The Lasso of Truth

Pulpy Goodness

As a Neocon, the only music that "speaks to my politics" is country.  *gag*

So as a music lover, most of the bands in my collection are obscure, and decidedly left-wing.  But I guess I haven't been quite cool enough to have even heard of the cultural vanguards of Pulp...

Readers may recall the 2006 Reading Festival being animated by a sing-along music video titled Cunts Are Still Running the World, which had been sent across the English Channel by Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker, along with an appeal to “smash the system.” No doubt Mr Cocker’s admirers could feel the heat of his socialist belly fire all the way from the singer’s second home in Paris.

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.

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...

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.

Handwringing

To kill or capture?  To publish the death shots or not to publish?  Jeepers.  I even hear it took the supposed leader of the free world 17 hours to decide if he even wanted them to go in at all!

But now that the deed is done, I've been hard pressed to find an opinion on the whole brouhaha that sounds right to me.  Until now.

It started last night, when I heard one of the administration apparatchiks detailing the information that was being gathered from the site, and the various agencies sifting through it, and how much of the information was useful, etc.  I though to myself, if I was in charge, I'd probably want to keep the enemy guessing about whether I got anything useful, and how much of it there was.  Make them have to scramble and worry.

This morning though, that instinct went one step further when as a rare treat I heard Oliver North on my daily morning show, opining that the best approach would have been to keep the whole business under wraps.  And he's right.

Keeping the enemy in the dark that their leader is dead, even holing up in his safe house for a few days, to gather more information from live sources (possibly) would have been a much better strategy.

Unfortunately, that is not how Obama and his pep squad roll.  Oliver North was right about that too...this president is all about the victory laps.

Whole interview here...

11_0506_oliver_north

 

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.

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.

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?

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.

Cuttin' to the chase

As usual...

Pencils, pens... or even bleeding edge laptop computers... do not write lyrical poetry. Parachutes... even negligently packed... do not smash the life out of innocent, random people. Cars... even rip-snorting 400 horsepower street racers... do not chase down pedestrians like panicked bunnies... and guns... even the dark & dastardly Glock... do not foment murder.

So instead of trying to divert all the attention here to an inanimate object... be it a length of pipe, a snowplow, or yes... even a handgun... perhaps you could explain, how not discussing letting obviously mentally defective people with flagrantly violent ideation carom consequence-free throughout the larger field of folk is some sort of inconsequential side-issue.

Amen brother.

Glenn Reynolds characterizes it as blood libel

For the less refined among us, it looks more like they're smearing their hands in the blood of the dead and making cutesy little finger paintings with it...

A lot has been made of Sarah Palin's now infamous graphic showing which Congressmen her PAC was "targeting" for defeat using cross hairs. Politics uses war imagery -- just as any cause does ("war on cancer" "battle against X" and the "fight against Y"). I just don't see a connection between the cross hairs and shooting Gabrielle Giffords and think you have to be an idiot to make such a connection...

Idiot is a charitable way to put it.  I somehow doubt I'm the only person who considered the possibility that Warren typed his post with only one hand.  In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if he types every post that way.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Irrefutable proof that Democrats are stupid.

The question now is, are people who vote for Democrats equally stupid?

Festivus comes early!

The next time one of your public-service-working neighbours complains about layoffs and contract cutbacks, I suggest you remind them that it's all in the name of "human rights"...

Representatives from 47 nations are set to gather Friday in Geneva for a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council with plans to address the human rights abuses of one country in particular: the United States of America.  Joining in the airing of grievances against the U.S. are various left-wing interest groups and American labor unions.

On the agenda for Friday’s gathering are the testimonials of select organizations and individuals who, for the first time ever, plan to claim the U.S. is violating global human rights — including allegations of discrimination against Muslims, police brutality and wrongful detention of certain political prisoners. The exercise comes as part of the UN’s “Universal Periodic Review” (UPR), a rotating periodic examination of various countries‘ human rights records by the council’s members — a council which includes such countries as China, Cuba, Libya and Saudi Arabia.

Pelosi's Damaging Competence

And one misguided journalist's delusional sycophancy...

But amid the wreckage of Tuesday's GOP rampage, there's one person for whom I feel awful: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She's losing her job not because she does it poorly but because she does it so well.

Pelosi would never ask for, or even accept, my sympathy - that's not her style. Her place in history was secure the moment she became the first woman to take possession of the speaker's gavel. Still, she squeezed every drop out of her four-year tenure. To string together a couple of sports cliches, she came to play and she left it all on the field.

I regret that the nation has never come to know the actual Nancy Pelosi. Most Americans are probably familiar only with the caricature that her political opponents sketched - the effete "San Francisco liberal" who knew nothing of America outside her mink-lined cocoon, where the taps ran with chablis and nourishment consisted of unpronounceable French cheeses, served on silver platters by waiters who were certainly gay, and quite possibly married.

And this is why you lost

Liberal attitude, summed up in one petulant whine...

 
h/t

And suddenly...

The Toronto Mayoral race becomes a tight one between Ford, or Not Ford.

And I would be remiss in my duties as snarky blogtress if I did not point out how magnificently Rocco Rossi's campaign exploded, coincidentally the very moment he recruited Warren Kinsella as the kick-ass-and-take-names volunteer of the year.

High five Special K!

I've been a mother for almost 17 years

And I like to think I'm a "good mother", but at no point have I ever even considered there would be an appropriate situation to put a pillow over one of my children's faces.

A maternal flaw for which my children are utterly grateful.  Or so they told me this morning, when they heard about this woman's madness.

In a Nutshell

“the environmental movement has revealed the snarling, wicked, homicidal misanthropy beneath its cloak of gentle, bunny-hugging righteousness.”

I'll say.

cl-ASS

Decades in journalism and seasoned columnist Heather Mallick finally opines on something she seems to actually know something about...

you wake in a hard, unfamiliar bed. Your eyeballs are congealed chip fat and your contact lenses have gone crispy. Your liver is en route somewhere. You appear to be missing a tooth. And there's something in bed next to you. It is the sweaty, beer-smelling oik from the bar last night.

With all the bitterness and cynicism of the trailer park's communal mattress sore.

Hey Heather, how much does it sting that, for all your obvious loathing, the beer-smelling oik would probably turn you down anyway?

The race to be ruler of The Center of the Universe (TM)

I don't get to vote for Mayor of Toronto because, thankfully, I don't live in Toronto, but the mayoralty race in The Center of the Universe ^(TM) is at least entertaining in the same way a carnie freak show is.

Enter the bearded lady...

Warren Kinsella, the controversial Liberal spin doctor and political strategist, is joining the campaign team of trailing mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi.

Kinsella, a bare-knuckle political scrapper, confirmed the news Monday. He is considered a prize catch by the Rossi camp near the start of the important post-Labour Day campaigning season.

Kinsella is president of Toronto-based Daisy Consulting Group and has run campaign “war rooms” for former prime minister Jean Chrétien and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty. He is expected to do the same for Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff in the next federal election.

This is pure, irrefutable proof that Rocco Rossi is either a comic genius playing a colossal practical joke on the citizens or Toronto or, a certifiably retarded tool and thus, only a marginally serious contender for the throne.

I found this little tidbit somewhat amusing though, considering my personal history with Catmeat Kinsella...

Kinsella’s brazen pronouncements include, on a Canada AM panel during the 2000 federal election, ridiculing the creationist views of then-Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day by holding up a purple toy dinosaur and reminding Day that “The Flintstones was not a documentary.”

I know I would jump at the chance of adding to my team, the political prowess of a man who uses The Flinstones as his primary cultural reference for scathing and witty comeback talking points.

The historic stupidity of Special K

Homeroom: Homicide

What do you have to do, to get fired from the education system in Australia?

WESTERN Australia's Education Department chief has apologised after a high school teacher set students an assignment to plan a terrorist attack to kill innocent people.

The society and environment teacher at the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Community High School asked Year 10 students to pretend they were a terrorist planning a chemical or biological attack on ''an unsuspecting Australian community''.

``Your goal is to kill the MOST innocent civilians in order to get your message across,'' the assignment read.

The students had to explain their choice of victims and decide the best time and place to release their weapon.

The assignment was withdrawn and the teacher counselled following a complaint made to the school after one 15-year-old student refused to do it, saying she was horrified and disgusted.

Education Department Director-General Sharyn O'Neill on Wednesday said the teacher had exercised ``poor judgement'' and was remorseful.

She said the teacher, who has been teaching for three years, was ``well intentioned'' and her heart was ``in it for the kids''.

Ms O'Neill said her ``deepest sympathy'' was with families of victims of terrorism who may have been offended by the assignment.

One is left to wonder how the school board would have reacted if a student had chosen to complete the assignment with a detailed outline involving a school bombing and/or the use of a variety of automatic weapons.  Would it also be passed off as just "poor judgment", I wonder?

Do you get the feeling they'd prefer to just do away with this whole election thing, altogether?

When will you knuckle-dragging, ignernt pleebs get it?  We know what's best for you...

Some left-leaning Toronto city councillors weren’t pulling their punches when asked how they feel about the thought of Councillor Rob Ford becoming Toronto’s next mayor.

“In my opinion, if Mayor Ford is elected, city council will have a caucus meeting and they will choose their own mayor and (Ford) will be the mayor in name,” retiring Councillor Kyle Rae said Wednesday during the last city council meeting before the Oct. 25 vote.

“I hope that the citizens of Toronto wake up ... I can’t believe Toronto is prepared to do it.”

[..]

“Most thinking people in Toronto would be so embarrassed by him being mayor that there would be an obligation on council to do something,” he said.

Councillor Howard Moscoe was a little more descriptive in how he sees a Mayor Ford interacting with council.

“He won’t be able to pass gas without the permission of council,” Moscoe said.

When asked if he thinks Ford will be able to work with council, he added: “Depends how often he wants to pass gas.”

Councillor Maria Augimeri said Rae may be right about council having to go rogue against a Mayor Ford.

“I have yet to know that he’s read a report, (the mayor) needs to be intellectually engaged,” she said. “You need to be able to be an avid reader and promoter of the city, simple pat actions won’t do, Band-Aid solutions won’t do ... there is no quick fix (for the city).”

The York Centre councillor said it’s “appalling” that Ford is ahead in the polls.

“But we’ve elected a clown before,” Augimeri said.

And, Rob Ford for Mayor? Are we nuts?  Well Heather, some of us are.

I almost wish I could vote in this thing.  You can almost bank on the guy's success by counting the rabble of yahoos lining up to bury him.

A look into the Obamacare crystal ball

[The] healthcare system is unable to provide sterilized needles, clean water, food and medicine, and patients are forced to undergo agonizing surgery without anesthesia

Thankfully, not the socialized medicine offered in the US and Canada...yet...

"I was screaming so much from the pain, I thought I was going to die. They had tied my hands and legs to prevent me from moving," said a 56-year-old woman from Musan who had an appendectomy performed without anesthesia.

In keeping with its socialist ideology, North Korea once boasted of providing free, universal healthcare with a network of more than 44,000 general practitioners who would even make house calls. Although hospitalization remains free, the facilities are unsanitary and have no food, bandages or medicine.

We used to be closer to the precipice, up here on the north end of the border, but you Americans (ambitious as ever!) are careening past us at lightning speed.

Say it with me: NO BLOOD FOR SUN!

Welcome to the days of the eco-fatwa...

Spain’s Dr. Gabriel Calzada — the author of a damning study concluding that Spain’s “green jobs” energy program has been a catastrophic economic failure — was mailed a dismantled bomb on Tuesday by solar energy company Thermotechnic.

Apparently they should have shipped him a flag, too...

Additionally, the head of Spain’s renewable energy association and the head of its communist trade union wrote opinion pieces in top Spanish newspapers accusing Calzada of being “unpatriotic” — they did not charge him with being incorrect, but of undermining Spain by daring to write the report.

Gee, now that sounds vaguely familiar.

I disagree

There's nothing queer about that about face.  I don't believe they ever had any real plans to exclude the haters from their world-class f*ck fest...just biding their time so there would be very little we could do about it.

Does anyone else think it's rather telling that one of the sponsors of Gay Pride is the Centre for Addiction and Mental health?

Grievance as a commodity

It's too bad I'm just a Canadian-born white woman...a Conservative one, too.  A better turn of luck at birth, and I could get the bills paid...

Dan’s one of the black people in this country who try desperately to make absolutely everything that happens to them be about their race, in hopes of either getting attention from it, or getting something for free.

As we probed Michel for more information on the “travesty” that befell this Dan character at Gay Days, we found out that, yes, indeed, Dan was demanding a refund of his hotel bill because he was discriminated against by Doubletree.  It turns out Dan’s unemployed and should not have really gone to Gay Days, because Dan could not afford it, and now Dan is faced with a credit card bill that Dan does not want.  So, Dan being a black man with no shame or decency has decided to invent RAAACISM!as an excuse to look for something for free, cause a scene, and burden Doubletree, Gay Days, and all sorts of other people with warrantless accusations that waste time and further make the Henry Gates wing of the black community look absolutely ridiculous for continuing the meme that everything bad that happens to blacks is because of RAAACISM.

"Good Sportsmanship"

It passes edicts and punishes achievement...

The official Gloucester Dragons Recreational Soccer handbook announces a mission to “promote the game of soccer while providing all participants with an equal opportunity to play and to develop in an atmosphere of fun, good sportsmanship and respect.” Keen eyed readers will note that “an opportunity to play” doesn’t seem to entail playing as well as one can. And I’m not quite clear how penalising competence squares with the professed ideals of sportsmanship.