Reader Tips

Reader Tips 34 Comments

Tonight’s Christmas music selection looks like it was recorded on a cellphone by a proud grandparent, but this visual fits the real-life performance, which is neither poppy nor sloggishly literal like so many other versions of this traditional carol. Don’t be put off by the unison singing at the start, btw, the harmony blossoms in the second verse: Here’s Denmark’s amateur ensemble Aarhus Pigekor (“Aarhus Girls Choir”) singing The First Noel.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.

34 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  2. Put your hand up if you’re surprised. No? Anyone?

    The Obama administration moved late Friday to prevent a federal judge in California from ruling on the constitutionality of warrantless surveillance programs authorized during the Bush administration, telling a court that recent disclosures about National Security Agency spying were not enough to undermine its claim that litigating the case would jeopardize state secrets.

  4. The Liberal party has a new? flag for Canada up on their website. It is a lot like the old one but has 7 vertical lines running through it.
    http://www.liberal.ca/newsroom/
    I’ve never seen this version before, and a quick google search turned up nothing similar. Did Justin have his wife design a ‘new age’ flag for Canada?

  7. Daniel Greenfield: “We all know that George W. Bush was a moron. And we all know that Obama is a genius. We have been told by Valerie Jarrett, by his media lapdogs and even by the great man himself that he is just too smart to do his job… But what is “smart” anyway? What makes Obama a genius? It’s not his IQ. It’s probably not his grades or we would have seen them already. It’s that like so many of the thought leaders and TED talkers, he makes his supporters feel smart. The perception of intelligence is really a reflection.”
    http://preview.tinyurl.com/pvusm48

  9. So says Sultan Knish … and So Say I!
    Liberal intelligence exists on the illusion of its self-worth. The magical thinking that guides it in every other area from economics to diplomacy also convinces it that if it believes it is smart, that it will be. The impenetrable liberal consensus in every area is based on this delusion of intelligence. Every policy is right because it’s smart and it’s smart because it’s progressive and it’s progressive because smart progressives say that it is.
    Progressives manufacture the consensus of their own intelligence and insist that it proves them right.
    Imagine a million people walking in a circle and shouting, “WE’RE SMART AND WE’RE RIGHT. WE’RE RIGHT BECAUSE WE’RE SMART. WE’RE SMART BECAUSE WE’RE RIGHT.” Now imagine that these marching morons dominate academia, the government bureaucracy and the entertainment industry allowing them to spend billions yelling their idiot message until it outshouts everyone else while ignoring the disasters in their wake because they are too smart to fail.
    That is liberalism.
    Sultan Knish = Daniel Greenfield

  10. Jordan’s idea of winter driving leaves something to be desired. Massive traffic snarls because “there might be frost” is not the Canadian way. Jordan does not seem to be enjoying a halt in global warming.

  12. Response to WallyJ – On their website, the vertical lines that you see on the Canadian Flag are easy to explain, it is the Liberal version of the Canadian flag, coming apart at the seams.

  18. J.S. Bach – Christmas Oratorio BWV 248
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFnW_CrPUlA
    Sir John Eliot Gardiner chose to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach in his own inimitable style: with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists he undertook an extended concert tour to perform the composer’s entire known output of sacred cantatas at churches and concert halls all over Europe.
    Enjoy
    Cheers
    Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group “True North”

  19. Can Rob Ford call in the army to salt Trona? Or can Wynne reverse the wind turbines and blow the rain away

  20. Where some might see vertical lines at the seams of the panels comprising the flag, others might see a metaphor for the bars of the prison of liberalism in which Canada finds itself.
    [Now all we need is a media report that the flag was not a single panel because making the flag all in one piece would put a seamstress out of work.]

  21. The left is wrong on most policies, and it will fail on those policies, because it advocates coercion.

  23. Toronto Star, Sunday, Dec. 22. Michael Valpy has been running a series about “social cohesion” in Canadian society for the past few weeks, and getting a lot of it very wrong. This is the wrap-up:
    http://www.thestar.com/news/atkinsonseries/2013/12/22/how_to_put_canada_back_together_again.html
    MV: “[The unravelling of social cohesion in Canada is] a winter storm of globalization-and-technology assaults that Canadians’ governing elites haven’t stood up to. It’s the continuing fallout of a cruel neo-liberal hoax. It’s a massive decades-old shift from a collectivist to a more individualist society aggravated by a withdrawal of the state from Canadians’ lives.”
    This is a standard apples-and-oranges mix. If anything, globalization is probably saving us from some of the depredations of excess government spending and debts. Technology allows increased productivity and a high standard of living; if every technological advance brought permanent job losses the unemployment rate today would be in the order of 99.99%.
    Furthermore, there is no “neo-liberal hoax”. The only hoax being pulled here is the one that claims the state has withdrawn from Canadians’ lives. Taxes are as high as ever (or close to it), and more and more legislation piles up every day. Valpy should think before he writes.
    If there really were a massive shift from collectivism to individualism, that would be the most hopeful news Canada has heard for decades.
    Valpy comes up with four ways to advance “social cohesion”:
    First is to make voting mandatory, although he doesn’t specify what punishment he would have descend on scofflaws, whether a $20 fine (as in Australia, although that can rise) or eternal hellfire damnation of some sort.
    Second is proportional representation. Much ink has been spilled in many newspapers on both sides of this one already, so no comment here.
    Third is a guarantee of basic income. What happens if everyone decides to take the basic income and forego work is not stated. If “[g]ood full-time jobs with benefits and security are disappearing, ushering in the new age of precarious employment, the age of the precariat”, it’s due to previous deficit spending by irresponsible governments, and doing something about that is the best answer.
    Fourth is “protections for the precariat”. The funny thing though is that usually the only people who end up being protected are the civil servants who are in charge of this alleged protection. The taxes and bureaucracy that would arise are part of the ongoing problem, not the solution to it.
    Having said that, failure to pay promised salaries for labour is a form of fraud – it always has been – and perhaps more could be done on this when it arises.
    In short, I would argue that the single thing most damaging to “social cohesion” is the existence of a class of people who are perceived as considering themselves “entitled to their entitlements”, taking a lot more out than they put in, and whose very jobs are highly detrimental to the populace’s standard of living. This includes large numbers of (although by no means all) civil servants. To a lesser extent, it includes quite a few who are dependent on “social programs” despite being able-bodied.
    There is nothing more damaging to “social cohesion” than being told to keep paying and shut up.

  24. AGW-Progress Report: Deadly.
    “the weather may have played a role in three deaths in three separate highway accidents in Quebec on Saturday, along with a fourth in Ontario.”
    …-
    “Canada: No respite from storm as millions in 3 provinces shiver in the dark”
    http://newswatchcanada.ca/
    …-
    “The top seven global warming alarmist setbacks in 2013”
    “Hold your champagne glasses high this holiday season, because the end of 2013 marks the 17th year without global warming.
    This year has been trying for climate scientists and environmentalists who have been trying hard to explain away the 17-year hiatus in global warming and link “extreme weather” to rising greenhouse gas emissions — despite strong evidence to the contrary. There has been a breakdown in the manmade global warming consensus, and some even argue we are headed for an ice age.
    In honor of the 17th year without global warming, The Daily Caller News Foundation has put together seven setbacks for global warming alarmism.”
    http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/20/the-top-seven-global-warming-alarmist-setbacks-in-2013/

  25. Neo-AGW PR Update: we are participating.
    It’s not Earth Hour*, is it?
    …-
    “Christmas in the dark: Toronto Hydro warns that power outages could last all week”
    http://www.nationalpost.com/index.html
    …-
    “*Lights out Saturday night as Toronto, world mark Earth Hour …
    TORONTO, Ont. – Earth Hour will be held around the world, Saturday, with Toronto being one of the 7,000 global cities participating.”
    http://www.680news.com/2013/03/23/earth-hour-to-be-marked-saturday/

  27. http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/12/23/ak-47-inventor-mikhail-kalashnikov-dies-in-russia-at-94-100-million-of-the-guns-were-produced/
    General Kalashnikov has died at age 94. Kalashnikov, a billionaire from his patent and subsequent sales world wide, was the recipient of the Order of Lenin,the Stalin Medal, and was a Hero of the Soviet Union.
    His fortune,made in a society that always rewarded ingenuity and hard work was said to rival that of Bill Gates. 😉

  29. The “politics” of calling an emergency order in T.O. is delicious.
    Council forgot that only the mayor can do it. Not the acting-mayor, D’oh.
    Ford aint falling for it.

  32. Obama has the same indoctrination as his followers, some of whom he indoctrinated himself. It’s all about ideology, something that universities do today, now they have been captured by the left.

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