No, Virginia, they're not the same!

You do realize, don't you, that the US of A and Canada are quite different in many ways. That's why our national holidays in July, although only three days apart, are celebrated differently. That's why President Trump's talk about Canada becoming the 51st state is just trolling the gliberals and never-Trumpers like Andy Coyne and Dave Frum. Chill, baby, chill!

Canada's liberal propagandists to get $600 million reward

First the funny stuff. Today, on its Toronto page, CTV News has a story headed "Police issue arrest warrant for suspect in violent attack on teen girl and her mother". (The suspect's name is Harry -- originally Hari -- Rajkumar. Can you say "Diversity is our strength!", boys and girls?) Here's a screen grab of the suspect description.

Evidently CTV, like the rest of the Canuck meeja, can't afford proofreaders any more. That Canadian newspapers and even TV networks are struggling is not news. Even the state-run (and taxpayer-funded!) CBC is crying stinking fish, laying off "workers" (but not execs, of course) and begging for (a) subscriptions and (b) government handouts.

The gentlemen and ladies (and those who aren't sure) of the fifth estate got their wish for (b) on Thursday when the gliberal government of Prime Minister Just In Trudeau announced, in its fall budget statement, that it would dole out C$600 million ($450 million in real money) to publishers and joournalists, to keep such organs as the Toronto Star from having to lay off more staff or even close its doors for good. Good news for the ink-stained wretches, not so good for taxpayers.

The problem is greater than a mere 600 mill added to Canada's soaring deficit. As Postmedia's Andrew Coyne points out (to his credit), in "Liberals' $600M aid package for news media will irrevocably politicize the press", it is hard not to see the massive handout as a less-than-subtle attempt to buy off what's left of the independent press, and co-opt them into the liberal/Liberal propaganda machine... as if the dominance of the CBC and the Red Star weren't bad enough.

But (I hear you ask), didn't the government say that the recipients of the pieces of silver would be determined by an "independent panel of journalists"? Oh yes... a panel chosen by the government in the same way and for the same reasons as the "independent" senators now being packed into the Red Chamber. Mr Coyne writes, "I don’t actually think the government will appoint a group of card-carrying Liberal hacks to this 'independent panel.' They won’t need to."

Indeed. Walt predicts that those appointed to the "independent" panel will be reliably "progressive" journalists of a pinkish hue, like CBC propagandists Rosemary Barton, Paul Hunter and Keith Boag, and CTV's Evan Solomon. Not appointed will be Rex Murphy, Ezra Levant, Mark Steyn and Gavin McInnes. Lifetime pct .989.

"To hell with it," mr Coyne concludes. "To hell with all of it. No newspaper publisher should have anything to do with this plan. And no journalist worthy of the name should go anywhere near that accursed panel."

Further viewing: "Trudeau gives $595M to media — but The Rebel isn't for sale", video by The Rebel's Ezra Levant. Running time 7:25.

MOR Canuck pundit blames Liberals for NAFTA talks impasse

The NAFTA renegotiation between the Excited States of America and the Dominion of Canada (yes, that's its proper title) is not going well. The Canuck Minister of Global/Foreign/External Affairs (or whatever it's called today) appeared at her country's embassy in Washington yesterday to indicate through body language if not unequivocal words that things are, errr, stalled.

Andrew Coyne, a middle-of-the-road-hugging columnist for Canada's somewhat National Post, had something to say about the NAFTA talks and who's responsible for the Mexican standoff (pun intended), in "The Trudeau Liberals fall to earth...". Here's the relevant excerpt:

And then there's the Liberals' trade agenda. In one arena after another — China, the Trans Pacific Partnership, and especially the NAFTA renegotiations — the Liberals appear to have genuinely believed they could impose their own bleeding-edge social-justice agenda on that of their negotiating partners, transforming blueprints for managing international commercial relations — difficult enough at the best of times — into sweeping progressive manifestos. Each time they were rebuffed but without apparently learning any lessons in the process.

NAFTA may yet be salvaged, but if so it will not be for any of the Liberals' doing. It's probably too strong to blame the perilous state of the talks on the failings of Liberal negotiating strategy — Donald Trump is simply not a rational actor — but it's equally hard to see how they have helped, from their intransigence on issues that ought to have been bargaining chips, like supply management, to getting visibly outhustled by the Mexicans.

Further reading:
"Trump Hits Canada Over Trade Talks: U.S. Shouldn’t Have to 'Buy' Allies with 'Bad' Deals", Breitbart News, 1/9/18.
"Payback for the Lady in Red - Trump set to stick it to Canada", WWW 28/8/18.

Footnote: Agent 3 saw video of Ms Freeland's presser on the CBC, which runs Freeland clips at every opportunity, and claims she was not wearing a bra. Walt asks, hasn't No. 3 heard of the legal maxim "De minimis non curat lex?" WTF is wrong with you, 3?!

8 ways liberals can blame themselves for electing Trump

Walt was surprised, during the late campaign for the presidensity, to find that pompous pundit Andrew Coyne, who previously masqueraded as a centrist, was a liberal in disguise. Mr Coyne is frothing at the mouth, even today, angry and incredulous that Americans could have had the temerity to disregard his (and 99% of the chattering classes') endorsement of Hellery Clinton.

I trust Mr Coyne is aghast, if not apoplectic, to read, in the very same pages as his latest rant, the excellent article by Tristin Hopper in today's National Post headed ""We'd cried wolf too many times": Eight ways liberals can blame themselves for President Trump". For those too busy to read the article, Walt reproduces here, in Letterman style, the eight-fold list.

8. Post-election protests. (You have to read the article to see how this fits in.)
7. All the damned celebrities.
6. All the political correctness talk.
5. Flawed candidate.
4. Demonizing conventional conservatives.
3. Mocking poor white people.
2. Flirting with identity politics.
1. Calling everything racist all the time.

I hope Mr Coyne and those who appear with him on CBC-TV's "At Issue" panel will have read Mr Hopper's article before next Thursday's telecast, in which they would do well to bring some salt for the large helpings of crow that should be on the menu.

Worth reading (and also from today's National Post): Rex Murphy "It wasn’t misogyny that caused Clinton’s downfall, it was all the baggage she dragged around"

UPDATED: VIDEO: Niqab ban becomes hot Canuck election issue

On Thursday night, the leaders of Canada's Big Three political parties (plus the Little Two parties -- the Bloc Québécois and the Green Party) had another in what promises to be an enervating series of debates on issues which Canuck voters may care about -- or not -- come October 19th, the date set for a general election.

This debate, conducted entirely in French and aired on the French-language media with translations on some of the English channels, was supposed to cover the everything from soup (economic issues) to nuts (Canada's so-called foreign policy). Most of the two hours was taken up with MM Harper, Mulcair and Trudeau talking over each other, repeating the same talking points viewers had heard 100 times already, with Ms May and M Duceppe getting in the occasional jab.

There was only one surprise, that being the vehemence of the five minutes spent discussing (?) the question, pushed by M Duceppe (the Bloc Head), of whether Muslim women should be forced to remove the niqab -- the head-covering and facial veil worn by the more devout of them -- before taking an oath of citizenship or receiving or giving other government services.

This may seem like a small point, but it's a hot question in Québec, and only less so in TROC (The Rest Of Canada) because the ultra-PC Canuck media refuse to acknowledge that it's a sore point with non-Muslim Canadians right across the country.

The issue came to the fore earlier this month, when the Federal Court of Appeal struck down the government's rule requiring all women to show their face at citizenship ceremonies. See "Canucks try again to ban wearing niqab at citizenship ceremonies" (WWW 19/6/15). To no-one's surprise, the court found the regulation violated Muslim women's freedom of religion, contrary to the Canadian Charter of Right and Freedoms. The ink was barely dry on the judgment before Mr Harpoon's minions announced there would be an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

And so the issue was joined in the debate, with Ms May and M Trudeau clearly pandering to the Muslim minority, Mr Mulcair doing the same rather tepidly, and MM Duceppe and Harper vying to see who could out-nigger the other, as George Wallace would have put it.

In the post-debate analysis on CBC's "At Issue" segment of the national news, Andrew Coyne, who writes good columns for the National Post, expressed surprise that the election campaign had become so fixated on something that will have zero impact on nearly every single voter, a point made during the debate itself by the Greens' Ms May.

"It’s ridiculous," he said. "It’s not an issue that is germane to the future of this country. It is a trivial issue in the grand scheme of things." That brought a withering response from one of Walt's favourite Canadian pundits, Chantal Hébert, who writes for the Toronto Star. Normally Ms Hébert is cool and unflappable, but she answered Mr. Coyne's point by telling him that it was not a trivial issue to something like 75% of Canadians outside Québec who supported the idea of a ban on the niqab, according to a recent opinion poll.

We have video of the entire "At Issue" segment (running time 15:13), including clips from the debate itself, with voice-over in English. The heated exchange between Ms Hébert and Mr. Coyne starts at 5:45 and ends at 9:50 -- about a minute less than the time spent on the issue in the debate itself.



As for the polls to which Ms. Hébert refers, Maclean's tell us that one, conducted in March by Forum Research, found that 67% of Canadians oppose the wearing of niqabs during citizenship ceremonies. An Ipsos poll found a whopping 88% support for the government’s stance. A Leger survey, commissioned by the Privy Council Office over the winter but not released until last week, tallied similar results: 82% in favour of the no-niqab policy.

The Big Three leaders will appear in another debate this evening, ostensibly on questions of foreign policy. It will be amazing if the niqab issue doesn't arise, less amazing if MM Mulcair and Trudeau, having read the numbers, find ways to alter their views to be more in line with those of their countrymen/women/persons.

Further reading:
"Niqab debate leading to wider discussion on religious, cultural accommodation": Chantal Hébert in the Toronto Star.
"The niqab: Trivial politics, or election difference-maker?": Michael Friscolanti in Maclean's.

UPDATE (30/9/15) from Ed.: We're still catching up from Walt's absence over the weekend. Turns out that the afternoon before the debate referred to above, the Harper government released a poll, kept secret until now, showing strong support for banning the niqab at citizen ceremonies. Click here to read the report on CBC News.  

Putin: "Are you talkin' to me?!"

For US Secretary of State John Kerry, it must seem like Groundhog Day all over again. Throughout 2004, when he was campaigning against Bush the Younger, he kept talking and talking and talking, but no-one listened. Now, faced with the Russian invasion of its next-door neighbour, he's still talking -- he should be arriving in Kiev right about now -- and still no-one is listening.

No-one includes Russian President Vlad "the Impaler" Putin. He's not listening to Kerry's warnings of dire (but unspecified) consequences. Nor is he paying any attention to the organ-grinder. President Hussein Obama made a statement a couple of days ago warning of dire (but unspecified) consequences. Yesterday he called Putin on the phone. What reception did he get? "Talk to the hand!"

Putin says he's on a "humanitarian mission" to protect the ethnically Russian citizens of the Ukraine -- in particular the Crimea, which coincidentally is a major Russian military base -- from the predations of the Ukeys and Crimea's terrible Tatars. It's all about peacekeeping, you see, and he "reserves the right" to use military force to keep the peace. (Does any of this sound familiar?)

Alas, Obama (and Kerry and all the other "leaders" of the West) have decided to not employ military force to make the Russians withdraw to their side of the border. Obama specifically ruled that out. So what will the USA/UK/EU do? Weellll... there could be sanctions of course, which would have "economic consequences". And there will be "diplomatic action" -- an oxymoron, surely -- such as, errr, not going to the next G8 summit, scheduled for Sochi later this year. Yeah! That will teach those Russkis a thing or two!

What it's taught them, evidently, is that they can do as they damn well please, and no-one in the USA/UK/EU is going to lift a finger -- let alone put boots on the ground -- to stop them. They have already occupied pretty much all of the Crimea and recognize a puppet government which helpfully has asked Russian troops to stay in the "country" to (of course) keep the peace. Ukrainian troops have been given an ultimatum to surrender, and are effectively prisoners in their own bases. The Russians are in control.

Today, Crimea. Tomorrow? Walt guesses tomorrow's target is the rest of the Ukraine east of the Dniepr River. The Ukrainians will be lucky if the Russians stop there, because there is no-one...no-one...with the cojones to stand up for an independent and democratic Ukraine. It's very, very sad.

Further reading: Russia enabled by West’s foreign policies of vacillation, uncertainty -- excellent commentary by Andrew Coyne in Canada's Notional Post.

Secretive, controlling, manipulative, crude, autocratic, vicious, unprincipled, untrustworthy, paranoid

Andrew Coyne is a political analyst, journalist, and member of CBC-TV's At Issue panel. He is no lover of Canadian Gliberals and Kneedippers. His politics are generally MOR, leaning perhaps to the right. One must pay attention, then, when he excoriates the Conservative government of Steve "Stephen" Harper.

This he does in "The economy is in good shape, so why is support for the Conservatives slumping?" in today's National Post. I hope Mr. Coyne and his publisher will not mind if Walt reprints a large chunk of his column -- an excellent explanation of why Harper and his party are even more reviled by Canadians than his role model, the execrable Lyin' Brian Mulroney.

Mr. Malarkey at least had a twinkle in his eye and the charm and blarney of a son of the ould sod. Harper has none of this, only the character of a self-righteous, self-satisfied bully. And that is why, unless there is a major distraction or disruption between now and 2015, the Harper-led "Nasty Party" -- Coyne's phrase -- will lose the election due in that year. (Lifetime pct .986.)

Here is Mr. Coyne's view.

If today both Mr. Harper and the party he leads are actively disliked by more than seven voters in 10, it may be because they have gone out of their way to alienate them in every conceivable way — not by their policies, or even their record, but simply by their style of governing, as over-bearing as it is under-handed, and that on a good day.

When they are not refusing to disclose what they are doing, they are giving out false information; when they allow dissenting opinions to be voiced, they smear them as unpatriotic or worse; when they open their own mouths to speak, it is to read the same moronic talking points over and over, however these may conflict with the facts, common courtesy, or their own most solemn promises.

Secretive, controlling, manipulative, crude, autocratic, vicious, unprincipled, untrustworthy, paranoid … Even by the standards of Canadian politics, it’s quite the performance. We’ve had some thuggish or dishonest governments in the past, even some corrupt ones, but never one quite so determined to arouse the public’s hostility, to so little apparent purpose. Their policy legacy may prove short-lived, but it will be hard to erase the stamp of the Nasty Party.

Perhaps, in their self-delusion, the Tories imagine this is all the fault of the Ottawa media, or the unavoidable cost of governing as Conservatives in a Liberal country. I can assure them it is not. The odium in which they are now held is well-earned, and entirely self-inflicted.