For a Sunday

Oh, dear:

At least nine people were killed and at least 27 were wounded in a shooting early Sunday in Dayton, Ohio, the second deadly American mass shooting in less than 24 hours and the third in a week.

The shooting began at 1:07 a.m. on East Fifth Street in the city’s Oregon entertainment district, which was bustling with more than 1,000 late-night revelers enjoying a warm summer evening, Mayor Nan Whaley said. Uniformed officers on routine patrol in the area responded, shooting and killing the gunman within one minute of his first gunshots, she said.

Eight hundred Russians are arrested after protesting that their candidates have been disallowed:

Police in Moscow cracked down hard on an unsanctioned election protest for the second weekend in a row Saturday, detaining more than 800 people at a rally against the exclusion from city council contests of some independent and opposition candidates, an arrest monitoring group said.

Election officials rejected signatures several candidates needed to qualify for next month’s local ballot. The decision tapped dissatisfaction with a political environment dominated by the Kremlin-aligned United Russia party, in which dissenting voices are marginalized, ignored or repressed.

 
It's an election year. The gloves are off and the cheating has begun:

Trudeau’s government has been the most image-conscious in Canadian history. Enormous effort has gone into presenting it as enlightened, “progressive,” and positive. Yet his re-election strategy to date has consisted of trying to tie Scheer to the unpopular premier of Ontario while working mightily to rev up a controversy over abortion that no one but his war room can see.

(Sidebar: for the record, if abortion is the first thing that falls out of a politician's mouth, he is a disgusting creep who thinks of women in one way.  I would start looking for some jaded girlfriends in his background.)

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The correct answer is “The self-image of a typical Canadian politician.” We are all struck every day by how little the language of politicians resembles the English we use to talk to one another, and one reason is that when a verbal tag like “fighting for youuuu” becomes trendy, they cannot resist it. The thing is, almost nothing about their job involves fighting, even metaphorically, and self-evidently few of them are people who grew up enjoying a fine tussle by the bike racks, although no doubt everybody I’ve mentioned in particular could be described personally as determined and uncomplaining.

There’s a lot of persuasion and rhetoric in politics, but these are the things we do instead of merely fighting. (It took a lot of effort to get the physical fighting out of our political system!) And electoral politics certainly is a lot of work. You spend long hours on doorsteps, being careful not to fight with voters, and you perhaps spend eons on the phone with donors and influencers, but that is surely more like seduction than fighting. So, too, with media interviews. Politicians are salesmen when they’re trying to get in and managers once they do get in. Why all the talk of fighting when, frankly, they don’t even damn well involve themselves in reasoned verbal argument very much?

(Sidebar: these are the same people who will never do math on the spot. Indeed, to quiet a politician's rhetoric, ask him how much his new election promise will cost the average taxpayer.)

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As we’ve seen with previous Liberal scandals, their modus operandi has been to try and make the story go away. The same playbook is being used here. With an election looming, it’s even more incentive for the Liberals to avoid giving life to any story that might have even the whiff of scandal.

You don't say.

According to a report by Blacklock’s Reporter, the Toronto Star is set to receive $115,385 PER WEEK from the Trudeau media bailout.

That certainly is control.




How could any of these things go wrong?:

The Canadian lab involved in a mysterious RCMP investigation around one of its most acclaimed scientists shipped samples of Ebola and another deadly virus to China earlier this year, says the Public Health Agency of Canada.

The other pathogen was henipavirus, an emerging family of bugs that inspired the Hollywood thriller Contagion, and which in real life has killed up to 100 per cent of people infected.

There are fears it could be weaponized or cause a widespread epidemic, according to a recent paper by agency researchers.

The viruses were provided to Chinese scientists as part of a “routine” sharing of infectious agents, fulfilling the National Microbiology Lab’s mandate to promote public-health research worldwide, said an agency spokesman.

Naturally.

How are those talks with the Chinese going? They're not?

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A Jordanian man who has been declared a danger to Canada’s security for spreading ISIS propaganda on the internet is being released from custody to live in rural B.C. while the government tries to deport him.

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When there's an artificial shortage of a good or service, a black market usually follows. I have heard from several Canadians that paying doctors bribes to jump the line is not uncommon. But Canada has another pressure reliever: Ninety percent of Canadians live within 90 miles of the U.S. border, and medical centers in Buffalo, Chicago, Rochester and elsewhere receive tens of thousands of Canadian patients every year.

  
If there really is an environmental disaster, who is getting the brunt of it?:

Also:

Ottawa is pushing back against Saskatchewan’s request to have the Supreme Court of Canada delay hearing its challenge of the federal carbon tax.

This carbon tax challenge:

The Alberta government has filed legal arguments in its constitutional challenge of the federal carbon tax, arguing Ottawa should not be granted new power to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions in the provinces.

And:

Those howling loudest at people to use public transport — “for the planet’s sake” — should not, per exemplum, own $400-million yachts, travel themselves by private jet, have a dozen vast mansions in a dozen countries, and hold suppers that cost $100,000 in ancient Greek temples. But they do. Check out the Google Summer Camp.

This week the richest of the rich, the famousest of the famous, the most pretentious of the pretentious, convened a three-day summit in a high-luxury resort on the island of Sicily to — discuss? bemoan? illustrate? — the crisis of climate inflammation wrought by fiendish fossil fuels. It was sponsored by the two founders of Google (personal worth, 2017, US$81 billion).

(Merci)




It's just an economy:

In its latest edition of its annual Canadian Consumer Tax Index, the Fraser Institute says the average Canadian family now spends 44.2% of its income on taxes, more than on shelter, food and clothing combined.

That translates into paying $39,299 in taxes on an annual family income of $88,865 last year.

By comparison, an average family paid $32,214 in total for shelter ($19,134), food, ($9,299) and clothing ($3,782), or 36.3% of it income

“Taxes, not life’s basic necessities — remain the largest household expense for families across the country,” said Finn Poschmann, citing the release of the Fraser Institute report.

It also says combined taxes on Canadians have risen by 2,246% compared to the annual study’s base year of 1961, when the average family earned $5,000 and spent most of its money — 56.5% — on necessities, compared to only 33.5% on taxes.

This 2,246% increase in taxes (2,449% if you count government deficits as deferred taxes) far outstrips the increases since 1961 in average incomes (1,677%), inflation (750%) and the higher costs of shelter (1,593%), food (639%) and clothing (769%).

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Canada posted a narrower trade surplus in June, the second in as many months, despite significant declines in exports and imports of crude oil, aircraft and other transportation equipment, official data showed on Friday.  

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The European Commission will deem that Canada, Brazil, Singapore, Argentina and Australia don’t regulate credit ratings agencies with the same rigor as the EU, the Financial Times reports citing a document. The decision would withdraw some market access rights of the country, removing a status that makes it possible for European banks to rely on the ratings.

The schleppy, useless caricature of a Canadian emerged from the time of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Never mind that Canadians had distinguished themselves as capable soldiers and statesmen who built a country from scratch. A non-threatening moron seemed, for some reason, a better image for a nation of the New World.

Ask a Canadian to accurately describe himself without referring to any other country, especially the United States, and see if he can do it. Without empty platitudes or cartoons, he's stuck and he knows it:

What do you do when you meet a Canadian?

According to a page on the government's website, you might want to ask about the weather.
"Good topics of conversation are: work, studies, the weather (a good opener), one's house, vacations, sports (especially hockey, American football, baseball, water sports and, increasingly, soccer/football) and other leisure activities."

That's an excerpt from Global Affairs Canada's "Country Insights" page for Canada. It's a little-known corner of the government-operated website run by a third party group called the Centre for Intercultural Learning, where travellers can find etiquette and cultural information about more than 100 different countries – including our own.

The stated purpose of these Country Insights is to "provide snapshots of the overall social and cultural norms as well as the workplace environment that a Canadian might face working in a specific country," according to the website. ...

"The best way to impress most Canadians is to show what you have noticed is different from the United States, as there is a great deal of sensitivity and concern about being lumped in with our powerful neighbour."

 
Only self-conscious twits with no self-esteem talk this way.

Look no further than the government's website on what a Canadian caricature is.