Monday Post

The story so far....


As Canadians, we are fortunate enough to see how disastrous electing an incompetent, stuttering, self-indulged creation of the popular press really is by looking no further than the American experience. The memoirs of an unaccomplished empty-suit do not detract from one's transparent ambitions:

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair said it was premature for Justin Trudeau to say the Liberals would take away a Conservative tax cut that doesn’t yet exist.

Mulcair reacted on Monday to comments over the weekend by the Liberal leader, who said, if elected, the Grits would rescind the promised income-splitting tax cuts.

Mulcair said his party doesn’t like income splitting because it doesn’t benefit a large enough percentage of the population. Income splitting allows couple to pool incomes in order for the higher earner to fall into a lower tax bracket.

However, Mulcair wouldn’t say if his party would take away the tax cut if they win the 2015 federal election.

While the benefits of income splitting are not unanimously praised in the Conservative Party, there has been no indication the government will renege on its promise to offer the tax-cutting measure if the spring budget is balanced and there is a surplus.

Trudeau said over the weekend that he’ll rescind income splitting and use the surplus to pay for education, innovation and other projects to benefit the middle class.

(Sidebar: as the NDP is no longer the far-left, Mulcair almost becomes a voice of reason. Almost.)



Related: Justin Trudeau's popularity falls after he fails to condemn ISIS as normal thinking, feeling human beings should do:

The Abacus Data poll, released on Monday afternoon, suggests that the federal Liberals have taken a six-point drop since last month. 

The respected pollsters still have Justin Trudeau’s party in the lead with 32 per cent support, but now have the Tories on their heels with 30 per cent and the NDP not far behind at 25 per cent support. 

Abacus’ David Coletto says the ”road for the Liberals may not be as smooth as appeared last month.”

"For the first time in our tracking this year," Coletto wrote, “we have seen some movement. Liberal support is down, NDP and Green support has ticked up, while Conservative support is holding at 30 per cent.”

A lot of people dismiss mid-term opinion polls, arguing that they don’t provide much value months or even years before an election.  

But this latest poll is interesting for a couple of reasons. 

It’s one of the first major polls conducted after the parliamentary debate about Canada’s mission in Iraq. It’s also the first poll after Trudeau’s latest gaffe when, during a Q&A, he inappropriately said that Canada can do better than “trying to whip out our CF-18’s” and show the international community “how big they are.”

This poll might just give us a glimpse of how much voter support a Justin Trudeau-gaffe can cost his Liberal party – at least in the short term. 

(Sidebar: "short term" relates to low-information voters who don't know or care that ISIS is a band of savages and that Canada has had humanitarian aid in place since before the debates that Trudeau often did not take part in.)


Ontario Liberal voters are getting more of what they happily voted for:

 A plan to "optimize" major public assets is a recipe for higher booze and electricity prices in Ontario, Interim PC leader Jim Wilson says.

The Ed Clark-led government assets council is proposing that the LCBO increase the service charge levied on beer producers to cover distribution costs, effectively giving the provincial treasury a greater share of the profits as a result of the government-sanctioned Beer Store monopoly.

"The way I read that part of the report is they're looking to squeeze beer customers," Wilson said Monday.

"They're not talking about reducing the size and the cost of the bureaucracy at The Beer Store, they're not talking about really selling it."

Clark's group of advisers is reviewing publicly owned Hydro One, Ontario Power Generation (OPG) and the LCBO to determine if there are ways to maximize profits for taxpayers.

On Friday, Clark said in a major speech that he does not recommend selling off the assets, except for a majority share in Hydro One's distribution business.

Wilson said he supports keeping the assets public but believes Clark should have been given freer rein to look at all options.

Clark made it clear that the Kathleen Wynne government was not interested in selling Hydro One or OPG outright, or breaking up the monopolies of The Beer Store or LCBO.

It doesn't end there:

The Liberals are also facing demands from the opposition parties to release documentation surrounding a $224-million loan made years ago for the MaRS Phase 2 tower. MaRS and the developer have been unable to repay the loan and the province is now paying interest of up to $7.1 million a year on it until an agreement on the future of the new tower is finalized.

I could almost live with this if I knew for a fact that Liberal voters lived in such squalor that one had to put their faces on UNICEF boxes.


Good:

A Muslim woman wearing a niqab has been forced to leave a theatre in France after the cast refused to perform in protest against her attire.

The niqab is a traditional Muslim garment which covers the head and chest, with the exception of the eyes. It is illegal in France.

The incident occurred during the performance of La Traviata at Opera Bastille in Paris, the opera house's deputy director Jean-Philippe Thiellay told AFP.

The episode is believed to have happened on 3 October. However, French media did not report it until Sunday [19 October].

The woman, from the Gulf State, was visiting France with her companion. She was asked to remove the veil or leave the theatre as "performers said they didn't want to sing," Thiellay explained.

After the deputy-director was made aware of the cast's request, an usher approached the woman.

"He told her that in France there is a ban of this nature, asked her to either uncover her face or leave the room. The man asked the woman to get up, they left," Thiellay said, adding that it was unpleasant "to ask someone to leave."

 
At no point should Western culture tolerate the intolerable. In Islamic countries, women have had acid thrown in their faces or were abused if they didn't cover up. The desire for modesty is a fraud perpetrated on multicultural apologists who don't understand that wearing niqabs or any other covering is a thumb-in-the-eye of the popular culture where such adolescent reactionary garb-wearing is tolerated.


Just like ISIS, Saudi Arabia also beheads people:

A sudden surge in public executions in Saudi Arabia in the last two months has coincided with a U.S.-led bombing campaign against Islamic State. This has led to inevitable comparisons in Western media between Islamic State's beheadings and those practiced in Saudi Arabia.

Defenders of the Saudi death penalty say beheadings, usually with a single sword stroke, are at least as humane as lethal injections in the United States. They deplore any comparison between the kingdom's execution of convicted criminals and Islamic State's extra-judicial killing of innocent hostages.

But rights activists say they are more concerned by the justice system behind the death penalty in the kingdom than by its particular method of execution. And critics of the Al Saud ruling family say the latest wave of executions may have a political message, with Riyadh determined to demonstrate its toughness at a moment of regional turmoil.

Saudi Arabia beheaded 26 people in August, more than in the first seven months of the year combined. The total for the year now stands at 59, compared to 69 for all of last year, according to Human Rights Watch.

“It’s possible the executions were used as intimidation and flexing of muscles. It’s a very volatile time and executions do serve a purpose when they’re done en masse,” said Madawi al-Rasheed, visiting professor at the Middle East Centre of the London School of Economics.

“There’s uncertainty around Saudi Arabia from the north and from the south and inside they are taking aggressive action alongside the U.S. against Islamic State, and all that is creating some kind of upheaval, which the death penalty tries to keep a lid on.”

For some reason, the West seems dependent on this house of sand.


The city of Richmond is considering a ban on Chinese-language signs:

The hottest language debate may no longer be in Quebec but rather British Columbia, where a city in Vancouver’s suburbs is again embroiled in a battle over whether English should be included on signs targeting the city’s Chinese community.

And thanks to the impending municipal election, the language debate has received a higher profile than ever before, with several council candidates weighing in for and against mandating the use of English.

Richmond, B.C., has one of the most significant Chinese communities in Canada, with more than half its population of 205,000 descending from the country.

As a result, companies are targeting the Chinese community through billboards and other advertisements written entirely in Chinese.

The debate routinely draws comparisons to Quebec, where “language police” have garnered headlines for seeking and destroying company signs posted exclusively in English.

Last week, the City of Richmond voted to seek a legal opinion to determine what, if anything, they could do about Chinese-only signs. ...

Independent candidate Janos Bergman, however, told the Post that Chinese-only signs “serve to exclude the rest of the community and this is very un-Canadian.”

On his Facebook page, council candidate Henry Yao says that it is important for cultures to remain unique in a multi-cultural society, but that harmony relies on communication.

"This is why I wish to emphasize the importance of English on all signs in Richmond," he writes. 

“Having a common language will help people to communicate and understand each other. If we all live together and do not share a common language, we will become an exclusive society of strangers.”

 
It is not always easy to learn another language or adapt readily to new surroundings. That being said, failure to do so in an environment as welcoming and affluent as the West suggests that there is an unwillingness more than an inability.


And now, fifteen tales of female ghosts to curdle the blood.

Friday Freakout

Getting one in the mood for Halloween...


This commercial was deemed so scary that it came with a warning that anyone with health conditions or was faint-of-heart should not watch it:




To make up for that, watch these incredibly funny Panda cheese commercials:

Friday Post

Just in time for the week-end...


It is reported that ISIS has appropriated three fighter jets and are training pilots to use them:

Iraqi pilots who have joined Islamic State in Syria are training members of the group to fly in three captured fighter jets, a group monitoring the war said on Friday, saying it was the first time the militant group had taken to the air.

The group, which has seized swathes of land in Syria and Iraq, has been flying the planes over the captured al-Jarrah military airport east of Aleppo, said Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

If true, this opens up a new front in the battle against these child-murderers.


To another crisis Obama has no intention of handling:

President Obama said Thursday evening that he might appoint an “Ebola czar” to oversee the US government’s response to the virus. ...

Obama also addressed the question of whether the US should institute a temporary ban on travel into the US from the West African countries most affected by Ebola – Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia. The president said he didn’t have a “philosophical objection” to a travel ban, but cited experts in infectious disease who say that a travel ban could be counterproductive.

(Sidebar: Obama does not lead, as his golf-playing clearly demonstrates. The Ebola crisis is one more distraction from his inability to be a principled and competent leader.)

Obama: moron or instigator? Discuss.


Now on to another little-vetted, inexperienced dope the popular press fawns over:

Tears in my eyes — from laughter, or despair, or both — I made it to the end of Chatelaine magazine’s feature story on the Liberal leader, which asks, “Is Justin Trudeau the candidate women have been waiting for?” In 2,500 words, the author takes us inside the Trudeau home, where readers watch the Liberal leader balance his youngest by his feet in his garden, pose for pictures with his family on the couch and in the pool and answer a few soft questions, including one on his favourite author. The profile is a rather lovely snapshot of a young, happy family of five, but as a political profile — indeed, one that suggests its subject might be the candidate for women — it is insulting, patronizing fluff. Many women in Canada complain that politicians don’t take them seriously as intelligent, informed voters. This article is proof positive.

I suggest that the kind of women who would be moved by this fluff piece are the sort of women who do their thinking on their knees anyway (and no, I'm not taking that back). If Trudeau's many gaffes, utter contempt for seriousness and his "ladies' night" wherein he gushed about China's dictatorship, the kind that kills female infants and allows the sexual servitude of North Korean women, do not clue them into what kind of self-indulged twit he is, this fluff piece is their rationale for the kind of leader they want.

Canada is too big for these idiots to fail.

Related: Jean Chretien, who presided over Ad Scam and did not seek justice for murdered Canadian Zahra Kazemi, defends Justin Trudeau.

Birds of a feather, ect.


Why we need to elect our judges, state the obvious and let Darwin be vindicated:

For Laurie Hill, resident of Canada’s largest aboriginal community, it’s just wrong to suggest that modern medicine is the only way to treat cancer and other serious diseases.

She stands firmly behind the Six Nations neighbours who took their 11-year-old daughter with leukemia out of chemotherapy, and are treating her with traditional, but unproven, native methods and other alternative health-care instead.

“There’s a fear of [aboriginal remedies] or denial of it. If things can’t be quantified or qualified, to them it’s irrelevant,” said Ms. Hill, as she shopped at Ancestral Voices Healing Centre Thursday. “Who are they [doctors] to say she will make it with their treatments. Just because they have a degree, that makes them more knowledgeable?”

Her perspective on what seems to be a widening cultural divide received some recognition from a surprising quarter Thursday: ­the judge deciding whether the cancer-stricken girl should be forced back into chemotherapy. ...

But Justice Gethin Edward of the Ontario Court of Justice suggested physicians essentially want to “impose our world view on First Nation culture.” The idea of a cancer treatment being judged on the basis of statistics that quantify patients’ five-year survival rate is “completely foreign” to aboriginal ways, he said.

First of all, I don't believe for one moment this girl decided this course of action and even if she did, she is a kid and cannot decide, so there one goes. One would think her parents would be wise enough to choose Western medicine which has a far better chance of treating this poor kid's illness than a Stone Age culture ever could. But if Western culture is so intrusive (as Justice Edward believes), so is the money and the accoutrements that stem from it.

This case extends far from the rights and abilities to choose the best course of action for one's self or family. It is a deliberate thumb-in-the-eye by someone who advocates unproven therapies and a willing participant in this madness.

Mid-Week Post

Fifteen more shopping days until Halloween.


Prayers would be much appreciated.  


A new report states that not only were chemical weapons found in Iraq but that soldiers were ordered to keep quiet about it:

American troops found nearly 5,000 abandoned chemical weapons in Iraq from 2004 to 2011, but their discoveries were kept secret by the U.S. government, the New York Times reports.

According to the 10,000-word, eight-part interactive report ("The Secret Casualties of Iraq's Abandoned  Chemical Weapons") by C.J. Chivers published on the paper's website late Tuesday, at least 17 American service members and seven Iraqi police officers were exposed to nerve or mustard agents in Iraq after 2003.

On at least six occasions, American troops and American-trained Iraqi troops were wounded by the abandoned munitions, but news of the encounters was neither shared publicly nor widely circulated among the troops, the victims told the Times. Others said they were told to be vague or deceptive about what they found.

"'Nothing of significance’ is what I was ordered to say,” Jarrod Lampier, a retired Army major, said of the 2006 discovery of 2,400 nerve-agent rockets at a former Republican Guard compound, the largest chemical weapons discovery of the war.

The paper also published heavily redacted intelligence documents it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Among the reasons for the secrecy? "The discoveries of these chemical weapons did not support the government’s invasion rationale," Chivers writes. "After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, [President George W.] Bush insisted that [Iraqi leader Saddam] Hussein was hiding an active weapons of mass destruction program, in defiance of international will and at the world’s risk. United Nations inspectors said they could not find evidence for these claims."

These were the weapons that allegedly did not exist but were still uncovered by ISIS.


Speaking of ISIS:

Two months after American bombs and missiles began pounding fighters of the so-called Islamic State, President Barack Obama’s undeclared war in Iraq and Syria finally has a name: Operation Inherent Resolve.

The Wall Street Journal had reported on Oct. 3 that the name had been considered and rejected, with one unnamed military officer saying “it is just kind of bleh.”

The long search for a name had sparked a flurry of jokes on Twitter, where one leading tongue-in-cheek suggestion was that it be called “Operation Hey Wasn’t That My Humvee” – a reference to U.S. airstrikes hitting Islamic State fighters using American equipment captured from Iraqi troops.

The Obama Administration announced the moniker a day after the president attended a meeting of defense chiefs from some 20 partners in the coalition trying to beat back the rampaging extremist group, which has captured broad swaths of Iraqi territory. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hosted the gathering at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, best known for being home to the blue-and-white liveried airplane that serves as Obama’s Air Force One.

Veterans groups had complained that the lack of a formal name could shortchange Americans risking their lives to fight IS by leaving them unable to claim the recognition of a combat medal. One American, a Marine, has lost his life in the operations.

 
What resolve would that be? While Obama was golfing and certainly not coming up with a plan to liquidate ISIS,  thousands of Iraqi Christians and Yazidis have been forced from their homes (1.4 million if one counts Syrian refugees as well) with as many as 1,500 women and girls sold into sexual slavery. Obama isn't just indifferent; he does not care on purpose (SEE: "workplace violence").

This is what Obama is indifferent about:

During the ninth night of her captivity, Nadia seized an unexpected opportunity to flee. 

 

Back on the first day, the men who kidnapped Nadia and the other young women as hostages and sex slaves had away taken their shoes. Escaping barefoot was out of the question. As the women could see from the windows, the surrounding terrain was rough and rocky, and they would end up with bleeding cuts and gashes all over their feet. 

The house in which they were held captive had many rooms and the young women were frequently moved from one to another. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason for the frequent moves; they were apparently dependent on the whims of their captors. But in one room stood a wardrobe, inside of which Nadia found a pair of pink tennis shoes under some rags. Though they were a few sizes too small for her, they might just do.

Six men -- her captors, rapists and tormentors -- stood guard from day one. But on the ninth night, Nadia noticed that four of the men were apparently absent, perhaps sleeping elsewhere. Whatever the case, only two of the Islamic State fighters were sitting in the kitchen that night -- and they were distracted. It looked as though they were arguing.

The men had shut up Nadia alone that night and she didn't know where the other young women were. The lock on her door was defective and she was able to open it. She pulled out the tennis shoes that she had kept hidden, crammed her feet into them, slipped out of the room and was able to push open a terrace door. She scurried out of the house and rushed through the garden, filled with rustling dry bushes and trees. She was afraid that a dog would start barking, but she was lucky.

She came to a wall, a high wall, so it seemed -- reaching beyond her outstretched arms. "Now I had to climb over the wall," she says, "and I didn't have much time."

I'm sure those in charge are handling this with the utmost care and ability:

A top federal health official said Wednesday that a Texas nurse exposed to the Ebola virus never should have taken a flight from Cleveland to the Dallas area. She has now been diagnosed with Ebola and officials are now contacting other passengers on the plane.

China blocks access to a BBC site:

Chinese censors have blocked the website of Britain's national broadcaster, the BBC said in a statement late on Wednesday, coming as tensions rise in Hong Kong between pro-democracy protesters and police.

The broadcaster said that the move seemed to be "deliberate censorship". It did not say what may have prompted the move by Beijing, which also blocks the websites of the New York Times, newswire Bloomberg and the BBC's Chinese language website.

Censorship is what China does.


But... but... they said it worked:

Vancouver Coastal Health is trying to warn drug users about a bad batch of heroin that has caused 31 overdoses at the city's supervised injection site.

This is all as well-handled as the Ebola crisis.

Oh wait...


The war on Halloween:

A feminist theatre company in Calgary called Urban Curvz is fighting back against what they say is an increasingly sexualized holiday.

Pam Rocker, the organizer of Take Back Halloween, spoke on the Calgary Eyeopener about her inspiration for starting the event.

She says they are taking back the holiday from those who think a sexy leopard costume for a three-year-old, complete with fishnet stockings, is a good idea.

"When we saw that in a costume shop a couple of months ago, the artistic director of Urban Curvz and I thought, 'You know what, this is a problem for all ages,'" said Rocker. "And this is something that we want to take back by having something like a feminist costume contest where you actually have to be creative and think about things that don't gender stereotype and that maybe actually empower women."

There is no shortage of sexualized costumes for kids, says Rocker.

"There is also a 'mac pimp daddy' costume for eight-year-old boys, because it affects all genders. I also saw a sexy Bert and Ernie and a sexy pizza slice."

Rocker says Halloween is an indicator of a larger movement of rewarding over-sexualized behaviour.

"The culture perpetuates this — you're rewarded if you're not smart, you're not a leader and if you're something to be objectified."

The goal is not to tell people how to dress but give people more choice. 

"We are not saying that if you want to be a sexy nurse that's bad, but we want to provide an alternative to something that isn't gender stereotyping," said Rocker.

"Really the event is going tot be so much fun.... We'll have puppets, songs, stage fighting, imagining a future of feminist Disney princesses — so there is something for everybody.

Awareness doesn't have to be a drag and that's really important to us, so we want it to be an exciting night for people."

There will also be a patriarchy haunted house that highlights some gender issues in a fun scary way.

As revolting as people who clearly sexualise children are (especially those who worked alongside Ontario premiers), people who hunt for causes are just as insufferable.

Why not go to an Islamic country where women cover their faces all the time?

What? Not edgy enough?


And now, party snacks for your Halloween get-together. Enjoy.

Thanksgiving

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cell.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,---
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

 

("Ode to Autumn", John Keats)

 

Sunday Post

A post for a lovely Sunday....


I'm sure this is nothing to be concerned about:

A Texas health worker has contracted Ebola after treating a Liberian who died of the disease in Dallas last week, raising concern about how U.S. medical guidelines aimed at stopping the spread of the disease were breached.

The Kurds hold off ISIS in Kobani:

Kurdish defenders held off Islamic State militants in Syria's border town of Kobani on Sunday, but the fighters struck with deadly bombings in Iraq, killing dozens of Kurds in the north and assassinating a provincial police commander in the west.

This is why we should elect our judges:

The lawyer for the son of murdered Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi led the calls for Ottawa to close a legal loophole that the Supreme Court highlighted in its Friday ruling. By a 6-1 margin, the court ruled Stephan Hashemi is prohibited by the State Immunity Act from suing the Iranian government over his mother's death.

The justices handed the issue back to the government, saying legislators could simply change the act and open the door for Hashemi's civil lawsuit.

"Parliament has the power and capacity to decide whether Canadian courts should exercise civil jurisdiction," Justice Louis LeBel wrote for the majority. "Parliament has the ability to change the current state of the law on exceptions to state immunity, just as it did in the case of terrorism and allow those in situations like Mr. Hashemi and his mother's estate to seek redress in Canadian courts. Parliament has simply chosen not to do it yet."

 
This has stopped activist-judges when?

As a prologue, it was the Chretien government that dropped the ball on this matter. While the impetus should be put on Parliament to decide matters of the Crown, unelected judges have made law since someone put them in their judicial chairs. This, no doubt, is done to make the current government look heartless and inactive all the while forgetting what Chretien didn't do.



Oh, look! Street theatre!

A B.C. First Nation community has penned a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper asking him to spend one week living among them on their reserve.

Yawn.


More on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17:

The body of one passenger of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was found wearing an oxygen mask, Dutch prosecutors said Thursday, raising questions about how much those on board knew about their fate when the plane plunged out of the sky above Eastern Ukraine in July.

Why we need to privatise education and abolish teachers' unions:

Ontario's largest teachers' union is defending its decision to hold a workshop on "white privilege" at an upcoming convention, saying it has never been afraid to tackle controversial issues.

The Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, which has 76,000 members, has a posting on its website looking for presenters for a workshop called "Re-thinking White Privilege."

"What we're trying to do is spark a conversation about this and raise awareness and a growing understanding about white privilege," ETFO president Sam Hammond said Thursday in an interview.

I would like to propose a Teachers' Privilege Workshop. Rather like the counter-productive shame sessions of the "white privilege" workshop, it would point out how the education profession lionises itself all the while never producing any real results, like students who test well, who can write in full sentences or locate their countries on a map. Maybe then they would feel real shame, leave and make room for the genuine educators who can mould students into productive, happy citizens.


And now, just in time for the Thanksgiving meal, cooking with spices. Enjoy.

 

Mid-Week Post

Twenty-two more shopping days until Halloween.


The vote to send CF-18s and other materials to combat ISIS has been passed in the House of Commons with one hundred and fifty-seven in favour and one hundred and thirty-four against. Why such a margin (1:20 mark)?



That's why.

If the murder of historic populations by well-armed and bloodthirsty rapists is not sufficient a reason to militarily act then what is? How does one expect to provide aid safely to these embattled populations without air support? The arguments the NDP and Liberals provide (the very opaque and childishly contradictory ones) are not just morally unfeasible but impractical.


A Liberian man who made his way to the US while infected with Ebola has died:

The first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States died early Wednesday, officials with Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital announced.

Thomas "Eric" Duncan, 42, passed away at 7:51 a.m., the hospital said.

Is it now time to take this seriously?


Why education needs to be privatised:

Malloy’s committee on the Newtown shootings is recommending that Connecticut require home-schooling families to present their children to the local authorities periodically for inspection, to see to it that their psychological and social growth is proceeding in the desired direction. For anybody even passingly familiar with contemporary government schools, which are themselves a peerless source of social and emotional dysfunction, this development is bitterly ironic.

This audacity is born not only out of some twisted need to micro-manage others but to continue lining one's pockets with money that doesn't go to one when people send their kids to alternative schools or if they home-school.

(Merci)


And now, kick up your feet in this scorpion chair and the Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze (it's a two-fer tonight). Enjoy.

Your Monday Post

Isn't it time you did something for you?


What leadership?

The House of Commons is debating whether Canada should send CF-18’s to to join the U.S.-led coalition battling ISIS in Iraq, and to date, Trudeau’s performance on this file doesn’t instill much confidence. 

The biggest problem has been the flip-flops. Over the past several weeks — as clearly illustrated by the NDP here — the Liberals haven’t had a clear message about their position on airstrikes. 

Last week they said they couldn’t support a combat mission without a fulsome debate in the House of Commons. But then on Friday, Trudeau said outright that the Grits would not support airstrikes, three days before Monday's debate even began.

Trudeau is also facing criticism for an off-the-cuff and off-colour remark during a Q-and-A last week, when he said that Canada can do better than “trying to whip out our CF-18s” and showing the international community “how big they are.”

"Clearly meant to poke fun at the Harper government, Trudeau’s apparent gaffe showed that he is still not skilled at navigating the tricky waters of international issues," political consultant Marcel Wieder told Yahoo Canada News. 

"Mulcair on the other hand offered a reasoned approach that contrasts with the Conservative position."

Others were much harsher than Wieder. 

"Is this how an adult, a possible PM, talks? With its mixture of puerile condescension, its smug assurance that any vulgar reference to the Conservatives will 'go over' with everyone, it’s an obiter dictum for the ages," Rex Murphy wrote for the National Post. 

"We should expect more — both in class and thought — from a national leader, especially when he is speaking in the context of the miseries that have been inflicted by one of the most sadistic collection of terrorists the planet has ever offered."

Trudeau has a chance to redeem himself throughout the ongoing ISIS debate, but it won't be easy, as Canada appears to be rallying behind the Conservatives and their message that we can’t sit back and watch others do the heavy lifting.

The most recent poll numbers suggest that the vast majority of Canadians support participation in airstrikes. So, for the first time since becoming leader, Trudeau will have to defend a party policy that is seemingly unpopular with the broad public.

 
Oh, you mean this leadership:

According to CTV News, about 60 people showed up on Sunday for the event, only to hear Dhalla announce that she wouldn’t be running in the next federal election.

"As she spoke, Dhalla was surrounded by posters which had the Liberal Party name blacked out," noted the CTV report.

"When Dhalla finished speaking, the event emcee took the microphone and said: ‘That’s not the announcement we were expecting.’"

Dr. Dhalla was a Liberal MP in Brampton, Ont. from 2004 to 2011. For some time, it was rumoured that the chiropractor, former actress and Miss India Canada runner-up was eyeing a return to politics. 
But now, her decision to organize an event to say she’s not running has elicited suggestions that the Liberal Party took eleventh-hour steps to block her candidacy.

The Liberals – who have already been accused of interfering in other nomination races – deny it. And now, so does Dhalla.

Sure, Ruby.

It wouldn't be the first time Trudeau played the "bully leader" card or went all pouty and non-responsive whenever someone pointed out very ugly and true things about his parents, nor would it be the first time he acted childishly in an arena reserved for a much graver tenor than which he is capable. He didn't show up for a meeting on Iraq he called. He courts Islamists. His only purpose it seems is to oppose Harper at every turn even if it makes the Liberal Party out to be even further left than the NDP whose position has at least been more consistent than that of Trudeau's.

And that is not leadership and no amount of hair-admiring voters will make it so.


The real laugh would that if an all-aboriginal jury not only found the defendant guilty but wanted him hanged. What the defendant should want is a baker's dozen of self-loathing white liberals who have never met an actual aboriginal let alone been to a reservation. He would get off scot-free:

A case before the Supreme Court of Canada on Monday will determine how far Ontario must go to include First Nations people in the province's jury rolls. 

Ontario is appealing a decision from its top court that quashed a manslaughter conviction for a First Nations man because of under-representation of aboriginal people in its jury process.

Affirmative action: it's still apartheid.


Here we go again:

A South Korean naval ship fired warning shots on Tuesday after a North Korean patrol boat crossed a disputed sea border off the peninsula's west coast and fired shots back before retreating, a South Korean defense official said.

I'm sure those in charge will handle this new crisis promptly, efficiently and with great care:

In the first known transmission of the current outbreak of Ebola outside West Africa, a Spanish nurse who treated a missionary for the disease at a Madrid hospital has tested positive for the virus, Spain's health minister said Monday.

The female nurse was part of the medical team that treated a 69-year-old Spanish priest who died in a hospital last month after being flown back from Sierra Leone, where he was posted, Health Minister Ana Mato said. The nurse is believed to have contracted the virus from that priest.

Whatever we do, let's not restrict flights, ban entry of infected persons, quarantine patients and areas where they have been or stress how filoviruses like Ebola are spread person-to-person and have no effective treatment.


And now, pumpkin desserts just in time for Thanksgiving. Enjoy.

 

A Post For It Is Friday

Week-end, here we come!


Not being bombed fast enough:

An Internet video released Friday purports to show an Islamic State group fighter beheading British hostage Alan Henning, the fourth such killing carried out by the extremist group now targeted in U.S.-led airstrikes.

The video mirrored other beheading videos shot by the Islamic State group, which now holds territory along the border of Syria and Iraq, and ended with a militant threatening a man they identified as an American named Peter Kassig.

What might fix that:

On Friday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke in the House of Commons to unveil his government’s plan to send up to six CF-18 fighters, one refueling tanker and two surveillance aircrafts to join several other countries in the U.S. led airstrikes over Iraq. 

"Today we’re bringing forward a motion asking this House to confirm its confidence for a government decision to join our allies and partners…in launching airstrikes against ISIL," Harper said.

Yes, about that:

Canadian opinions shifting to the left in terms of social issues, new data suggests

 Well....

A new Ipsos Reid poll, released on Friday, suggests that 64 per cent of those surveyed “support” Canada sending Canadian Forces fighter jets to participate in airstrikes against ISIS targets in Iraq while 36 per cent “oppose.”

So much for Trudeau's grandstanding.

Overall, two-thirds (67%) of respondents say “they love their country and what it stands for”, while 23 per cent say they’re “attached to Canada, but only as long as it provides a good standard of living.”

It's probably because this country is working.

On the issue of buying sex, views are inverted by gender. Where more than half of men – 56 per cent – say it should be legal to buy sex, only one-third (34%) of women say the same. However, 55 per cent of women say it should be illegal to buy sex in Canada, while 34 per cent of men say the same.

There's that.

One-fifth (23%) say the federal government should create legislation that “imposes some restrictions” on abortion, while ten per cent would prefer to see access to abortion restricted, except in special cases.

Six per cent say Canada should outlaw abortion – except when the life of the mother is in danger. There are no significant differences in opinions between men and women. ...

A January 2012 ARG survey showed 60 per cent of Canadians believed there should be laws preventing sex-selective abortions.

I might see apathy but not a gradual shift.


The Toronto District School Board has decided to sever its ties with the Confucius Institute:

Canada’s largest school board is joining a handful of other academic institutions in taking steps to sever its ties to a language and culture program controlled by the Chinese government.

A Toronto District School Board committee voted on Wednesday evening to terminate the Confucius Institute programs. All but one member on the planning and priorities committee voted in favour of terminating the accord.

And now, travelling in swank and style:

Derek Low used his frequent flier miles to pay for a flight on Singapore Airlines Suites Class, the most luxurious class of flying that is commercially available. As Derek wrote on his blog: "Introduced in 2008, The Suites were exclusive to their flagship Airbus A380, and they go beyond flat beds by offering enclosed private cabins with sliding doors that cocoon you in your own little lap of luxury. The interior was designed by French luxury yacht designer Jean-Jacques Coste and comes along with a plush soft leather armchair hand-stitched by the Italian master craftsmen Poltrona Frau. Perhaps most well-known of all, Singapore Airlines became the first and only commercial airline with a double bed in the sky."

Mid-Week Post

Quickly now...


B!#ch:

Premier Kathleen Wynne says she’s going ahead with a one-week trade mission to China on October 25 despite growing pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

“We support the ability of people to express freely their opinions,” Wynne told reporters Wednesday when asked about the timing of her trip with representatives from about 60 companies.

The premier said she raised the issue in a meeting with the Chinese consul-general in Toronto on Monday but wouldn’t commit to pressing officials for a speedier pace on voting reforms.
“I am going to work in the context of the federal government’s relations with China,” she added before heading outside to help raise the People’s Republic of China flag in front of Queen’s Park to mark the 65th anniversary of the country founded in 1949.

Typical Liberal. 


And people expected something different?

A GIF of a police officer pepper-spraying a non-violent man during the Hong Kong protests is going viral. 

The clip comes from a live-stream video of the protests. In it, a police officer reaches over a barricade and grabs an elderly protestor by the shoulder, turning him around so he can pepper-spray him at point-blank range.

Sure, Jimmy. Sure:

Jimmy Carter attempts to kick Glenn Beck around. Former President Jimmy Carter marked his 90th birthday Wednesday with a lengthy interview on CNBC Meets where he discussed his one term in office and the one thing he would have handled differently — the Iran Hostage Crisis. 

Carter suggested Operation Eagle Claw, a failed 1980 attempt to rescue the hostages taken by Iranian revolutionaries at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, could have been successful if he committed one more helicopter to the mission. 

"I think I would have been re-elected easily if I had been able to rescue our hostages from the Iranians," Carter said. "And everybody asks me what would do more, I would say I would send one more helicopter because if I had one more helicopter, we could have brought out not only the 52 hostages, but also brought out the rescue team, and when that failed, then I think that was the main factor that brought about my failure to be re-elected. So that's one thing I would change."

Operation Eagle Claw was aborted after three of the helicopters taking part in the mission experienced mechanical problems. 

Carter also said he believed he would have been re-elected if he took military action against Iran in response to the taking of the hostages. Though he argued he "could have wiped Iran off the map," Carter said he thought avoiding war was the "right decision."

"I could've been re-elected if I'd taken military action against Iran, shown that I was strong and resolute and, um, manly and so forth," said Carter, adding: "I could have wiped Iran off the map with the weapons that we had, but in the process a lot of innocent people would have been killed, probably including the hostages, and so I stood up against all that, er, all that advice, and then eventually my prayers were answered and every hostage came home safe and free. And so I think I made the right decision in retrospect, but it was not easy at the time."

 

And now, something awesome:

The shipwreck found in the Arctic has been identified as HMS Erebus, the vessel on which Sir John Franklin himself sailed — and may even have perished — in search of the Northwest Passage in 1845.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who took obvious delight last month in delivering news of the discovery of the ship from Franklin’s doomed voyage, revealed Wednesday just which of the two it is.

“I’m delighted to confirm that we have identified which ship from the Franklin expedition has been found,” Harper told the House of Commons.

“It is, in fact, the HMS Erebus.”

The discovery of the wreck, found some 11 metres below the surface in the Queen Maud Gulf, was confirmed Sept. 7, but was not identified until now.

The two ships of the Franklin Expedition and their crews, 129 members in all, disappeared during an 1845 quest for the Northwest Passage. So far, the location of the other ship, HMS Terror, remains a mystery.