Category Archives: Politics

Justin Trudeau does Robin Hood imitation

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From here:

Justin Trudeau is gambling that he can get away with a tax hike on wealthy Canadians to fund a middle-class tax cut for those who get “an ever-shrinking piece of the pie.”

The Liberal leader, long criticized for speaking in generalities, revealed the core theme of his election platform — Fairness for the Middle Class — at a folksy event in an Aylmer, Que., diner on Monday.

Specifically, he committed to a $670 tax cut for every Canadian who earns $44,701 or more — a pledge that will cost $3 billion.

It will be paid for by creating a new tax bracket of 33% for those who earn more than $200,000, he said. The Liberals project this change will bring in $3 billion, making the move revenue neutral to the federal government.

How is this really all is going to work, you might wonder. Like this:

What’s in a name?

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“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Sometimes a name is so apposite it’s hard not to think that there really is something in it. Yesterday, Mohammed Badie, Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood was arrested.

From here:

The Brotherhood’s spiritual guide, Mohammed Badie, was arrested in an apartment in the Cairo district of Nasr City, close to the site of a sit-in encampment [a better euphemism would be holiday torture resort] that was forcibly cleared by security forces last week, triggering violence that killed hundreds of people.

Badie’s arrest is the latest move in an escalating crackdown by authorities on the Brotherhood, which has seen hundreds of its members taken into custody.

Smoke forces reporters out of White House

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From here:

Reporters and photographers were evacuated from the West Wing of the White House early Saturday because of smoke from a faulty piece of equipment.

Reporters would not normally flee at the sight of smoke emanating from the White House, but this was different: the smoke was not accompanied by mirrors.

R.I.P. Margaret Thatcher

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I left the UK in the dark days of Harold Wilson’s tenure as Prime Minister: the era when the country was run – more accurately ruined – by trade unions. During my early years in Canada, it was with considerable relish that I followed Thatcher’s battle with the thuggish UK unions.

As Mark Steyn notes:

That’s to say, she understood that the biggest threat to any viable future for Britain was a unionized public sector that had awarded itself a lifestyle it wasn’t willing to earn. So she picked a fight with it, and made sure she won. In the pre-Thatcher era, union leaders were household names, mainly because they were responsible for everything your household lacked. Britain’s system of government was summed up in the unlovely phrase “beer and sandwiches at Number Ten” — which meant union grandees showing up at Downing Street to discuss what it would take to persuade them not to go on strike, and being plied with the aforementioned refreshments by a prime minister reduced to the proprietor of a seedy pub, with the Cabinet as his barmaids.

Living through the Harold Wilson years provided me more than sufficient empirical evidence that Socialism doesn’t work. It is a lazy form of Communism, lacking Communism’s demonic fervour but immersed in the same blinkered utopianism: Communism for dilettantes. Ironically, in Canada, socialism is now the official religion of the Anglican Church; it is enthusiastically embraced by witless Anglican clergy willing to try anything to avoid the embarrassment of reciting Creeds in which they no longer believe.

As expected, the left, ever caring, tolerant and inclusive, is indulging in an orgy of rejoicing:

MP George Galloway led the way with a crass tweet…. ‘Tramp the dirt down.’…… ‘May she burn in the hellfires.’….

Colchester Labour councillor Tina Bourne posted a photo of a bottle of Bollinger on Twitter with the accompanying message: ‘Chin chin everyone.’…..

A Facebook campaign has been launched to take Judy Garland song ‘Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead’ to number one following Margaret Thatcher’s death.

Bad News about Fidel Castro

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He is alive and very well according to this:

Former Venezuelan Vice President Elias Jaua said Sunday that he met with aging revolutionary icon Fidel Castro for five hours and showed The Associated Press photos of the encounter, quashing persistent rumors that the former Cuban leader was on his deathbed or had suffered a massive stroke.

[….]

Son Alex Castro told a reporter for a weekly Cuban newspaper that his father “is well, going about his daily life.”

Son of fuddle duddle

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Justin Trudeau, peering down from the lofty heights of inherited privilege, cries “begone” to the envy and mistrust that has infested Canadian politics for the last – well, since his father invoked the war measures act in October 1970, suspended civil liberties and set tanks on the lawn of the parliament buildings.

Still, as Trudeau the younger notes, “our greatest strength is above ground” and his father is below it, so he is ready “to build a better life, a better Canada.”

A poll suggests that, with Trudeau at the helm, the liberals would win the next election. Jaundiced as I am about the tastes of Canada’s voting public, I still can’t fathom why someone whose grasp of a reasoned argument in defence of the Kyoto Protocol extends only so far as calling the Environment Minister a “piece of shit”, would end up as prime minister.

But, then, people voted for Trudeau senior and junior is merely following in Pop’s footsteps.

From here:

Justin Trudeau is off and running to lead the federal Liberals, determined to breathe new life into a party he says has lost touch with middle-class Canadians — and confront those critics who say he’s just a pretty face with a famous last name.

Hundreds of supporters in his riding of Papineau cheered as the 40-year-old Montreal MP confirmed his leadership ambitions, easily among the worst-kept political secrets in Canada.

“I am running because I believe this country wants and needs new leadership, a vision for Canada’s future grounded not in the politics of envy or mistrust,” Trudeau told a crowd peppered with Liberal party luminaries.

“One that understands, despite all the blessings beneath our feet, that our greatest strength is above ground, in our people. All Canadians, pulling together, determined to build a better life, a better Canada.”

Love and tolerance from the left

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T-shirts looking forward to celebrating Margaret Thatcher’s death are “proving very popular with trade unionists” at the annual Trades Union Congress.

Nothing like longing for your enemy’s death to usher in an era of utopian egalitarian harmony.

From here:

T-shirts celebrating the eventual death of Margaret Thatcher – on sale at the TUC conference – have been condemned.

Tory MPs called the garments “beyond the pale” and “sickening”. TUC general secretary Brendan Barber called them “tasteless and inappropriate”.

The T-shirts were proving “very popular” with trade unionists, stall holder Colin Hampton said.

Baroness Thatcher, 86, has been in declining health in recent years and has withdrawn from public life.

 

Muslims swell the ranks of the Democratic National Convention

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As the article below notes, God was not mentioned at the DNC this year; at the next convention I expect Allah will be invoked instead.

It seems that Muslims may have stayed away from the Republican National Convention because of its anti-Sharia position. The Muslim perception of the Democratic Party must, presumably, be that it is not anti-Sharia; perhaps it is even pro-Sharia.

Welcome to Hope and Change 2012: polygamy; prohibition; criminalisation of homosexuality; dhimmitude; the death penalty for apostates and rape victims – and no bacon sarnies.

From here:

The word “God” may have been absent at the Democratic National Convention, but there were record numbers of Muslim delegates present at the Charlotte, N.C., meeting.

According to a news release from the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the convention hosted more than 100 Muslim delegates from 20 states—up from 43 Muslim and Arab-American delegates at the 2008 convention and 25 four years before.

“The more than doubling of Muslim delegates at this year’s Democratic National Convention is a direct result of their hard work and grassroots organizing within the Democratic Party,” said CAIR’s government affairs coordinator, Robert McCaw. “It is also a sign of the American Muslim community’s growing civic engagement and acceptance in the Democratic Party.”

McCaw noted that only a handful of Muslim delegates attended this year’s Republican National Convention (RNC), during which the RNC adopted an anti-Sharia platform plank targeting the religious practices of Muslims. CAIR has asked the party to reject this policy.

Mitt Romney does something right at last

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He has offended the Palestinian Authority. Even better, they are calling him a racist – a sure sign of that most rare spectacle: a politician not dissembling.

From here:

Mitt Romney has offended again. And again, it may be a blunt and undiplomatic reflection of what he really thinks.

He was talking to donors at a breakfast at Jerusalem’s plush and historic King David hotel. Each of them had paid at least $25,000 (£16,000) to attend.

Mr Romney was talking about what he called “the dramatically stark difference in economic vitality” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. He said that in Israel, the gross domestic product was $21,000 per capita compared to $10,000 in the Palestinian territories.

[….]

Certainly one senior aide to the Palestinian Authority’s president has condemned the remark, calling it a racist statement that did not recognise that the Palestinian economy could not reach its potential because of an Israeli occupation.