Reader Tips

There's some great radio on live right now:

Friday, April 10th, 2009

7pm PDT / 8pm MDT / 9pm CDT / 10pm EDT

Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant are appearing live on Chicago radio station WGN.

You can listen live here.

Watch the awkward spin as Rinaldo and Clark try to get the dirt on the non-story.

All about the huge rift between Harper and Mulroney...in their minds anyway.

http://watch.ctv.ca/news/latest/party-distancing/

Learning how bacteria communicate, and the possible benefit to humans of preventing pathogenic bacterial communication.

Bonnie Bassler's TED lecture : Discovering bacteria's amazing communication system.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate.html

Camille Paglia:

"Something very ugly has surfaced in contemporary American liberalism, as evidenced by the irrational and sometimes infantile abuse directed toward anyone who strays from a strict party line. Liberalism, like second-wave feminism, seems to have become a new religion for those who profess contempt for religion. It has been reduced to an elitist set of rhetorical formulas which posit the working class as passive, mindless victims in desperate need of salvation by the state. Individual rights and free expression, which used to be liberal values, are being gradually subsumed to worship of government power."

Later,

"The problems on the American left were already manifest by the late 1960s, as college-educated liberals began to lose contact with the working class for whom they claimed to speak. (A superb 1990 documentary, 'Berkeley in the Sixties,' chronicles the arguments and misjudgments about tactics that alienated the national electorate and led to the election of Richard Nixon.) For the past 25 years, liberalism has gradually sunk into a soft, soggy, white upper-middle-class style that I often find preposterous and repellent. The nut cases on the right are on the uneducated fringe, but on the left they sport Ivy League degrees. I'm not kidding -- there are some real fruitcakes out there, and some of them are writing for major magazines. It's a comfortable, urban, messianic liberalism befogged by psychiatric pharmaceuticals. Conservatives these days are more geared to facts than emotions, and as individuals they seem to have a more ethical, perhaps sports-based sense of fair play."

(all emph. mine)

http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/04/08/bow/print.html

GREAT link, EBD. Thank you!

Several parts caught my attention, especially her longer responses in the beginning. I loved the one comment from a reader that she reprinted:

"The failure of talkers on liberal radio is in large part due to an absolute inability to poke fun at themselves." How true!

It's not just "talkers on liberal radio". The Left in Canada is especially unable to poke fun at themselves!

In BC we have a major election coming up. The last one was a squeaker. This time, no-one is talking about it and I need help knowing how to vote.

No, I'm not talking about the premier's office. That one's a no-brainer and a landslide-in-waiting. I am talking about BC-STV.

Last time around, I know some people objected (most notably, Terry O'Neil) but I never heard a valid objection.

Avi Lipkin: Shiite and Sunni Struggle 10 22 2007

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4420192359252481053&hl=en

As of 8:00 am this morning here in Woodstock Ontario, the little eight year old Woodstock girl is still missing.
Police were canvassing door to door yesterday evening in our area.

Many people are volunteering to search.

why the Left should trust and support Obama.

Excerpt:

...from 1976-2007, public spending as a percentage of GDP had consistently remained in the 32%-37% range. However, due to the stimulus package and the proposed budget, public spending as a percentage of GDP will move above 40%, even without the bailouts, for the first time in American history outside of World War Two.

This is the biggest progressive economic victory in over thirty years. It is a tangible step toward the Canadian and Western European mixed economic model, the first one we have taken in a few decades. And it happened in less than three months. If, in only three months, someone has achieved the biggest progressive victory in thirty years, and the first real step toward an equitable economic model in a similar amount of time, that should probably earn that person a bit of trust and support from the American left...

Bush vs. Obama deficits in pictures.

No wonder the "progressive" in the piece linked above "trusts and supports" Obama.

Andrew Coyne demonstrates why sda fills a void.

My complaint is not just that the Conservatives have abandoned conservatism themselves — which is annoying to me mostly because I believe there should be a conservative alternative, even if I don’t necessarily subscribe to it. But they’ve closed off the possibility of anyone else applying it either. They haven’t moved the middle to them, they haven’t even moved to the middle. All they’ve done is shift the spectrum further and further to the left.

Does This Bring Back Memories

"Cauchon rejects kickback allegation in suit that has little to do with him"
Globe & Mail April 11/2009

*Former Liberal Justice minister Martin Cauchon is rejecting allegations he offered government contracts to a B.C lawyer in exchange for donations to the Liberal Party.

The Explosive claims of a political kickback scheme surfaced yesterday, But have been buried in court records.....

IMO
A Liberal Political Kickback Scheme! Go on say it ain't so, Never, the liberals would never do that!

"We still can't read Obama" - Rex Murphy.

Monte Solberg apologises for not paying closer attention to Ezra' Levants situation.

http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/monte_solberg/2009/04/10/9074156-sun.html

[ .. , seems to have become a new religion for those who profess contempt for religion.] EBD

That, I believe, is what underlines many of today's battles.

It is what allows frauds and scams to have legs. Super biases and contempt are allowed as if two wrongs can make a right. My-Kyoto-religion is no worse than your church, kind of thinking. Married women are desperate housewives. Playing the Religion Card worked to reelect the nutter McGuinty.

It has become larger than life. Three years ago this, and many other sites, had very few Kyoto posts. Now it is one of the dominate ones.

The world should really be moving on to more pressing issues but the childlike attitude of our beloved Media is the crotch of the problem. Perhaps the financial rough spot will starve the Warmongers and religion haters to death.

[Note; I am not religious in the least.]

SHUT UP

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/04/10/newest-source-of-lefts-pretend-fearoutrage-tea-parties/

"the story emerged from the shadows of the Internet."

The Shadow reports on bOw-wOw.
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"Why is this man lying? (BOWelGate)

In a series of five posts titled "Why is this man bowing?," I noted Barack Obama's disgusting bow to the Saudi King in London. My persistence on the subject was prompted by the blackout on the story by the mainstream media. Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post carried a story about it. Neither did the news services nor FOX News.

Then this week the story emerged from the shadows of the Internet. Ben Smith ran an item on Politico with the White House denying the bow. "It wasn't a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he's taller than King Abdullah," said an Obama aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Bill O'Reilly ran a bemused segment on it once the White House denied what Obama had done.

As John Hinderaker noted, on Thursday a reporter asked Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs about the bow. Under his own name and on the record, Gibbs denied what any fool could see. Indeed, one astute observer commented on CNN that "Ray Charles could see that he bowed." (Michael Goldfarb noted the observer's comment.)

Why the lying? Perhaps Obama realizes he made a mistake. As the American head of state, protocol dictates that president does not bow to royalty. Yet Obama holds himself out as a sophisticate and cosmopolitan. His ignorance of the governing protocol is both a personal and national embarrasment. The Office of Chief of Protocol apparently remains unfilled by an appointee. Is it better to lie than to admit a mistake?

Perhaps admitting that the bow was a mistake would be an insult to the King of Saudi Arabia. Yet even his Muslim subjects don't bow to him. It's hard to see how the frank confession of error would cause offense.

So, once again, why the lying?"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2227005/posts

More shadow.
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"(Iranian) Blogger becomes casualty of Iran cyber-wars

— The first line of his first blog from Tehran in September 2006 asks: "What is freedom?"

Omidreza Mirsayafi answered his own question. "I don't know," he wrote, "but I know someday I will see its shadow falling on my land."

Two and half years later, from behind the gray walls of Tehran's Evin Prison, he phoned his mother. They talked about his battle with depression behind bars. She asked if he was taking his heart medicine"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2226993/posts

The Vatican/internet has a longgggggggg .... memory with lotssssssss of skeletons in the closets.
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"Vatican blocks Caroline Kennedy appointment as US ambassador"
urlm.in/cbwc
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"... in a long forgotten meeting at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, on a hot July day in 1964, the Kennedy family and their advisers and allies were coached by Fr. Drinan, then-Dean of Boston College Law School, and a contingent of leading theologians and Catholic college professors, to accept and promote abortion with a "clear conscience."

"The Passing of 'Fr. Death'
The New Oxford Review"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1818654/posts

The methodology/modus operandi of the HRCs/bureaucrats/apparatchiks/agents of the apparatus is delineated here:

Using "legal means" for criminal ends.
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""The Nazis had a morbid fascination with committing their crimes under the cover of legitimacy," Ledbetter said.

"They had a twisted genius for inventing legal mechanisms which seemed to be legitimate but in fact were mechanisms of theft and that's what happened to the Oppenheimers.""
...-

"Hearst's Nazi art returned to heirs"

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Worl...9080086- ap.html

From Daniel M. Ryan's (11:24 a)m link to Rex Murphy's column:

"But I have not heard...the core note of the authentic Barack Obama. What are the most important issues for Mr. Obama? What are the cornerstone beliefs of this new President? What does he have 'within which passes show'? He glides from one part of his mammoth agenda to the other, smooth, cool and charming all the way. But his effortless equanimity poses the question: If it were another agenda, a contrary agenda even, would he glide equally smooth, cool and charming over it? I don't think we know. He doesn't offer any real affective clues."

(emph. mine)

Mao Stlong say to Ministel Day*: egg fooey stink on face.
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"Chinese Drywall Poses Potential Risks ["...Gives Off A Rotten-Egg Stench"]

Chinese drywall poses potential risks

AP – In this April 8, 2009 photo, Mary Ann Schultheis stands in the guest room of her Parkland, Fla. home

PARKLAND, Fla. – At the height of the U.S. housing boom, when building materials were in short supply, American construction companies used millions of pounds of Chinese-made drywall because it was abundant and cheap.

Now that decision is haunting hundreds of homeowners and apartment dwellers who are concerned that the wallboard gives off fumes that can corrode copper pipes, blacken jewelry and silverware, and possibly sicken people.

Shipping records reviewed by The Associated Press indicate that imports of potentially tainted Chinese building materials exceeded 500 million pounds during a four-year period of soaring home prices. The drywall may have been used in more than 100,000 homes, according to some estimates, including houses rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina.

"This is a traumatic problem of extraordinary proportions," said U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, a Florida Democrat who introduced a bill in the House calling for a temporary ban on the Chinese-made imports until more is known about their chemical makeup. Similar legislation has been proposed in the Senate.

The drywall apparently causes a chemical reaction that gives off a rotten-egg stench, which grows worse with heat and humidity."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2227059/posts
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*"Trade Minister Stockwell Day begins visit to China

The Canadian Press

SHENYANG, China -- The global financial crisis and bilateral trade were on the agenda as International Trade Minister Stockwell Day began a seven-day visit to China on Saturday.

"I am here to demonstrate that Canada views China as a key economic partner," the minister said in an emailed statement."
urlm.in/cbwf

Hey everybody, be sure to check out the videos of Ezra speaking at a Fraser Institute reception and dinner.

It's a stellar performance -- compelling and *hilarious*.

What an absolute mensch this guy is. We're very fortunate to have him in this country.

http://ezralevant.com/2009/04/book-talk-in-a-bar.html

Choice excerpt from the second of the three Ezra vids:

"My mother teaches English as a second language to adult immigrants -- newcomers -- she teaches them business English, really, and some cultural norms, how to fit in and make a go of it in a can-do country like Canada and a can-do city like Calgary.

"Well, she received a brochure from the Government of Alberta, co-sponsored by Alberta's Human Rights Commission. It was basically a textbook, a learn-to-read-English workbook for the students. But what was the subject matter? It was co-sponsored by the Human Rights Commission. The subject matter through which her adult students -- new immigrants, newcomers to Canada -- were asked to learn English was a how to file a complaint with the Human Rights commission.

"Sixty thousand copies of this document were given were given to ESL teachers throughout Alberta. Instead of "See Spot Run" -- okay, I guess that would be for kids -- instead of "How to Do a Job Application" or "How to Fill Out Your Taxes," or how to call the fire department, or whatever -- how to open a bank account -- it was how to file a Human Rights Commission complaint.

This is what they gave my Mom, who is even more enthusiastic than me. I mean, she just loves -- 'Alright! Let's go get jobs!...'"

"OBAMA'S BROTHER REFUSED ENTRY TO UKs over attempted sex attack

AMERICAN president Barack Obama's half brother was REFUSED a visa to enter the UK after being accused of an attempted sex attack on a young British girl. The News of the World can reveal that Kenya-based Samson Obama tried to get into Britain on his way to Washington for his family's big day, the historic inauguration in January.

But eagle-eyed immigration officials at East Midlands Airport, using the latest biometric tests, discovered he was linked to an incident here last November.

Details on the hi-tech database revealed that Samson-who manages a mobile phone shop just outside Nairobi -was in fact the same man who was arrested by police in Berkshire after he approached a group of young girls, including a 13 year-old, and allegedly tried to sexually assault one of them.

He then followed them into a cafe where he became aggressive and was asked to leave by the owner.

That's when police were called to the scene and Samson was arrested.

But he gave officers a false ID - claiming to be Henry Aloo, a genuine refugee and asylum seeker - and supplied his mother's address in Bracknell.

Mum Kezia, 67, has lived in the town for six years. She married the US president's father Barack Obama Snr in Kenya when she was a teenager.

Following Samson's arrest he was fingerprinted but not formally charged and then left the country. However, all his details were stored on the Home Office's new database of prints and biometric details.

And that's what finally pinpointed Samson's link to the world's most powerful leader-as he attempted to slip back into Britain to visit relatives en route to joining the two million crowd at the swearing-in ceremony."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2227116/posts

"For the third time in a week the crew of the Canadian Navy's HMCS Winnipeg has helped ward off a suspected pirate attack off the Gulf of Aden."
...-

"Canadian warship wards off attempted pirate attack off Horn of Africa

TORONTO - For the third time in a week the crew of the Canadian Navy's HMCS Winnipeg has helped ward off a suspected pirate attack off the Gulf of Aden.

Commander Craig Baines tells CTV NewsNet that the Winnipeg dispatched its Sea King helicopter Friday night after a civilian vessel reported four people in a skiff were firing weapons at it.

Once the suspected pirate vessel was located, Baines says a boarding team was sent over. However, as they approached the skiff in the dark the crew saw a number of items being thrown overboard, possibly weapons.

On Wednesday, the Canadian warship was involved in a similar incident involving a skiff with four men firing at a civilian vessel, and last Saturday, its Sea King crew warded off another potential attack."
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2009/04/11/9086341-cp.html
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"U.S. Navy in Standoff With Pirates (just in from WSJ)

The Maersk Alabama pulled into its berth in Mombasa port Saturday evening, while U.S. warships tried to stop Somali pirates from sending reinforcements to a lifeboat where the Alabama's capitain is being held hostage off Africa's eastern coast. About seven Alabama crewmembers, clad in blue overalls and hardhats, watched from the railings as the ship was pulled into its berth. A few waved and one pumped his fist as the ship approached the dock, which was covered with journalists wielding cameras and notebooks, as a helicopter rented by the Associated Press hovered overhead. The ship had visible security: several men.."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2227087/posts

Posted by: Drained Brain at April 11, 2009 10:53 AM

If you've seen the arguments directed at those who are critical of this 'conservative' government here in reader comments - you'd probably say alot of the posters here are the void.

Big government, big spending, gun registry HRC Wheat Board loving deficit munching unaccountable stimulus spending latte liberals.

Thanks to those from the 'pink in the middle' side of the party - you've won a complete and total victory.

You have power - what you so desperately missed.

Special thanks to Jim Prentice the Red, and Flaherty the Coward for expediting the process.

Conservatives - ahh, we hardly knew ye

EBD - I think that Obama-the-Smooth would glide over any policy that is given to him to process and ensure its passage.

He has no intellectual affinity for any theory, policy, program; he is a Performer - and as a narcissist, his only agenda, his sole agenda, is to control how people interact with him.

By the way, Obama held a 'seder' at the White House. I find this action disgraceful; a religious action turned into a political campaign strategy.

The seder is a religious ceremony for Jews. As such, it is meant to be approached and carried out with religious reverence and significance. [Remember, I'm an atheist but I don't denigrate religion]. What did Obama do? He turned a religious ceremony, one meant to be a deep experience of great historic and religious depth, into a multicultural tourist performance.

Catholics take communion. Is this experience supposed to be open to non-Catholics, taking communion just for the tourist experience of it? No - for that would denigrate and indeed, demolish the religious sanctity of communion.

Same thing with Obama's having a Jewish seder at the White House. The seder is NOT a tourist trip; it's a religious and historic ritual - and it is arrogant and outrageous that Obama turned it into a political Performance for himself and his narcissism.

Mao Stlong say, Boob my nephew. Boob leady to lorr.

Boob say: "READY to roll. Agir des MAINTENANT".
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"Bob Rae embraces American election software to manage donations"
Comments (62)
http://stevejanke.com/archives/285821.php

It's an outrage that two brilliant Canadians like Steyn and Levant, instead of being a source of pride for Canada, are harassed by a kangaroo court where winning is impossible.

I've sent countless emails to politicians at the federal and provincial level, begging them to do something about this outrage. I take pride in the fact that my MP, Liberal (and former Reform Party member) Keith Martin, introduced an amendment to eliminate Section 13 of the Act.

And still, with a Provincial Election here in BC next month, this issue is nowhere to be seen. All the various provincial and federal "Human Rights" Commissions are still in business, and Section 13 is still with us. I guess the HRCs are lying low, hoping the storm will pass.

Is it ever possible to just scrap a particular government program or initiative? It seems impossible. The affected bureaucrats always manage to keep the gravy train running.

Civilization walking the plank
Pirate problem joins North Korean missile, Iranian nukes as 'distractions' for Obama.

By Mark Steyn

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/distraction-world-pirates-2361189-states-distractions

The writer is a young women who experienced parenting by a homosexual dad. Her story is compelling, but the larger story is the power of the CRTC and the Canadian media.

http://www.realwomenca.com/page/newsljf0904.html

bryanr at 11:17 brings up an interesting story about liberal corruption.What I find a little more interesting is the cbc's lack of interest. There is not only a 'smoking gun' in this story,there is a whole arsenal of facts that substantiate the allegations. Just like the unethical Rae/Ignatieff leadership fundraising hi-jinks that is cut and dried,based on easily obtained factual information,the cbc will ignore the story.Do they no longer have the funds to persue stories of liberal corruption so they are focusing on the conservatives,or possibly they are biased?..This is a story that should be reported,even the G&M have given it some ink,though on Easter weekend with a bunch of slanted qualifiers,but heck,the cbc should at least give it a perfunctory nod.

EBD, many thanks for the Ezra at Fraser Institute links. Amazing story about this mother. Yup, "human rights" market development.

Came across this amusing quote about Long Term Credit, the 3 geniuses hedge fund which was bailed out in 1998 being "too big to fail".

The LTCM risk model told them that the loss they incurred on one day at the end of August 1998 should have occurred once every 80 trillion years. It happened again the following week.
- Sir Howard Davies, Chairman of the Financial Services Authority, UK

Goreacle is on the prowl; take cover.
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"Snowfall warnings issued for Atlantic Canada"
(cbeastsee)