The Lasso of Truth

This is why I'm not a Catholic

Because according to them, this man would be eligible for forgiveness and redemption...

A former Catholic bishop from Nova Scotia faces child pornography charges after being stopped by authorities at the Ottawa Airport last week.

News of the charges broke just days after Raymond Lahey, 69, stepped down as bishop of the Diocese of Antigonish, citing time needed for personal renewal.

Not in my book, and not under any God I'd want to follow.

Cops doing the job the "justice system" won't do

Trying, at least, to keep the public safe...

A sex offender with a long history of violence -- punctuated by several heinous attacks -- has been released from prison and is living in Calgary.

Dean Robert Zimmerman, who in 2006 pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting his friend's girlfriend over a nine-hour period, including with a toilet plunger, will be monitored by the Calgary Police Service's high risk offender program for the next two years.

[..]

Police said in a news release they issued the information after "careful deliberation . . . in the belief that it is clearly in the public interest to inform the members of the community of Zimmerman's release."

In 2005, it was learned that Zimmerman was twice given statutory release despite being seen by the parole board as a high risk to reoffend.

While on statutory release, he abducted and assaulted his friend's 24-year-old girlfriend with a toilet plunger, and also tied her up using power cords and shoe laces.

Say hello to your lovely new neighbour, courtesy of the tough-as-bunny-rabbits Canadian justice system.

Just another "social construct" to be challenged by the Thespians

Let me register my surprise that Woody Allen is in support of a man having sex with little girls...

More than 100 film industry figures have now signed a petition calling for the release of Polanski, the acclaimed director of Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby and The Pianist.

They include leading Hollywood figures Martin Scorcese, Woody Allen, David Lynch, Wim Wenders, Pedro Almodovar, Tilda Swinton and Monica Bellucci.

I think it's safe to assume Jerry Lee Lewis would approve, too.  And Josef Fritzl.

Rewriting family law

Or at least, putting an Islamic flavor to it...

Within the case, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice was also faced with the issue of whether the Court is willing to enforce a traditional marriage contract under Muslim law, known as maher. Basically, this entitles the wife to a sum of money [$20,000.00 in this case] that is given to her upon marital breakdown as agreed by contract. Contracts for maher are seen as being intrinsic to Muslim law as the money given to the woman is part of the husband’s moral obligation. It is important to note that the maher is an agreement paid to the spouse in addition to and without prejudice to the husband’s obligations under the Ontario Family Law Act. Both parties did not obtain independent legal advice and neither party provided financial disclosure. At the culmination of the martial ceremony, neither spouse retained a copy of the marriage contract. However, given that setting aside a marriage contract is a discretionary power of the Court, the Court in this case found that given the nature of the terms were simple and the husband understood his obligation, the Court upheld the marriage contract.

Too good not to share

Via Rossputin

Return of the Pinup!

Most of my summer was spent neglecting the weekly pinup, much (I'm sure) to the consternation of some of my most loyal readers.  But now that the wedding is done with and kids are back in school, I'm out of lame excuses and well overdue to class the place up again!

~ A city abandoned in the wake of disaster, reclaimed by nature.  Very "I Am Legend", without the creepy vampires.

~ Seen on this page before, Japan's Love Hotels, complete with creepy Hello Kitty theme options, etc.

~ Does the world love the U.S. any more with Obama as President?  "I’m sure they do - except in places it really, really, really matters like Moscow, Tehran, Damascus, Beijing, and Caracas..."  Rick also points out that love - or in this case, mindless celebrity worship - is not the same as respect.

~ My blog crush, Jay Tea, wades into a dust up that to this point, I had not found a good way to articulate my feelings on.  I hate to pull a "what he said", but, well...posts at LGF havereally started to remind me of that scene in Body Snatchers when the zombified stare and point and cry out "not one of us!" 

~ On a semi-related subject, could sock-puppeting get you thrown in jail now?  Maybe in Texas.

1,784 billion, trillion dollars?!?

Who knew there was such a number?  And how would you cash a check like that, anyway?

What would you pay for a good night's sleep?

We have a Sleep Number bed, and I love it.  Mostly because Mikey is a super-human and I was suffering crippling back pains due to the challenges of having to share what felt like a concrete slab style mattress with him.  This way, at least when he wants to jack his side up to the "medieval-torture-device" setting, I can sink into "soft, fluffy cloud" and drift away...

Anyway.  It wasn't cheap, this bed.  Less than my previous ultra-motionless water mattress, but more expensive than any other traditional mattress.  But even though I cracked a couple of K on this one less than 2 years ago, it's mighty tempting to throw it all away and start from scratch on Cool Sleep...

This bed tech is actually supposed to regulate the heat of the bed, keeping someone who's hot cooler but without robbing heat from the person who's wearing socks in July.

That person...the one with socks on in July, not to mention the down duvet and ultra-fleece blanket and flannel nighty, when I can get away with it...that's me.  While sometimes I suspect that Mikey would happily shovel the driveway, in -20 degree weather, with nothing but his sweet smile and his boots on, and still complain about the heat!

Maybe what I really need is more body hair ;)

Oh, happy day!

Soaring debt...

Crippling strike action...

An approval rating headed toward single digits...

His work here is done.

But who let him speak, anyway?

It's nice to see my country grow a pair, for a change...

Diplomats from Canada, the United States and many other countries walked out of United Nations General Assembly Wednesday to protest a blistering speech by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that included scathing verbal attacks on Israel and the West.

"There is no way I am going to permit any official of the government of Canada to be present and give any legitimacy to remarks by a leader like that," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said earlier in Oakville, Ont.

[..]

He said Canada believes Ahmadinejad's abuse of human rights, detention of innocent people and "disgraceful, insulting" declarations about Israel and the Holocaust should be protested.

"President Ahmadinejad has said things, particularly about the state of Israel, the Jewish people and the Holocaust, that are absolutely repugnant," Harper said.

"It is unfitting that somebody like that would be giving those kinds of remarks before the United Nations General Assembly. . . .

"There are times when things are being said in this world that it is important that countries that have a moral compass stand up, make their views known and our absence there will speak volumes about how Canada feels about the declarations of President Ahmadinejad."

If the world were run by women...

Guilt would be a traded commodity and war would be mostly psychological.

***

My first husband spent most of our time together insulting and beating me.  So it was a general relief whenever he bothered to leave the house for one of his many affairs.  Blessedly, this became a more frequent occurrence as time wore on.

On the few times when I roused the short-term courage to leave him, I often ended up in the local women's shelter.  A depressing place of dysfunction and activist feminism.  Six times I went there.  Each time I was cajoled into feelings of victimhood, disguised as empowerment.  Each "workshop" or counseling session steeped in a man-hatred and sense of helplessness so profound as to make any woman feel with utter certainty that all men are brutalizers waiting to reveal themselves.

But not all men are like that.  In fact, my experience has been that the more manipulative, abusive, entitled and destructive gender tends to be female.

And I too, attribute this backward step in family relations to the feminist movement...

Thirty years later, when feminism exploded onto the scene, I was often mistaken for a supporter of the movement. But I have never been a feminist, because, having experienced my mother's violence, I always knew that women can be as vicious and irresponsible as men.

Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the movement, which proclaimed that all men are potential rapists and batterers, was based on a lie that, if allowed to flourish, would result in the complete destruction of family life.

[..]

it was my mother's more emotional, verbal form of abuse that scarred me most deeply.

She indulged in a particular kind of soul murder - and it was her cruelty that, even 60 years on, still reduces me to tears and leaves me convinced that feminism is a cynical, misguided ploy.

[..]

Feminism, I realised, was a lie. Women and men are both capable of extraordinary cruelty. Indeed, the only thing a child really needs - two biological parents under one roof - was being undermined by the very ideology which claimed to speak up for women's rights.

This country is now on the brink of serious moral collapse. We must stop demonising men and start healing the rift that feminism has created between men and women.

I have seen some wonderful, loving, supportive men fall victim to manipulative and cruel women, focused on self-gratification and revenge -- often at the expense of their own children.  I have seen mothers do the most unthinkably cruel and thoughtless things to humiliate and degrade their husbands, and treat it as something of a right of passage for women.  Coffee groups and "play dates" are full of this kind of behavior.

This is the main reason I have very few female friends.  Most women I know spend "girls' night" bitching about how useless and infirm their husbands are, without giving a thought to how they would feel if they discovered their husbands doing the same thing on "buddies night".  The entire prime time sitcom industry is based on the "stupid dad vs. tolerant, condescending mom" formula.

It's disgraceful.  And totally accepted in far too many circles.

A word or two of advice, for the women who wallow in this role:

- If you are with a genuine asshole who cheats on you or treats you badly, leave him and never go back.  Better yet, don't marry him in the first place!

- If you are with a useless loaf who you honestly feel never does anything right, leave him...or shut the hell up.  Or how about you just figure out how to do it yer damned self?!

- If you are with a nice guy, who is decent and loving, forget everything you heard in feminist indoctrination class and just appreciate him.  Don't bitch about him to your friends.  It's not classy.

Mikey and I fight...and sometimes it is really angry.  But we try very hard to never call names.  And no matter how angry or annoyed I get, no one...not a single soul on the planet...has ever heard me criticize or demean him.  I believe he does the same for me and it should always be this way.

Mothers, teach your daughters.

The Age of Stupid, indeed

Too much time on their hands, obviously...

Last November, New Yorkers were greeted one morning with a Fake New York Times, produced by pinkos. Today the same people—The Yes Men—have dropped a Fake New York Post on the city.

[..]

It's keyed to promote The Age of Stupid, the soon-to-be-released environmental flick.

Printing off thousands of fake newspapers and handing them out for trash is a novel approach to launching an environmental initiative, I'd say.

A perfect argument for capital punishment

The details of this case still have the power to give me nightmares...

Randal's 3-foot, 10-inch body was covered with "hundreds" of bruises, cuts and welts. Only his scalp, the palms of his hands and soles of his feet were spared from the vicious beatings.

He had pneumonia. He was as emaciated as those poor children you see on World Vision appeals, weighing just 41 pounds. When he vomited from his beatings at the hands of his stepmother, he was forced to eat it.

A missing tooth was found in his stomach. His ribs and elbow had been broken, his liver lacerated, a vertebra fractured. He suffered four separate injuries to his brain, the last of which ultimately killed him Sept. 25 on the second floor of the Dooley's McCowan Rd. townhouse.

[..]

On the last night of his life, a frail and battered Randal was being beaten again by their stepmother and was trying to make his way up to the top bunk bed when he fell.

She put his unconscious brother in a bathtub filled with cold water, Tego said, and ran out when his father came in. Their dad simply shut off the light and left his sons alone in the dark bathroom.

Just 8, Tego hoisted his dying brother on his shoulders and carried him out of that ice-cold water. He stripped off his drenched pyjamas, dressed him in dry ones and tucked him into his bed.

He then lay down beside his little brother and fell asleep. In the morning, Randy was dead.

And we may have to relive them, all over again...

...on Monday, more than seven years after their conviction for second-degree murder, Randal's father, Edward (Tony) Dooley, and stepmother, Marcia, have the nerve to appeal for a new trial, arguing that Ontario Superior Court Justice Eugene Ewaschuk didn't ensure that the jury remained objective.

In a just world, these animals would have been beaten to death, in prison.  But I think Randy would agree (if he could) that this is not a just world.

Since it never leaves the news cycle

Not that I care to defend the use of taxpayer dollars for government advertising campaigns at all, but I have to say...is there a single soul who hasn't been informationed out on the H1N1 that has been looming over us in full dread mode, but has yet to show it's face?

For those who want to know just how stupid politics can get in Canada

Two days of media and government paralyzation because H1N1 pandemic preparedness kits shipped to Indian reserves included body bags...

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said yesterday the body bag shipment "sends a message – it simply says: `We expect aboriginal Canadians to die.'"

Lillian Dyck, a Liberal senator and First Nations member from Saskatchewan, was at Ignatieff's side as he lambasted the government.

"It's like someone had taken a knife and driven it into my heart," Dyck said.

"As a woman, how would you feel if you were worried about being infected with H1N1 and what you were sent was a body bag, indicating that your family was going to die?"

Because apparently, First Nations people would prefer to litter their own countryside with festering infected carcasses instead of safely containing any contagion, for the sake of survivors.

The government would do well to launch an initiative to have the Liberal caucus take charge of flu preparations for Native reserves.  Let Michael Ignatieff pack the kits himself and include whatever he thinks is culturally sensitive.  Then, when the bodies start piling up, send him in with a wheelbarrow for a photo op.

Wearing your crazy on your sleeve

Maureen Dowd hears voices...

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

Perhaps it was just the echo of her own inner condescending racist she heard.  Are we to indict people on the telepathic interpretation of stupid twits now?

Can't see the forest for the eco-weenies

Because this sounds like the perfect plan for "building a better world"...

cell biologist Leonard Ornstein of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and David Rind and Igor Aleinov of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies outline their plan to plant a forest in the Sahara Desert. They propose desalinating seawater from the desert's nearby oceans, and using aquaducts and pumps to bring it inland. The idea is to plant Eucalyptus Grandis, which survives well in heat, which would be watered using drip irrigation. The trio claim the trees would lower the Sahara's temperature by up to 8°C Celsius in some areas, bring clouds to reflect the sun's rays back into space, and capture eight billion tons of carbon each year.

Fundamentally alter the landscape for timber and it's a bad thing.  Do so for "greening" and suddenly arguing with Gaia isn't the purest form of evil.  And what could possibly go wrong, anyway..?

Aside from the $2 trillion a year price tag, the forest would also likely prevent iron-rich dust from the sands from blowing into the Atlantic Ocean, iron that nourishes marine life. And the increased moisture could bring a plague of locusts down on not just the Sahara, but the rest of Africa as well.

Isn't it glorious?

It's official!

Yesterday was the best day of my life.

Despite the many challenges leading up to the big day, the weather was perfect, the event went off without a hitch and I am now the new Mrs. Mikey.  It doesn't get any better than that.

I will have more pictures once the photog does his thing.  Until then, many thanks to all of you who tolerated my sporadic and frantic posting and still came back.  Normal posting will resume on Tuesday, after I catch my breath.  In the meantime, allow me to pat myself on the back because this beautiful sugary confection was hand made, from scratch, by me...and it was delicious!

One sunny September morning

At 8:45 am, I was sitting in my car, outside my children's school, chatting with them about our wedding tomorrow, before sending them out to the playground.

At 9:03 am, I was back home and mopping the kitchen floor, sipping my coffee and thinking about everything I need to do today.

At 9:43 am, I will be poking around the news and getting ready to go out.

By 10:05 am, I will be heading out to the grocery store and Costco, for last minute supplies.

By 10:10 am, I'll be chatting in the car with my mother and listening to Mike Stafford fend off the Truthers who will inevitably swamp the lines today.

By 10:28 am, I will be trolling through Costco, with my shopping cart and my Amex card.

...All very mundane.  All very ordinary.  And all so very much like the same day, 8 years ago, that dramatically changed my world view forever.

Listening to the call-in shows this morning, it is obvious that not enough of us learned the one valuable lesson of that day -- that diligence is the only protection we have against the very real threat at our doorstep and that if we forego that, in favor of compassionate political correctness, we will one day find ourselves enslaved or slaughtered.

How many people went about their daily routine today, without giving a single thought to any of that?  I dare say, more than is good for us.

Just giving Americans more choice

Isn't that what he said..?

The plan from Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana would make health insurance mandatory, just like auto coverage. It would provide tax credits to help cover the cost for people making up to three times the federal poverty level. That's about $66,000 for a family of four, and $32,000 for an individual.

But those who still don't sign up would face hefty fines, starting at $750 a year for individuals and $1,500 for families. The maximum penalty on individuals would be $950.

Change you'd better believe in!

h/t

There is a God

...and He is punishing me.

Firstly, I did not win this fight.  I had to change my ceremony time by 2 ^1/2 hours and phone each and every guest, to advise them of the new time...reschedule the officiant who is performing the ceremony and move the time window with the photographer.  It was all that, or risk unloading so fiercely on the woman organizing at the venue, that they canceled us outright and told us to take our business elsewhere.

As if that weren't enough, my car would not start on Thursday morning.  After getting it to the mechanic on a boost, calling off work for the day and arranging a lift home, I got the $400 bill for a new battery, transmission flush and oil change.

That was money I didn't have to spare, one week before my wedding.

That was just the primer, though.  Things went downhill from there.

Friday afternoon, in the parking lot of my office, my car would not start again.  I was, blessedly, saved by a coworker with CAA who arranged to have the damned thing towed to Canadian Tire.  That was when I discovered just how lucky I am!  Now that my car had a shiny new battery, it was now in need of a fancy new fuel pump, etc, for a whopping $1150!

2/3's of my wedding plans have already been canceled or modified to accommodate unexpected expenses that could not be put off.  This nearly put me over the edge.

I hope I can be forgiven for having the slightest suspicion that I was never meant to get married, or that the universe is playing a colossally cruel joke on me.

At this rate, I am expecting the catastrophic asteroid to hit somewhere near the northwest of the city, at some point around 10am on Saturday.  If I survive that, or whatever else the next few days have in store for me, I will be back to regular blogging and -- most certainly -- with quite a sordid tale to tell.

Wish me luck.

The next logical step in the campaign

From the people who's stupidity knows no bounds.

h/t

***Update:  The WWF issues a statement, distancing themselves from the campaign "It is our understanding that it was a concept offered by an outside advertising agency seeking our business in Brazil. The concept was summarily rejected by WWF and should never have seen the light of day."