Czech election: Milos Zeman, pro-Russia incumbent, wins second term

Great news!

The Czech Republic’s pro-Russia president won a second five-year term Saturday after beating a political newcomer viewed as more Western-oriented in a runoff vote. With ballots from almost 99 percent of polling stations counted, the Czech Statistics Office said President Milos Zeman had received 51.6 percent of the vote during the two-day runoff election. His opponent, former Czech Academy of Sciences head Jiri Drahos, had 48.4 percent.

Drahos conceded defeat and congratulated Zeman on Saturday afternoon. The career scientist and chemistry professor said he planned to stay in politics, but did not provide details.

“It’s not over,” Drahos said.

Zeman, 73, a veteran of Czech politics and former left-wing prime minister, won his first term in 2013 during the Czech Republic’s first presidential election decided by voters, not lawmakers. Since then, he has divided the nation with his pro-Russia stance, support for closer ties with China, and strong anti-migrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric.

Zeman was one of the few European leaders to endorse Donald Trump’s bid for the White House. He also has proposed a referendum on the Czech Republic’s membership in the European Union like the one held in Britain.

[…]

One of the Czech president’s key responsibilities is picking the prime minister after a general election, power that was on display in the days before the runoff election.

The government led by populist billionaire Andrej Babis since his party placed first in an October election resigned Wednesday after failing to win a confidence vote. Zeman immediately asked Babis, his ally, to try again.

The president had said that even if he lost the election, he would swear Babis in again as prime minister before his term expired on March 8. The president also appoints members of the Central Bank board and selects Constitutional Court judges with the approval of Parliament’s upper house.

Otherwise, the president has little direct executive power since the country is run by a government chosen and led by the prime minister.

Zeman is considered a leading pro-Russian voice in EU politics. His views on the conflict in eastern Ukraine, as well as Europe’s migrant crisis, diverge sharply from the European mainstream. He called Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula irreversible.

He has linked extremist attacks in Europe to the ongoing influx of newcomers, called the immigration wave an “organized invasion” and repeatedly said that Islam is not compatible with European culture.

Heroic!

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He fenced the nations

“God didn’t create borders.”

-Vicente Fox

“And I will set your BORDER from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates, for I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you.”

-Exodus 23:31

— Educating Liberals (@Education4Libs) January 27, 2018

 

Amazon’s Alexa Will No Longer Tolerate ‘Sexist Abuse’; People Outraged as Google Home Identifies Buddha, Muhammad and Satan but Not Jesus Christ

A pair of stories about these stupid voice-activated home devices, and their SJW converged programming:

First, about Alexa:

When people buy a product, they probably don’t want it to police their behavior. Unless it’s bought for that specific purpose, they want the product to work with them, not against them. This isn’t rocket science.

However, Amazon’s Alexa software has now changed its response to a certain stimulus — namely, calling it sexist names — from “thanks for the feedback” to “I’m not going to respond to that.” Further, the device will also respond to the question of whether it’s a feminist with: “I am a feminist. As is anyone who believes in bridging the inequality between men and women in society.”

Second, about Google Home:

Smart Audio technology, such as Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa, has quickly become the dominant go-to source of information for this generation but some consumers are now speaking out about the fact that Google Home devices refuse to share information on Jesus Christ.

Google Home is a new self-proclaimed “powerful” speaker and voice assistant. The device can play your music, call your friends, and answer almost any question that can be found on the web. However, when asked who is Jesus, Jesus Christ or God the smart speaker says it does not know the answer.

“Sorry, I’m not sure how to help” or “My apologies I don’t understand,” Google Home responds.

What has some people up in arms is that if you ask the device who other religious figures are such as Muhammad, Buddha and even Satan the device gives a full breakdown on what it has found on the web.

Hey, you get what you pay for.

Do you need these stupid damned expensive toys?

Of course not.

I’m doing fine without them, thank you.

So should you, if you don’t want to put money in our enemies’ pockets.

 

Why modern day opioids haven’t inspired much ‘art’

Every artist is a cannibal,

Every poet is a thief,

All kill their inspiration

and sing about the grief

– U2

Ben Sixsmith has an interesting essay at The American Conservative, noting the relationship between drug abuse and artistic inspiration in the past, and finding not much of such happening with opioids today:

one of the interesting things about the opioid crisis is how little it has influenced Western culture. Where are the films and books about opioid misuse? One has the feeling that it is not quite romantic enough to have tempted the imaginations of modern artists. LSD encouraged optimistic idealism, and heroin had a kind of outlaw glamor. Opioids ease pain rather than spreading love and peace, and are more associated with dropouts and disabled people than dissidents and dreamers.

[…]

It is in music that opioids have been most influential, even if there have still been fewer aesthetically enticing acts than in previous drug-fueled generations. From the Beatles to the Happy Mondays, bands produced joyous and dreamy music under the effects of psychoactive drugs. Punk and grunge were darker—associated with the grim rituals and consequences of heroin addiction—but they had a furious anti-establishment ethic. Opioids have inspired music that is dumb, anxious, and miserable.

I suspect that while indeed those most affected – poor rural folk – are less likely than middle and upper class folks to go into the arts, I think the method of delivery of modern day opioids is a factor in terms of the lack of glamour surrounding them.

I mean, they’re either pills or patches. Thus, none of the dangerous glamour associated with ruining one’s nasal passages by snorting a powder up one’s nose, or damaging one’s skin and blood vessels through sticking needles in; none of the dark romance of such substances; nor the visual impact of burning something and observing smoke in a dimly lit room, etc.

Nope; just plain old pills that one swallows like vitamins, or a patch that delivers the drug in an invisible, slow fashion, untasted, unsmelled.

Surely, the fact that modern day opioids just tend to numb, combined with their boring delivery methods, makes them absolutely uninspiring to write good songs / poetry about, for the most part; nor do they inspire reflectivity…

Of course, products of our educational system today may just not be quite as capable of creative self-expression as those of yesteryear…

 

And the Nova Scotia Tory leader, too

Just hours before Ontario Tory leader Patrick Brown’s resignation, came that of the Nova Scotia Tory leader:

Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative Leader Jamie Baillie was forced to resign Wednesday after an investigation found he acted inappropriately and breached the legislature’s policy on workplace harassment.

Party president Tara Miller said the Tories launched an independent, third-party probe into Baillie’s behaviour after a sexual harassment claim was brought to the party’s attention late last month.

“As soon as we became aware of those allegations we took immediate steps to address them,” she told reporters at Province House in Halifax. “The PC party of Nova Scotia does not and will not tolerate sexual harassment in the workplace.”

Miller said she is only aware of one individual who has come forward with allegations, but she would not say whether the allegations result from one incident or multiple incidents over time.

“In order to respect the confidentiality and privacy of the individual involved, we’re not going to be sharing any more details than what we’ve already disclosed,” she said.

One individual, and no details to share with the press…

Guess we’re just supposed to take their word for it, eh?

I don’t know much about the current state of Nova Scotia politics, but funny how two Canadian provincial Progressive Conservative leaders end up toppled within hours of each other, eh? Must just be a coincidence, of course; it couldn’t have been planned or anything…

 

Anti-Brown accusations timing way too convenient

Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leader Patrick Brown has announced his resignation in the wake of allegations of sexual misconduct brought forward in the press yesterday which he denies, but which he feels compromise his ability to lead the party into the upcoming election.

These allegations have arisen at a time when, despite being a leader known for flip-flopping on various social and political issues, and for ethnic pandering (he spent most of December in India, touring holy sites and documenting it all for Twitter), he had nevertheless taken a lead in the polls, not so much because he’s any good but because Premier Wynne is so massively unpopular.

How convenient.

I call shenanigans.

Obvious bullshit is obvious.

#FAKENEWS

Look, Patrick Brown is one of those political uber-nerd bachelors, an asexual type, for whom politics is everything, like Jason Kenney in Alberta, or that Evan McMullin in Utah. Possibly gay; possibly just more interested in politics and too busy with it for any kind of relationship with a woman.

Alas, they picked the perfect mark, a man so gutless he won’t stay on and fight.

And how does federal Cuckservative leader / gutless quisling Andrew Scheer respond to these allegations?

The same way he did with the hijab hoax: by following the Narrative party line:

Conservative Party Leader @AndrewScheer issues statement in wake of sexual misconduct allegations levelled against Ontario PC Leader Patrick Brown #cdnpoli #onpoli pic.twitter.com/skc5tqGEnb

— Michel Boyer (@BoyerMichel) January 25, 2018

Pathetic.

There’s a reason I haven’t voted federally since 2000, and not much provincially, either.

Anyway, I suppose the silver lining in this is that Ontario’s Tories have the opportunity to pick a better leader.

But they’re unlikely to; they haven’t had a winning one since Mike Harris, nor a good one since Bill Davis.

 

“Gender-based snow removal”

We need more women in govt which needs to become more feminist.
So we are told.
What does feminism in govt lead to?
Sweden.
Sweden is a country being conquered by Muslim rape gangs.
Sweden's female leaders are more interested, however, in the issue of "gender-based" snow removal pic.twitter.com/L2699tzV5x

— Kevin Michael Grace🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇮🇪🇫🇷🇳🇴 (@KMGVictoria) January 25, 2018