Great Galloping Goose whatever!! Just got my cheque from the feds - cost of production payment - my part of the $1 billion came to $107.77. Should cover my fuel costs to the bank and back.

IN TOUCH ON-LINE

CTV finally admits it. Blogs in our world today are making a difference --- the new journaling.

Yup, CTV then goes on to cite six "great" blogs as examples.

Never heard of even one of them. None.

Didn't even mention the one that has been voted Best Canadian Blog four years in a row now.

The day they start up a national daycare is the day I drop into the underground economy and dwell evermore in he shadow of the peoples dominion.

Cut taxes enough and everyone will have the money they need to pay to raise their own kids.

The environment will be best taken care of by empowering people with decent levels of prosperity then will have fewer kids just like we do in Canada where we are prosperous. That will help the environment along with some new technology and the Left shutting up and letting us build some nuclear plants.

What was her last bitch .. oh ya .. poverty. We don't have poverty in Canada. They have poverty in Africa. We have lazy stupid people whose job is exacting other peoples money from vote hungry politicians. Poor people in Canada have cable TV and cars. Street people are not poor, they are drug addicts.

University students cry poor, but do most of that crying into a pitcher of beer at the local pub.

Excellent post Mr. West - are you running for office anytime soon? You've got my vote if you do...

Zero woman is totally bent out of shape - the anger that radical leftists display when they don't get to control other people is disturbing, do they hate their fellow Canadians that much?

I always think of Lily Tomlin whenever vegetarianism comes up. Paraphrasing slightly, she said "I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals; I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants."

Though it may be early, and colourized, Ernst Röhm is not to be found in that picture..i believe that is Wilhelm Schepmann to Hitlers right, and Viktor Lutze to his left, both leaders of the SA after Röhms demise, Schepmann replacing Lutze after his death in a car accident in 1943

"Neanderthals may be ancestors of modern humans, scientist says." An ongoing controversy.

(For some reason, the Globe and Mail isn't allowing comments for this one.)

Somebody must have dropped these people as babies.

How else to explain it when people start complaining about paying too little tax, especially when they don't particularly like the policies of the government that is collecting the tax.

Thinking logically they should be thrilled as hell that they can keep some of their money out of the hands of a government with whom they disagree, a government who may or may not spend it the way they see fit, and hand it over to their favorite pet cause.

The simple solution is to calculate on a monthly basis how much they would have paid had the tax remained at 6 or 7%. Contact the local early childhood education center, homeless shelter, food bank, university, hospital, Liberal, Green or NDP candidate and arrange for a monthly donation in the amount of their savings. At current carbon credit rates, the environmentally conscious could probably buy themselves out of existence. Whatever. But, at least that way their money won't be filtered through the government they hate and their causes benefit directly - no middleman.

I see the web's resident financial guru has voiced a similar complaint but of course he didn't buy his new plasma TV in December. No, he waited until January 1st so that he could save himself a few bucks and then bitch about the unfairness of it all.

Which reminds me, wasn't Garth Turner one of those guys promoting the GST during Mulroney's tenure? But then, he was against it before he was for it. After he was for it, he was against it.

Just look at that nice picture of Adolph and the kids! Proof right there that, as Will Smith says, "Adolph was basically a good person".

Liberals and taxes go together like to peanut butter and jam, steak and potatoes, lasagna and meat sauce, fries and gravy, turkey and stuffing........ anyone else care to join in?

There is a reason why they are called "tax and spend Liberals".

Where's the public enquiry??
I have been reading about the Digby wharf issue now that the community has been able to buy it back (see maz2 comments from yesterday.) I came across this comment on a political forum from April 2005 which pretty much sums up the problem:
"Down here where i live they gave one liberal supporter our town warfe where 70-80 fishing boats lay for nothing , Then they gave him 3,000,000 dollars to repair the warfe and keep it up (Which he Pocketed ).
He never paid a cent in upkeep just put some money back in liberal campain contrabutions .

He then raised warfage through the warfe and collected 200,000 or so in warfage a year not putting a cent back in .Then he even started chargeing Fuel trucks and welding trucks that was driveing on our warfe to service fishing boats . Some had to stop coming to our warfe as fees was so high .

Now the warfe is falling down and our town got no place to lay its fishing fleet if it does . And the friendly liberal wants to sell the warfe back to the fisherman for 7,000,000 (well i guess he put his price down to 4.5) or else he says he is selling our warfe to the Chinese .
I guess he kind of turned on the liberals after it went public , would not even let a liberal cabinet minister on his warfe. Or maybe that was just a Show ."

The basic accusation seems to be that government money was once again funnelled back to the Liberal party and -- surprise, surprise -- charges never laid by the RCMP. I know this is old news, but so is Mulroney and that has not stopped the ethics committee from investigating.

RE: The zero loand twit who deos not want a tax decrease....

...Thanks a lot Kate , Just when I was gaining faith in the intelligence of the electorate, you have to parade the demented ramblings of a conditioned sheepie like Zero Woman.

It always amazes me how people were so quick to adopt the self-deprecating masochistic altruism sermonized to them by the high priests of statist collectivism. Guess those who buy this self-hate crap the most have the deepest guilt complexes.

I agree with you Kate...if this proud self loathing collectivist feels guilty for taking a tax cut before the collectivist utopia has been constructed,...if she really wants to show us her dedication to being a servant of the collective...then start cutting checks to the global NGOs running UN Agenda 21.... or if she is a civil servant (as I suspect) she can take a voluntary massive pay cut or work for the state for nothing for 6 months of the year...like we tax slaves do.

Well, we know we're in trouble when people are against a drop in a consumer tax.

Speaking of national daycare, is Drone Dryden still the expert on that file? What a fool he's made of himself.

We can't allow any more Commie/Socialist creep in this country, our schools have been oozing that ideology for at least two decades. Cut taxes and let parents take care of their own children, make their own choices.

I don't doubt that, as the Canadian dollar continues to (more or less) match the US one, Canadian and American pricing will converge somewhat too.

But here's the blindingly obvious rub: American prices are based on the economic realities of the American market. Canadian prices are based on the economic realities of the Canadian market.

What we are really hearing is good old-fashioned Canadian cake-and-eat-it-too whining: we want to preserve the "sacred trust" of our healthcare and social welfare systems but we also demand US-style consumer costs at the same time.

Frank Furedi
In 2008, let us challenge the Politics of Apocalypse

From global warming to obesity, bird flu to terrorism: 2007 was the year when the threat of an apocalypse became an everyday, even banal public issue. It was a year of ceaseless alarmist warnings about an ever-expanding number of calamities facing the planet. [...]

Compared with the past, people living in most parts of the world today experience less pain, debilitating disease and death than ever before. We are far better placed to deal with the outbreak of new diseases or unexpected weather incidents than we were even 20 or 30 years ago. And yet we continually fear the worst.

Worst-case thinking, the principal legacy of 2007, will most likely thrive in the years ahead. That is unless we can rediscover a sense of purpose in what it means to be human.
http://tinyurl.com/27lpzk (spiked)

Liz: See my tips link from yesterday....Flannagan was telegraphing the advent of conservative incrementalism...a long term strategy to counter socialist incrementalism which took is to the brinkmanship era we are in today.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=206880

JJM says: "Canadian prices are based on the economic realities of the Canadian market."

Incorrect. The US consumer market is a "demand" economic market based on competition for consumer dollars (best value for quality model)...the Canadian system is said to be a "mixed" economic model based on (soviet) "command" economic directives and :demand" marketing revenues...what we really have is a consumer price which hides a plethora of non value added taxes,institutional costs,marketing board costs, and guilt/sin taxes.

Demand systems are driven by consumers and this matket gives best price for cost valie

Command/Mixed economic models are driven by governt and NGO interventionist costs... it embeds institutional looting revenues in the cost of consumer prices.

We do not pay the true cost of our retail goods in Canada.

JJM: Canadian prices are NOT based on the realities of Canadian MARKET - they are based on the cost of bringing small lots of goods across the border. Shipping and taxes factor in and create disparity in price. Example: a tire costs US consumer US$55, but a Canadian can only get the same tire for CDN$85 if he's lucky. Even the dealers who operate with wholesale quantities will not sell for less (actually they sell for more than that) because $85 is bottom line for everybody. The border is the largest factor in pricing goods in Canada.

Bhutto helped create Taliban monster
Rosie Dimanno
[...]

But make no mistake: The woman who is now being so widely mourned – assassinated last week, perhaps by the very elements she empowered more than a decade ago – was nurturing stepmother to terrorists incubated under her watch; the same Islamist fanatics she inveighed against during the election campaign that came to a screeching halt in the calamitous assault on her motorcade. ...-
http://www.thestar.com/columnists/article/290372

Yasser Arafat is not mentioned above. Debbie Schlussel mentions the monster and Bhutto.

"Bhutto praised homicide bombers against Israel, she hung with Arafat, and she assassinated her brother." http://tinyurl.com/2bxnpx

Daniel Pipes, Palestinians who prefer Israel

...As the title of a Globe and Mail news item puts it, "Some Palestinians prefer life in Israel: In East Jerusalem, residents say they would fight a handover to Abbas regime." The article offers the example of Nabil Gheit, who, with two stints in Israeli prisons and posters of "the martyr Saddam Hussein" over the cash register in his store, would be expected to cheer the prospect of parts of eastern Jerusalem coming under PA control.

Not so. As mukhtar of Ras Khamis, near Shuafat, Gheit dreads the PA and says he and others would fight a handover. "If there was a referendum here, no one would vote to join the Palestinian Authority...There would be another intifada to defend ourselves from the PA."

Harper is on the right track doing what is possible given the situation he's in surrounded by Leftist Opposition.
Socialism once entrenched to any degree requires a gradual weaning off.

A good example of a person who understood that fact was Gorbechev (sp), he wanted to bring democracy to Russia but knew it could not be done in one fell swoop and keep order.

I am for continued income tax cuts particularly for the poorest Canadians.

Awww, how noble, except the poorest Canadians don't pay income taxes. They do, however, pay GST.

Only a zero would suggest that a cut in something they don't pay has more benefit than a cut in something they do pay.

(Via Israpundit) Alyssa A. Lappen, Does Sharia Libel Law Now Apply in the U.S.?

Unless the U.S. Congress and New York legislatures act immediately to stop them, foreign terror financiers and libel tourists now can essentially impose sharia (Islamic) law on American writers and publishers...

In the U.S., the Supreme Court’s seminal 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan decision defined libel or slander by a journalist as stating or writing falsehoods or misrepresentations that damage someone’s reputation—and in cases of public figures, doing so with malice.

Under sharia, by contrast, libel constitutes any oral or written remark offensive to a complainant, regardless of its accuracy or intent. Slander “means to mention anything concerning a person that he would dislike, whether about his body, religion, everyday life, self, disposition, property, son, father, wife, servant, turban, garment, gait, movements, smiling, dissoluteness, frowning, cheerfulness, or anything else connected with him,” according to Ahmad Ibn Lulu Ibn Al-Naqib (d. 1368). 1

Repeat: Sharia regards even the truth as slander if its subject dislikes the facts...

Jason Burke, Crisis, what crisis?

How long will it be until Pakistan implodes? Take your pick of the analysts: a week or so as opposition parties take to the streets to complain about the postponement of elections, just announced; two weeks if the elections take place and the country descends into chaos; a few months and the mullahs will have poured down from the North West Frontier Province, seized Islamabad and the nuclear button; a year or so and Pakistan will have become another Afghanistan. Or perhaps it won't implode at all.

...Clearly the events of the last week have shaken many - and rightfully given the strategically critical nature of the world's second largest Muslim state - but perhaps the thing we should wonder at most is the astonishing fact that Pakistan successfully manages to keep itself together - apart from the inevitable and logical splitting off of eastern Pakistan to form Bangladesh in 1971 - not its manifest and manifold problems over 60 years of history.

...

Talk of civil war seems to me to be nonsensical, at least immediately. For who would battle whom? Again, it may seem counter-intuitive but the country is currently far too divided for an outbreak of organised civil conflict in the near future. The Islamic militants are split into dozens of factions, the Pakistan People's Party is on the point of splitting itself, Sharif and his people are hardly likely to turn to the rocket launchers and kalashnikovs and then there are the myriad ethnic and religious divisions too - to say nothing of tribe...

Yup. Global Warming is really taking its toll here in Toronto.

Present temp? -14.

'Think I'll jump into my bikini and tan for a few hours on my deck...

Apparently, to mention that you don't favour tax cuts so that the government can generate enough revenue to pay off the debt created by social policy started by Mr. Trudeau and the Liberals in the past is considered "Tory Propaganda".

:)

Thanks Kate for moderating intelligently.

:)

Sheesh - and there's that unoriginal notion that such a thing as a 'national IQ' exists. Incredible. Try thinking and ask yourself one basic question. Then, ask a second basic question.

Can you connect a biological property/attribute with a non-biological property? Can you?

Can you conclude that there is a direct connection between your weight and your choice of political party?
Can you conclude that there is a direct connection between your blood type and your choice of car?
Is there a connection between the colour of your hair and how much money you make?

No? Conclusion: you cannot link a biological attribute with a social or political attribute.

Then ask a second basic question. Is there any such thing as a group-based biological attribute? This is more difficult, because in isolate populations, you can indeed get a population with distinctive biological properties confined to that group. Once the group moves out of isolation, that attribute will of course no longer be confined to the group.

But remember, this attribute remains biological. There is no way anyone in this world can connect a biological attribute to a non-biological attribute; there's no causal relation between the two. Now, move to IQ.

IQ, or 'intelligent quotient' is not a group measurement but an individual measurement. In any group testing, the results of the whole group will always show the familiar bell curve with a score of 100 as the average.

You cannot - I repeat, cannot - correlate your individual IQ with your nationality. Possessing a Canadian passport does not mean that you have a higher IQ than a Kenyan passport. Remember, nationality is a political/social description. It isn't biological. Your IQ is, in large part, a biological property.

So, the absurdity of attempting to come up with 'national IQs' is mindboggling in its stupidity.

Ah, that word - stupidity. Can people, as individuals and as groups, act in a stupid manner? Most certainly. Is this stupidity related to their IQ? Hmm. I wonder. Let's take the case of Canada.

Canada denies its population full freedom of speech, thought and belief. It hides this denial by setting up a superficial rhetoric that Canadians are fully free in these areas. The rhetoric is in Section 2 of its (in)famous Charter.
But in actual legal reality, it rejects individual freedom and instead subsumes the individual within a group. A group defined by biological or cultural heredity: gender, ethnicity, language, religion. These groups are privileged within Canada in all matters of employment and 'rights'.

In Canada, we have set up Commissions to ensure that individuals comply with the demands of these groups. The Commissions are called 'Human Rights Commissions'. Their members are appointed and unaccountable; their decisions are subjective and beyond appeal. They censor individuals; they reject the Charter rights of the individual.

Now, does this mean that Canadians have a low national IQ because they established a Charter that took away their previous freedoms, the freedoms they had as individuals before the Charter?

Does this mean that Canadians have a low IQ because they not only revoked their freedoms in this Charter but then went on to set up the HRC, a body that polices and snuffs out any attempts at individual free thought and speech?

Do Canadians, as a nation, have a low IQ because instead of confronting this repression, they praise the Charter, and praise the HRC, and define this repression as 'tolerance'?

No. There is no such thing as a national IQ. Our behaviour means instead that we are Stupid, Naive, and Inhibited. We, as a people, have socialized ourselves to act not as individuals but as members of a collective. We think it is 'uncivil' and even 'selfish' to act as an individual. We see ourselves instead as mild, white-gloved members of a collective (the British Empire, the Commonwealth). We don't 'speak out'.

So, we, who viewed ourselves as members of a collective, have therefore allowed ourselves to be totally smothered as a people, when we theoretically removed ourselves from the collective and 'repatriated' the Constitution and set up our Charter. We fell into the mud; we set up a social structure that stamps out freedom and individuality.

Do we have a low IQ and can never change? Or are we just 'stuck on stupid'?

MSM spreads communist propaganda without question: http://no-libs.com/?p=2081

HUCKABEE "OUTED" AS JUST ANOTHER GLOBALIST BUM BOY:

CFR's Richard Haass in his policy group:

http://thenewamerican.com/node/6728

WHAT HUCKABEE POLICY ADVISOR HAASS (CFR chairman) HAS TO SAY ABOUT US SOVEREIGNTY, CONSTITUTION AND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE;

http://tinyurl.com/ypbcnl

" State Sovereignty Must be Altered in Globalized Era

In the age of globalization, states should give up some sovereignty to world bodies in order to protect their own interests....states must be prepared to cede some sovereignty to world bodies if the international system is to function. This is already taking place in the trade realm. Governments agree to accept the rulings of the WTO because on balance they benefit from an international trading order even if a particular decision requires that they alter a practice that is their sovereign right to carry out.....Our notion of sovereignty must therefore be conditional, even contractual, rather than absolute.""

Welcome to the GOP's UN boot licking candidate

Can you conclude that there is a direct connection between your weight and your choice of political party?
Why yes I can. People who weigh a lot usually find it hard to get work because well, they are very fat. So, they are likely to vote NDP, the party that will pity them most and pretend they are normal and being down-trodden by wealthier, thinner people.

Can you conclude that there is a direct connection between your blood type and your choice of car?
Yes I can. People with blood type O negative choose larger safer cars since there is always a shortage of their blood type should they have an accident and bleed a lot.

Is there a connection between the colour of your hair and how much money you make?
Yes there is. Not only do blonds have more fun they usually make more money and have more opportunity than say the mousy brunette. This one I think is may be factual, especially if the blond is tall.

:0)

The 2008 Banished Words list is up, featuring words and phrases banned due to either overuse or misuse. My personal favorites on the list are "x is the new y" and decimate, which has been misused for years.

ET asks:
"Do we have a low IQ and can never change? Or are we just 'stuck on stupid'?"

We (or more correctly, the vast majority of Canadians) are simply reacting to the mass conditioning we have been exposed to from corporate media, NGO messaging and public educational institutions...no "IQ" factor enters into it...the so called "intelligent" are as susceptible to designed conditioning as any other lab rat...what sets those free from this staus-quo conditioning matrix is the ability of critical thought...and this is resident in everyone who is truly sensate.

http://www.criticalthinking.org/aboutCT/define_critical_thinking.cfm

If Canadian learning institutions and pop culture spent more time training students in critical thought processes and less time conditioning them to accept anything promoted by "experts" or "authority" unquestioningly, we may see our general IQ test scores improve.

On a more serious note.

ET,

You post has it down. You have nicely described exactly what it is I hate about my country. Take heart, what we are doing here on SDA and many other blogs, is NOT being quiet about those repressive, socialist, collectivist, weights upon us. That is what the Internet has given those of us who truly love freedom. a weapon to fight with.

It is a big ship to turn around, but if we are relentless, we will succeed in freeing ourselves. Remember, it took our Canadian collectivists under Pierre Trudeau and successive Liberal governments about forty years to get us into this present state of dull gray mediocrity.

The backlash has only been on for the past five, or so years and it's growing. We have a conservative government at present and and the HRC snake in Ontario is about to try to swallow Macleans Mag and Mark Steyn whole. There is a good chance they may nearly choke to death on that lunch and will be diminished afterward.

It will be up to the rest of us to continue kicking the HRC once they are in a sac and down. We must continue kicking that sac until it is wet and lifeless. The will be a good start.

Brits so infantilised by the NHS that Nanny tells them what to eat?

Hey Calgary, what's cooking?

Liz J at January 2, 2008 8:56 AM: "Speaking of national daycare, is Drone Dryden still the expert on that file? What a fool he's made of himself."

Other than the sensible commenters sent over by Kate (which caused great gnashing of teeth by Zero Woman), that whole Zero Woman site sounds like a bunch of wailing Drone Dryden's: "I want my (nanny state) Canada back".

Imagine, that guy was once a Canadian hockey hero. What the hell ever happened to him?

Coincidentally, the webpage featuring the Hitler article has another article listed on the sidebar detailing recent heart surgery for someone who never ceases to extol the health benefits of a vegetarian diet: Paul McCartney. He apparently underwent heart surgery to implant stents to deal with clogged arteries.

I posted the following at woman at mile 0.

Just in case you haven’t noticed, the basic personal tax credit was raised and the base tax rate was lowered, plus the GST was cut. What do you want, pay no taxes on first $30,000 of income? It would cost you more than the taxes you would save, to replace the services that would have to be cut. Although you may not like it, the $100/month per child under 6 years of age is more than anything the liberals did in their 13 years of power to help with the child care issue. They issued lots of plans and promises but with little or no real action. The child tax credit also provides signicficant help to the lowest paid and is clawed back as income increases.

You progressives want your cake and eat it too. You proclaim that a womans body is hers and regarding procreation, she has the right end her pregnancy if she wants without state interference, but if she chooses to keep the child then the state has to support that child for her. Double standard maybe.

mike

Poland to strengthen its role in Afghanistan

Warsaw - Poland is to accept more responsibility in the international presence in Afghanistan, Poland's Foreign Minister Bodgan Klich said in an interview published Wednesday in the daily Dziennik. According to the plan, Poland wants to takeover responsibility for the province Paktika, bordering Pakistan. ...-
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/167591.html

Zero+Zero=Zero

Jack's Newswatch has an important post by Sandy, listing the accomplishments of the Harper govt over the past two years. Each accomplishment is substantiated with a link to the source of the information.

The headings are: "Environment, Tackling Crime, Accountability, Child Care, Health Care, Sovereignty, Lowering Taxes, Righting Historical Wrongs and the Military."

The accomplishments - and that's 'accomplishments' not rhetorical promises - are astonishing. Remarkable. Take a look, and spread the word.

Longtime auto-seller just wants to sell cars.

* * These cars that Detroit bets their future on, and my future, are not selling,* * says Adam Lee, president of Lee Automalls.

* *Automakers need a not-so-gentle nudge in the right direction of producing cleaner cars. I am afraid that if they don't pick up the pace not only will global warming continue to get much worse, I will be stuck with a lot full of cars that no one will buy; or even worse: This country will no longer have a domestic car industry.* *

Our guide gives you talking points for communicating with dealers like Lee, and explains the best strategies for making automobiles cleaner – better fuel efficiency now, plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles next, and no big push for corn ethanol.

http://www.coopamerica.org/takeaction/fordandgm/index.cfm

Download our Adopt-A-Dealer PDF today, and let us know about your successes.

Nice to see an informed group leave the Goreacle and Fruitflyguy in the dust and do
something useful / practical. = TG

About the tiger that escaped,

I read somewhere -don't remember where, maybe at CTV.ca? - that the wall was not as high as they first said it was, it is something like 14 feet high instead of the recommended 20...

Theodore Dalrymple hasn't been exaggerating the increased crudeness of Britain's youth. This story linked on Drudge today on their New Year's Eve behavior is disgusting. It's another snapshot of Tony Blair's legacy.

Looking for an easy job in Brasil. . . fun and physical fitness?

expectations are that 70,000 new jobs to work with the new tractors will be created.

Current work conditions for sugarcane harvesting are claimed to be very bad. São Paulo's Ministry of Employment is currently investigating 19 deaths related to exhaustion and is also prosecuting plantations that don't offer minimum working conditions such as access to water and security equipment.
AutoblogGreen.com

Currently, every harvester needs to cut from 12 to 15 tons of sugarcane a day. This usually means working 12-hour shifts, cutting 78,000 times with a sickle and walking more than 8.8 km (5.5 miles).

This is *fairness* learned from Rogers Sugar, now owners of Rogers, your friendly cell phone bandi.. er provider. = TG

good to hear as most of that sugar cane will go into making fuel.

The Trudeau Charter of Rights and Freedoms is comprised of a list of the rights and freedoms we are told we have. All very feel good but wrought with provisos leading to many interpretations from the Judiciary. It keeps money flowing to the Legals.
The HRC is a spawn of the dictum of the freaking Charter. We all have rights but in the present scheme some are more equal than others.

Freedom of speech is in your dreams. The politically correct police are listening and ready to pounce on any complaint, no matter how obtuse.

Enacting a bit of common sense would infringe on someone's "rights" no doubt.

CTV where 6.7 /10 is average

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080102/attractive_survey_080102/20080102?hub=TopStories

A Happy New Year to all!! As for the national IQ--Some things are best left unturned!!

Apropos of nuthin' much:

Actually overheard in park -

Woman: "Your second-hand smoke is KILLING me!"
Smoker: "Any chance of it happening soon?"

I know SDA folks like to make fun of the media idiots. I just saw a CTV Newsnet story on weather - i think it was about car thefts AND weather - and the reporter actually said this: "It's only January 2nd, and it's already the coldest day of the year."

Wow.

These stories run on a loop, so check it out for yourself.

Helicopter parents...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/graduate/story/0,,2234187,00.html

Coddled kids, what will they do when mommy & daddy are dead?

Climate scientist Bert Bolin dies at 82 (co-founder of IPCC) [...]

Commenter NormsRevenge said:

How about “He was an evil little man who tried to push world-wide slavery via world-wide socialism via world-wide ecofraud.” ...-
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1947292/posts

ADOLPH HITLER WAS A VEGETARIAN and so is CHARLES MANSON and as for that bull kaka about becoming vagans to stop this GLOBAL WARMING poppycock i say GET REAL and GET A LIFE

Karen Selick: Don't extradict Marc Emery to the U.S.
An open letter to Rob Nicholson, Canada's Minister of Justice

...From 1999 until he was arrested in 2005, Marc declared on his income tax return that his occupation was “marijuana seed vendor.” He paid $578,000 in income taxes into federal and B.C. government coffers. He gave Canada Revenue Agency access to his bank statements and explained all his cash flows to them. The CRA graciously accepted his money without ever taking any action to put a stop to all this criminal activity.

If you believe that all Canadians benefit from taxes being collected and governments spending that tax money (I don’t, but most Canadians do), then logically you will have to concede that Marc has been a huge benefactor to the Canadian people.

As for the money laundering charge, maybe all Canadians should face U.S. indictments for having conspired with Marc to transform Americans’ outlays on recreational drugs into Canadian outlays on health care, roads, schools, etc....

network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2007/12/31/karen-selick-an-open-letter-to-rob-nicholson-canada-s-minister-of-justice.aspx

Since I don't need daycare, I'll take the GST cut thank you. BTW, cutting out the US price on goods does stink.

batb: "Think I'll jump into my bikini and tan for a few hours on my deck..."

Please post a picture of you tanning. I have never seen an icy blue tan before ;-)

Had a weather warning out last night and again tonight here in Houston. Seems that the temperature will hit freezing. Brrrr...

Scottish town feels pull of centuries-old blood sport

...Half of the men in Kirkwall, called Doonies, try to push a small ball into the sea using any means necessary. The other half, called Uppies, work to push the ball to a wall one mile across town. The ba', which refers to both the game and the ball with which it is played, can last anywhere from four minutes to nine hours in freezing temperatures and hurricane-force winds.

The ba' is played nowhere else. It has persisted in Kirkwall because its basic tenets are congruent with life on these Orkney Islands in northern Scotland. If you're tough enough to survive in this old Viking territory, in a frostbitten town of around 6,000 bordered by white-capped seas, then you don't worry about relaxing on Christmas and New Year's Day. You put on steel-toe boots and a rugby shirt and walk downtown to the almost 900-year-old St. Magnus Cathedral, ready for hell....

h/t CFRB
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004103345_ba02.html

"And not that I want to pour cold water on its bright future, but as I leave for home I consider the natural as well as the economic uncertainties ahead.
For if sea levels rise too much, or the permafrost softens underneath the railroad, or Hudson Bay clogs up with ice floes from a disintegrating ice cap, or the Gulf Stream shifts direction, then Churchill's big chance could melt away." ...-

Canada's climate change boomtown
By Adam Fowler
BBC Radio 4

"The next economic boom is going to happen in northern Canada and Churchill's going to be a part of that."

So says Mike Spence, a part Cree Indian and part Orcadian Scot who is mayor of the tiny Canadian settlement of Churchill on Hudson Bay.

When I first arrived in the sub-Arctic town in early October, I found his claim hard to believe. ...-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7155494.stm

David Warren on the Bhutto Legacy

COMMENTARY
January 2, 2008
Bhutto legacy
The queen is dead, long live the king. This is the message from Pakistan's "People's Party," founded forty years ago by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as the machine to advance his own political career. At his death by judicial murder, the machine was inherited by his daughter -- with competition from his sons until both had died mysteriously. And at Benazir Bhutto's death, it is now inherited by her 19-year-old son, Bilawal, under the guardianship of his corrupt father. The many prize idiots in the Western media who presented Ms Bhutto as a beacon of democracy are now perhaps beginning to grasp what path she was lighting.

The creed of the PPP -- "Islam is our faith, democracy is our politics, socialism is our economy, all power to the people" -- consists of three calculated lies followed by a howler. A more honest creed might be, "Government of the Bhutto, by the Bhutto, and for the Bhutto."

By the accident of holiday schedules, I was relieved of the burden of writing about the assassination next day. Happily (a relative term), because, as we say in Latin, "De mortuis, nihil nisi bonum." Of the dead, speak nothing but good. But now, a few days have passed.

Those who thought Ms Bhutto the agent of democracy and progress, because she was young and a woman and told them in fluent English exactly what they wanted to hear, should know that she, like every other woman who has risen to power in the region, including a prime minister of India, two in Bangladesh, and now two in Sri Lanka -- inherited dynasties founded by powerful men. The (murderous) "Good Queen Bess" did not rise to the throne in 1558 on a wave of democracy and feminism in late mediaeval England. She rose as the daughter of the (murderous) Henry VIII. It is the failure to grasp such simple facts that makes so much Western journalism ridiculous.

I have been reading much rubbish in celebration of Ms Bhutto's life. A number of my fellow pundits have further provided personal memoirs: it seems dozens of them were her next door neighbour when she was studying at Harvard or Oxford or both.

She was my exact contemporary, and I met her as a child in Pakistan, so let me jump on this bandwagon. I remember her at age eight, arriving in a Mercedes-Benz with daddy's driver, and whisking me off for a ride in the private aeroplane of then-President Ayub Khan (Bhutto père was the rising star in his cabinet). This girl was the most spoiled brat I ever met.

I met her again in London, when she was studying at Oxford. She was the same, only now the 22-year-old version, and too gorgeous for anybody's good. One of my memories is a glimpse inside a two-door fridge: one door entirely filled with packages of chocolate rum balls from Harrod's. Benazir was crashing, in West Kensington, with another girl I knew in passing -- the daughter of a former prime minister of Iraq. They were having a party. It would be hard to imagine two girls, of any cultural background, so glibly hedonistic.

After her father's "martyrdom" Bhutto became, from all reports, much more serious. But I think, also, twisted -- and easily twisted, as the spoiled too easily become when they are confronted with tragedy. She became pure politician. Think of it: she, a libertine in previous life, submitted to an arranged marriage, because she needed a husband to campaign for office. Stood by him in power only because there was no other political option when he proved even greedier than she was.

Twisted, in a nearly schizoid way. For she was entirely Westernized, but also Pakistani. She thought in English, her Urdu was awkward, her "native" Sindhi inadequate even for giving directions to servants. Part of her political trick, in Pakistan itself, was that she sounded uneducated in Urdu. This is as close as she got to being "a woman of the people."

Brave, unquestionably brave. Which I would qualify by adding it was one facet of a wilfulness not otherwise attractive. She was irresponsible to make her assassin's job so easy, by campaigning in plein-air after what had happened in Karachi; wrong to lure so many to their own deaths around her.

Faced with the actual problems of Pakistan, she twice made a disastrous prime minister. Her death obviates a third term. But the legacy creates as large a mess. She tutored her supporters to blame President Musharraf for any harm that might come to her, so that when Al Qaeda pulled off the murder, they scored twice. In addition to killing a hated symbol of Westernization, they set the mobs not against themselves, but against Musharraf. As I have argued before in these columns, for all his visible faults, Musharraf has been dealing to the limit of his abilities and opportunities with the actual problems of Pakistan.

David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen

http://www.garth.ca/weblog/

garth turner wont donate 13 measly bucks to the hospital down the street !!! buys a tv instead.

Texas Canuck: "Please post a picture of you tanning. I have never seen an icy blue tan before ;-)"

I wouldn't want to scare SDA readers, TC!! ;-)

It's COLD, windy, and white in Toronto tonight. 'Think I'll change into my long underwear now...

"It said those who look for the future of Iraq using a national perspective have found the strategic relationship with the United States is the only way to save and build Iraq."

Iraq Press Roundup
Published: 2, 2008 at 10:32 AM

By HIBA DAWOOD
UPI Correspondent
The independent Kitabat newspaper said in an editorial Wednesday that the "liberation" of Iraq uncovered the reality of Shiite and Sunni Islamic parties and revealed the true nature of religious figures.

The editorial, titled "U.S. success in saving Iraq from the evil of Islamic parties," said that for the first time in the history of Iraq, religious figures and political Islam had been discarded.

"Today, the average Iraqi considers Islamic activists and religious figures as thugs and hijackers," the paper said. It said the transformation of public opinion in Iraq was a "clever" move by the United States.

"The U.S. plan relied on the concept of letting Islamic parties and religious men to rule, thereby revealing to the public" their motives, the paper said.

It said the immense social and political transformations that have taken place in Iraqi society, along with the banishment of the power of Islamic and religious powers, have become popular among Iraqis.

"As a result, a secular government has become a reality, a nature that dominated the political history of Iraq," it said.

Kitabat said the "sons of Iraq" recorded the greatest and brightest secular revolution when they fought al-Qaida.

"Fighting the Islamic powers is the first of its kind battle in Iraq's modern history," the paper said.

It said Shiite areas have come to a "general critical moment" that crystallized "national awareness for the simple Iraqis who were used by … Shiite parties to achieve sectarian goals."

"Shiite population criticizing their Shiites parties … is considered a civic miracle; a huge, qualitative transformation in a society that the Iranian lobby tended to use to achieve their sectarian interests," the paper said.

It said those who look for the future of Iraq using a national perspective have found the strategic relationship with the United States is the only way to save and build Iraq. ...-
http://tinyurl.com/359plu (upi)

good stuff et. canadians seem not to realize that if the individual is not free then the collective is also not free.

A Canadian woman rots in California waiting for a hospital bed to open up back home.

NDP Health Critic Adrian Dix says the issue is one that's continued to plague the Lower Mainland and he's blaming Liberal government cuts to acute care beds. "The number of acute care beds in British Columbia was reduced by 1,300 in the first mandate of the government, and some of the new facilities being opened won't be adding to that number."

.....via this link posted on Drudge.

another great essay from Mr. Whittle at www.ejectejecteject.com.not for those on the left though the use of OODA could be to confusing.

"A Canadian woman rots in California waiting for a hospital bed to open up back home."

Gee, penny, is the American healthcare system so atrocious that a stay in a California hospital is "rotting"?
BTW, in Canada the political parties of the right come under many names and guises. They just happen to call themselves Liberal in BC.

solar flying , send suzuki and algore up and we wont see them for months.

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/gen/page2366.html?theme=light

Say - asking any SDA readers if they can turn me on to finding political donations to parties in Canada.

I've looked around the web abit, but it seems harder to find than I'd thought.

And who else to ask but the best read readership?

Excellent critique of Michael Byers' piece: Michael Byers and the Neo-Conservative Bogeyman Redux at
http://nexusofassholery.blogspot.com/2008/01/michael-byers-and-neo-conservative_02.html

This one has the feminists enraged:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=505796&in_page_id=1879

The gerbil warmites/changers are backing up, backing, backing ...

Now the Party line is: "Oceanographer James Overland, who reviewed Graversen's study for Nature, said the research dovetails with an upcoming article of his which concludes that the Arctic thawing is a combination of the two."

... splash; cold water.
...-

Natural causes as well as global warming may be causing Arctic thaw: study
By Seth Borenstein, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://tinyurl.com/2y8acs

@the bear:

You may have noticed that the term 'prostitot' has been used as a re-tooled paraphrase of the old standard, 'jailbait.' Look like another old standard has been retooled: instead of 'stage mom' or 'stage dad', we now have 'helicopter parent'.

How Soon We Forget...
or: We Still Forget When We're Told To...

Only in Canada:
911 caller startled killers blame her for man's death
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/subscriber/local/story/4099683p-4697904c.html

A Good Samaritan who called 911 to report a vicious beating of an innocent man is stunned two convicted killers are trying to blame her for their victim’s death.The 24-year-old woman—who asked the Free Press not to publish her name—spoke out for the first time Friday.

“I’m trying not to let it bother me but it’s hard,” she said. “It’s definitely not a very nice thing for them to say.”

The two killers—Dallas Pruden-Wilson and Terrence Sinclair—brought their sentencing hearing to an abrupt halt last week by claiming they’d been wrongfully convicted of manslaughter.
They have filed a motion saying Queen’s Bench Justice Karen Simonsen didn’t properly consider the actions—or inaction—of the woman who drove by the scene and called for help during the March 2005 incident.
Adam Lecours, 34, was seriously beaten and robbed by Pruden-Wilson and Sinclair and then left lying unconscious on a darkened street in The Maples, only to be run over moments later by an unsuspecting motorist.

The Good Samaritan testified during their trial last January that she saw the attack but was too scared to get out of her car and help Lecours after the culprits fled.

She called on her cellphone for help, but Lecours was struck and killed before police or paramedics arrived.

Defence lawyers Randy Minuk and Roberta Campbell argued last week their clients should not have been convicted of Lecours’ death when the woman had the opportunity to rescue him and “control the scene.”

The Crown is opposed to the motion, calling it “devoid of merit.”

The judge is now considering the issue and will return to court Jan. 16.

The British Labour Party is being educated on the advantages of tax breaks for stay-at-home mothers versus the dangers of subsidized daycare.

Christmas is obviously a Christian holiday. But what percentage of Americans today identify with a Christian religion?

About 82% of Americans in 2007 told Gallup interviewers that they identified with a Christian religion. That includes 51% who said they were Protestant, 5% who were "other Christian," 23% Roman Catholic, and 3% who named another Christian faith, including 2% Mormon.

Because 11% said they had no religious identity at all, and another 2% didn't answer, these results suggest that well more than 9 out of 10 Americans who identify with a religion are Christian in one way or the other.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/103459/Questions-Answers-About-Americans-Religion.aspx

This boy has been at it a long time !
Same plot different story.
Same sh** different pile.

[Vice President Al Gore has accused the Republican Congress of waging "jihad" -- a holy war -- against the environment and of employing "Stalinist" tactics to silence "real science." At the center of the controversy is federal policy on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), man-made chemicals used in refrigerators and air conditioners, whose production must stop by the end of this year.

Why does Al Gore resort to such intemperate language to describe critics of regulatory excess? Perhaps because he has staked out such an extreme position on environment in the past and his position is now at risk of being exposed as fraud. As a U.S. Senator, for instance, Gore pushed for the ratification of the 1987 Montreal Protocol, the international treaty to ban substances like CFCs. He did so despite the fact that there was no solid evidence that CFCs had any impact on stratospheric ozone levels. There was only an incomplete theory suggesting that CFCs might cause such depletion.

It is well to remember that the 1995 Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to three professors who pioneered the study of man-made effects ozone layer. The prize was not given to Al Gore and the hypesters who inflated that research into a doomsday scenario, thereby rationalizing government intervention. The reality is that the ozone-CFC relationship is a chemistry problem with over 150 variables, and nobody has the definitive answer. Methane, ice crystals, sulfate aerosols, and other chemicals all contribute to the complexity of the problem. The Nobelists would be the first to agree that the question is by no means settled.] Dr. Thomas P. Sheahen, October 1996

http://www.nationalcenter.org/npa152.htm

Fast forward to 2006
Even NASA is puzzled with Ozone hole healing;

"Earth's ozone layer appears to be on the road to recovery." NASA
"The question is why? Is the Montreal Protocol responsible? Or is some other process at work?" NASA
"It's a complicated question. CFCs are not the only things that can influence the ozone layer; sunspots, volcanoes and weather also play a role." NASA

Tim Ball has been saying that for a decade or more.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/26may_ozone.htm

YouTube Video; this ordinary citizen has Al Gore peged perfectly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRSOkHU2ZcQ

Me: "Canadian prices are based on the economic realities of the Canadian market."

WL Mackenzie Redux: "[W]hat we really have is a consumer price which hides a plethora of non value added taxes,institutional costs,marketing board costs, and guilt/sin taxes... [w]e do not pay the true cost of our retail goods in Canada."

Aaron: "Canadian prices... are based on the cost of bringing small lots of goods across the border. The border is the largest factor in pricing goods in Canada."

Me: "Quod erat demonstrandum. Thank you both for validating my original premise."

B-I-N-G-O:

Is the CBC seeing the writing on the Kyoto wall, as Peter Mansbridge uttered these words tonight:

"New study blames natural causes, global warming for Arctic melt"

"There's a natural cause that may account for much of the Arctic warming, which has melted sea ice, ice sheets and glaciers, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Nature. New research points a finger at a natural and cyclical increase in the amount of energy in the atmosphere that moves from south to north around the Arctic Circle.

But that energy transfer, which comes with storms that head north because of ocean currents, is not acting alone either, scientists say. Another upcoming study concludes that the combination of both that natural energy transfer increase and man-made global warming serve as a one-two punch that is pushing the Arctic over the edge."

http://www.examiner.com/a-1134730~New_study_blames_natural_causes__global_warming_for_Arctic_melt.html

The media will alter their fraudulent ways, when and only when, their lawyers come into the boardroom meetings and, as Don Cherry would say, cause the paint on the walls to peel.

Regarding the new article in Nature referenced above at 12:24am, there is an odd paragraph in the middle:

"Another upcoming study concludes that the combination of both that natural energy transfer increase and man-made global warming serve as a one-two punch that is pushing the Arctic over the edge."

How can an "upcoming" study (presumably, one that hasn't been finished yet) already come to a conclusion? And shouldn't they postulate, rather than conclude?

The Weather Channel up for sale: report

[...] the sale was part of a break-up of the Weather Channel's parent, Landmark Communications, a privately held company based in Norfolk, Virginia, that owns community newspapers and other media assets. ...-
http://tinyurl.com/2x9ygy (reuters)

The unspeakable practice of female circumcision that's destroying young women's lives in Britain

....By conservative estimates, 66,000 women and girls living in Britain have been mutilated. This figure, accepted by the Metropolitan Police, came in a report by a volunteer organisation funded by the Department of Health and carried out with academics from the London School of Tropical Hygiene and the City University....

....Perhaps we should take a lead from France, whose methods of prevention have been strengthened following a landmark case in 1999, when a woman of West African origins was jailed for eight years for cutting 48 young children.

Now all French children of African background are closely scrutinised by social workers and doctors during infancy, and any abnormal behaviour or prolonged absence from school is immediately investigated....

www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=505796&in_page_id=1879