A Post ... for Now

 The story so far ...




Ontario Premier Doug Ford is wasting no time at all getting things in order:

Ontario's provincial government promised to audit government spending, end cap-and-trade and scrap the current sex-education curriculum in the throne speech delivered Thursday by Ontario's Lt.-Gov. Elizabeth Dowdeswell.

The speech, written by the premier's office, emphasized that change is coming for Ontario. It echoed many of Premier Doug Ford's campaign statements, vowing to sell beer and wine in convenience stores and provide more funding for mental health and addictions.

This will be a "government for the people," the speech says, that will cut taxes, protect jobs and lower hydro rates.

The government says it will do a Commission of Inquiry into the government's financial practices to identify ways to "restore accountability and trust in Ontario's public finances."

It will include a line-by-line audit of all government spending to "identify and eliminate duplication and waste."

Also:

A big part of that change is a new approach to wine and beer sales, which had previously been controlled by the government:

“Your new government will respect consumers and trust adults to make the responsible choices that work best for them. That’s why it will expand the sale of beer and wine to convenience stores, grocery stores and big-box stores.”

It’s two short sentences, but it speaks volumes.

The Wynne Liberals had launched hysterical attacks against the PCs when they introduced their plan to free up the sale of beer and wine, making insane predictions of danger and gloom, even calling it “reckless.”



That just showed how little respect the Wynne Liberals and the elites had for Ontarians, as the Nanny-State Libs thought they had to exert government control over the sale of beer and wine or disaster would follow.

 

It makes no sense to allow injection sites and then become rabidly puritanical about the sale of alcohol to adults.


But it was never about public morals:

Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister is asking his colleagues to eliminate restrictions on interprovincial booze runs.

In advance of next week's premiers meeting in New Brunswick, Pallister has written a letter to other provincial leaders outlining his priorities.

In the letter obtained by The Canadian Press, Pallister says the provinces should remove their limits on interprovincial transportation of alcohol for personal use.

He says the idea has broad public support, and would show progress in the effort to reduce inter-provincial barriers on other items. ...

"The Bank of Canada has estimated that removing existing trade barriers could raise real GDP by the equivalent of approximately $1,500 per family per year. Viewed from that perspective, the costs of inaction are high."

Justin's puppet-master chief advisor, Gerald Butts, takes issue with Ford's repealing the controversial sexual education program:

On Twitter, Gerald Butts attacked the Ford PCs for keeping their promise to scrap Kathleen Wynne’s highly unpopular sex-ed curriculum.

Here’s what Butts said, in response to a Michael Coren tweet:

“Will the Ford government be roundly condemned by the right for forcing its values on millions of families who don’t agree with them?”

Whatever you say, Nazi-hunter!




Justin will not be told:

Donald Trump boasted Thursday of singlehandedly winning commitments from his fellow NATO leaders to meet and exceed a defence spending target of two per cent of GDP — even though Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke only of continuing with Canada's existing military plan.

At a news conference wrapping up the two-day NATO summit in Brussels, Trudeau was pressed to provide more details about the U.S. president's sudden insistence that allies have agreed to spend more — and to do it more quickly.

Trudeau said he did agree to uphold Canada's commitment to the 2014 Wales NATO summit pledge on defence investment, but took pains to point out the declaration technically states NATO allies would merely "aim to move towards" the two per cent guideline within a decade.

"That is something we certainly agree with," Trudeau told a news conference.

Then why aren't you doing it, Justin?

(source)

ONLY person anywhere near #TrudeauGroper is Canadian Airforce Member* next to him— the narcissist ignores him as #KokaneeGroper waves to emptiness (but his personal photographer took the photo)

*Troop represents every Canadian ignored by #groperGate

pic.twitter.com/Nw5NR7K0SL

— Manny_Ottawa (@manny_ottawa) July 12, 2018

(Merci beaucoup)




Another cabinet shuffle isn't a good sign:

She's gone from a junior minister, to a minister with a $4-billion budget to spend, to a minister holding down two different portfolios.

Now Kirsty Duncan, minister of science and minister of sport and persons with disabilities, finds herself at the centre of speculation as talk heats up about a cabinet shuffle.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will shuffle his cabinet sometime in the next week, sources tell The Canadian Press. With the NATO leaders' summit in Europe now behind him, his focus is shifting to putting the final touches on a Liberal cabinet that will carry his government through to the 2019 election.

As word spreads among the government that the changes imminent, political staff are anxious about their own futures and some cabinet ministers are looking at flight options in case they get a call to return to Ottawa immediately.

 
I'm sure that b@$#@rd will get it, too:

A Saskatchewan farmer who was convicted of killing his severely disabled daughter nearly 25 years ago is applying for either a new trial or a pardon.

Robert Latimer's Vancouver lawyer, Jason Gratl, has filed an application with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and federal Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould that asks them to consider both options.

The North Koreans have not met their American counterparts over the repatriation of American war dead. This surprises absolutely no one:

North Korean officials did not turn up to a Thursday meeting with the U.S. military about repatriating the remains of the war dead, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the situation.

The two sides had been expected to discuss at the Korean Peninsula’s demilitarized zone the return of U.S. troop remains from the 1950-1953 war — an arrangement that the State Department had announced after Secretary Mike Pompeo’s visit to Pyongyang last Friday and Saturday.

State Department officials had said that the meeting would likely take place on July 12, though they added that the date could shift.

On Thursday, however, Department of Defense and United Nations Command officials were left waiting in the DMZ’s Joint Security Area. The expected North Korean officials never arrived, according to the official who requested anonymity as he was not permitted to talk publicly about the event.

“We were ready,” the official said. “It just didn’t happen. They didn’t show.”

Had those "dreadful" Europeans not preserved artefacts, history and culture would have been lost forever:

Before the British came [to India], there was no indigenous tradition of exploring or conserving antiquity. The wonderful Buddhist stupas of the Mauryan empire (circa 2nd century BC) were destroyed, abandoned and forgotten during the Hindu revival, and then many Hindu temples met a similar fate during Muslim invasions from the 12th century… The fact is that we have no idea what would have become of the world’s ‘looted’ antiquities if they hadn’t been preserved in Western collections. Would the treasures of Beijing’s Summer Palace have survived Mao’s Cultural Revolution? Would the Elgin marbles have survived Turkish tour guides chopping off chunks to sell as souvenirs? Would ISIS have spared those Middle Eastern artefacts that survive in European museums?

The backlash is unjustified and serves only to prove his point:

The interviewer pressed on and asked the actor if the movement has made him reflect on his own actions, to which he said he’s “never been like that.” He went a step further to attempt to unpack more about the movement, saying that “any human being alive today, if someone casts too harsh a light on anything, you could be like, ‘Well, OK, yeah, when you say it like that, maybe.’”

“But it’s such a delicate and careful thing to say because there’s flirting, which, for example, in a social environment is in context ― and is acceptable. And that has been done to me as well, in return,” he said.

Men’s behavior “has to change,” Cavill said, but “it’s important to also retain the good things, which were a quality of the past, and get rid of the bad things.”

Waxing poetic on men chasing women, Cavill said, “There’s a traditional approach to that, which is nice. I think a woman should be wooed and chased, but maybe I’m old-fashioned for thinking that.”

“It’s very difficult to do that if there are certain rules in place. Because then it’s like: ‘Well, I don’t want to go up and talk to her, because I’m going to be called a rapist or something,’” he said.

Not every man is a creep and some workplace romances do end up in marriage. 

Instead of being frightfully reactionary, perhaps the frothing-at-the-mouth vanguards could take down some actual rapists and gropers instead of harmless comments on social media.

And now, two men who made childhood a remarkable time:

However, in 1962, both men made the drive up Interstate 79, from Pittsburgh to Toronto, for a trip that would eventually change the face of children’s television. At the time, the pair had been working on a show called The Children’s Corner at WQED-TV in Pittsburgh. Fred Rainsberry, head of children’s programming at the CBC, saw Rogers, and invited him to come to Toronto to do his own show. Rogers, in turn, invited Coombs to come along and work as a puppeteer on the new program, which was going to be called Misterogers. ...

Misterogers ran for four seasons on CBC before Rogers returned to Pittsburgh, taking his sets with him. For the next 33 years, he put on that cardigan and those sneakers, and talked about the joys of neighbourliness until finally retiring in 2001. Coombs stayed in Canada and, after working on the children’s series Butternut Square, created Mr. Dressup, which ran on CBC for 29 years (1967-1996).

Both Rogers and Dressup addressed the camera as if it were a single child rather than a collective. 

They were quiet and restrained, Rogers to the point of narcosis at times (he once silently watched an egg timer tick off a minute). Years ago, I interviewed Coombs, who said Rogers had told him that “if you’re restrained, the kids will come to you.” And come they did. Both created iconic shows (Mister Rogers’ Neighbourhood was the longest-running children’s show in U.S. history until Sesame Street eclipsed it), and both were successful live performers.