Ron's News

[A daily pastiche of Trumpisms and responses thereto. *RON*]


Sarah Palin touted as US ambassador to Canada? You betcha!, The Guardian
The High-Concept Presidency, Moyers & Company
Air Force chief: Military must remain apolitical, uphold its values, Air Force Times ["you like me and I like you"]
Trump just lost a standoff with China and now it knows it has the upper hand, The Star [Master of the Deal backs off without a whimper]
Democrats call for Michael Flynn's dismissal after reported Russia talks, The Guardian
Three signals that Donald Trump isn’t going to renegotiate NAFTA, Quartz

Click here to view the original article.
[Click here to sign the petition! *RON*]
PressProgress, 10 February 2017


Justin Trudeau thinks no one cares about electoral reform?

He might want to speak with a hundred thousand Canadians who are telling him otherwise.

An official House of Commons petition demanding Prime Minister Trudeau honour his campaign promise to reform Canada's electoral system rocketed past 100,000 signatures Friday afternoon.

The petition – which is generating so much traffic, officials say it's crashed the House of Commons website multiple times – calls on Trudeau to reverse his recent decision to break an explicit campaign promise that "the 2015 election be the last federal Canadian election under the first-past-the-post system":

Click here to view the original article.

[ELECTION 2017 BC!!! The iniquitous saga of the $50K 'stipend.' *RON*]

Dermod Travis, Huffington Post, 9 February 2017

"When did our moral standards become so complicated?"

It was a question left hanging in a recent email to me from Linda Kayfish, the sister of Roderick MacIssac. MacIssac was one of eight health ministry workers fired in 2012. He later took his own life, as a result of that firing.

To this day the government hasn't come clean on what led to the firings or who made the call.

While the question was more rhetorical in nature over the government's intransigence, it could just as easily pertain to any number of political issues in the province. A fact that hit home after reading a recent column by the Georgia Straight's Charlie Smith entitled: "Has the time come for B.C. premiers to disclose their tax returns?"

Let that sink in for a moment.

Click here to view the original article.

["The Star watched as three groups of people walked across the border into Quebec. Despite RCMP officers warning they would be arrested all very willingly allowed themselves to be taken away." *RON*]

Allan Woods, Toronto Star, 10 February 2017


A man is arrested by the RCMP on February 10, 2017 after crossing illegally into Canada from the United States along a hole in the border in the town of Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, QC. He would not say where he was from.(ALLAN WOODS/TORONTO STAR)
SAINT-BERNARD-DE-LACOLLE, QUE.—For a family of asylum seekers from Sudan, the path into Canada on Friday morning was a long, windswept road 60 kilometres south of Montreal.

It led past warning signs that the territory of the United States was ending. The hope of a new country lay ahead.

Click here to view the original article.
[ELECTION 2017 BC!!! "Where it’s now clear that Donald Trump-style tactics of 'alternative facts' and flat-out falsehoods have arrived." *RON*]
Mike Smyth, The Province, 11 February 2017

Premier forced into rare apology after falsely accusing NDP of illegally accessing B.C. Liberal website

There’s an old saying in politics: When you’re in a hole, stop digging.

Click here to view the original article.

[ELECTION BC 2017!! "B.C. has become a Wild West of political donations. Critics worry it’s slowly eroding public confidence." Slowly? *RON*]

Nancy Macdonald, Maclean's, 11 February 2017

Last year, the British Columbia Liberal Party raised more money than any ruling party in any other province in the country. It pulled in 13 times more than the Quebec Liberal Party, six times more than the Alberta NDP, twice what the Liberals did in Ontario. That’s a province with three times B.C.’s population, an economy triple the size, and a head-office count quadruple that of the Western province. And all this was before Ontario brought in sweeping reforms ending corporate and union donations, dropping the ceiling on annual individual donations and banning cash-for-access fundraisers.