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No, the American car industry was not destroyed by its cars. The American car industry was destroyed by the Fun-Suckers. You know the Fun-Suckers. You may be married to one. The Fun-Suckers go around saying how unsafe this fun thing is and how unhealthy that fun thing is and how unfair, unjust, uncaring, insensitive, divisive, contagious, and fattening every other thing that's fun is.

The Fun-Suckers are a bit too careful, a bit too concerned, a bit too scrupulous. That's bullshit. They're evil and they hate us. The motive behind spoiling things for others and then throwing a wet blanket over the rained-on parade is a matter of neither caution nor morals. The Fun-Suckers suck the fun out of life in order to gain control. They've found a way to achieve power without merit. Nothing requires less information, education, or accomplishment than saying that everything's wrong. It's wrong to risk lives, wrong to use up earth's resources, wrong to pollute air, wrong to support an economic system that heightens income inequalities, wrong to own a big, expensive car, drive it fast, and vote Republican. The Fun-Suckers have been around forever. But they didn't used to have the influence they have now. The ruling class of yore was too fond of its dangerous fun. The nobility was having a ball (and PETA be damned) chasing game animals through the serfs' standing corn and chasing serfs as well if any buxom serf lasses were spied. Dukes and princes spent their days warring with infidels and each other and their nights feasting themselves into oblivion. The Fun-Suckers had to rely on religious zealotry to make others miserable and themselves important. Fun-Suckers were reduced to burning a few books and witches, pestering Copernicus and Galileo, and making everyone eat carp pie on Fridays. (Although, to judge by the cumbersome impracticality of medieval armor, knights and squires may have had to deal with a Ralphius Naderum.)

Even the threat of damnation failed the Fun-Suckers when the Enlightenment dawned, and elite thinkers like Voltaire gave up the idea of hell for the idea of a hell of a good time. And yet Fun-Sucking was not to be thwarted. The invention of democracy gave the Fun-Suckers a party platform. What better way to gain power without merit than by being the kind of pea-brained, unaccomplished Fun-Sucker who runs for political office? And what makes a better stump speech than saying that everything's wrong? Elect the Fun-Sucker.

Cars were a perfect opportunity for Fun-Sucking. Ruining cars could produce an even bigger sensation (and government) than the Fun-Suckers' previous golden oldie, Prohibition. After all, at any given moment there are a few people on the wagon and hence not affected by Prohibition. But Americans never get out of their cars.

Cars were everyplace. We couldn't do without them. The car business was too big, complicated, and socially prominent to go on the lam. Cars were a way for the Fun-Suckers to clamp their lamprey jaws onto everybody's seat upholstery.

The Fun-Suckers started small, with seat belts to make sure we'd be trapped inside flaming car wrecks and padded dashboards so we wouldn't injure our knuckles while pounding the dash in frustration as we burned to death. Then the Middle East's predatory goat molesters gave Fun-Suckers the excuse they were looking for, with the 1973 oil embargo.

The Fun-Suckers were able to turn the automobile into a public enemy, an outlaw they could persecute without compunction. Cars were shackled with five-mph bumpers that spoiled the styling of everything from 3.OCS BMWs to landau-style vinyl-roofed opera-windowed Gauche DeVilles. The idea was to make us fun-lovers look ridiculous, to turn us into objects of popular ridicule and scorn. The Fun-Suckers are doing the same thing to our kids by making them wear bike helmets, knee and elbow pads, shin guards, safety goggles, and steel-toed boots to use the teeter-totter at the playground, after which they have to wipe themselves all over with Purell hand disinfectant.

Our children tamely submit to this because they were torn from our fun-filled arms as babies and strapped, belted, buckled, and bound into lonely, isolated rear-facing infant carriers where they grew up without normal social contact or human interaction, causing them to become the passive teen video-gaming thumb-twiddlers and pasty Facebookers who are tweeting, texting, iPhoning, and Wii-wiggling like Internet-wits while they sprawl in front of the high-def TV in our homes. These pallid adolescents are easy prey to the brandishers of Nerf hope and the loose change makers who are sucking fun in the Obama administration.

The fifty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit had a similar intent. The dreary and tedious rate of travel was meant to produce "highway hypnosis" in the American electorate so that the Carter White House's pointy-headed grand wizards of the Fun Sux Klan could employ posthypnotic suggestion to make people do their bidding. Americans would be rendered so zombielike and devoid of free will that, heedless of all pangs of conscience or instincts for self-preservation, they'd reelect Jimmy Carter. Fortunately, Jimmy's brother Billy had too many beers, told all, and the plot was foiled.

CAFE standards were imposed to make American cars use less gas and thereby keep the oil crisis going longer. If American cars used less gas the world wouldn't run out of oil. And as long as the world didn't run out of oil the sheephumped sheikhs of the Mideast's giant kitty-litter tray-the Fun-Suckers' most important allies-would remain rich, powerful, and happily mutton-buggered.

Pollution controls were installed on automobiles to increase the amount of pollution. You'll recall that, at first, air pollution from cars was nothing but a wisp of smog in the sky, easily remedied with a tune-up and positive crankcase ventilation. Then the atmosphere filled with lead that damaged our brains, followed by carbon monoxide that poisoned our bodies. Now hydrocarbons cook the planet and melt the ice caps and cause us all to die of heat prostration and drowning. That's no fun. Truly the Fun-Suckers are wicked, wicked people.

Next came the DUI hysteria with legal blood-alcohol levels lowered to the point where you can't drive a car all Sunday if you received communion at 8 A.M. Mass. This was the Fun-Suckers' most obvious attempt to create a police state since it takes one full-time police officer for each adult male in America to enforce current DUI laws.

Drinking and driving is not a problem and never has been. Bravery and driving is the problem. And beer makes young men brave. The answer isn't more cops. The answer is more drugs. Give those young men some peyote and mescaline and LSD with their beer and watch their bravery vanish. Mile markers jump out from the berm, hopping on their single legs and forming into packs. Their rectangular, numbered heads flash with green reflective menace. The centerline rises from the pavement. The giant yellow-striped serpent coils to strike. Meanwhile, a highway overpass gapes-the jaws of hell. Abandon all joyriding ye who enter here. Those young men will be crawling down I-40 at fifteen miles an hour the way I was forty years ago.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105471744

More Flim Flam from the media.

[ That’s when Mann said he realized the hockey stick had taken on a life of its own.] Faye Flam, journalist

[Woah! Woah Faye! Back off a little! In between 1999 and 2006 Mann was Lead Author of the key chapter on paleoclimate of the IPCC Third Assessment Report which featured the Hockey Stick no less than SIX TIMES. Why is he surprised at the reaction to the Hockey Stick, Faye? Helloooo?] WUWT

[Mann points out that the hockey stick is not widely seen as a smoking gun implicating human activity in global warming. And it was not the giant graph used in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. That was a graph of the carbon dioxide component of our atmosphere – which also is rising sharply.] Flim Flam

[Erm. The Hockey Stick was shown on AIT but misrepresented by Gore as “Dr Thompson’s Thermometer”.] John A

Nice one by Rieu Vit.

This arrangement of his of Amazing Grace WILL send a chill down the spine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe8FyzW2aiM

No post about horse racing is complete without mentioning The Dancer - Northern Dancer. What a horse he was! Faux Pas was the son of The Dancer and he sired all the RCMP Musical Ride horses born at Ft Walsh in the Cypress Hills; the stable moved to Ottawa a few decades ago -and the Musical Ride horses are beautiful, just like their sire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjA3-P3hpAY

Good rant xiat - I agree with every point you made about the fun killers - you forgot to mention the anti tobacco bedwetters.

oops that post was supposed to be under the Phar Lap post..sorry vitruvious.

jema54 ..that's a fragment from new book by P.J. O'Rourke .....

I've just messed-up the quotation marks somehow

Al Sharpton and Coulter on Geraldo tonite..for Big Al,Harry Reid is forgiven...altho he was a bit offended by the 'negro dialect' comment

AGW's Metamorphosis: From "global warming" to "climate change" to "the weather" to extinction.
(H/T Ovid)

But, not to worry, "Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary," is on the scene, er job.
...-

"MPs pass landmark climate change bill

(AFP) – Nov 18, 2008

LONDON (AFP) — MPs have given final approval to a bill committing Britain to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050 -- the first country to have such a legally binding framework on climate change."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gQnRHG0ezxK_JJwMIKIczuFgylrA
...-

"January 11, 2010

Panic buying in supermarkets as the weather tightens its grip on Britain"

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6982935.ece

Xiat:

It is actually a book of several of pj's past columns on cars. The one you quote from i can remember reading back in the very early eighties and I howled re-reading it in the book.

Even the full title is funny:

Driving Like Crazy: Thirty Years of Vehicular Hellbending, Celebrating America the Way It’s Supposed to Be — With an Oil Well in Every Backyard, a Cadillac Escalade in Every Carport, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank Mowing Our Lawn

highly recommended, and in many ways it tells the story of an America that sadly is forever gone.

Meanwhile, in negatively global warming Florida;

Cold weather has killed about a 100,000 tropical fish and large, green iguanas became catatonic in the cold and fell from trees and more than 160 cold-stunned turtles were found floating in a lagoon near Titusville.

Meany, cold hearted mother earth.

[Breen said his town, which raises everything from tropical birds and fish to organic produce and palm trees, was holding on to the little that was left from the cold.

"Everybody is just wiped out. It's that bad," he said. ]

Oil sands - just a few hundred ducks.

There was greenie outrage, yes, but nothing like will be directed at Mom Earth.

Fun Suckers in Lotus Land want sodium, calories and fat listed on all menu items in all restaurants in B.C. under new proposed laws. People are taking this seriously.

Obama's man Gibbs on what is causing the record world wide cold;

Gibbs: "I think that one only has to step outside here or visit where I used to work in Chicago to understand that climate change, and the record temperature that climate change is likely causing, is with us....I would say that eve in places that are used to getting very cold weather, record cold...our weather patterns have been affected by change in our climate"

Audio

Vitruvius, thank you for Riew's short Hava Nagila ditty. The Amazing Grace by Riew link suggested by AtlanticJim was fantastic. I loved it.

That reminds me, my wife said the other day that if I don't get a haircut, she is going to buy me a violin.

Thanks xiat for the link.
Still laughing !
bonus quote from the article

"There's nothing special about a leaf-spring-mounted solid rear axle. However, it's the thing to have if you decide to use your Fairlane 500 to pull a wheat combine."

Good music!! Thanks vit!! Tomorrow I'm going to whittle a fiddle from a old ironing board mama had in the attict! Just kidding.

OK, Next order of business is to make P.J. O'Rourke compulsory reading in our public schools and toss Al ManPigGore's manifestos into the trash cans where they belong.

Don't remember if this has been posted anywhere on SDA but for those of you with a few hours to kill ... this is a magnum opus of a work that puts all the climate gate e-mails into context. Brilliant annotations and analysis.

A must read. Even just the first few pages.

http://assassinationscience.com/climategate/

Thanks vit! Tomorrow, I'm going to whittle a fiddle from an old ironing board mama kept in the attict. I'll give you a call when I'm done. My favorite tune is "Rambling Bob."

Globe, and Star, Saturday.

The Harper government is cutting off funding for the Canadian Council on Learning, "an independent agency that examines the strengths and weaknesses of education and workplace training nationwide", as the Star puts it.

Its head, Dr. Paul Cappon, says Canada must find a way to develop a national strategy on education even though it falls within provincial jurisdiction, says the Globe. Gary Mason in the Globe says the CCL suggested that the country would fall behind our competitors unless that national strategy included standards, goals and objectives that were defined and measurable.

The impression I always get from "national strategy" -- in any field, not just education -- is a standard bureaucratic mishmash imposed from above on individuals. But true education is personal and is motivated by individual interest instead. One often hears about "Canada's needs" in the education department. Actually, Canada has no such needs -- only individuals do, because they're the ones who have to look after their own futures. And Canada's economic performance and competitivemess will take care of itself.

The CCL sounds like just another pointless bureaucracy to me.

RE the "new" Liberal ad...

Notice that the fence doesn't just appear as a whole, instead the barbed part takes the main focus right out of the chute -- it's where the Liberals want you to look and the most suggestive part of the ad and what they want Canadians to take away from it. In fact, the barbed part is suggestively focused in on a second time just for good measure.

A padlock on a door, it seems, couldn't suffice for what the shameless Liberals are so obviously trying to suggest with this reprehensible smear piece. It's no different at its core than the "soldiers in our streets" ad... in fact, one can argue it's even more egregious since it shows that a) the liberals' apology for that one wasn't in fact genuine; and b) they learned nothing, testing very dangerous waters yet again when they should just sink or swim already instead of leaving it to their Liberal pumpers in the media to push the messages meaning out and then cover for them when they're under fire for that very message. But give the Liberals and their media cohorts some credit: they've shown that indeed garbage can be recycled.

And with the narrator’s generic reference to "other" countries, can we expect MSM to angrily press Iggy and the Liberals first thing in the morning (and for days to come just for those of us who miss their climb-down) to clarify the names of those "other" countries and, more importantly, just so Canadians can see just how low the LPC can sink, give the names of those leaders which they're "suggesting" that PMSH most exemplifies and the tools of control they both share? Don't hold your breath on any of these questions to be asked. Too many "New Liberal Ads Slam PM Harper" type headlines -- along with anchors and reporters regurgitating the Liberal talking points contained within those ads -- that the media is off enjoying to display even a semblance of balance and journalistic integrity.

This has probably already been brought up, but if it hasn't or you haven't read it, be sure and read it. It is the opening salvo in a new battlefront in the media wars Andrew brietbart's first column in his new site Big Journalism. Reading it now will be something you can tell your grandkids about years form now.

http://bigjournalism.com/abreitbart/2010/01/06/you-are-a-bad-bad-bad-journalist/

Myleene Klass warned by police after scaring off intruders with knife...

Miss Klass, 31, who was alone in her house in Potters Bar, Herts, with her two-year-old daughter, Ava, called the police. When they arrived at her house they informed her that she should not have used a knife to scare off the youths because carrying an "offensive weapon" – even in her own home – was illegal.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/6957682/Myleene-Klass-warned-by-police-after-scaring-off-intruders-with-knife.html

re: the "new" Liberal ad

They are boring to the the point that even the most credulous person wouldn't be able to focus on the message.

If Harry Truman could use executive orders to create loyalty checks which dismissed thousands of communist supporters from the military, why couldn't Osamabamby do the same thing to weed out the jihadis today?

Star, Sunday.

Haroon Siddiqui claims the "Harperites" are eroding one of Canada's "foundational pillars" -- multiculturalism.

He notes that the Bilingualism and Biculturalism Commission, established in 1965, ushered in the era, and the Multiculturalism Policy arrived in 1971. But how can these be "foundational pillars" when the country was formed in 1867?

He says the 1988 Multiculturalism Act states, "The minister shall encourage and assist individuals, organizations and institutions to project the multicultural reality of Canada".

Time for this Act to go to the trash can. It is not the function of government to encourage or assist anyone in celebrating their heritage. Persons remain free to do so on their own of course, but using their own resources. There's nothing wrong with diversity per se, and with ongoing advances in transportation methods it's pretty much a fait accompli, but it should be no concern of government. If there is a "multicultural reality of Canada" that means something other than Marxist propaganda, it is a sociological description rather than a constitutional or legal issue. And s.27 of the Charter of Rights should be abolished, for the same reason.

Siddiqui claims that conservatives object to multiculturalism because of "the equality it extends to new Canadians". But you don't need official multicultural policies to regard people as equal, or more correctly, as possessing equal rights. In fact, extending tax funding for it makes the recipients "more equal than others".

He says, near the end of his column, "The greater truth is that Canadians have never been more accepting of each other, despite occasional intolerance". I have to agree with this, and it's a positive situation. For one thing, it means the constant claims of "racism" from the extreme left are bogus.

Dump the child-mans Trudeau's "charter of so called rights" for our true heritage. The BNA act. As well bring back our Bill of rights. That & only that will save this Nation from being overrun through law fare.
Canada was really free than. Not the busybody lawyers paradise its become with inequality taken for granted for certain groups.

Now these are real freedoms.

"I am a Canadian,
free to speak without fear,
free to worship in my own way,
free to stand for what I think right,
free to oppose what I believe wrong,
or free to choose those
who shall govern my country.
This heritage of freedom
I pledge to uphold
for myself and all mankind."

From the Canadian Bill of Rights,
July 1, 1960.

http://www.ggower.com/dief/

Climate change affects real estate market...!

Is it just me, or is this really pointless and aggravating?

Maybe it's got something to do with what his ex is up to.

(p.s. - sorry if someone beat me to this; it's not brand new.)

Gord Tulk @11:07 - One of O'Rourke's books is called Give War a Chance; that's the best title ever.

Loyalty oaths to the military wouldn't work for Islam followers. There is a term called taqiwa which means lying for Allah so such lies would be permitted if it advances Islam.

Weather Gore Al (WGA)
...-

"Key West Smashes Record Low By Six Degrees"

"Big freeze to last another week as grit supplies dwindle"

"December 2009: Second Snowiest on Record in the Northern Hemisphere"

http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/news-forum/index

Mini ice age now forecast...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html#ixzz0cFYGMwZK

Swine Flu over Liberal Iffy's nest.
(H/T Liberal MP Dr. Bennett*)
...-

"The 'false' pandemic: Drug firms cashed in on scare over swine flu, claims Euro health chief

The swine flu outbreak was a 'false pandemic' driven by drug companies that stood to make billions of pounds from a worldwide scare, a leading health expert has claimed.

Wolfgang Wodarg, head of health at the Council of Europe, accused the makers of flu drugs and vaccines of influencing the World Health Organisation's decision to declare a pandemic.

This led to the pharmaceutical firms ensuring 'enormous gains', while countries, including the UK, 'squandered' their meagre health budgets, with millions being vaccinated against a relatively mild disease.

A resolution proposed by Dr Wodarg calling for an investigation into the role of drug firms has been passed by the Council of Europe, the Strasbourg-based 'senate' responsible for the European Court of Human Rights.

An emergency debate on the issue will be held later this month.

Dr Wodarg's claims come as it emerged the British government is desperately trying to offload up to £1billion of swine flu vaccine, ordered at the height of the scare."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1242147/The-false-pandemic-Drug-firms-cashed-scare-swine-flu-claims-Euro-health-chief.html
...-

(H/T Liberal MP Dr. Bennett*):

"Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett said the situation in northern Manitoba reserves is dire. The government is telling communities that people will die rather focusing on flu prevention, she said.

"It's just shocking," Bennett said. "We've been asking for flu kits, we've been asking to make sure they're on the priority list in terms of vaccinations, to make sure the antivirals are in place - and we get body bags. It's appalling.""

http://www.carolynbennett.ca/whatsNewPosting.cfm?ID=2450

Troubling poll results:

"Canadians believe climate change poses a significantly bigger threat to the "vital interests" of this country over the next decade than international terrorism, a new poll suggests.

While nearly half of those surveyed said climate change is a "critical threat," only about one in four people said the same about international terrorism. A similar poll conducted in 2004 showed Canadians believed the two threats were about equal."

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/consider+climate+change+bigger+threat+than+terrorism+poll/2427979/story.html

Public servant depression a 'crisis'...
inertia and paralysis have gripped the public service that's compounded by an "ambiguity" around who is in charge...
many whom leave work every day frustrated and feeling they have accomplished nothing.

It's the country's biggest public health crisis

"Climategate" notwithstanding,";

""Even if we're warming, it doesn't cancel the cold."

"the planet continues to toast subtly".

AGW: Gore Al's Weather, aka Al Gore's Weather.
...-

"This is global warming?

As teeth chatter, experts say, it's exceptions proving the rule."

"So what happened to global warming?

"Climategate" notwithstanding, the data suggest that the planet continues to toast subtly - but on the order of tenths of degrees, hardly enough to snuff out winter as we know it, said Gadomski. "No human being on earth experiences the global average temperature," he said. "Even if we're warming, it doesn't cancel the cold."

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/health_science/daily/20100110_This_is_global_warming_.html

Coyne, spot on as usual....

"Parliament has become a kind of vestigial ornament, like the monarchy, beloved of nostalgists but quite without any practical purpose. There hasn’t been a mind changed or a vote swayed by a parliamentary debate in 60 years. Question period is, by common consent, a national embarrassment, kept on only to provide employment for the parliamentary press gallery. The House still makes a show of voting, but it’s a pantomime, and everybody knows it. The only votes that really count are those of the party leaders."

"Indeed, as long as we are discarding the pretense that Parliament matters, would it not make more sense—I grant this will strike some as controversial—to shut it down altogether? This country has a lot of important decisions to make: about the economy, the Afghanistan mission, global warming, you name it. Can we afford to spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year, distracting ministers from their responsibilities and taking up untold numbers of bureaucratic man-hours, all to preserve an illusion—that we are still a parliamentary democracy, in the centuries-old tradition of Westminster? Adults grow out of their illusions."

http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/01/10/parliament-who-needs-it/

Public servant depression a 'crisis'

Disability Claims

Kathryn May, Canwest News Service Published: Monday, January 11, 2010

Depression among Canada's public servants is the country's biggest "public health crisis," says a leading mental health expert.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=2427560#ixzz0cK4VjhRp

Wow. So a lifer job without genuine empowerment accepted to get a fully indexed pension at retirement gets people depressed.

Surprise, surprise. Marking time at dead end bullshit 'jobs' isn't exactly exhilarating.

What a way to waste a life.

Meanwhile, government hard at work:

Silence on police corruption cases - John Sewell
Published On Mon Jan 11 2010

The silence following the decision not to appeal the dismissal of corruption charges against senior Toronto police officers is frightening. It follows six years of inadequate response by senior officials to two large corruption cases within the Toronto force.

One is left with the clear impression that senior police officials do not take corruption charges seriously.

Ten years ago there were allegations that some Toronto officers were assaulting drug dealers and stealing their money. In 2001 a special task force, headed by RCMP superintendent John Neilly, was established. Neilly's confidential report documents four previous internal investigations into the activities of John Schertzer and officers working with him in the drug squad, with no action taken. Neilly said there had been a "crime spree" by "rogue officers," and recommended criminal charges against 12 officers.

In January 2004, criminal charges were laid against Schertzer and five other officers. Charges were never laid against the other six officers as recommended by Neilly......"

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/748911--sewell-silence-on-police-corruption-cases

Announcement:

PET Cemetery honours Canada's Uncle Mo and his nephew, Bob Rae:

>>> "*Cemetery to become memorial to China's Cultural Revolution".

Canada's Mao Stlong, aka Canadian "Liberal leader" Bob Rae's Uncle Mo, is a nephew of the departed Anna Louise Strong, aka one of many of Chinese Red Chairman Mao's mistresses.
...-

"Newspapers in Canada published some unfavorable stories about poor Maurice, then, approaching his 80th birthday, he moved to Beijing University where he now lives, honored by the Chinese.

That's because his aunt, Anna Louise Strong, who died in 1970, was a journalist and activist who supported most radical and revolutionary causes of her day in Russia and China.

A beautiful lady, she was accepted by the leadership in China, where she became Chairman Mao's English language interpreter."

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/datelinedc/s_643877.html
...-

"Cemetery to become memorial to China's Cultural Revolution

China has for the first time formally recognised the preservation of a site that is a memorial to the chaotic Cultural Revolution, a defining decade in its modern history that the ruling Communist Party has been at pains to forget.

A cemetery filled with the bodies of Red Guards killed in factional battles during the ultra-leftist 1966-76 movement launched by Mao Zedong is to be preserved for posterity after being granted the status of a “cultural relic”."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6983280.ece

ron in kelowna re: ducks in the tailing ponds.

drove by the Bonnybrook sewage treatment plant the other 'cold day'. Saw lots of ducks around the settling ponds. Wonder how many die every year in those 'ponds'?

Hava negila! Have two negila! Have three negila! They're kinda small...

Welcome to the future Canada. Your governments are collectively broke, the civil service is metastasizing, and here's the first in a long line of stories over the next decade about exactly where we are.

An olympic sized hangover deserves an Olympic sized advil. Better enjoy the show.

The next federal budget is setting up a fall economic update that's gonna piss everyone off. Especially fiscal conservatives....."

Montreal budget raises concerns among island suburbs, merchants
Mon, 2010-01-11 15:24.
Shuyee Lee

The city of Montreal's budget isn't even out yet and there are negative reviews and concerns all around.

With the city's budget coming out this Wednesday, suburbs on the island of Montreal have been told they're going to have to fork out a lot more for shared services like policing and fire prevention. And that, of course, will mean tax hikes for homeowners.

Peter Trent , mayor of Westmount and president of the Association of Suburban Municipalities, says they've been told they're going to have to shell out about 13% more for agglomeration expenses such as policing, firefighting and public transit.

http://www.cjad.com/news/565/1049185

Cbc has a story on their website about one of the 'Toronto 18' pleading not guilty. Comments are closed. According to their guidelines the following may be the reason---In some situations, we disable commenting on stories. We do so by following certain criteria, such as if the comments may cause harm, or if there is a risk that they may break the law.--- I call BS on that. The comments are closed because they do not want their readers, who may not embrace the CBC viewpoint,to realize that there are others,many others ,who also despise the terrorists,and their enablers and apologists amongst us. If you go to the article,scroll down to 'contact us' click that and you will find the guidelines for closing comments.FIRE.THEM.ALL. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/01/11/abdelhaleem-trial.html

77 richest country in the World that even does not exist.

Al Gore's Weather (AGW) is not available.

The following is via CBC/Suzuki/LizardMay NutWork, uninformed sources say.
...-

Record Lows Reported In Florida [Jan 11, 2010]

The Sunshine State is still in the deep freeze.

MIAMI (January 11, 2010)--Record low temperatures continued to grip Florida Monday, breaking record lows set more than 80 years ago.

The National Weather Service said overnight temperatures at the Miami airport dipped to 36 degrees, beating the previous low of 37 degrees, which was set in 1927. Click here to find out more!

There's a hard freeze watch on until Tuesday.

Much of the rest of the South is also in the grip of the deep freeze.

Residents of Northern Florida will feel temperatures drop to the lower 20s and mid-teens.

For the first time in at least 30 years, Miami Metrozoo shut its doors Sunday because of cold weather.

Farther north, temperatures in Atlanta have stayed in the 30s over the weekend with lows in the teens.

Atlanta's zoo was closed because trails were iced over."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2426051/posts

Vit - your music posts are usually wonderful, but Rieu is awful. A ridiculous circus act (the Susan Boyle of the violin?) with no violin talent. With so many great performers out there (Oistrakh, Milstein, Zukerman, Stern, Heifetz, etc) we don't need this clown!

Of course it's a circus act! You don't like circuses?
Fine, then don't go. But don't expect me to care.

Someone has started a pro-prorogation facebook site. ---http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=240544201629 --- . Along this line of thought, has anyone heard from Lizzie May on this subject. It appears that the liberals are going after her base,the facebook crowd and the university types. I'll bet she has been hyperventilating and swooning for days now,if she noticed.