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H/T to Dust My Broom: http://tinyurl.com/cu6mtp

Things that make you go hmmmm.....

This picture comes from Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff's Flickr account. Apparently the Liberals were so proud of Ignatieff's half-hour meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama that they purchased ad space in Times Square in New York:

They are calling it a 'pr coup' and have also purchased ad space in Las Vegas. Why is it so important for the Liberals to be recognized in America? This is weird.

"Green energy legislation applauded"
St.Catharines Standard.
The Ontario gov't is entering into the age of collectivism-so much for liberalism.
Truly scary stuff.

Vitruvius,

I haven't used Stephen Wolfram's Mathematica since version 4.0 and. Oh, drat, I've wandered into the wrong thread.

Color me red.

* Warming is causing global cooling.
* The sun has virtually nothing to do with global temperature change.
* Carbon dioxide, a harmless gas essential to life on Earth is labeled a toxic substance and a pollutant and must be reduced.
* Rewarding failures will reduce the number of failures.
* Punishing success will encourage more success.
* You can have more freedom by letting the government control more of your life.
* You get out of debt by going further into debt.
* The best people to get you out of trouble are the ones who got you there.

The list of absolute contradictions about environment and economies gets longer every day as we drift further from logic and reason. (Tim Ball, CFP)

Funniest thing I've read all day:

From NRO's The Corner:

Wingin' in the reign [Mark Steyn]

On the Is-he-wingin'-it-or-is-he-a-Machiavellian-genius? thing that Derb started this morning, I'd say the president is wingin' it. That summit today was hilarious, especially the bit before all the bigshots went off to their "breakout sessions" and Obama told them, in best Community-Organizer-in-Chief mode, "not just to identify problems, but to identify solutions." A reader adds:

I haven't heard dialogue that leaden since Edward D. Wood was producing, directing and writing his classic films. Plan Nine From Chicago. All Obama needs is a silk body suit, a tin foil helmet and a shower head that's supposed to be a ray gun.

It'd be funny if the shower head wasn't shooting trillion-dollar bills . . .

Looks like a civil war is breaking out amongst the Libs. Toronto blogger Michael Stickings has somehow managed to get a long piece about Iggy published in the UK's Guardian.

It's highly critical, but what's more telling is Stickings' own political stance. From his blog, he's on the far left of the Liberal Party and possible even into Video Professor territory.

For example, one recent posting is entitled "It's the GOP vs. Obama (and the American people)". Yes, that's right kids, if one happens to be against the government throwing away a trillion dollars into Democrat pet projects then somehow that makes you against the American people.

So Stickings is indeed a Radical Leftist, which possibly underscores his contempt toward Ignatieff.

Why stock speculation is often compared to gambling: both induce the same "rush" in our brains.

Slappy the Clown. Who is he? Whom did I give the new nickname?

http://thecanadiansentinel.blogspot.com/2009/02/ignatieffs-strategy-for-political.html

Oh, my... what a pickle Warren's gotten into! Ditto his boss, the clueless Iggy-Poo!

Most astonishing of all is the fact that the reputedly "smart" Iggy-Poo hasn't fired Slappy, even after all the spectacular poopers he's dropped!

Let the entertainment continue! Don't you just love watching clowns having their silly pants fall down over and over and over again?

We should call Wornout Catsella "Slappy the Clown", for his slapstick antics, for the fact that he likes to launch nuisance SLAPP suits and for his non-stop, knee-slappingly hilariously backfiring attempts at gaining advantage over political opponents.

The scary part,CS,is that the clowns are running the show.

How Micheal Ignatieff is playing abroad....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/feb/13/michael-ignatieff-canada-economy/print

The audacity of Michael Ignatieff; Naive and egotistical, Canada's Liberal leader

Katsella and Iggypoo, what a team, one doesn't know what the other is up to. Iggypoo's likeness was flashing and twirling on Marquees in Times Square and Vegas and he didn't know about it?!!
That reads more like playing the desperate fools than political smarts.

Agree with CS, it's a clown act.
Iggypoo and Katsella go to New York running on HOPE, if you can make it there you can make it anywhere.

No Guff:

More to the point, why in hell are the Liberals spending money on advertising in the USA when they still owe the Canadian government millions of dollars?! Can't the current government go after these guys, and make them pay?

Good news. Gaia blewed up NASA. Kabango! No injuries/deaths reported.
Hansen/Goreacle, et al, plan mourning in conjunction with Mao Stlong. Details TBA.

Rumour has it that the rocket ran out of O.
...-

"Nasa loses its first CO2 satellite after launch failure

Nasa has lost the centrepiece satellite of its $280 million climate-change mission after a catastrophic launch failure today.

The carbon dioxide-monitoring satellite was fired on a rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but after blasting through the Earth’s atmosphere it fell short of its orbiting height.

A Nasa spokesman at the launch site said: “The mission has been lost. We don’t have any details at this moment. There’s an investigation under way.”

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) satellite was designed to map carbon dioxide on Earth providing a major step forward for scientists attempting to understand climate change."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5795724.ece

an expert on nothing gets the nod from CBCpravda. I tink hes been hit in da head playing rugby too many times by jeezuz he 'as.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2009/02/24/trawler-mp.html

GAIA IS DEAD*.

Shout that out right in the faces of the Red-Greens; Mao Stlong, Goreacle, Hansen, Suzuki, et al., and O.

>>> "what thrilled them was the scenario of a humanless earth."
...-

"All the Leaves are Brown

"On what principle is it," wondered Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1830, "that when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?" Environmentalism didn't exist in its current form in Macaulay's time, or he would easily have discerned its essential pessimism bordering at times on a loathing of humanity. A trip down the environment and earth sciences aisle of any larger bookstore is usually a tour of titles that cover the narrow range from dismay to despair.

On the surface this is not exceptional. Titles predicting decline, decay, and disaster are just as numerous in the real estate, economics, and social science shelves, though, ironically, not so much in the religion book racks, where one would expect to find apocalypticism well represented. This is an important distinction: unlike the eschatology of all major religions, the eco-apocalypse is utterly without hope of redemption for man or nature. The greens turn purple at the suggestion that most environmental conditions in rich nations are actually improving, and they bemoan the lack of "progress" toward the transformation of the human soul that is thought necessary for the planet's salvation. Yet some cracks are starting to appear in their dreary and repetitive story line. Although extreme green ideology won't go away any time soon—the political and legal institutions of the environmental movement are too well established—there are signs that the public and a few next-generation environmentalists are ready to say goodbye to all that. There are even some liberal authors with environmentalist sympathies who are turning against the environmental establishment. But it is necessary to claw our way through the deepening slough of green despondency to see this potential turning point.

More than 30 years ago political scientist Anthony Downs wrote in the Public Interest of a five-step "issue-attention cycle" through which public enthusiasm for an issue gradually diminishes as we come to recognize the high cost of drastic action, and that the nature of the problem was exaggerated or misconceived. The environment, he wrote, would have a longer cycle than most issues because of its diffuse nature, but it appears that the public is finally arriving at the late stages of Downs's cycle. Opinion surveys show that the public isn't jumping on the global warming bandwagon despite a multi-million dollar marketing campaign and full-scale media hysteria. More broadly there are signs that "green fatigue" is setting in. Magazine publishers recently reported that their special Earth Day "green" issues generated the lowest newsstand sales of all issues published in 2008. "Suddenly Being Green Is Not Cool Any More," read a London Times headline in August.

This has been building for a long time. Three years ago New York Times green-leaning columnist Nicholas Kristof lamented that the environmental movement was losing credibility because of its doomsaying monomania, with the result that "environmental alarms have been screeching for so long that, like car alarms, they are now just an irritating background noise."

Environmental leaders did not take well to his wandering from the reservation. In response to the popular indifference to green alarms, conventional environmentalists have ratcheted up their level of vitriol against humanity and democratic institutions. One of the most popular books of 2007 among environmentalists was The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, which projects a "thought experiment" about what would occur if human beings were suddenly removed entirely from the planet. Answer: nature would reassert herself, and ultimately remove nearly all traces of human civilization within several millennia—a mere blink of an eye in the planetary timescale.

Environmentalists cheered Weisman's vivid depiction of the resilience of nature, but what thrilled them was the scenario of a humanless earth. Weisman made sure to stroke his audience's self-loathing with plenty of boilerplate about resource exhaustion and overpopulation. The book rocketed up the best-seller list, the latest in a familiar genre stretching back at least to Fairfield Osborn's Our Plundered Planet in 1948, arguably the first neo-Malthusian doomsday tract of modern environmentalism. Time magazine named The World Without Us the number one non-fiction book of 2007."
http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1588/article_detail.asp

(*H/T Friedrich Nietzsche)

MSM will attempt to bury this report.

Soldier: "President Obama an "impostor""
...-

"Soldier doubts eligibility, defies president's orders

A U.S. soldier on active duty in Iraq has called President Obama an "impostor" in a statement in which he affirmed plans to join as plaintiff in a challenge to Obama's eligibility to be commander in chief. The statement was publicized by California attorney Orly Taitz who, along with her Defend Our Freedom Foundation, is working on a series of legal cases seeking to uncover Obama's birth records and other documents that would reveal whether he meets the requirements of the U.S. Constitution. "As an active-duty officer in the United States Army, I have grave concerns about the constitutional eligibility of Barack Hussein Obama to hold the office of president of the United States," wrote Scott Easterling in a "to-whom-it-may-concern" letter."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2192707/posts

Mao Stlong say, alse-kissing not arrowed in Moi's poriticar collect legime.
...-

"Chinese proofreader fined after 'Such a**e-kissing!' ends up in print

A show of lèse-majesté and a lapse of concentration have resulted in an editing error in a Chinese newspaper that highlights the frustrations felt by many local journalists at the strict propaganda rules they face.

The proofreader and typesetter at the outspoken Southern Metropolis Daily have been fined for an article that went a step too far – even for one of the few newspapers in China willing on occasion to challenge the censors.

The proofreader was outraged when he was presented with a story from a junior reporter that fell into line with the mainstream newspapers that lavish praise on the activities of Communist Party officials."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5791025.ece

"It was a perfectly reasonable question, and on the surface it seemed like a perfectly reasonable answer. But when Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd went on Bloomberg TV Friday and mused about the possibility of bank nationalization, panicked investors sent the Dow plummeting a hundred points in the next hour.

"Whoops.

"Dodd’s casual remark and the not-so-casual consequences it caused were among the most vivid examples of a new Washington phenomenon. The city’s sudden status as the de facto world financial capital means that briefings and interviews that once would have passed with a yawn can create instant terror on Wall Street and Main Street alike..."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/19213.html

The more things change....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090223/ap_on_sc/sci_climate_update_1

O is a narcIssIst*
AssPress IdOlizes I.

...-

""The helicopter I have now seems perfectly adequate to me," Obama said wryly, inciting more laughter. "Of course, I've never had a helicopter before. So, you know, maybe I've been deprived and I didn't know it.""

""Lindsey Graham. I don't know about Lindsay Thomas, but I know Lindsey Graham.""

""Well, I will certainly do that, Tom, because I'm just a glutton for punishment," Obama joked. "I'm going to keep on talking to Eric Cantor."

"I'm not in Congress, so I don't want to interject myself too much into congressional politics," the former Illinois senator said. Then, not passing up a moment to make his pitch, he said: "But I do want to make this point, and I think it's important..."

"Obama uses humor at White House summit"
http://tinyurl.com/dykqxx

*"The narcissist brags incessantly. His speech is peppered with "I", "my", "myself", and "mine"."
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/71124

CBCpravda doesnt like it when people talk back to the talking heads.

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/media/story/2009/02/23/reader-comments.html?ref=rss&loomia_si=t0:a16:g25:r1:c0:b22216444

I just thought some here might be interested in what is in the minds of the Obama fanatics. Read through some of the comments on this forum. Truly mind blowing.

Here is an example,

Alright let's get the ball rolling. We must make the internet more "Obama" friendly, there are a whole bunch of conservatard sites that criticize our president. I have been assured by Sec of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano that she will take steps to make the internet more friendly but she needs sites that should be banned. Please brainstorm here

Sincerely,

Howard Dean M.D.

http://www.theobamaforum.com/showthread.php?t=1808&page=1

Noted former baggage handler and present day pol now apparently an expert on at sea disasters.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2009/02/24/trawler-mp.html

So lets get this straight. Instead of possibly facing a minor fine for maybe over fishing in INTERNATIONAL waters, the Captain decides to put himself and his crew in extreme danger and decides to sink a nearly new multi-million dollar 30m fishing boat.

Stoffer? Learn to keep yer mouth shut when you obviously have zero knowledge of a subject.

J.E. Dyer is a retired U.S. Naval Intelligence officer.

J.E. Dyer, Deterrence and the Superpower

It is understandable that, from the American perspective, nuclear deterrence seems to have “worked” during the Cold War. The Soviet Union never attacked us, nor did local conflicts escalate to global war. But the lesson of the Cold War for nations like Iran and North Korea is that nuclear deterrence worked against the United States...

Something to ponder while you put off attending to more important matters:

W. A. Pannapacker, How to Procrastinate Like Leonardo da Vinci

On his deathbed, they say, Leonardo da Vinci regretted that he had left so much unfinished...

Leonardo was the kind of person we have come to call a "genius." But he had trouble focusing for long periods on a single project. After he solved its conceptual problems, Leonardo lost interest until someone forced his hand. Even then, Leonardo often became a perfectionist about details that no one else could see, and the job just didn't get done...

Catsmeat Machiavelli Adscam-boy "The Lying Jackel" Kinsella has been fired from his volunteer job at the CJC, and people whose lives he is trying to destroy are reacting more in sorrow than in anger. I wonder if Kate feels the same way? Check out Kathy at Five Feet of Fury and Ezra Levant.

Vitruvius: Two thumbs up on the musical selection! Many thanks.

Kate, congratulations on SDA exceeding 12 million visits!

"Prime Minister Harper is very impressive."
...-

Fox: "Learning From Sweden and Canada: How to Solve the U.S. Financial Crisis
By Alexis Glick"

http://tinyurl.com/cseaaz
(via Bourque)

I dont know how George Bush done it by I knows he done it.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/02/24/satellite-fail.html

now we will never know how the climate is changing, unless we are told by the obamamessiah.

I dont know how George Bush done it by I knows he done it.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/02/24/satellite-fail.html

now we will never know how the climate is changing, unless we are told by the obamamessiah.

CKNW's Bill Good is such an ignorant ass, when he wants to be. This morning he had Dennis Miller on for a short 15 minute segment. Good appeared shocked when Miller stated that he thought extremely highly of George Bush's stance on Radical Islam and its threat to our civilization.

After Miller had left, Good said to a caller, "Oh Dennis Miller just thinks that way because he's very conservative." He also added, on another tangent, that "Obama is doing everything he can to reach out to Republicans".

So many thing wrong with these statements...

First off, the manner in which he used the term "very conservative" was clearly a derogatory slam against Miller. Though Good reminds everyone on a daily basis about how "centrist" he is, clearly the years of drinking CBC Kool-Aid have had a lasting effect. All members of the Conservative Party of Canada should be aware of this man's strong bias every time they get interrogated ... errr "interviewed" by him.

Secondly, in point of fact, Dennis Miller is not "very conservative". In general, he's extremely liberal on most social issues. It's just that with this one issue of Radical Islam, he has drawn a line in the sand to protect his family and their future. Too bad the Bill Good's of the world think that self-preservation is an insane notion.

Finally, as for Obama reaching out to Republicans, if Good didn't have the Man Crush on The Messiah that he does, he would clearly realize that exactly the opposite has occurred.

The state of the Canadian Media in 2009 = Pathetic!

In Ontario, Canada, the Green$hirt$, are on patrol.

Its quarry? The New Jew, aka CO2.

LibSocialist McGuinty has anointed/crowned himself: The Green Emperor.

His Green Energy commiSSar is Smitherman.

...-

"Mandatory home energy audits planned
Green Energy Act

The Ontario government is prepared to impose a green regime that will direct how homeowners sell their property, set prices on alternative energy and cut municipalities out of decision-making where wind and solar energy projects can be located."
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1321615

And while Herr McGuinty & his little helper Smitherman dictates to Taxpayers on how they will sell their own house, There is Nothing said I repeat Nothing Said about his Coal fired plants Closing Scheme, that was supposed to be enacted by now.

I would like to know Just How 50,000 Jobs will be created? All they state is 50,000 jobs will be created They DoNot indicate How or by Whom.
Governments do not create Jobs, Industry & Business do.

It is going to be interesting how Americans defend themselves against Obamic socialism.

Already, at least eleven states are rejecting Obama's expansion of the federal govt into issues involving states. That is, Obama's money, with its strings, is moving into areas controlled by state legislatures. This is a violation of the 10th amendment which gives any and all jurisdictions not specifically mentioned in the Constitution as federal - to the states.

The US constitution limits the federal government rather than the people, i.e., the Constitution guarantees the freedom of the people by limiting the power of the government.

So, will the people of America stand up for their constitution?

Meanwhile, what we will also see is an effort by the Obama team to reduce, inhibit and prevent debate and dissent to the Democratic socialist agenda.

But ET, how can you say such things? After all, aforementioned members of the Canadian media are telling us that Obama is "reaching across the aisle", spreading goodness wherever he goes.

Are you telling us that these media types are actually LYING?!?

(PDF warning) Richard deVillafranca, Reconsidering Afghanistan: Time for an “Azimuth Check”

Two Strategic Mistakes

Why we are not winning is complex but can be traced to two strategic errors, both of which are remediable. The first error centers on state-building: We have adopted a standard western state-building template that does not fit Afghan conditions particularly well. Expectations, both ours and the Afghans’, are not aligned with reality, not just in terms of outcomes but also in terms of the time it will take to achieve them. The second mistake is more dangerous to our overall objectives in Afghanistan. It centers on the Taliban insurgency, which we perceive in one dimension (as a military—our military—problem). This perception drives American strategy and the instruments of US power we choose, with decreasing returns, to apply to it. But there are other parties to the conflict. Pakistan, the Afghan people, and the insurgents themselves view the insurgency in ways that differ significantly from our perspective. A successful strategy for defeating the insurgency needs to be based on a clearer, deeper understanding of what these parties want...

bryanr - but governments DO create jobs, particularly in Ontario, where the expansion of public sector jobs - in the bureaucracy, in education, in social services etc, far outstrips the jobs created by the private sector.

After all, if the private sector is paying more and more and more taxes then they can't possibly fund new small and medium businesses or employ more people!

McGuinty has lots more civil service jobs planned and he's setting up new taxes to cover this. He's got the new one for renewing car registration which effectively DOUBLES the registration cost per year; he's got another planned where you'll have to pay a 'green test' tax when you sell your home or condo

"The sweeping legislative package known as the Green Energy Act will amend 15 statutes and the government says it will create 50,000 jobs." National Post.

These jobs will be public sector jobs; paid for by your taxes. Not by any business or industrial creation. And that means that these jobs will rely on your taxes. High taxes.

Robert W - gosh and golly, yes, the media are lying. But so is Obama and his team and the Democrats. When Obama says 'bipartisanship', he doesn't mean that the Democrats and the Republicans will work on policies and programs together. Heck no. What he means is that the Republicans will not dissent, will not criticize, will not reject His Will.

Obama is a Sovereign Ruler. As in the Leviathan. An Absolute Sovereign who rules by Divine Will. The people, both in their states, and against Amendment 10, give up ALL rights, even the right to disagree. There is no 'right of dissent', no 'right of rebellion'.

This is a unitary, monlithic authoritarianism, invested with a messianic divinity, inalienable and it cannot err. The Sovereign is always Right and the only interaction of the people to the Sovereign - is devotion and acceptance. That's the Obamic mode.

Let's watch how and whether the States stand up to this transformation of the US government from a constitutional democracy by the people, for the people, of the people...to an absolutist state governed by a Sovereign Will unfettered by law, where the people have lost all rights, including the right to rebel.

And let's watch and see how this Sovereign Will moves to inhibit and prevent questions, criticism and dissent. The repression of the Washington Post 'chimpanzee cartoon' and Obama's personal attacks against Hannity and Limbaugh are only the beginning.

Brilliant stuff as usual, ET. Thank you!

Btw YOU should be writing in the Guardian about Canada, not that Sticky boy from Toronto!!

Reuters is a colossus in the MSM. It's a dragnet of a moulder of public opinion.
Why is Reuters allowing stuff like this?
There is something up? Waht could that be?

"So people in northern Europe may have to buy more snow shovels than parasols to cope with global warming?
How about where you live?"
...-

"Ice Age or global warming?

It looks more like an Ice Age than global warming.

There is so much snow in Oslo, where I live, that the city authorities are resorting to dumping truckloads of it in the sea because the usual storage sites on land are full.

That is angering environmentalists who say the snow is far too dirty – scraped up from polluted roads — to be added to the fjord. The story even made it to the front page of the local paper (’Dumpes i sjøen’: ‘Dumped in the sea’)."
http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/2009/02/24/ice-age-or-global-warming/

ET: Govt's do create jobs... Public Sector

Dohhh!
ET as usual i stand corrected, You are so right & how could i ever forget our Ontario friends of Dont give a Shit as long as they are Reaping the taxpayers & they have a job with a Super Pension.

BTW ET: Speaking of reaping the taxpayers, I see there is Trouble in the Land of Oz at the Emerald City Admin.Centre,(Toronto City Hall).

"Citizens need some answers, Mayor Miller"
Sun Media Toronto Sun Feb24/09

*Taxpayers deserve answers from Toronto Mayor David Miller to questions raised by Auditor General Jeffrey Griffiths annual report on the city's fraud and waste hotline .........
-an emplyoee charging $50,000 of overtime because he was doing Union & other duties instead of his job.

Plenty more great read

Geert Widers interview on Beck. via Atlas Shrugs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW-dQev-NSE&eurl

Downdate: satellite fell into the cold water just missing a polar bear which was sunning itself on a melting glacier.

This is an omen; AGW has crashed.

"“Woo Hoo!”*
...-

"Mission to map Earth's CO2 ends as rocket crashes into H2O

Nasa admitted yesterday that the US Government’s first attempt to map carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere from space had come to an inglorious end, when the rocket carrying the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) crashed into the Pacific. The spacecraft that was supposed to save us from global warming was carrying a highly toxic fuel, hydrazine.

Nasa insisted that the fuel had been burnt up before poisoning the ocean."

"On conservative websites such as Free Republic, global warming sceptics — some of whom argue that Nasa uses climate change as a scare tactic to lobby for more funding from the federal government — rejoiced. *“Woo Hoo!” wrote one commenter. Another added: “I hope it fell on Nasa. It’s the most worthless government programme in existence.”"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5799134.ece

SDA! 'fess up. Post a pic of yer Tiffany Gift Bag courtesy O.
>>>> *"And how's this for a nice touch: Female guests at the Chicago concert all got trinkets from ... TIFFANY AND CO."
...-

"Bailout Bank Blows Millions Partying in L.A.

A bank that received $1.6 billion in bailout money just spent a fortune last week in L.A. hosting a series of lavish parties and concerts with famous singers ... and TMZ cameras caught it all.

Northern Trust, a Chicago-based bank, sponsored the Northern Trust Open at the Riviera Country Club in L.A. We're told Northern Trust paid millions to sponsor the PGA event which ended Sunday, but what happened off the golf course is even more shocking.

Northern Trust flew hundreds of clients and employees to L.A. and put many of them up at some of the fanciest and priciest hotels in the city. We're told more than a hundred people were put up at the Beverly Wilshire in Bev Hills, and another hundred stayed at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel. Still more stayed at the Ritz Carlton in Marina Del Rey and others at Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica.

Here are the highlights:"

*"Female guests at the Chicago concert all got trinkets from ... TIFFANY AND CO."
http://www.tmz.com/2009/02/24/northern-trust-bank-bailout/

Bryanr, all these employees of Toronto city hall that have committed all sorts of fraud and theft with one person "fixing" over 500 parking tickets! At $30 average a ticket this is $15,000 that was stolen from city coffers.

Yet the only thing we have heard happening to these employees, this is going back over at least 3 years, is that they were "disciplined". Does this mean they were scolded severely or slightly yelled at or told to write out "I will not steal" a hundred times. No one at city hall is saying. Bet with their unions no one was fired as THAT would hurt their self esteem.

bryanr - yes, I've been watching Toronto City Council debates on TV.

Some esteemed councillors operate as 'politicians'; i.e., they want to achieve an agenda and their tactics are rhetoric: misinformation, lack of information and manipulation. I was watching one councillor promoting a particular 'minority resource'. Her ignorance about statistics of use of the resource, about success rates - and definition of success, etc; about costs, etc - were quite evident. BUT, she expected her Motion to pass!

I acknowledge there are a few councillors, not in Mayor Miller's gang, who have great integrity and who therefore don't operate as political hacks. But the majority as part of Miller's Gang.

By the way, that's a difference between Obama and Harper as well. Obama is a politician, someone whose agenda is to get His Way. He'll misinform and manipulate. He'll do things for his popularity to retain power.

Harper is not a politician; he's a statesman; his agenda is to what's best for the country and the people. That's why he's being so well received on the international scene because his clarity of thought, his integrity and his knowledge are obvious - he's not trying to win over adoring masses (cf Obama in Berlin).