Monday Post

(insert pithy remark right here)


While Stephen Harper lauds the signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade deal, Justin Trudeau - who has never managed money- promises to put the deal to a "fulsome discussion":

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau offered to help students in search of higher education and families trying to raise healthy children Monday as he fleshed out the last remaining bits of his party’s election platform.

And he promised his government would put the newly signed Trans-Pacific Partnership to a “fulsome” discussion with parliamentarians and the public before making a decision on whether to vote for it.

“We will ratify this properly in the House of Commons after a fulsome and responsible discussion,” Trudeau said during a campaign event at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont.

I bet he will.


Also: shut up, Kathleen Wynne.



She can vote when she renounces Islamism and the woman-hating rags she wears to thumb her nose at Canada:

Zunera Ishaq could be headed to the ballot box Oct. 19 after clearing another hurdle Monday in her quest to take the oath of citizenship with her face covered.

The Federal Court of Appeal on Monday dismissed a government motion to stay a recent decision that supported the devout Muslim woman’s position until the matter could be heard before the Supreme Court of Canada.

“That’s great, one more step towards citizenship,” Ishaq said upon being informed of the news by the National Post. “I might be able now to vote in this election.”

Oh, dear:

For the first time ever, not a single oil and gas company was hiring at the Alberta Employment and Career Fair, the largest such event in the province.

Terry Kuhn went to the job fair Friday with hope it might give him the breakthrough he's been looking for to land a job.

"I wanted to broaden my search, and that's why I came here today. But it just isn't enough in my field."

Kuhn, a journeyman electrician, lost his job about a month ago. He had hoped to make contact with oil and gas companies hiring tradespeople, but times are so tough in the oilpatch that none of them were even there.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers says that 35,000 oilpatch jobs have been lost this year alone.

Kuhn said many businesses they rely on the oilpatch are also struggling, meaning jobs are few are far between.

In a normal year, job seekers can expect to see about 175 employers set up at the career fair. But this year, given the slumping Alberta economy and plunging oil prices, that number has dropped to about 100.

For some perspective:

... Notley has always been against crude oil exports. She said that again and again before her election. But she hasn’t changed one bit since her election. ...

It’s so bad, Notley just granted a bizarre concession to the Liberal premier of Quebec, giving him a de facto veto over Alberta’s pipelines. No province has the constitutional power to block another province’s exports.

Netanyahu promises swift retaliation after Palestinians attack Israelis (again):

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Monday that he will use a "strong hand" to quell violent Palestinian protests and deadly attacks, signalling that the current round of violence is bound to escalate at a time when a political solution to the conflict is increasingly distant.

(Sidebar: how is throwing firebombs a "protest"? Never mind.)

Netanyahu said he has sent thousands more soldiers and police to the West Bank and Arab neighbourhoods of Jerusalem and that "we are allowing our forces to take strong action against those who throw rocks and firebombs." He said restrictions limiting what security forces can do were being lifted, but did not elaborate.

Netanyahu's warnings came after a rash of violence that began Thursday when Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli couple in their car near a settlement in the West Bank as their four children watched. Two days later, a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli man to death and seriously wounded his wife as they walked in Jerusalem's Old City, then attacked and killed another Israeli man.

The name of the institution is CoExist House so this shouldn't really be a surprise:

Kitchens that are shared between office workers may soon be banned from storing pork products like sausage rolls over fears that they are “offensive”.

New guidelines proposed by interfaith group CoExist House say that employers should consider worker’s religions before allowing ham sandwiches placed in the fridge alongside other products.

The group also suggests that alcohol should not be served at corporate events in case it upsets members of certain faiths.

And now, some facts that will curdle the blood and quicken the beatings of the heart:

The Shelleys visited Switzerland during the “year without a summer.” The eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia had caused severe climate abnormalities and a lot of rain. Stuck inside, the group read ghost stories from the book Fantasmagoriana. It was then that Lord Byron proposed that they have a competition to see who could come up with the best ghost story: Byron, Mary, Percy, or the physician John Polidori. 

In the end, of course, Mary won the contest. Neither Byron nor Percy finished a ghost story, although Polidori wrote The Vampyre, which later influenced Bram Stoker while writing Dracula. ...

At first, Mary had writer’s block, unable to come up with a good idea for a ghost story. Then she had a waking dream—“I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think,” she said. In the introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein (PDF), she described the vision as follows:

“I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life. … He sleeps; but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold, the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes.”

Mary opened her eyes and realized she’d found her story. “What terrified me will terrify others,” she thought. She began working on it the next day.