The Lasso of Truth

It's called Karma, bitches

Warren Kinsella, who never wastes an "I told you so" moment, comments on something he's demonstrated an expert-like proficiency in... The Biggest Losers.

If you're in the Ottawa area on June 8...

The Free Thinking Film Society is hosting an evening with Bruce Bawer & Hege Storhaug...

Hege Storhaug is the information director of Human Rights Service in Norway and the author of several books on immigration and integration, forced marriage, women in Pakistan, and related subjects.

Bruce Bawer is an internationally-acclaimed author, whose recent book is "Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom"

[..]

Bruce has translated Hege's new book, "But the Greatest of These Is Freedom: The Consequences of Immigration in Europe." — the authorized English translation of the explosive Norwegian bestseller about the consequences of immigration in Europe.

Location and ticket information can be found here.

Child Abuse

With progressives, it often comes under the guise of giving their children the "freedom to choose".  Sometimes it's being too permissive toward the little snowflake's temper-fueled outbursts, or letting him dictate the family's dinner menu, and the like.

But why stop at these petty little exercises in lazy parental neglect, when you can inculcate your child with the notion that gender - a naturally occurring selection process completed in the womb before birth - is just a construct that you can pick and choose at will?

When Storm was born, the couple sent an email to friends and family: “We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime (a more progressive place? ...).”

The genderless child.  I suppose we'll have to come up with a new cardboard lawn stork for that one. 

Sadly, inflicting the mental damage of giving their child no discernible identity is also just the tip of the iceberg for this sweet little family of mental eunuchs...

The family challenges the norm on other issues, too. They practice “unschooling,” an offshoot of home-schooling that centres on the belief a child’s learning should be curiosity driven. They believe children can make meaningful choices for themselves, like choosing their own clothing and how to wear their hair. And the family co-sleeps, curling up together at night on two mattresses pushed together.

Remember when I said I don't approve of the government telling people how to parent their children?  Ya, scratch that.

More on the gender-denialists here...

Both Mrs Witterick and Mr Stocker grew up in very liberal families. They have visited revolutionaries in Mexico and spent weeks in Cuba learning about the Communist revolution.

You don't say...

What he said

The most charming and handsome peep on the Neo-Con side sets the record straight on the notion of settling for less, vis a vis the so-called Conservative Party of Canada...

Getting it right

Neil Reynolds (Canada’s Conservatives Should Ease Up On Harper – May 9) argues there is no place in politics for what he calls “ideological purity.” But for many conservatives, it’s not a question of ideological purity, but of what’s right and wrong for Canada.

They believe it’s wrong to spend and borrow the country into deficit; wrong for the state to infringe on individual liberties and wrong to expand the size and scope of government.

It’s also wrong for Stephen Harper to ignore his conservative political base, the people whose money, time and votes helped propel him to a majority government. In short, Canadian conservatives have showed loyalty to the Prime Minister, he should now show loyalty to them.

The Literal Nanny-State

Via Kathy...

I think the thing that is pushing me over the edge with graduate school is that people who are thinking straight about schooling are not even considering graduate school. These people are debating if college is a rip off (here's a great discussion in New York magazine with James Altucher, a venture capitalist in NYC) And people are even debating if high school is useless (here's a great blog by Lisa Nielsen who is with the NYC Department of Education). And anyway, I'm losing interest in the debate about grad school because I'm convinced that the future belongs to home schoolers because they are self-learners. [LINK]

Well, tell that to the Quebec judge who just ordered a perfectly good set of home-schooling parents to enroll their children in state-run school so they could be more "socialized".  Judging by the state of public education (especially in Quebec) I expect this "socialization" to have the emphasis on the "socialist" part of the term.

What have things come to when caring responsible parents, against whom there have been no accusations of abuse or neglect, cannot make a simple parenting choice about the education of their children?  Sounds like what Quebec needs more of, is guns...and a revolutionary spirit.

In fact, we could all use a little more of that these days.

Where has personal responsibility gone?

Apparently, getting sauced is a perfectly acceptable excuse to get away with any number of crimes these days...

A judge has reopened a major legal controversy by ruling that accused people can claim they were too drunk to be found culpable of committing crimes.

Presiding over a sexual assault case in Southwestern Ontario, Mr. Justice Terrence Patterson of the Superior Court of Ontario ruled that Parliament violated the Charter of Rights with a 1995 law that prohibits the so-called defence of excessive intoxication.

The ruling opened the door for Carl Frederick Fleming, 62, to argue that he was too drunk to appreciate his actions when he sexually assaulted a St. Thomas, Ont., woman in 2009.

Even worse though, will be the predictable caterwauling we will hear from the hypocrites on the slut-walk side of the spectrum, arguing that a drunk man who sexually assaults someone should be held responsible for his actions, but a drunk woman who dresses like a hooker and wanders into the woods with a perfect stranger should not be.

Two legs good, three legs bad?

Living in a black hole

It was with much consternation that I discovered the closest location where I can see the Atlas Shrugged movie, upon it's release next week, is Washington D.C.  A mere 10 hour drive away.

Despite the rumoured Conservative wave taking over this country, the film version of a book which has been consistently parked on the bestseller list for over 50 years, and in fact soared in sales exponentially in the last 3 years, has found no venue willing to screen it.

I did however find that, should Mikey and I still have the urge to take in a show that night, Cineplex has reserved a screen for Mulroney: The Opera.  Sure to draw in far more than a Hollywood production of an epic bestseller.

This country sucks.

Come now...

It's very unkind to comment on a politician's legitimate medical condition this way...

Do MP's medical benefits cover the little blue pill?  These guys could be maxing out their coverage.

Thanks to reader Bryan, who deserves all the credit for the pic.

Just a pillar of the community

Living up to everything his community values, and dying with a bullet in his face...

Clifenton Ford died around 2:25 a.m. at G’s Chill & Grill, on Eglinton Ave. E. near Midland Ave.

Family and friends said Ford was the father of 10 children ranging in age from 6 to 17, born to six different mothers.

Ford’s fiancée, Ayisha Spence, 28, refused to leave until his body was taken out of the bar. “We can’t leave him here,” she said, clutching one of Ford’s T-shirts close to her chest because it smelled like him.

Spence is the mother of two of Ford’s children, an 8-year-old girl and 7-year-old boy. She said her fiancé worked as a janitor at a fitness facility and was “finally settling his life.”

“He was a great father,” Spence said. “He was a great son. He was an all-around amazing man.”

"All-around" being the operative term here, apparently.

She showed up at the crime scene when one of the other "baby mamas" called her to tell her the bad news, they were all so very close.  All 6 of them, and their 10 fatherless children.

Clearly, what this community needs is an afri-centric school.

Amen

To my favorite salacious stalker...

Wow. There isn't a lot that I have to say in response other than that if a Conservative prime minister needs to be forced to stop spending money that he doesn't have, then he isn't particularly conservative. And, amazingly enough, electing a lot of Conservatives was supposed to be the cure to stop the Liberals from pissing away a ton of money, even though they, y'know, balanced the books and everything. At what point is electing Conservatives going to stop costing so much fucking money?

And why do I feel like I have to keep bringing up the contradiciton of the so-called "Law & Order" party bear-hugging and giving slobbery kisses to Mr. The-Law-Don't-Apply-to-Indians, "Caledonia" Fantino?

Sheesh!  Yer makin' ma head hert!

***Via Kathy...Fantino's do-nothing policy still reigns in Caledonia.  Now he wants your vote, and so do the two-faced hacks that share the party banner with him.  SHAME.

Overheard on the radio this morning...

"The last time she wrote a hit piece like this, Rob Ford swept the mayoralty race in a near landslide.  Let her write!"

You'd think her editor would have caught on by now.  Then again, Warren Kinsella keeps getting work, too.

The feeble Liberal mind

It feels "uncomfortable" with employing a "judgmental" "tone" when discussing things like spousal abuse and honour killings, in official government literature introducing new Canadians to their new home.

Well shucks, we wouldn't want to alienate any of those wife beaters/murderers with "pejorative" words that might discourage them from bringing their barbaric cultural customs here.

Jeezus.

Oh, Canada!

A new survey finds that nearly half of Canadians have managed to retain some semblance of common sense, despite the valiant efforts of poverty interests and government "sensitivity" campaigns...

A new poll commissioned by the Salvation Army finds that many Canadians hold some less-than-charitable views when it comes to the poor, including that those of meagre means would "take advantage" of any help and would "do nothing" with it.

The poll, conducted by Angus Reid in late January, also found that about 25 per cent of Canadians think that poor people are lazy and have low moral values.

With very rare exceptions, all poor people are in those circumstances as a consequence of bad choices:  Choosing to use drugs, choosing to marry an asshole, choosing a cellphone as 46" flatscreen over baby pablum.  I HAVE BEEN THERE, and I can trace back through the misery of my previous experience to each and every bad choice I made, that only made my circumstances worse.  AND I can trace back to all the hard choices and sacrifices I made that dragged my stupid butt (and that of my blameless son) out of it.

Sadly, The Salvation Army, and the rest of the poverty pimps, are all too happy to perpetuate the myth that poverty is something that just happens to you while you're walking around, minding your own business...

Spokesperson Andrew Burditt told The Canadian Press that many of the 1,025 adults polled "didn't really understand the extent to which systemic barriers can get in the way of really providing a life for yourself and that does rob you of your dignity."

What dignity is there in taking money from your neighbours, to pay for your irresponsible choices?  I'd say 1,025 of adults polled understand the systemic root causes of poverty more than The Salvation Army does.

I try to be helpful

Kathy pointedly asks...

a house in Toronto costs half a million dollars. How they expect to get a viable, built-to-code women’s shelter, complete with security system, a couple of kitchens and numerous bathrooms out of a fraction of that $241,000 they extorted from us baffles me.

Might I suggest they can buy it from the Wigamen?

Old world meets new, in a manner.

Priorities

It tells you everything you need to know about this messed up country, that the bill to allow "gender variant individuals" to use whichever public washroom/change room they "identify" with is heading into final reading in Parliament, and could be law within a few weeks. 

Meanwhile, the bill to allow fathers equal parenting rights in custody cases in family court is stalled until at least the fall, when it will just enter the debate stage.

Shaping young minds

Most mornings I pack 6 school lunches.  1 cream cheese bagel or croissant in a Ziploc bag, a handful of baby carrots in a Ziploc bag, slices apples dredged in lemon juice in a Ziploc bag, two-bite brownies in a Ziploc bag, and a fruit cup or pudding with a disposable plastic spoon.  I used to even send a juice box or disposable juice bottle, until I figured it would be less expensive to use jug juice and refillable bottles.  That was an economical decision.  The rest of the choices are motivated by expense and time constraints.

I expect my children have all been summarily labeled offenders in the first degree for some time now, by the eco-tyrants in their classrooms…

A couple in Laval, Que., has sparked a fierce debate over how far schools should go to teach children about environmental responsibility after their six-year-old son was shut out of a kindergarten draw to win a stuffed animal because he had an environmentally unfriendly sandwich bag in his lunch box.

Marc-Andre Lanciault said he hadn't heard of the school's draw or any environmental policy until his wife, Isabel Theoret, was making their son Felix a sandwich and he begged them not to put it in a plastic bag.

"He said, 'No mommy, you can't do that. Not a Ziploc,' " Mr. Lanciault said.

Through tears, the boy told his parents that the school had held a draw to win a stuffed teddy bear and only children who didn't have any plastic sandwich bags could enter.

I’ve already made the school resoundingly aware of how I feel about the nauseating bacterial science project that comes home under the “boomerang” lunch project (where children bring their lunch garbage back home).  Do you have any idea what a pudding cup looks like when it’s been baking in a thermal lunch bag all day?  Imagine the frantic reports that would be made to various agencies if it was me who forced my child to traipse back and forth to school with festering food garbage in their backpack!

On a day when we have all the children, I routinely run our dishwasher on an average of 3 times a day.  If I migrated to the so-called “sustainable” containers (ie. Tupperware) that the school encourages, it would add at least one more load each day.  Don’t tell me that is more “environmentally responsible” than a handful of Ziploc bags.  And even if it was, tough!  I already have enough work to do, making sure 6 kids get fed and dressed and off to school in time with a healthy lunch, and I already do enough dishes.

Death by Social Worker

What would motivate the poor and under-educated to work and strive to improve their fortunes, if they didn’t have the greener pastures on the other side of the street to look to..?

In a first for Ontario, a Niagara-area school opening this fall will only admit low-income students whose parents don’t have a college or university education.

While raising concerns about stigmatizing poor children, the board has approved the initiative saying the current system doesn’t serve them well and that similar U.S. schools have proved successful.

If you insulate them from seeing or experiencing uneven or disadvantaged circumstances, how would they even know there is more to be had out there?

Disability still trumps culture - for now

Why call the cops..?

Charges have been laid against a downtown restaurant and its owner for denying access to a blind woman.

Although the owner of the Dunlop Street establishment believes it is a misunderstanding, many believe it’s a lack of understanding about the Blind Persons' Rights Act that is to blame.

Barrie police say the woman alleges she was refused service at a downtown restaurant last July because the waiter did not want her to bring her service dog into the restaurant.

Const. Angela Butler said some retailers may believe that the Trespass and Property Act allows them to deny service to a customer, but adds, “The Blind Persons’ Rights Act supersedes that act."

But Selim Amhad, the owner of Nawab Fine Indian Cuisine, believes his restaurant was charged in error.

Just leave your dog outside, bring out the white cane and make sure you sweep it across every table on the way by.  Ooops!  For good measure, trip on a chair leg or slip on the floor in the bathroom and call a lawyer.

Oh, Canada!

Where 3 masked thugs can firebomb your house in the middle of the night - with you in it - but you are the one facing charges...

The incident began six years of trouble for Mr. Thomson that culminated early one Sunday morning last August when the 53-year-old former mobile-crane operator woke up to the sound of three masked men firebombing his Port Colborne, Ont., home.

“I was horrified,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know what was happening. I had no idea what was going on.”

So Mr. Thomson, a former firearms instructor, grabbed one of his Smith & Wesson revolvers from his safe, loaded it and headed outside dressed in only his underwear.

“He exited his house and fired his revolver two, maybe three times, we’re not sure. Then these firebombing culprits, they ran off,” said his lawyer, Edward Burlew.

His surveillance cameras caught the attackers lobbing at least six Molotov cocktails at his house and bombing his doghouse, singeing one of his Siberian Huskies. But when Mr. Thomson handed the video footage to Niagara Regional Police, he found himself charged with careless use of a firearm.

The local Crown attorney’s office later laid a charge of pointing a firearm, along with two counts of careless storage of a firearm. The Crown has recommended Mr. Thomson go to jail, his lawyer said.

F those buggers

See the movie they did not want you to see. 

When I first got notice of the showing in Ottawa, I was super-disappointed that it was physically impossible for me to go.  If it had been scheduled for a weekend, I probably would have made the 6 hour drive to Ottawa for it.  Sadly, kids and work prevented it.

Lucky for me, the thugish stunts of the chumps at the Iranian embassy and their cro magnon compatriots have made it possible for me and many others to view it free over the internet, without the constraints of distance and schedule!  Thanks guys!

Gender Politics

How long before it becomes a compulsory part of the public school curriculum..?

King City Public pull pulled the plug on the "Opposite Gender Day," when kids as young as six would be allowed to come to school dressed as the opposite sex, following an outcry from parents.

[..]

The chance to dress as the opposite sex was voluntary for students from junior kindergarten to Grade 8, Virgo said.

It was proposed by the school's student council to principal Karen Goan, he said. 
 

"They discussed the fun the day might generate, plus how the experience might help boys and girls understand a bit more what it felt like to be a member of the opposite sex ... that was the plan," he said.

Just lend little Madison your strap-on and slap some lipstick and stilettos on Liam and toddle them off to school then.

Maybe school has changed since I was there, but this sounds like a perfect recipe for getting a beating in the hall.  And that is as it should be.

Fiscal Genius

First, he roots around in the sofa cushions and finds $100 million he didn't know he had.

Now we find out His Royal Hairness forgot to carry the one and account for a little thing we like to call inflation...

David Peterson, who led Toronto’s successful bid to host the 2015 Pan Am Games, helped sway city council’s support with this classic quote, early in the process: “This is a chance for Toronto to have a great party with no hangover whatsoever.”

Now that the city’s bill has doubled, with four years of adjustments still to come, you can bet many councillors are today asking, what was he drinking?

[..]

At an executive committee meeting Monday, a number of councillors sounded stunned about various parts of a bill that suddenly has doubled. Mayor Rob Ford said he was “blindsided.”

They have a point. No one, anywhere, predicted the city’s costs would double, from $49.5 million to more than $97 million.

There was a small warning in 2009, but in the city’s 2010 budget, the potential for cost escalation had disappeared.

Then — boom — the Pan Am team demands another $47 million.

There are two key elements to the doubling of the price tag. The first is $22 million to clean up the old Morningside landfill site, so the Pan Am pool complex in Scarborough can be put on top of it. Surprise!

The second big bill is for inflation, a whopping $21.3 million, because the city budgeted for the games in 2008 dollars. Who budgets for 2015 using 2008 numbers?

I wonder where this stone cold fiscal prowess has led him to now?

outstanding.

Oh Canada!

Not the least bit embarassed to be this pathetically stupid.

Eat it, losers...

 

UPDATE:  And after spending the last 5 hours listening to Canadian talk radio, I don't believe I have ever heard the word "faggot" used so many times -- ever, just in the telling of this story.  Mission accomplished guys!  It's nice to see there are still a few talking heads in this country with their balls intact.

NOT satire

In a shockingly unpredictable move, the Halton District Catholic School Board decides to align school policies with Catholic doctrine.

I know.  Weird, huh?

1 little, 2 little, 3 little Indians...

Do they still count as a "disadvantaged people" when their chiefs get paid twice what it takes to make the Sunshine List?

Chief Shirley Clarke and the Glooscap First Nation came under the spotlight when the Canadian Taxpayers Federation unveiled federal documents last week that showed high salaries at many reserves across the country, including one East Coast band with 304 members that paid its chief $243,000 a year.

So, each resident on that reserve paid almost $800 last year, for Ms. Clarke's representation.  I'd like to know how many of them feel like they got their money's worth.

A rare thing indeed

The father of a dead black punk who is not afraid to tell the truth about his son's death.

Oh Canada!

Contrast this...

When officers arrived they found Joshua Dexter Watson, 24, of Knoxville dead from multiple wounds administered by a .357-caliber revolver belonging to the homeowners, DeBusk said. . . . Watson has a criminal history that began even before his 18th birthday, records show. He was facing a charge of aggravated robbery in 2004 before he turned 18. After that, Watson racked up dozens of charges, including drug possession, theft, evading arrest, reckless driving and violation of probation for the aggravated robbery conviction, records show.

with this...

Manzer has been charged with possessing a weapon for a purpose dangerous to the public peace after he went out to help a neighbour dealing with three young men who were spotted trespassing in his Burton neighborhood late one night in March.

[..]

Manzer, who took restricted firearms training during his time in the military, said he knows he can't use potentially lethal force to protect property and kept the gun pointed at the ground throughout the brief incident.

"I wasn't out there to take the law into my own hands. I never left my property," said Manzer, who said that between November and March, residents of his small neighbourhood had to contend with break-ins to sheds, thieves rummaging through parked cars and vandalism ranging from damage to Christmas decorations to uprooted fruit trees.

"I yelled at them and said everyone be quiet and I told my wife to call 9-1-1."

He said he watched as his neighbour rounded up three strangers - all of whom looked like adults but turned out to be minors.

With the situation under control, Manzer, shirtless in the minus-13 degree night, went back inside and locked up his gun before hading back out.

He said Mounties arrived on scene 15 minutes later, took the three youths into custody and confiscated a near-empty liquor bottle.

When a Mountie showed up at his door six days later on Good Friday, Manzer assumed they were coming to take a statement.

Instead, he was arrested in front of his wife and kids. Then the Mounties seized his shotgun and hunting rifles.

The neighbour who nabbed the youths was also arrested and told he was being charged with assault.

I know where I'd rather live.

Dear Mr. Prime Minister

Send this to him, and every MP in the country.

WE. DON'T. WANT. HIM. BACK.

h/t

Mommie Dearest

I'm glad to see that a mother who murdered her own children will be seeing the inside of a jail cell for most of the rest of her natural life. 

I am however more than a little disgusted at how many times the news coverage about it mentions the father - who is also a victim - as the "abusive former husband".

She systematically took each child, one at a time, into the bathtub, held their heads under the water until they stopped breathing and then carefully changed their clothes, posed them on her bed and sat down to record a spiteful videotape, practically bragging about it to their father.  But somehow this is still about him being the abusive one?

That's effed up.

Previous.

It begins at home

Perhaps if these mothers spent a little more of their time at home, actually doing things with their children -- as opposed to marching to the front lawn of Queen's Park on a Sunday morning -- their kids might have something better to do with their time, than run around the city shooting each other.

I've got a closet filled with board games, my kitchen has been victim to more than several messy cupcake-making extravaganzas and I have spent countless hours dragging our hoard out on every god-forsaken backwoods trail, mossy cliff, sun-drenched beach and packed amusement park known to man.  I drag them out to dig in the garden with me.  I cajole them into eating dinner all together, as a family, every night they are there.  I rent lame movies with inappropriate humor, and make root bear floats and crappy microwave popcorn and force them to watch and laugh with me -- even the older ones who have become too cool for family movie night.  Tough.  Humor me.

This is how you stop your children from joining gangs or selling drugs out of their locker.  This is how you keep them off a street where they'll run into a character they just shouldn't mess with.  The investment you make, as a parent, is time.  Giving them your time shows them they matter to you, and if they matter to you, they will matter more to themselves.  And kids who have a high regard for themselves, their lives and their family, don't get mixed up with the kind of thugs who will shoot them in the face in the hallway at school.  They just don't.

With very rare exceptions, the kind of kids who get shot in this city, are the ones who know or hang around the dudes who do the shooting -- if they're not the shooters themselves.  And if these punks didn't have guns, they'd resort to car bumpers, baseball bats or just good old fashioned fists, to settle disputes.

These mothers need to face the honest truth of that and re-examine their own priorities, before calling on the government (or anyone else for that matter) to parent their children for them.