Tuesday, May 12, 2020

And the Rest of It

Oh, that will help as they sit lonely and frightened in a nearly-abandoned nursing home or in their remortgaged houses debating whether or not they should buy medication or food:

Seniors Minister Deb Schulte and Treasury Board president Jean-Yves Duclos held a press conference on Tuesday morning to roll out details of a $2.5-billion plan to give seniors eligible for the OAS pension a one-time, tax-free payment of $300, with an additional $200 going to those also eligible for the GIS.

Just admit that you want them dead and to be replaced by people who can't speak English but will mark an X next to the word LIBERAL.




The House of Commons is already a farce. Who would notice a difference if it resumed and the pantomime continued face-to-face?:

The dignity of a nation is a resource in its governance. It cannot be abandoned without cost. The rites and rituals of Parliament, its protocols and practices, impart weight and dignity to the function of its members. Its splendid and historic buildings, the site itself on a hill in the capital, speak of seriousness and respect and pride of nationhood. Stripped of its proper setting, replaced by a kind of press conference soliloquy, under damn tent, it becomes mundane.

I’ve watched, with some pain, one of those virtual make-believe Commons sittings and it resembled more the fossilized opening of “The Brady Bunch” than the deliberations of a modern democracy. It was like a bad call-in show (I am familiar with the format) and attempting to co-ordinate the rules of the House with this pale mimicry simply does not, and cannot, work.



Let them fight:

The elected leadership of several First Nations split over a natural gas pipeline in northern British Columbia are calling for the immediate resignation of Crown – Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett.




Statistics Canada is an arm of the government, the same one that can operate stupidly as it does sneakily:

Statistics Canada now appears cowed. On the morning of May 11, I asked for confirmation of who receives the jobs data in advance. I was still waiting on a response at the end of the work day on May 12.

I know for sure that the numbers are seen the evening before by the Prime Minister’s Office and Finance. For what purpose? Message preparation, of course, so not for any real purpose at all. If Bains is serious about preventing future leaks, he will make the politicos wait until the official release like the rest of us.



The Canadian voter didn't want a member of Parliament who had the audacity to suggest that Canada's abortion rate shouldn't resemble North Korea's or that marriage is really between a man and a woman and we all know it. The Canadian voter wanted a fiscal conservative or at least someone who said that he was. The Canadian voter cast his ballot accordingly and got neither conservative. The country is an economic wreck that can boast its abandoned elderly and disabled sitting in filthy, barely staffed care homes. Oh, but at least there are gay parades that go largely unattended by members of Parliament whose traditionalism never goes questioned if one knows what is good for one.

Maybe we do need some socially conservative candidates to shake things up. We left our old people to die in their own sh--. A country whose parties and voters breathe apathy can't survive:

After Conservatives fill out their leadership race ballots this summer, the results may hinge on whether Lewis was able to attract a substantially different group of people than Sloan, or whether they were fishing from the same pond all along.

“I think that’s the million dollar question,” Trost said. He said Sloan’s “throw the bums out” style may mean he attracts some support from anti-establishment populists who aren’t social conservatives, but also aren’t interested in ranking anyone else. On the other hand, Lewis’s lower-key style may attract voters more open to throwing support to O’Toole or MacKay.

The candidates themselves are naturally expected to stay mum about who they might someday throw their support behind, if it comes to that. But in March, Lewis circulated an attack on MacKay for saying the party should “park” discussions about social conservative issues. And MacKay’s remark after the fall election that Andrew Scheer allowed social conservative issues to be a “stinking albatross” was not taken well by many social conservatives.

“As the race has evolved, I think MacKay continuously does things that makes social conservatives unhappy,” Trost said. “And if MacKay’s not careful, he’s gonna deliver 100 per cent of the so-con vote to O’Toole.”







China is a bully? NO!:


Chinese diplomats and supporters of the Communist Party of China are increasingly resorting to “threats, bullying and harassment” to intimidate and silence activists in Canada, including those raising concerns about democracy and civil rights in Hong Kong and Beijing’s mistreatment of Uyghurs, Tibetans and Falun Gong practitioners, a new report says.




Canadians can breathe a collective sigh of relief knowing that Gabriel Wortman, who killed twenty-three people, shot them to death with guns smuggled in from the US.

Gun control does work!:

The RCMP says three of the four semi-automatic weapons used by a gunman during last month’s mass shooting in Nova Scotia are believed to have come from the United States.

The federal force says in a news release today that only one of the guns could be traced back to a source in Canada.

The Mounties are still declining to reveal the brand or the calibre of the weapons — two handguns and two rifles — used during the April 18-19 rampage that killed 22 people in five communities around the province.

Would that be the gun that Wortman took from Constable Stevenson?




No one knows the infection rate in North Korea but as of this writing Canada has a death toll of 5,169:
Chinese authorities banned all non-essential transportation in the city of Shulan in the northeastern province of Jilin, while residential compounds and villages were closed, official China Central Television reported Sunday. Students who had returned to schools were required to study from home. The city raised its virus threat alert level to high risk from medium, Jilin province said.

North Korea shut its borders in January when cases surged in China, and has yet to confirm any COVID-19 infections. Yet the U.S. military said it suspects North Korea has cases, and Kim Jong Un’s regime has accepted help from other nations to fight the virus.

“There were at least hundreds of reported cases near its border with China late last year, which makes me believe that North Korea also saw cases even before it shut down its border with China early this year,” said Kim Sin-gon, a professor at Korea University’s Department of Internal Medicine in Seoul. He also leads a group of doctors studying medical systems under a potentially unified Korea.




Where's that cheesecake, Doug?:





No comments: