labour all day,” she said. “Because North Korea does not allow mixed ethnicities, they make women who become pregnant in China to miscarry by forcing them to harsh labour.”
Fat chance of this happening:
As Australia continues to reel from lurid revelations about the extent of Beijing’s influence-peddling, espionage and propaganda operations in that country, Conservative Senator Linda Frum says Ottawa should follow Canberra’s example by launching an inquiry into the extent of Beijing’s subterfuge in Canada, and by tightening laws to prevent Beijing from meddling in Canadian political processes. ...
Senator Frum says Canada’s laws banning direct foreign donations to political parties are sufficiently robust, but third-party groups registered under the Canada Elections Act can still get away with using foreign money to influence voters, as long as the money is donated six months before an election. “It’s just so obvious that for the purpose of elections, there should not be any foreign funds coming in,” Frum said. “It should be prohibited.”
It should be obvious, but former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien led his first Team Canada emissaries to Beijing way back in 1994, so Beijing has had a head start of nearly a quarter of century in sloshing money and influence around Canada. What might seem obvious and sensible to most Canadians won’t necessarily look that way in Ottawa.
I repeat myself:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was forced to defend his party's fundraising methods in the House of Commons Tuesday after media reports emerged revealing he attended a fundraiser with Chinese businessmen who went on to donate $1 million to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.
But ... but ... it's legal!
There is little to no research to support the supposed benefits of medical cannabis, and what evidence exists suggests that using marijuana as medicine may do more harm than good, family doctors’ associations across Canada are telling their members.
A trio of advisories prepared by the Alberta College of Family Physicians has been distributed to more than 32,000 clinicians, summarizing the scientific literature, or lack thereof, around medicinal marijuana.
“One thing that was quite consistent was adverse events,” said Dr. Mike Allan, a professor of family medicine at the University of Alberta. “And the benefits, even if they’re real, are much smaller than what people might anticipate.”
People voted to have their drugs taxed.
How good can drugs be?
Veterans Canada issues an apology after some bad press makes it look like a bunch of disorganised douches:
A top official at Veterans Affairs says the department was unaware last spring of widespread problems at April’s Vimy 100 ceremony in France but now takes full responsibility.
And he says part of the problem was the fancy French portable toilets.
(Sidebar: yeah, that must have been it.)
“I’m deeply, deeply sorry. I regret to hear all of it, you can be sure … I accept full responsibility for that,” said Mike Jorgensen, a retired brigadier-general who is director general of the Veterans Affairs office that organizes overseas events.
“I’ve been deeply saddened to hear of the sad experiences that people had,” he said in an interview Tuesday.
His comments follow the disclosure this week of scores of complaints from visitors and criticism from Veterans Affairs staff on site. These were in documents obtained under access-to-information legislation.
Also in "incompetent @$$hole" news:
For the third time this month, federal cabinet minister Kent Hehr has been forced to defend himself against allegations he was rude and insensitive toward Canadians who came to him for help.
Why, it's like he's Justin but fatter.
Remember - Liberal voters are fine with this.
Andy, that is a terrible thing to say. Justin's mother would never let him buy a used van with his trust-fund. The "magic beans" experience has taught her a lot about his irresponsibility:
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer tried his hand at used car sales Tuesday to mock the Liberal government's decision to buy old Australian fighter jets."If the prime minister is so keen on buying fixer-uppers, will he come over? Because I've got an old minivan I'd love to show him," Scheer joked in question period.The Tory leader was poking fun at how the Trudeau government plans to purchase 18 second-hand F-18 fighter jets from Australia, while also launching a competition to replace Canada's aging CF-18s with 88 new jets by as early as 2025.
But ... but ... Canadians are better than Americans or something!
- The general trend in recent years is that a declining percentage of Canadian tax filers are donating to charity and they are donating less as a percentage of income.
- Nationwide, a lower percentage of tax filers donated to charity in Canada (20.9%) than in the United States (24.5%). Similarly, Canadians (at 0.56%) gave a lower percentage of their aggregate income to charity than did Americans (at 1.43%).
Before I post this, one should be reminded of Ibn Warraq's wisdom:
An obsession with conspiracies leads to fatalism, a refusal to take charge of one's own destiny or to take responsibility for the manifest backwardness of one's own culture.
(Warraq, Ibn. Why the West Is the Best. Encounter Books, 2011. pg. 159)
Now:
Muslim leaders on Wednesday condemned U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and called on the world to respond by recognizing East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. ...
Iran, locked in a regional rivalry with Saudi Arabia, said the Muslim world should overcome internal problems through dialogue so it could unite against Israel. Tehran has repeatedly called for the destruction of the Israeli state and backs several militant groups in their fight against it.“America is only seeking to secure the maximum interests of the Zionists and it has no respect for the legitimate rights of Palestinians,” Rouhani told the summit.
(Sidebar: why wasn't the Muslim world united when ISIS was driving their co-religionists from their homes?)
One band of anti-semites can do it alone. This is a global effort.
Never trust the popular press:
The lack of Okinawan media coverage of Trujillo’s unhesitant courage to help a stranger is perhaps not entirely shocking, given the often strained relationship between Okinawan political and media organizations and the American military, which has maintained multiple facilities on the islands since the end of World War II. However, regardless of the sociopolitical debate about the U.S. military presence, Keiichi Takagi, head of Sankei News’ Naha (Okinawa) Bureau, finds the lack of respect shown for Trujillo’s sacrifice deplorable, saying:
“Cars regularly drive along the Okinawa Expressway at speeds of 100 kilometers (62 miles) per hour. Getting out into the road is incredibly dangerous, but Trujillo sacrificed his own safety to save the life of a Japanese citizen. It is thanks to Trujillo’s courageous actions that the driver of the car was able to escape with only light injuries. … Ignoring what he did is conduct unbecoming media and news organizations, and as a citizen of Japan, I find it shameful. I am praying for Trujillo’s swift recovery.”
And now, grammar lessons from Christmas carols:
God rest you merry, gentlemen
Notice the comma placement there? The gentlemen in this phrase are not necessarily taken to be merry already. It’s not “Hey, you! You merry gentlemen! God rest you!” It’s “Hey, you gentlemen over there! May God rest you merry!”
(Merci beaucoup)
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