NEW YORK – The 2024 Democratic National Convention – the DNC – is over.

The red, white and blue balloons have dropped. The speeches have been spoken. The 4,700 Democrat delegates are heading home, or home already.

So what was accomplished? What wasn’t? What is still to be done?

Here’s ten observations from an (admittedly) biased perspective – a Canuck who has volunteered for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and (now) Kamala Harris.

1. It ain’t over. One thread ran through the speeches of Harris, Barack Obama and even Oprah Winfrey: independents. Over and over, the Democratic luminaries stressed the critical importance of that middle swath of American voters – the ones Harris needs to win. The media polls notwithstanding, the earnest appeals for independent support strongly suggest that the Democrats haven’t won the election, yet.

2. Harris is a good speaker. But she ain’t Barack Obama, or even Michelle Obama.  Her Thursday night address was only 38 minutes long – the twelfth-shortest in modern history. Content-wise, it was a pretty safe speech, with the traditional Democratic Party themes. But it broke no new ground. Harris isn’t a bad speaker – but nor is she Winston Churchill. Hope she’s better in the debate.

3. The DNC had one theme, however, that wasn’t traditional – it was positively radical, for them: freedom. For a generation, conservatives have made “freedom” their own: freedom to buy lots of guns, freedom to drive big cars, the freedom to say and do what you want. They owned it. The Dems have now flipped the script. Because Donald Trump is an aspiring autocrat, the Democrats are preaching a different kind of freedom – freedom of reproductive choice, freedom to love who you want to love, freedom to vote how you want to vote (and have it respected). It’s freedom with a twist.

4. Notice something missing? Unlike in 2008, when Barack Obama needed to address his skin color – or in 2016, when Hillary Clinton needed to address her gender – Kamala Harris did not say anything, not a word, about hers. Polls have shown that Americans don’t really consider those to be a big deal, so Harris smartly decided to follow their lead. Her gender and her racial identity make her truly extraordinary, but – for now, she’s keeping all of that on the down low. Voters don’t want those things to be the center of her campaign, and she agrees.

5. Tim Walz was an inspired pick.  With a Left Coast woman of color at the top of the ticket, the Democrats had no choice: they had to find a regular white guy from the middle of America. They needed the Doug Fordiest Ralph Klein of all Jean Chretiens, and that’s exactly what they got. Walz is remarkably unremarkable and it works. Big time.

[To read more, subscribe here.]

Comments (2)

Every successful politician has a secret power.

Jean Chretien was a brilliant strategist and tactician. But he’d hide it behind the sports pages, and let his cocky opponents underestimate him. At their peril.

Bill Clinton was a Rhodes scholar and possessed of a razor-sharp mind. But he loved a Big Mac, and talked like normal people talk.

Barack Obama wasn’t a populist like Chretien or Clinton. But, with stirring oratory, he had an unerring sense of where the people were at, and how to lead them to where they needed to be.

At long last, I’ve figured out Kamala Harris’s secret power.

Harris is running against Donald Trump, a bad man. Trump has been found to be a rapist by a court, convicted of 34 felonies by another court, and is considered a racist in the court of public opinion.

Because he has no policies, because he doesn’t have any interests beyond his own, Trump always has had just one strategy: personal attacks.

If he’s good at anything – and he isn’t good at anything that is good – it’s that: running people down. Calling them names. Denigrating them. Lying about them.

So, he is using his favorite strategy on the Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris.

His press conferences are about one-half recitation of personal grievances and gripes, and depicting himself as a victim. The other half is about attacking Kamala Harris.

So, just in recent days, he has said that he is better looking than her, despite the fact that he looks like an octogenarian orangutan jammed into a Fifth Avenue suit.

[To read more, subscribe here]

 

Comments (3)

Proud to have worked for Hillary and Joe. Last night reminded me of that.

Will be working for this woman next week. Proud to do so.

Comments (12)

Comments (12)

Samidoun: Canadian federal corporation 1279374-1.

Status: active, since March 3, 2021. Three directors: Charlotte Lynne Kates, Vancouver. Dave Diewert, also of Vancouver, and Thomas Gerhard Hofland, of the Netherlands.

Annual filings in 2022, 2023 and 2024, done. Last annual meeting: 2023.

Most federally-registered non-profit corporations, like Samidoun, don’t pay taxes. That’s a big benefit. Often they don’t pay HST on goods or services, either. Other benefits: being able to receive “gifts” from charities.

Now, being a non-profit like Samidoun isn’t exactly the same thing as being a charity. A charity has to stick to their charitable purposes — although, as the Sun has reported, some pro-Palestinian charities have been allowed to operate despite funding or possible links to extremism or terror, which is against the rules. But a non-profit? A non-profit can do pretty much whatever it wants to do.

Which Samidoun — full name: the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network — does. Their record is clear, and has included advocating for the listed terrorist entity Hamas, and the Trudeau government lets them do it.

For example: just this week, the aforementioned Kates — who happens to be a non-Canadian — popped off to Iran to receive, wait for it, a human rights award from Iran, the country that is considered to have the worst human rights record in the world, second only to Yemen.

There Charlotte was, her crewcut covered with a modest scarf — she was in Iran, after all, where women get tortured and killed for not doing so — beaming as she was lauded by the monsters present.

Other winners of the Eighth Annual Islamic Human Rights Award included Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ “political bureau” until Israel sent him off to meet his 72 virgins last month. Also: Hossein Amir Abdollahian, the Iranian foreign affairs minister who was killed in a helicopter crash in May, and is assumedly now swapping virgins with Hanieyh in the Ninth Circle of Hell. Also honoured: Mohammed Reza Zahedi, a top officer in the banned Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Israel sent him virgin-hunting back in April.

Now, for Charlotte Kates to honored with the likes of Haniyeh, Abdollahian and Zahedi is a big, big deal in Iran. Those dead terrorists are revered in terrorist-loving Iran. Does that mean our Samidoun gal supports terror, too?

To answer that, let’s look at some of Charlotte’s bon mots, shall we? These are quotes from Charlotte on just one day in April, on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

• “Long live October Seventh! Long live October Seventh!”

• “We stand with the brave Palestinian resistance, and their heroic and brave action on October Seventh.”

• “The beautiful, brave and heroic resistance of the Palestinian people (Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine).”

[To read more, subscribe here.]

Comments (2)

In Trudeau’s Canada, some charities seem to be more equal than others.

That’s the only conclusion that can be drawn from the shocking notices posted this week on the Canada Gazette, which is where Ottawa publishes all of its official bulletins. Whenever a regulation, treaty, proclamation or the like is passed by the government – usually the cabinet – it gets published on the Canada Gazette.

And, this week, the Trudeau Liberal government published notices revoking the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and the Ne’eman Foundation.

The JNF has branches in the United States and the United Kingdom, and has been active in Canada for 123 years. Among other things, it plants trees in Israel, builds infrastructure like dams and reservoirs, and creates parks. Its Canadian chapter helped build a 1,700 acre park in Israel, for instance, one that is used by Jews and non-Jews alike. As parks are.

The Ne’eman Foundation, meanwhile, is focused on reducing and eliminating poverty, helping firefighters and paramedics, and funding educational and health initiatives – particularly accident victims and cancer patients.

And, this week, the Trudeau government essentially posted death notices for both charities in Canada, without any explanation. On the Canada Gazette, Sharmila Khare, head of the “charities directorate” wrote that “notice is hereby given” that the JNF and Ne’eman Foundation were getting their charitable status revoked for violating obscure sections of the Income Tax Act, which governs charities in Canada.

[To read more, subscribe here]

Comments (0)

Comments (9)

Ottawa wants to take away the charity status of the 100-year-old Jewish National Fund of Canada for allegedly breaking the rules – but the Trudeau Liberals aren’t doing likewise with a host of pro-Palestinian charities, some with questionable links.

Because some Canadian pro-Palestine charities have been funding – or have possible links to – Palestinian extremist or terror groups, the Sun has learned. And, in some cases, they’re doing so right out in the open.

The four charities are Canadian Palestinian Foundation, Hands For Charity, International Development and Relief Foundation (IDRF) and Medical Aid for Palestine.

All have been accepted as legitimate charities by Ottawa. All have the ability to provide tax receipts for donations, which together add up to millions. And all have been sending large amounts to Gaza and the West Bank, for years.

The revelations are found in the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) filings made by the charities themselves. The filings show links or possible links with entities in the Middle East that have long been associated with terror.

This newspaper obtained the information through searches of CRA charity databases, their T3010 filings, corporation searches and evidence found openly on social media.

[To read more, subscribe here.]

Comments (1)