The Lasso of Truth

On the bulletin board of a local youth counselling centre:

Most successful indoctrination starts on the young and impressionable.  The best way is to make friends with vulnerable, unguarded children and slowly seed their minds with radical ideas under the auspices of friendship and guidance.  Most pedophiles know the best way to take advantage of children, is to be their friend and offer them goodies.

Or FREE self defense training.

Send your children and we'll train them for battle, er, to protect themselves.

"Made possible by: Citizenship and Immigration Canada"  Nice touch.  My tax dollars, hard at work, teaching troubled youth how to kill people with their bare hands -- Palestinian style.

MORE:   BCF offers up the backgroundon the Palestine House I was too lazy to go digging around for.  Fanks!

Predictable hypocrisy uperdate:  The Palestine House's own website has a document criticizing the Jewish Defense League, in which this quote can be found, with no hint of irony...

The JDL frequently organizes martial arts classes for their members, which makes them even more dangerous.

Fanks again!

Chilly Cheeks

Whatever his issues are, you have to at least appreciate the hearty constitution of a man who will go outside naked, in Saskatchewan, in winter.

Your tax dollars, hard at work

Toronto city counselor, Paula Fletcher, shrieks accusations and insults at members of the taxpaying public during what was supposed to be a public budget consultation.

The disgraceful behavior has to be heard to be believed.

Condescension, immaturity and hubris in spades.  How dare the lowly taxpayer question the wisdom of Queen Paula and her appointed slop-eaters!

Just business as usual on Toronto city counsel.

Taking the gloves off

This is a problem that seems to me can be easily solved with just one FedEx box.

The House that Tolerance Built

This weekend, while I was busy sprinkling Valentine's cupcakes with kiddies, real bloggers were donning hip waders and slogging into the festering slop pit of the Toronto Islamic community (and their version of "outreach").

Hey Arnie...put on a burqa next time.  Apparently it contravenes Islamic law to search under those ;)

The curse of lowered expectations

It’s a refrain that became familiar, in the wake of Monica Lewinski and her blue dress.  The concept that somehow, a man can be forgiven for lying and cheating on his wife if he is perceived to have done a good job otherwise.  Like it was somehow possible for a person to be morally bankrupt in their personal life, but still be trusted to be a pillar of integrity in his business life.

Or worse, that somehow, doing a few really good things, makes it ok to act like a slobbering animal.

A caller into the radio this morning, compared Adam Giambroni’s predicament to JFK, who he claimed did so many good things as President, but cheated on his wife all the time – and that this did not diminish his greatness.

To which I must ask…

On a personal level, would you forgive your wife sleeping around with all the neighbours, if she made a really good pot roast and kept a tidy house?

So why forgive it from a guy who is in charge of spending nearly half your paycheck?

Seems a wee bit strange to me.

Put the suspect in a military uniform...

And suddenly the Good Canadian Virtue of Mercy^TM goes out the window...

As of late Tuesday, more than 2,000 people had joined the Facebook group “Russell Williams Should Get the Death Penalty.” While the air force colonel and former top commander at CFB Trenton is accused and has not been convicted of any crime, the online community is already comparing him to infamous American serial killers Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer.

Not that I object to bringing back the death penalty, for this kind of crime, if he's found guilty.  But for the sake of comparison, I wonder how many people who have signed on to this, made the same call for, say, Omar Khadr.

Just wondering.

Work to rule, you say?

Wouldn't that be nice if they actually did?!  Since I'm pretty sure, the rules don't include being allowed to sleep on the job or abandon your post for an unscheduled coffee break.

I wouldn't begrudge a dude a coffee break, except I spent plenty of years using transit -- holding on for dear life while the bus driver played whack-a-mole with his break pedal, waiting for what seemed like forever, in sub-zero temperatures while the bus ambled along at whatever schedule struck the driver as right for his mood, and occasionally getting passed by when they didn't feel like stopping - not to mention getting stranded by wildcat strikes and the occasional summertime-long-weekend-Friday-sick-day.  Riders are fed up and they're not willing to give the benefit of the doubt to a horde of jerks who take a mile with every inch.

An inside joke...

For those of us who live in the halo of Canada's Greatest City ^TM...

Imagine my surprise, when I heard the affair was with a woman!

Please let the door hit you...

He spent a lot of time and made a hefty profit, spying on behalf of an oppressive government to help subvert a democratic movement.  Now, he shows up on our doorstep, to take advantage of the freedom he helped deny to others -- in the catch-all of Canadian asylum.

Stars fade - wouldn't you rather have a rock?

Barack Obama's presidency, distilled down to a few words...

"the biggest celebrity on the planet"

Like Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Liberal

Personally, I think Danny Williams should be entitled to do whatever he wants with his own money and his own health care.  What, that we should all be so fortunate as to have the choice.

But one thing's for sure...I certainly hope I don't ever again, have to hear the "Americanized Health Care" sneer that Liberals are so fond of using, like it's a dirty word.  After all, if it sucked so bad down there, he wouldn't be blowing wads of cash to use it when it's free at home...right?

Behold!

A ray of sanity in the comments section of the National Post...(thank you, Pumpkin!)

Just to say...

If a *conservative* is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat.

If a *liberal* is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a *conservative* doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one.

If a *liberal *doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a *conservative* sees a foreign threat, he thinks about how to defeat his enemy.

A *liberal *wonders how to surrender gracefully and still look good.

If a *conservative* is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.

If a *liberal* is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.

If a person of colour is *conservative*, they see themselves as independently successful.

Their *liberal * counterparts see themselves as victims in need of government protection.

If a *conservative* is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.

A *liberal* wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a *conservative* doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels.

*Liberals* demand that those they don't like be shut down.

If a *conservative* is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church.

A *liberal *non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless its a foreign religion, of course!)

If a *conservative *decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.

A *liberal* demands that the rest of us pay for his.

Banana Cream Bomber

Let me be clear.

I have no kind words or tolerance for activists who toss pies, shoes, or anything, at elected officials,to score press exposure and cheap political points.  It’s assault and should be dealt with as such, to the fullest extent of the law, in order to discourage these types of stunts.

But…

I also believe that when we overreact, and try to get this idiocy labeled as terrorism, what we really do is diminish the impression and concept of what terrorism really is.  The corollary of this kind of nonsense is that when a real terrorist act gets committed or planned, the perpetrator(s) get placed on the same level as a pie-thrower at a luncheon.

Is that really what we want?

The power to silence

And the abuse of that power...

An infringement of the Charter by the actions of the delegated decision-maker in applying the legislation, as distinct from the legislation itself, does not render the legislation invalid.

This is what so-called free speech, in this country, has come to...A never-ending fight against the ultimate Weeble.

A strange venue for "sensitivity"

I think it’s amazing (and pathetic) that a game which invariably always involves a mixture of fist fights, elbows to the face and teeth knocked to the ice, would be suddenly paralyzed in a collective gasp of revulsion and echoing silence, in the wake of a “racial slur”...

An on-ice racial slur by an Oakville high school male hockey player has prompted the school's principal to shut down the team for the season.

The Thomas A. Blakelock Tigers will not skate for the remainder of the 2009-10 Halton Secondary School Athletic Association (HSSAA) season after the player directed a discriminatory slur against a player of Middle Eastern heritage on the Milton District Mustangs on Dec. 16.

How did we get to a place where physical assault is grounds for a 2 minute penalty, but muttering a heeb or raghead comment nets the entire team banishment for the rest of the season?

Calling for an occupation

From quarters where the hue and cry would be deafening, should imperialist westerners dare occupy, to civilize, violent cesspools like Afghanistan or Palestine -- we have the call to send in the Marines..!

Canada, the U.S., France and other nations are rushing aid to Haiti. Food and medical help are essential, but Haiti also must have an effective government that cares for its desperate people. A small UN contingent has achieved little. What Haiti really needs is to be again administered by the U.S. Marine Corps.

This column despises any form of imperial action as a grave violation of democratic and republican values. But the U.S. could do enormous good for Haiti, which needs a major rescue mission for a desperate people who have failed to govern themselves and have no other hope. Most Haitians, I think, would welcome U.S. humanitarian intervention.

It's heartening to see a member of the esteemed intelligentsia acknowledge that there are societies which cannot be relied up on to govern themselves, and require the hand of a functioning democracy, to establish working order.  One wonders though, what distinguishes Haitians from, say, Palestinians...I mean, other than skin color?

Friday Afternoon Rumor

Canadian Liberal MPs don't think the work in their individual constituencies is important enough to do, when they are not expected to sit in Parliament. 

They'd rather spend their time sitting around Ottawa, sulking.

That's just what I hear...

JUST. NOT. GETTING. IT.

Not that I'm a big fan of the idea of installing scanners at the airport, but this initiative seems somehow self-defeating...

Travellers under 18 will be exempt from Canada's peek-a-boo body scanners amid international fears that the resulting images would amount to child pornography.

because gawd knows, terrorists would never resort to using a child as a vessel for a bomb.

If we were really serious about security, we would call up a few Israelis to come over and show us how it's done.  After all, when was the last time one of their planes was the subject of a breaking news report?

Pass the stuffing!

This article kind of reminds me of how I felt when I learned about dust mites and the "friendly bacteria" in cheese and yogurt...

Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and potatoes expose you to a myriad of Mother Nature’s finest carcinogens. They contain heterocyclic amines, acrylamide, ethyl alcohol, benzo(a)pyrene and ethyl carbamate. Add to that the furan derivatives, furfural, dihydrazines, d-limonene, psoralens, quercetin glycosides and safrole, not to mention caffeic acid. Umm, caffeic acid.

If you think you can escape exposure to these so called toxins by sticking to a simple tossed-green salad topped with a splash of basil-mustard vinaigrette, think again. You’ll then be dealing with allyl isothiocyanate, estragole, methyl eugenol and caffeic acid. A buttered roll will add acetaldehyde, benzene, ethyl alcohol, benzo(a)pyrene, ethyl carbamate, furan derivatives and furfural to the mix. Broccoli spears mean allyl isothiocyanate.  Carrot sticks equal aniline and that darn caffeic acid (again!). Cherry tomatoes offer benzaldehyde, caffeic acid, hydrogen peroxide and quercetin glycosides, just as God intended.

 

You know, what we really need to do is start jacking our food with drugs, to head off this kind of, uh, chemical interference. /SARC

 

Cavemen were eating charred rabbit since before there were product labels, and here we all are, in abundance now.

 

A proper meal isn't worth the trouble, if you don't risk full cardiac arrest with each bite and macrobiotic is for fairies.  Eat hearty this Christmas, before big nanny starts doling out the portions.

My tax dollars

...hard at work...

Indian and Northern Affairs Canada is reviewing Peguis First Nation's finances following complaints by band members about audit practices and the salaries paid to the chief and to council.

[..]

Peguis Chief Glenn Hudson made $174,230 in the fiscal year ending in March. That includes a base salary of $124,000 plus $48,200 in unspecified "other remuneration" that includes fees for meetings and committee work outside band business. It doesn't include $32,000 in travel per diems and expenses.

But Hudson made far less than his four councillors last year.

One band councillor, Glennis Sutherland, made $251,000 and charged an additional $59,000 in travel expenses in the 2008-09 fiscal year.

Fat salaries have been a recurring problem on Peguis, the province's biggest reserve. In his last year in office, former chief Louis Stevenson was paid $240,000 plus a further $133,000 in travel expenses.

Consider that not only are these salaries exceptionally high, they are also tax free.

But the last line of the article is the one that really turns the knife...

The Interlake band has about 7,200 members.

The most expensive constituency in the country?  Maybe.

Ask the victims of Thalidomide...

...about the law of unintended consequences...

Health Canada is proposing an unorthodox way of combatting a food ingredient suspected in some cancers: It wants to let manufacturers put small amounts of a cancer-fighting drug into potato chips and similar foods to curb production of the harmful chemical.

[..]

As a partial answer, Health Canada is suggesting removing the requirement for a prescription to administer the enzyme asparaginase, except when it is injected into leukemia patients as a treatment.

That way, food companies could include small amounts of the drug in their products, the department says in a "notice of intent" document published on Saturday.

The health industry, that can't get me a hip replacement in less than 4 months, wants to start adding prescription medication to my food.

Outstanding.

The Equivocation Game

I, for one, always thought that smarmy, obnoxious road runner had it coming...

How many classic cartoons were based on the premise of the perennially hapless hunter – Elmer Fudd tracking Bugs Bunny, Wile E. Coyote chasing Road Runner – caught in booby-traps of their own making?

For novice PC Leader Tim Hudak, his party's protest over the Liberal government's proposed harmonized sales tax produced a couple of unforeseen outcomes.

[..]

Hudak said that, irrespective of rules, sometimes "extraordinary measures" are warranted. With that utterance he undercut his own law-and-order positioning and his credibility on long-running issues of civil disobedience.

What Hudak essentially did was give licence to civil disobedience any time anyone feels sufficiently aggrieved to arbitrarily take "extraordinary measures."

How will he stand, for instance, against any future native highway blockades in support of land claims? How can he say his right to extraordinary measures trumps anyone else's?

How can he go to Caledonia, say, and denounce native blockades and occupations there that his own caucus members have long railed against but, in essence, mimicked?

Regarding the "land claims" logic, being used here to widdle down the credibility of the opposition: Doesn't it stand to reason that by the same token, the government's efforts to forcibly remove the caucus "protestors" undermines their credibility in the face of the utter lack of action they've taken with the protestors currently entering their fourth year of occupation on disputed land in Caledonia?

Maybe Hudak and Co. decided to go with a tactic that's proven to work with this government.  See?  The Indians can still teach us a few things.

Collective Madness

Union thugs want to ensure potential employer, Wal-Mart, will never open another store within the borders of Quebec, again...

The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the right of Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, to shut down stores after workers unionized at one of its outlets in Jonquière, Que.

In a 6-3 decision, Justice Ian Binnie, citing previous case law, noted there is no legislation in Quebec that obliges any employer to remain in business, even if it closes for “socially reprehensible” reasons.

The store closure, which followed one of the first unionizations of Wal-Mart employees in North America, drew continent-wide attention and the high-stakes appeal has been closely watched by labour and business.

Laid-off workers at the store in Jonquière argued Wal-Mart violated Quebec labour laws and the workers’ constitutional rights by shutting its store during negotiations for an inaugural collective agreement in 2005.

A majority of the Supreme Court judges rejected their appeal. They ruled that under the specific section of the Quebec Labour Code that formed the basis of the workers complaints, the workers cannot seek remedy if their former place of employment no longer exists.

Had the workers brought forward their case under a separate section of the Labour Code, namely sections 12 to 14, then the question of whether Wal-Mart closed the store as part of an anti-union strategy might have been put in play.

[..]

“This is not a substantive victory for employers in any way whatsoever,” said Dominique Monet, leader of the labour, employment and human rights practice at law firm Fasken Martineau in Montreal. “[The judges] have certainly shown them the right exit to take on the highway next time.”

If Wal-Mart is smart, they'll make sure there is no next time.

Just another stitch in the multicultural fabric?

Broadcasting in Canada is about to get a lot more diverse...

Al-Jazeera English, the English-language service of the Qatar-based broadcaster, has been approved for distribution via satellite in Canada.

Ethnic Channels Group Ltd., a Toronto-based satellite service, had applied in February to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for permission to carry Al-Jazeera English.

On Thursday, the federal regulator approved the request, clearing the way for Al-Jazeera to be carried via digital satellite.

"The commission notes the substantial support for the addition of AJE to the digital lists and considers that AJE will expand the diversity of editorial points of view in the Canadian broadcasting system," the CRTC said in its decision.

"Further, despite concerns expressed by certain parties, there is nothing on the record of the current proceeding that leads the commission to conclude that AJE would violate Canadian regulations, such as those regarding abusive comment."

Coming to a terrorist sleeper cell near you.

"Your paradise. Their prison."

I was 20 years old, driving home from some night club and passed a billboard shouting these words out from an idyllic beach scene.  Cuba was the subject, and at the time I knew and cared nothing about the political and social ramifications of what most Canadians consider as nothing more than a cheap vacation.

That billboard propelled me to learn enough to know better.

Sadly, most Canadians’ attitudes towards the world’s most accepted dictatorship haven’t changed...

In Raul's Cuba, as in Fidel's, dissent remains punishable by indefinite imprisonment, unemployment is considered antisocial and the government can lock away anyone a summary trial finds guilty of "dangerousness," a legal catch-all.

Once incarcerated, political prisoners are denied medical care, family visits and legal aid. Solitary confinement is a common and seemingly arbitrary form of discipline.

It's an old hobby horse of mine.  In light of Barack Obama's calls to lift sanctions on the island prison, it seems I'll be riding this one for years to come.

A medal for the ultimate cowardice?

Have we all lost our minds?

Do we honestly want to treat a soldier who commits suicide while on active duty, as an honourable death on the same plane as those who truly give their life in service to their country?

Soldiers who commit suicide would receive the medal if the suicide is found to have been service-related, according military officials hosting a media briefing Monday.

I think it's disgraceful.  This is the most certain form of desertion and should be treated as the shameful act it is.

The enemy are big fans of suicide, too.  Why not give them all medals?

Muslims plotting murder of infidels: Must be Wednesday

In the tradition of retooling the English language to gloss over the inherent violence of a growing faction of fundamentalists, a plot to execute large scale carnage and murder on an office filled with journalists and possibly a synagogue, is now called a "newspaper plot". 

My, that sounds insidious.  And aren't we all relieved to hear the mastermind is an immigration consultant on both sides of the border?!

Comments disabled on an article about murderous Muslims.  I wonder why..?

Not in Kansas Anymore

I'm generally not in favor of handing out tax dollars to every needy hand that comes grubbing.  But if the government is going to mug you for your hard earned money and funnel it into a "disaster relief fund", you'd like to think you're going to get a little back when your house is leveled by a tornado...

More than 600 Vaughan homes were damaged; 38 were declared unsafe to live in. The estimate for public damage and recovery costs is about $730,000.

Vaughan has asked for about $400,000, most of that related to overtime pay for city workers, Jackson said.

A letter from Municipal Affairs Minister Jim Watson to the mayor's office explained that Vaughan didn't meet the criteria set out by the ministry's Ontario Disaster Relief Assistance Program.

Contrary to the suggestion that a tornado doesn't qualify as a disaster, it sounds more like the real deal breaker is the curse of affluence...

The program "is really intended for use in exceptional circumstances, where the event was of such magnitude that it is beyond the ability of the municipality to manage," said Adam Grachnik.

"Vaughan, as a municipality, we determined has it within their fiscal capacity to manage it."

I wonder how the Liberal-friendly, predominantly Italian community of Vaughan feels, now that they've discovered they are only considered citizens of this province when it's time to collect the taxes, but not when it's time to give some back.  I wonder if they'll remember this when it comes time to vote again.

And I wonder if Dalton McGuinty truly understands what it's like to stiff rich Italians, who have honed the science of grudge-holding to a fine art.

Kathy asks...

How many of these people are on welfare?

Easily answered when you consider the rally is being held at 2:30 on a Friday afternoon.  At the very least, they're not working.  Which is what most of us dirty kuffars will be doing instead.

Good thing they planned it for November, otherwise I'd be tempted to take the day off and show up in my bikini.