Good evening, ladies & gentlemen, welcome to the first SDA Late Nite Radio broadcast for the eighth year of the third millenium. Tonight we have a classic work in the dance electronica genre that I find curiously applicable to some interesting classes of human misbehaviour, from all fields, and, yes, including some blog commenters.

Here's Yello[1] performing Vicious Games with Different Names:

video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-4431747113979907915

[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yello

Thanks Vit. Nice one. Not to be picky(heh),but this is only the seventh year of the third millenium, which started at 12:00:00 Am January 1st,2001.

Should be interesting to see how this plays out:

http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Alberta/2008/01/03/4751345.html

A police officer was quoted on QR77 saying, "People are allowed to use whatever means necessary to defend themselves in a situation like this but it has to be the minimum."

I'm glad you liked it, Justthinkin, and not to put too fine a point on it, but the first year of the third millenium was 2001 (beginning at 2001-01-01 00:00:00 as you note), the second 2002, and so on, thus as is 2008 the eighth year. It's like I'm 52 now, but this is my 53'd year. And you people make fun of the Y2K problem. Thank god we had people like me looking after you, pace the fear mongerers ;-)

Grab some popcorn, Steven Staples military analyst (yeah, riiiight) has decided to show his face on ARMY.CA.

http://forums.army.ca/forums/index.php/topic,69333.0.html

Is the Clinton Era ending ?

Era of Spin also ?

Grab some popcorn, Steven Staples military analyst (yeah, riiiight) has decided to show his face on ARMY.CA.

This could be good... what's lefty pseudo-intellectual for 'ass handed to him on a plate"?

http://forums.army.ca/forums/index.php/topic,69333.0.html

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen (to mimic Vitruvius), if you like Victor Borge, watch this:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BcV19rylSZc

Western culture is SO disappointing...

Hey, wouldn't that be the 9th year of the 3rd millenium? Sorry to be OT, but at this time of night that makes my head spin.

Grab some popcorn, Steven Staples military analyst (yeah, riiiight) has decided to show his face on ARMY.CA.

I *earn* respect over time (sometimes I'm right and sometimes I'm wrong - I'm man enough to admit it) and resent wannabes that troll for money based on appealing to emotions.

Staples seems to be yet another "peace at any cost" self-aggrandizing individual seeking money.

Remember that indoctrination starts at home and with the children. We don't want that fluffy bunny innocent phase to ever end.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=404190&cid=21890376

The second millenium ended December31,2000.The first year of the new millenium began January1,2001. We are now in the seventh year of the third millenium.Y2K was a scam.

Sick justice anyone?
http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Alberta/2008/01/04/4752221-sun.html

Peggy Noonan has a good Iowa summary up in the WSJ opinion journal.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110011083

The money quotes:

1. Hillary Clinton, the inevitable, the avatar of the machine, lost.
It's huge. Even though people have been talking about this possibility for six weeks now, it's still huge. She had the money, she had the organization, the party's stars, she had Elvis behind her, and the Clinton name in a base that loved Bill. And she lost. There are always a lot of reasons for a loss, but the Ur reason in this case, the thing it all comes down to? There's something about her that makes you look, watch, think, look again, weigh and say: No.

2. What we have learned about Mr. Huckabee the past few months is that he's an ace entertainer with a warm, witty and compelling persona. He won with no money and little formal organization, with an evangelical network, with a folksy manner, and with the best guileless pose in modern politics. From the mail I have received the past month after criticizing him in this space, I would say his great power, the thing really pushing his supporters, is that they believe that what ails America and threatens its continued existence is not economic collapse or jihad, it is our culture.
They have been bruised and offended by the rigid, almost militant secularism and multiculturalism of the public schools; they reject those schools' squalor, in all senses of the word. They believe in God and family and America. They are populist: They don't admire billionaire CEOs, they admire husbands with two jobs who hold the family together for the sake of the kids; they don't need to see the triumph of supply-side thinking, they want to see that suffering woman down the street get the help she needs.

January 3, 2008

Today's message is long - there is so much to tell our readers and so little time to do it with. As my 2nd last message before I leave for my holidays (Jan/7 - Feb/22/08) I hope you will bear with me.

Link Byfield's editorial today from the CCFD is proof that more Canadians are finally agreeing with us - Official Bilingualism is a failed policy - Link recommends that we scrap it!! Music to the ears of all those who have fought this policy for years on the premise that it discriminates against the majority & is an expensive flop!!

Bernard Lord's "flying circus" - his attempt to consult with Canadians about the policy of Official Bilingualism was a complete farce - he only met with the groups who support Official Bilingualism and all these groups want is....MORE MONEY!!!

Graham Fraser blames the universities & Bernard Lord blames Canadian parents!! Incredible!!

Kim
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy

FIRST PRINCIPLES
A weekly commentary by Link Byfield

January 3, 2008

Why not just scrap official bilingualism?

By Link Byfield

Newspapers before Christmas were dutifully reminding us that we have fallen short of a 2003 declaration by Stephane Dion, then a Chretien minister, that within ten years, half of all Canadian high school graduates should be bilingual.

“Informing” might be more accurate than "reminding." Did anyone pay attention to Dion’s compelling national objective five years ago? Yet here we are half-way to deadline, none the wiser, none the closer and all the poorer.

The reason we didn’t pay attention then, and aren’t likely to now, is that all the way back to Ottawa’s Laurendeau-Dunton commission 45 years ago, such grandiose bilingual goal-setting all sounds the same and all sounds absurd. We tune it out.

And for good reason. By any objective measure, official languages policy in Canada has been a colossally expensive flop.

We are no more bilingual than we were five years ago, we are less.

According to the Canadian census, 17.4% of Canadians claimed “knowledge of English and French” in 2006, down from the 17.7% who made the claim in 2001.

Until 2001 that percentage had been creeping up by half a percent or so with each five-year measure. Now, despite all the preaching, propaganda and spending, bilingualism is actually in retreat.

Curiously, nowhere have I been able to find this fact reported in the media since Statscan published its language tables on December 4. Nor can I find it in Official Languages Commissioner Graham Fraser’s subsequent tirade about federal neglect.

Instead we got a lot of trivia about “allophones” being more numerous than before, French being spoken less at home in Quebec, that bilingualism among anglo teens (15 to 19) has fallen from 16% to 13%, and that among mother-tongue francophones bilingualism is static, while still creeping upward among mother-tongue anglophones outside Quebec.

All of which means nothing. No one wrote the headline “Bilingual language skill falling in Canada.” Why not?

The problem, as I see it, is this: that Canadians have been taught for half a century to think that official bilingualism somehow unites the country. It doesn’t, but nobody in federal office dares say so, because too many jobs and votes would be lost.

The simple truth that bilingualism is a flop could be stated more easily at the provincial level. Unfortunately, the premiers treat it the same way Ottawa does: as a means of buying political support from special interest groups.

The worst example of this is Ontario, which under its French Services Act is now allowing municipalities bordering Quebec to force local businesses to post signs in both official languages. (For more on this civil rights atrocity, visit the recent archive entries of www.galganov.com)

It’s worth speculating what would have happened had Canada’s premiers united around Alberta’s Ernest Manning back in the 1960s and told Ottawa to stay out of provincial constitutional affairs such as language. Language rights had been retained by the provinces in 1867 for a good reason: so that Quebec could remain French, as it had been promised, and everyone else could remain English.

This might sound less biculturally chummy than many Canadians are now accustomed to, but the Pearson/Trudeau alternative we have been stuck with ever since – the idea that we will become a bilingual country -- is sheer fantasy. Why not expect all Canadians to play the piano? We are not a bilingual country, and never will be. We are a unilingual country with two bilingual provinces, Quebec and New Brunswick.

Nobody knows how much we have spent on this pipedream. Ottawa always says it spends only about $1 billion a year, give or take, which doesn’t sound like much. But let’s add in the provincial and municipal program burden across the country, plus the regulatory burden to Canadian businesses and professions of translation and extra effort. Toronto accountant Jim Allan pegged the total imposed cost at $16 billion in 2001, and the accumulated cost since 1969 at $772 billion.

Allan does not claim his calculation to be anything more than the best he can make given how little is actually published about the subject. It’s surely remarkable that none of our economic think-tanks has tackled so obvious a question. One suspects they might fear for their federal charitable registration. But a full and honest accounting is long, long overdue.

Where exactly Prime Minister Harper stands on bilingualism is anyone’s guess. He can’t confront the national delusion head-on, that’s certain. I assume that until English provinces start objecting to the cost, he has to maintain the pretense it’s saving the country.

Link Byfield

Link Byfield is an Alberta senator-elect and chairman of the Citizens Centre. The Centre promotes the principles of personal freedom and responsible government.

Although I don't like harping about an old subject, regarding the CBC Editor's letter against the CPC funding letter:

- the comment I submitted on Jan 1st was submitted when ZERO comments were recorded (original post was Dec 27th, I believe);
- when my comment first showed up on Jan 2nd (CBC folks obviously off for New Years Day), it was one of only 8 comments, all but one was negative toward CBC;
- when I checked on January 3rd, there were 82 comments and mine was approximately the 70th comment...the majority were supportive of the CBC.

Either CBC releases comments in a reverse chronological order or they release them in no particular order or they changed dates/time of comments or they fabricated the quotes.

I submitted a second comment stating this and asking some other rhetorical questions about CBC bias and that comment has not been released. I wonder if I struck a nerve?

BHUTTO HAD EVIDENCE OF PLOT TO RIG PAKISTANI ELECTIONS:

http://tinyurl.com/2th8sf

"" NAUDERO, Pakistan — The day she was assassinated last Thursday, Benazir Bhutto had planned to reveal new evidence alleging the involvement of Pakistan's intelligence agencies in rigging the country's upcoming elections, an aide said Monday.

Bhutto had been due to meet U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., to hand over a report charging that the military Inter-Services Intelligence agency was planning to fix the polls in the favor of President Pervez Musharraf.""

The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Thursday, December 27, 2007

Reaching bilingualism target 'a long shot,' adviser says
Parents responsible for ensuring students meet federal goal: former premier

Kate Jaimet
Canada will "probably not" meet Stéphane Dion's target of making half of all high-school graduates bilingual by the year 2013 -- but that's no reason to stop striving toward the goal, says the man charged with advising the federal government on bilingualism policy.

"I think it's a long shot at this moment. But I think pursuing the goal of having more children graduate bilingual is a noble goal," said former New Brunswick premier Bernard Lord. "I think we must encourage our children to not only learn English and French, but to learn other languages as well."

Mr. Lord spoke to the Citizen after a whirlwind tour of the country earlier this month to take the pulse of French and English minority communities. He is to report his findings and make recommendations to Minister of Official Languages Josée Verner in January.

The bilingualism goal was set in 2003 by Mr. Dion, now the Liberal leader, when he was intergovernmental affairs minister under former prime minister Jean Chrétien.
Despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the provinces and the federal government on French- and English-language education since that time, recently released 2006 census data from Statistics Canada indicate that bilingualism among high school students is going down, not up -- especially for anglophones outside of Quebec.

Asked why the drive toward bilingualism appears to be faltering, Mr. Lord said while he is still gathering information, he believes parents bear a frontline responsibility.

"I've always felt that the parents are responsible for the education of children, and parents decide if their children will learn one language, or two, or three, and if they will only rely on the school system for the whole education of their children," Mr. Lord said. "The government has a role to play in education, but at the same time, parents have the first responsibility."

Mr. Lord said that he will make recommendations about education in his report to Mr. Harper next month. He also said he will recommend how much money the government should spend on bilingualism policy. The action plan developed by Mr. Dion in 2003 allocated $750 million over five years to foster bilingualism, of which $381 million was given to education.

Mr. Lord said his report will also weigh in on the contentious issue of immigration. The 2003 Action Plan allocated $9 million over five years to help French-language communities outside of Quebec recruit francophone immigrants to bolster their demographics. But that policy has recently come under criticism from Parti Québécois immigration critic Martin Lemay, who said that if the federal government recruits francophones to other provinces, it will harm Quebec's strategy to attract French-speaking immigrants from among the same, limited pool of international migrants.

Questions have also been raised about whether francophones who immigrate to mainly anglophone provinces actually continue to speak French, or simply end up blending into the English-speaking majority.

Mr. Lord said that while he has an opinion on the controversy, "I have to keep that point of view to myself until I give it to the minister."

In the course of his consultations, Mr. Lord visited Halifax, Moncton, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Vancouver, meeting with representatives of French and English minority communities, academics, representatives of the private and volunteer sectors and government observers.

"The people that I met are people that care deeply about Canada. They feel that bilingualism is a fundamental value of the country, and it's an asset for the country. They love both languages and these are people that are determined to make sure that we continue to build a strong future for Canada," Mr. Lord said.

He said the people he met in his consultations were optimistic about the survival of francophone communities outside of Quebec, despite 2006 census results that show the number of native francophones is in decline in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and across the Atlantic provinces. The census data also showed high rates of francophones who have switched to speaking mainly English at home in all provinces except Quebec and, to some extent, New Brunswick.

Still, Mr. Lord said the people he spoke to didn't express a lot of concern that the French language would die outside Quebec.
"It did come up, but the people I met were people determined to make sure that survival occurred."

Mr. Lord said while immigrants from all over the world have brought with them a huge diversity of languages, the idea of Canada as a bilingual country is not outdated.

"The country has two official languages, which means that government accepts that it will function in two official languages, English and French. In no way does that mean that it prevents people from speaking more languages, or only speaking one language," he said. "Sure, it's great when people speak both languages. It's even better when our children speak more than two languages ... Language is a passport in the 21st century."

© The Ottawa Citizen 2007

For those of us who are working hard towards correcting one of the most damaging and unfair social policies ever inflicted on a nation, bilingualism, the news of another opinion that the Official Languages Act is a major waste of money and effort is welcomed and incentive to continue our efforts.

I would personally question Mr. Lord's report at the current time, not having seen it, because of what he has said in preview indicating that he has met with people that "...feel that bilingualism is a fundamental value of this country, and it's an asset for the country. ... these are people that are determined to make sure that we continue to build a strong future for Canada."

There are also people who are just as determined to have a very very large microscope focussed on this social policy and what it is doing to the unity of our country. We want to focus on many details that have been artfully avoided or hidden by our political leaders over the last 40 years to the point that non Francophones feel they are second class citizens in Canada.

Condensing the many stories of unfair treatment because of language policy is the first hint in the Census of 2006 and now Bernard Lord's report to the Minister of Official Languages due in January 2008. His report will be examined in detail by all sides to the disagreement.

Mr. Lord coins a new phrase that I'm sure he will repeat again to argue his point which is "...Language is a passport in the 21st century." I maintain that it's not language but "...the English language is the passport in the 21st century." Check the numbers of users Mr. Lord.

K. P.

Good tip Zip :-)

Any time I get to see this sniveling little mush bag Staples cut down by real military staff I get all warm and fuzzy-like ;-)

Staples is quite possibly the most pompous impostor since Gwynne Dyer. This little termite was soley manufactured by leftard pacificist NGOs to be the "expert" anti-US/anti war voice of the left....a crown previously worn by Dyer or Margolais.

I laughed until I cried when I saw the ridiculous front he manufactured (the Rideau Institute) which is a blatant parody of the RIIA to give it some fraudulent "expert" "official" policy tank polish/credibility...nope just one large concocted sales pitch from Leftard NGOs to create a talking head "expert" who trashes all military endeavors.

Take a bow Steve ...but not too deep or a vet will insert a mine probe in you.

The story begins at Michigan State University

with a mechanical engineering professor named

Indrek Wichman.

Wichman sent an e-mail to the Muslim Student's Association.

The e-mail was in response to the students' protest

of the Danish cartoons

that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist.

The group had complained the cartoons were

"hate speech."

Enter Professor Wichman.

In his e-mail, he said the following:

Dear Moslem Association,

As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU

I intend to protest your protest.

I am offended not by cartoons,

but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians,

cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders,

murders of Catholic priests

(the latest in Turkey ),

burnings of Christian churches,

the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt ,

the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims,

the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women

(called "whores" in your culture),

the murder of film directors in Holland,

and the rioting and looting in Paris France.

This is what offends me,

a soft-spoken person and academic,

and many, many of my colleagues.

I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal,

and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems

to be very aware of this as you proceed

with your infantile "protests."

If you do not like the values of the West

- see the 1st Amendment -

you are free to leave.

I hope for God's sake

that most of you choose that option

Please return to your ancestral homelands

and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.

Cordially,

I. S. Wichman

Professor of Mechanical Engineering

As you can imagine,

the Muslim group at the university didn't like this too well.

They're demanding that Wichman be reprimanded

and the university impose mandatory diversity training for faculty

and mandate a seminar on hate and discrimination for all freshmen.

Now the local chapter of CAIR has jumped into the fray.

CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations,

apparently doesn't believe that the good professor

had the right to express his opinion.

(unlike the broad latitude given to the Islamists to spew their hate-filled raves)

For its part,

the university is standing its ground

in support of Professor Wichman,

saying the e-mail was private,

and they don't intend to publicly condemn his remarks.

============================================================

OK children, its time to learn our numbers. When you start counting you start at the number 1, not 0. So, 1, as in 2001, is the first number, or in this case, year of the current millenium. Once we reach December 31st we go to the second number, 2, or in this case, the year 2002. That would be the second year of the current millenium. Then on to 3.....I think you should get it by now. We just finished getting to December 31 of the 7th year, or 2007 of the current millenium (the 3rd) and Vituvius is completely correct when he states that we are now in the 8th year, 2008, of the 3rd millenium. Anyone handing in their test papers with any different calculation will be scored with a big fat "0" and sent back to the 1st grade. Or is that the 2nd grade of the first millenium? Oh well, its all so complicated.

Leave it to an engineer to explain it to the Muslim Student Assn. And a big Atta Boy goes to the university for not doing anything, which was what they should have done in this case.

Great National Post article this a.m. and a book worthy of my bedside table.
" The conservative case for going green"

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=213875&p=1

Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again by David Frum. ©David Frum 2008

There is a poll at the calgary sun, -do you think the cold weather in the east is caused by gw-NO is way ahead.
Last night, when entrance polls were talked about, global warming was never mentioned once. Hillory, in her speech had no emotion, but did mention gw once. It is not an issue in the USA.
Dion's plan for bilingualism is meeting the same fate as his action on the environment. Doesn't he get anything done.
Should be interesting watching the msm talk about how Hillory's loss is not important, for the next 5 days. Even women deserted her. But, over 100,000 new caucus goers last night must mean something.

Forgive me for intervening in the discussion of whath year of the third milennium this is, but I offer this speculation:

The reason why the decades, centuries and millenia start on Jan. 1st of years ending with 1 is to square the final digit off with proper use of ordinal numbers. Thus, 2001 is the 1st year of the third millenium; 2008 is the 8th year, etc.

Crumpled map solves mystery of German gun behind D-Day massacre

A baffling mystery of the D-Day landings was solved by an amateur historian - after he found a crumpled map at a fair in Stockport.

Experts have long disputed the location of the main Nazi gun battery which caused carnage on Omaha Beach, in terrible scenes which were recreated for the Hollywood film Saving Private Ryan.

The Germans had built a decoy gun emplacement overlooking the area while the location of the real guns which blasted the beach, where 2,000 men lost their lives, remained unclear...

thanks, ql1800 for your posts on bilingualism. I completely agree; it's a travesty, an action against democracy, a utopian act that reduces the Canadian population, politically, to a class without political/economic power.

It specifically gives official govt power only to those who are bilingual, and thus denies such power to over 85% of the population.

If you cannot insert democracy by force then you cannot insert languages by force. To assert that someone must be bilingual before they can hold high economic and political office in Canada is a denial of equal rights. It sets up an elite class of mandarins in power, a class that rapidly be comes closed and self-ruling.

The costs of useless bilingualism are enormous, including translations, requirements for bilingual staff in each and every post office, in each and every Air Canada flight and so on.

And, above all, it denies full participation by all Canadians in the economic and political life of their country. That's the travesty.

After two years in government, Stephen Harper will have his very first meeting with all of the provincial premiers on January 11: www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080104.LETTER04/TPStory/TPNational/Politics/

January 11. January 11. Now why does that date ring a bell? Wasn't something else going to happen that day? Wasn't something going to be reported on that day?

Oh, yes. Just by pure and utter coincidence, David Johnson's report on whether to hold a public inquiry into the Mulroney scandal is due that day.

The whole set up is more than vaguely reminiscent of another report (www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/007630.html#c221905that made the Conservatives look really really really bad over their record breaking spending on polling which was released during the senate hearings to hide the results.

Now, there's couldn't be any possible chance that Johnson is going to suggest that Harper flip flop a fourth time on this matter is there? that despite Harper first saying he wasn't going to do anything, then saying he was going to be guided by Johnson, and then saying he was going to hold a public inquiry... Harper wouldn't flip flop yet again, would he? That couldn't possibly be why the quickly put together casual first minister's meeting without a set agenda (like all prior meetings0 has been scheduled for January 11, could it?

No one ever said this government wasn't clever at hiding from bad news. But perhaps too clever by half? Don't expect the Conservative pliant media to pick up on this, though.

For some reason that link didn't work: www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/007630.html#c221905

Bali bomber feels 'beautiful' facing end

ONE of the Bali bombers has written from his Indonesian jail that he feels so "beautiful" on the eve of his execution that "no words can describe how good the feeling is".

Mukhlas, the elder brother of the so-called smiling assassin Amrozi, posted a 10-page statement on the internet exhorting Muslims to show their support for him by turning out in mass numbers for his burial...

A former Islamic preacher in his late 40s, Mukhlas has showed no remorse for helping to organise the 2002 bombings in Bali's Kuta tourist district, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians. Many of the victims were Muslims. He claimed on the internet he has sympathy "from all Muslims in the world" for what he did as well as the "blessings of God". Earlier, the three bombers said in a signed statement smuggled from jail that their deaths would make them heroes to God and that being "thrown out of the country" would be "an adventure" and "a sightseeing trip".

"If we are executed, then our drops of blood that flow - with God's permission - will become light for those good Muslims and will become hell burning fire for those who are not Muslims and the hypocrites," they wrote...

There is a very good reason why the bilinguals are Quebecois, they are only 7 million and they live on a continent of 300 million English people. Commercially everybody needs to speak English but the English do not need French. Therefore very few other than the Québécois are bilingual.

Senior mandarin jobs in Ottawa need to be bilingual. Therefore what we end up with is Québécois filling those jobs. It becomes incestuous for the bilinguals in the Ottawa/Hull/Montreal area to fill those jobs. The West need not apply.

Over the last half century we’ve seen the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party of Canada de facto become like the Baathist party in Iraq. It is the 80/20 rule of rule. It’s practically bloodline tribal.

But like Huckabee is doing in the USA, the ROC middle class is waking up. As that happens we'll get diversity of thought in our civil service and the best ideas from across the country will start to gain traction. Dion will start to look as old guard as Hilary.

Liberal-socialists' agenda: 'hug-a-thug', aka Canadian Youth Criminal Justice Act .

"Ontario's interim opposition leader, Bob Runciman, said yesterday, "The act still goes overboard to protect young punks."

The former solicitor general says it's time that in serious crimes the names of so-called young offenders be released and that stiff sentences go with convictions."

Opinion: Enough of this 'hug-a-thug' approach
By JOE WARMINGTON
The Toronto Sun
http://tinyurl.com/35448b

Cremations are an environmental hazard because of... mercury! Now Where did I put those CFLs?

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-na-cremate26dec26,1,4725792.story?ctrack=2&cset=true

Irving, Texas, and the talk is going to it being honor killings:

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=4079762&page=1

"Irving police have issued a capital murder warrant for a cab driver accused of fatally shooting his two teenage daughters.

The bodies were found in his taxi."

It's possible those d*mned SUV driving cavemen did in the mammoths:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080104/ap_on_sc/japan_baby_mammoth_1;_ylt=AqLsE2AEJ7QQh.r0c1Ch_KL0kPUI

Oooops. The article Maz2 refers to does indeed refer to Bob Runciman as "Ontario's interim opposition leader" and not his actual title "Leader of the Opposition in the Legislature" because Tory couldn't win his own seat.

Typo? Lazy columnist? Freudian slip? Subliminal messaging? or a further push of the knife in the back?

Poor John.

Jimmy F, I'm glad to see your post about yesterday's killing in Langdon Alberta of a home invader at 3:30 a.m. The QR77 News headline focuses only on the investigation of the homeowner's actions, and state that the homeowner will possibly be charged with homicide. This really, really bugs me. Imagine waking up in your bed at 3:30 am to hear that there are invaders in your house. You're terrified. You realize that there is more than one, and that the only way to fend them off is to take them by surprise, to incapacitate them, in order to protect your family. Heart racing, with great relief, you do so successfully. Your family is safe. You call the police. Now you're under investigation, and may possibly be charged with homicide. The police are saying, "People are allowed to use whatever means necessary to defend themselves in a situation like this but it has to be the minimum."

And our politicians wonder why there is a perception that our laws protect the criminals more than the victims.

The Right Honourable Stephen Brian Jean Harper's Conservatives are using our tax dollars for political ads.

The more things change...

"It is always costly and inefficient to choose men or to favour institutions on the basis of their ethnic origin rather than their particular aptitude or competence. Great industries cannot promote maximum efficiency by ethnocentric policies, any more than by nepotism."

Pierre Trudeau, 1965 (who obivously became better known for not practising what he preached).

If I had a dollar for every lie told about Official Bilingualism in Canada, I'd be a billionaire.

BB, it was an Islamic honour killing.

"Wichman sent an e-mail to the Muslim Student's Association."

Related from the Telegraph:

"Don't criticise Islam, says UN"

Posted by Damian Thompson on 31 Dec 2007

It didn’t attract much notice, but the General Assembly of the United Nations ended the year by passing a disgusting resolution protecting Islam from criticism of its human rights violations.

The resolution shows a worrying acceptance of Islamic ideology

Lots of non-Muslims voted for it – a sign that more and more corrupt Third World governments are identifying with the ideology of Islam, even if they don't accept its doctrines.

The resolution goes under the innocuous title "Combating defamation of religions" – but the text singles out "Islam and Muslims in particular". It expresses "deep concern that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism".

Wrongly associated? As of today, terrorists have carried out 10,277 separate attacks since September 11, 2001. They all belong to the same religion, and it ain’t Methodism.

The resolution (which of course makes no mention of the vicious persecution of Christians) was pushed through by the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which has been agitating for it for years. Naturally every Muslim country was among the 108 supporters, but it’s interesting to note how other countries lined up.

Cuba, China, North Korea and Zimbabwe all voted the same way.

--------------

From infidel bloggers (ibloga.blogspot.com)

"Muslims committed the huge blunder of revealing their vulnerability [all the rioting over a cartoon]. Now the world knows what hurts them. When you find your opponent's weak spot, it is exactly where you want to hit him. If Islam is ridiculed publicly and systematically, it will be defeated.

Muslim psychology is all pomposity and bravado. I give you my word that if Islam is ridiculed publicly and systematically, it will be defeated. Shame is a great motivator as well as deterrent. Do not underestimate the power of ridicule. This is serious stuff not a laughing matter.

How much ridicule is enough? Until it hurts. The pain of shame must become bigger than the comfort of clinging to this false fetish. When you see their eyes are popping out of their eyeballs, their veins bulging in their necks, foam forming at their mouths, and they are ready to explode, you know that the remedy is working. Give them more. They will either die of heart attacks or they will come to their senses and recover from this insanity.

Every one of us must become a cyberwarrior and mock Muhammad, Islam and the Muslims. Use your talent. Draw cartoons based on the hadith and the Quran. You can find tons of ridiculous stuff in these books to lampoon. Write articles, lyrics, jokes, plays, do whatever you can to ridicule Muhammad the prophet pretender and Muslims. Don't heed to their howls and cries."

--------------------

It's all related. The seething snakes of Islam hiss louder and more often as Islam is exposed for what it is - institutionalised and religiously sanctioned hate and violence.

Their terrorist front organisations, such as the MSA, CIC and CAIR, are doing everything they can in North America to shut down freedom of speech as it applies to Islam. Their UN voting bloc is doing the same internationally.

They are working zealously to apply shariah (and this is the application of shariah) on the world. This is because Islam cannot withstand rational criticism, the application of reason, being mocked, and the unveiling of what the truth is about "the one true religion" and its psychopath prophet.

I Agree Ted about the ads. The only way a democracy can operate at high performance levels is to have lots of choice .. .be it Health Care, education, other commercial products or especially political parties.

What Conservatives need to do is to help the Liberals find a competent leader, otherwise Conservatives will over the next decade of power backslide into the morass that the LPOC has become. That is just the nature of things and only lots of healthy competition can prevent it.

nomdeblog - we agree!

Get a grip Ted.

It's arguable whether they need to spend that much (650K).

We are just glad that it's not a Liberal party decision. We're probably talking 10 to 20 times the amount for meetings in restaurants, paper bags of cash, phoney invoices, cover-ups, Rick Mercer ads, etc., etc.

More ads from the Conservative government:
From the Prime Minister's Web Site (http://www.pm.gc.ca/)

PRIME MINISTER RINGS IN NEW YEAR WITH GST CUT

CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT FULFILLS COMMITMENT TO REDUCE GST TO 5%
December 31, 2007
Mississauga, ON
[...]

“Reducing the GST is part of our broader plan to ensure Canada’s long-term economic growth and prosperity,” said Prime Minister Harper. “Under our Government, taxes are headed only one direction: down.”

Since coming to office, the Conservative Government has taken action to cut sales, income and business taxes, reducing the overall tax burden for Canadians and businesses by close to $200 billion, and bringing taxes to the lowest level they have been in nearly 50 years.

Ted; You should live in Sask and see all the crown corp ads that the NDP trot out before an election.Premier Wall says these are going to end and its about time.He should prohibit propaganda ads from the Sask Govt Employees Union (SGEU)before an election at the same time.

Top Russian scientist: global cooling coming
http://tinyurl.com/39xz7o (american thinker)
...-

"Maybe they found Lyuba because the ice in Siberia is melting from global warming," said Chikara's father, Misao Shimizu. "I find that very worrying."

Mammoth Could Shed Light on Warming
Friday, January 4, 2008

TOKYO - Frozen in much the state it died some 37,500 years ago, a Siberian mammoth undergoing tests in Japan could finally explain why the beasts were driven to extinction - and shed light on climate change, scientists said Friday. ...-
http://tinyurl.com/375ber (peopleonline)

Byfield's observations re bilingualism are accurate and his analysis is well-reasoned, and it may be true that the way to get rid of official bilingualism is for largely English speaking provinces to make this an issue. Unfortunately -- without knowing the actual costs -- too few people are aware of the unfairness and hypocracy in this policy. If you live in Ottawa, New Brunswick or anywhere near the Quebec border you are aware of the problems created by this policy, but otherwise I don't think it is a big issue for most people. Of course it would be if anyone were honest about the cost, but there is a deliberate attempt to hid e the actual costs. I used to hope that there would be a way out of this oppressive and anti-democratic policy, but now I realize that it is kind of like the mafia and that the dollars we pay are kind of like "protection", and that most politicians are too frightened to actually address this tyranny by the minority head-on. A couple of years ago the CBC had a "phone-in" re official bilingualism. Because I know that this is a most hated policy in Ottawa, I was interested to hear some of the comments. The program was a total sham -- I believe they even had "plants" there to make sure the mssg. would get out about what a wonderful policy this is. It will take a radical shifting of the political landscape to get rid of offical bilingualism and I do not expect that will happen any time soon.

To answer your question Ted: "That couldn't possibly be why the quickly put together casual first minister's meeting without a set agenda (like all prior meetings) has been scheduled for January 11, could it?" -- I doubt it. Usually it is a very tricky thing to find a date when all ministers can attend something in Ottawa. I suspect that this was the only date available that would work for everyone. Have you ever tried to set up a meeting for eleven very busy people? Also, I would expect that between now and the 11th a clear agenda will be established with input from the attendees.

Oh -- one more point, Ted -- don't despair. Maybe Harper will indeed flip flop and cancel the enquiry. Then you can still raise a stink about it -- even if the majority of the public at this point agree that a public enquiry is serious overkill.

ted - your constant malicious comments against anything "Conservative' suggests that you have a psychological problem. It has moved out of any reliance on factual or rational evidence; your posts are automatically malicious. I suggest counselling.

No, the announcement of the GST tax cut is not an advertisement for the CPC; it's an informational announcement of this gov't. Would you prefer silence about the govt's actions, because to announce anything, in your mind ted, is equivalent to an advertisement for a political party.

So, that also means that any and all actions carried out by any govt, is actually not informational but an advertisement for and only for, a political party. Hmmm. Not very logical ted.

I agree with nomdeblog about the incestuous set of bureaucrats in the Ottawa-Montreal corridor that has emerged within our dysfunctional bilingual policy.
And, I agree with nomdeblog that a robust govt requires a robust opposition.

Dion is not only an ignorant and arrogant individual who belongs only in the seminar room, but, the Liberal view of Opposition is incorrect. An Opposition Party's duty is not simply To Oppose, for that would reduce them to being simple mechanical objects that squawk the opposite of whatever the Govt says.
But that's what Dion says is the Duty of the Opposition. To Oppose.

Nonsense. A valid Opposition has the duty to CRITIQUE. That means to examine, analyze and sometimes fully agree. Sometimes add or substract. Sometimes oppose. In other words, the duty of an Opposition is to THINK. Not to behave like a mechanical reactive object.

So, we require not merely a new leader as Opposition. We require an Opposition party that understands their role and is able and willing to carry out that role - of critical thinking. The Liberals are, alas and alack, unable to think critically. Poor ted, a Liberal.

"When it was pointed out that previous governments have run similar ads to boast of tax cuts contained in budgets, Mr. McCallum said he couldn't speak for governments back through time."

Gov'ts he was an MP in, and cabinet minister, and somehow now can't recall the specifics...

...right...maybe Ted can help him recall..

So what’s behind the violence in Kenya? No, say it ain’t so:

"It's been hard to escape the news of the horrific atrocities coming out of Kenya. Just this past weekend, children were torched, burnt alive in a Kenya church. In broad daylight, a crowd of Kenyans set a church filled with hundreds of terrified families on fire and listened to their screams as flames engulfed them.

The violence is the worst Kenya has witnessed since a failed coup in 1982. The media has been, shall we say obtuse, in describing the combatants, the murderers - what exactly is at play.

Dr. Jack Wheeler at To the Point News lays it out for us and outlines a brilliant strategy for Obama, a Moslem in his youth with strong ties to Islam and that region. Interesting that Obama should sidle up to the agitator aligned with Islam.

Of course, Wheeler's bold strategy is way over Obama Hussein's head. Don't expect any such "action" from the actionless but the story behind the Kenya bloodbaths leads to of all places ................. Islam. Kenya's Muslim population is roughly 10% - that historical tipping point where the Muslims traditionally assert themselves and their Islamic law (sharia) on the poor, unsuspecting host country.

For it is the unique nexus of bloody violence between tribes - Kikuyu and Luo - and religions - Christianity and Islam - unraveling Kenya right now that gives Obama his opportunity. After all, his father, Barrack Hussein Obama Senior, was Luo and a Moslem.

When Raila Odinga lost the presidential election last week (12/27) to Mwai Kibaki, he claimed the vote was rigged, whereupon his tribal followers went on murderous rampages such as in the town of Eldoret, where on New Years Day dozens of people were burned to death in a church set on fire.

Throughout Kenya, hundreds of people have been politically murdered in the last few days.

The Evangelical Alliance of Kenya has posted on its website a photograph copy of a Memorandum of Understanding, dated and signed on August 29, 2007, between Raila Odinga and Shiekh Abdullah Abdi, chairman of the National Muslim Leaders Forum of Kenya.

It pledges the support of Kenyan Moslems for Raila's election. In return, as President of Kenya, Raila agrees to 14 actions, listed a) through n) on page two. Read them all, and be sure you're sitting down. Here's a sample:

b) Within 6 months re-write the Constitution of Kenya to recognize Shariah as the only true law sanctioned by the Holy Quran for Muslim declared regions.

c) With immediate effect dismiss the Commissioner of Police who has allowed himself to be used by heathens and Zionists to oppress the Kenyan Muslim community.

g) Within one year facilitate the establishment of a Shariah court in every Kenyan divisional headquarters. [Note: everywhere in Kenya, not just in "Muslim declared regions."]

And here is the biggest non-surprise: Raila Odinga has, in his own words, a "close personal friendship" with Barrack Hussein Obama Junior.

When Obama went to Kenya in August of 2006, he was hosted by Raila and spoke in praise of him at rallies in Nairobi.

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/01/obama-islam-and.html

I think the ads should be stopped.

I think the Bilingual patronage appointments to the Boards of government Crown Corps should be stopped. We should sell the CBC, the EDC, BDC , Via Rail , the Post Office with its rediculous Purolator subsidiary.

We are becoming hypocritical as Conservatives. The only way to be accountable and stop the patronage appointments and the faux need for bilingualism is to get rid of these government entities and privatize them, otherwise we’ll become as corrupt as Liberals.

If we don't want to become Liberals we need to do what ET says and start using our reasoning powers and start thinking.

I haven't given up on Ted yet , he might be able to save the LPOC which would be good for Conservatives to compete with and therefore good for Canada

A policy platform all western politicians should take up to win votes:

"Geert Wilders, who compares the Koran to Mein Kampf and wants it banned, has been named the Netherlands' politician of the year in a poll run by public broadcaster NOS.

Mr Wilders' pithy and shocking soundbites - he warned of a "tsunami of Islamisation" - have dominated headlines, while his parliamentary outbursts have brought an adversarial style of politics to the muted consensus to which the Dutch are attuned."

MSNBC

Why thank ya nomdeblog.

You are right, of course, these are obviously political ads and not ads just to inform. It's not like we're not going to notice the tax cut and it's not like we won't benefit without the taxpayer funded Conservative ads. To think anything else is rather silly or the worst kind of hypocritical partisanship.

This is unlike the child benefit ads where Canadians were actually provided information. Many Canadian parents were not aware of the process and, while there was a huge partisan benefit, you can justify the need for those ads. There is no need here other than partisan politics.

And the Liberals were wrong to do it too, when they did it. When I call him The Right Honourable Stephen Brian Jean Harper, that is not just a criticism of the current flip flopping lying petty I-don't-care-about-Canadians-who-won't-vote-for-me career politician who serves as our Prime Minister.

Advertisement from Global Change-Warming Ink. Meteo says it's "impressive". Go, Weather.
...-

"It's been several years since we've seen a storm this impressive," said Chris Jordan, a meteorologist with the weather service in Reno, Nev."

Arctic storm bears down on Calif.
By Samantha Young, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://tinyurl.com/3c6wdy

John Robson on the newly planned self-service medical care in the UK. Cutest quote:

Britain may seem like just this place where Lord Durham might have been from if he'd had the gall to exist. But actually it has one of those Parliament thingies and is the big powerful country whose cultural influence we used to resent bitterly before moving on to hating the United States. It even pioneered many policy initiatives we later invented, most notably socialized medicine. It is thus highly instructive that their health system, unlike ours, includes dentists and, unlike ours, has a shortage of dentists. Almost as if ... nah, can't be.

I don't think the information about the GST should be stopped. Why not? Because this is government policy and Canadians need to be informed about it. We all know that if they aren't informed, the Liberals and NDP will take every opportunity to misinform the public.

Remember, that the MSM act as 'ads' for the Liberals/NDP. [Oh, here comes Ted, with his mechanical rebuttal that the MSM are NOT Liberal but are instead, heavily Conservative!! Ted, remember, the Opposition is not supposed to be a mechanical reaction but is supposed to be able to THINK.]

So, the MSM are constantly misinforming the public about our current govt and its actions.SDA has often posted this misinformation from the CBC, from the Toronto Star, from CTV, etc. It's constant.

So, the facts coming from the govt should NOT be stopped. Not while we have the MSM busy with their constant misinformation 'ads' in favour of the Liberals.

And the constant commentary by Duffy and Newman, with that travesty, Jim Travers, and Gloria Galloway, Jane Tabers, etc, etc - all clearly Liberal, all clearly anxious for an election to Get Rid of The Usurpers and Return the Natural Governing Party to Power. The comments from this set are endless; the misinformation and propaganda are endless. So, the govt has to inform the public of the truth - when faced with this enormous propaganda machine of the MSM.

As for getting rid of bilingualism, the major part of that Charter, the handmaiden of the Liberals, is to legislate bilingualism. Almost half of the Charter is devoted to it. Individual freedoms? Rubbish - one brief section 2, which is immediately negated by privileging identity politics, privileging group 'rights' based on hereditary origin (ethnicity, religion, language, gender)...over any individual.

So, bilingualism, which is an enormous fraudulent system, a totalitarian act that insists that a population be What It Is Not (bilingual) and what it can never be - remains enshrined within the mythic nonsense of Canadian utopianism. It's not only the enormous cost to Canadians that is the problem. The real serious problem is its destruction of democracy and its insertion of an oligarchy in place of democracy.

We are run by a small Set of people, closed to outsiders and newcomers, in the Ottawa-Montreal corridor. They are bilingual from necessity and household use. No individual who laboriously picks up the language after the 'linguistic learning years of childhood' is admissable. They are the ones who run our NGO, our banks, our key govt institutions, the CBC, our research funding boards - everything. No-one West of the Ottawa River is readily admissable. That's what we've done to ourselves with bilingualism. By telling ourselves that we can Become What We Are Not, ie bilingual, we've set up an oligarchy as our govt.

Linda:

Maybe it is just an entirely purely huge big politically beneficial coincidence that this is the first meeting of this sort for Harper and the first time that I can remember the PM has decided to just hang out with the Premiers without a meeting agenda established well in advance. Maybe it is.

Indeed, maybe we should wonder why The Right Honourable Stephen Brian Jean Harper chose January 11th as the date Johnson was to deliver his report.

But it is all just coincidence, I'm sure.

ET: please provide a single instant where I have in any way said the media is Conservative, let alone heavily Conservative.

Sorry, typo, that should be a single "instance" not "instant". And I'll save you some time, ET: don't bother looking because there is no such example because I've never said The Media is conservative, Conservative or heavily Conservative.

Only 372 cars torched this New Years in France.
http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCAL0138249720080101

Where did the epthet, 'moonbat' come from? Also, Bali, Gore and the Marxists:

George Monbiot, a prominent environmentalist and author said to have been the inspiration for the epithet “moonbat,” coined in 2002 by Perry de Havilland of Samizdata, claims the US has subverted the Bali climate talks to the point of sabotage. His complaints begin with Kyoto, which was negotiated ten years earlier:

The European Union had asked for greenhouse gas cuts of 15% by 2010. Gore’s team drove them down to 5.2% by 2012. Then the Americans did something worse: they destroyed the whole agreement. Most of the other governments insisted that the cuts be made at home. But Gore demanded a series of loopholes big enough to drive a Hummer through. The rich nations, he said, should be allowed to buy their cuts from other countries. When he won, the protocol created an exuberant global market in fake emissions cuts. The western nations could buy “hot air” from the former Soviet Union.

Because the cuts were made against emissions in 1990, and because industry in that bloc had subsequently collapsed, the former Soviet Union countries would pass well below the bar. Gore’s scam allowed them to sell the gases they weren’t producing to other nations. He also insisted that rich nations could buy nominal cuts from poor ones. Entrepreneurs in India and China have made billions by building factories whose primary purpose is to produce greenhouse gases, so that carbon traders in the rich world will pay to clean them up.

Monbiot’s disappointment in the outcome of the climate talks is understandable. CTV reports: “The Bali deal came after all-night negotiations and sets the stage for the negotiation of a new treaty by 2009 to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. No specific targets are included in the document, which is considered to be a ‘roadmap.’ The Bali deal only commits countries to negotiate.” The Australian reports: “The European Union’s attempt to introduce a reference to non-binding targets for developed countries of between 25 and 40 per cent by 2020 was knocked out on Friday following stubborn opposition led by Russia and the US.” What is worse, fear some environmentalists, is that the US might actually have gained a political lever with which to beat the Greens over the head. The Australian article continues:

The White House statement indicates it will seek to negotiate different terms for poor countries based on the size of their economy and the scale of their emissions — a move that could create a wedge in the Group of 77 bloc of developing countries. “The negotiations must adequately distinguish among developing countries by recognizing that the responsibilities of the smaller or least developed countries are different from the larger, more advanced developing countries,” the US statement said. “In our view, such smaller and less-developed countries are entitled to receive more differentiated treatment so as to more truly reflect their special needs and circumstances.”

The history of every millennial movement starts out quietly enough. At first only those who have heard voices or received messages by moonbeam come stumbling in through the tent flap. Shortly they are followed by academics who have finally found someone who understands their theories and will popularize them. Then, as the crowd swells, come the curious, lost, desperate, and heartbroken. Soon follow the peddlers who sell peanuts, popcorn, and crackerjacks to the rapt crowd; then the pickpockets, hangers-on, con artists, and small-time grifters. In the latter stages come the political entrepreneurs, demagogues always on the lookout for ready-made crowds ripe for the leading. Finally come the lawyers, regulators, and venture capitalists to turn it all into an industry. Too bad George Monbiot didn’t see which one Al Gore would turn out to be.

Environmentalism has become the political lifeboat into which the survivors of the socialist shipwreck have crammed themselves. The need to “manage the climate” became the new foundation on which to base regulatory structures, impositions, and taxes which were formerly justified by the imperative to manage the “commanding heights of the economy.” Kyoto was the highest expression of the program to “manage the climate” and provided the same new basis for socialistic policies that Marxism once did. As such, Kyoto was too politically useful to discard. But like its socialist predecessor it suffered from the problem that it wouldn’t work. That weakness would be artfully concealed by superseding it with a successor agreement to be drafted in Bali. But delegates who came to Indonesia already knew that Kyoto’s key weakness was mandating “carbon emission” reductions. Reducing “carbon emissions” really meant reducing economic output in a world where poverty is a major problem. They were caught between the Scylla of having to maintain a commitment to environmentalism and the Charybis of recession. So the politicians and celebrities at Bali driven by the need to keep the circus going and uninhibited by the Green equivalent of a Bolshevik Party did the obvious thing: they created a shell game tricked out as an emissions control scheme. Bali would no more reduce “carbon emissions” than Kyoto did, but it would give the impression of doing so. And that would be enough, wouldn’t it? Monbiot writes:

Hilary Benn [the UK Secretary of State for Environment] is an idiot. Our diplomats are suckers. American negotiators have pulled the same trick twice, and for the second time our governments have fallen for it. There are still two years to go, but so far the new agreement is even worse than the Kyoto protocol. It contains no targets and no dates. A new set of guidelines also agreed at Bali extend and strengthen the worst of Gore’s trading scams, the clean development mechanism. Benn and the other dupes are cheering and waving their hats as the train leaves the station at last, having failed to notice that it is traveling in the wrong direction.

But Monbiot is wrong. Nobody has fallen for the pretense that climate negotiations are about anything except bureaucratic enlargement and corruption, other than Monbiot and his like. Benn is cheering and waving his hat as the train leaves the station, but he knows perfectly well in what direction the train is going. It is traveling all the way to the bank. And insofar as the corporate jetsetting crowd that descended on Bali is concerned, that is entirely the right direction in which it should go. The train’s got the public’s money, you say? That’s perfectly true, but then the environmentalists never had any problem with that when they thought the locomotive of history would bear the money their way.

Richard Fernandez is PJM Sydney editor; he also writes at the Belmont Club.

Well, nomdeblog, I've given up on Ted, because he never posts anything other than a diatribe against the CPC and above all, against Harper. It's endless.

That's why I think he needs counselling because a focus like that becomes a fetish, ie, unreasonable.

Yes, ted, you have informed us frequently that the MSM are not Liberal; that they are Conservative. You have frequently informed us that the MSM are not biased in favour of the Liberals; you frequently inform us that the Sun is 'Conservative'. You ignore, of course, the CBC, CTV, Global. Bias exists, ted, and it's Liberal bias. So, don't try to now say that you haven't done the above; there are too many posts from you denying Liberal bias in the MSM.

And your attempt to find a Hidden Agenda in the date of the premier's meeting is yet another sign of your fetish. Did you know that there are other meetings taking place on that same Friday? And there are quite a few job deadlines on that date. Oh, and there's a statistics release from the economics dept, the review of fuel resources is due on that data...and...and...

Your hatred of Harper and the CPC is pathological. It has moved into the realm outside of facts, outside of reason and into the purely subjective and psychological where you posit hidden agendas, nefarious motives, backroom deals. Those are Liberal tactics, ted. I suggest that you need counselling.

Gosh this is an odd state of affairs. I’m agreeing with Ted about the GST ads and disagreeing with ET.

ET, you are justifying ads because we have uncompetitive media. Then we should walk the talk and fix that problem not put a bandaid on it with our own ads.

The CBC has an enormous multiplier impact on Canadian News. Akin to the Democrats de facto propaganda outlet The NewYork Times. But the NYT has lost billions in market capitalization and now it has had to react (I suspect their major shareholder Morgan Stanley told them to get some diversity of thought). Therefore the NYT has hired “neo-con” Bill Crystal to bring some balance along with David Brooks.

But other than Rex Murphy there is not a soul on the CBC management that has ever voted Conservative. The CBC is the only entity left in Canada to have big enough budgets to fund global news. Therefore everybody else just takes the CBC headlines and put them into a sausage grinder,they add some spice and sell it as new news.

Bottom line: if we have to buy advertising to get Parliamentary policy out accurately (and I agree it is a huge problem) then let’s fix that problem by breaking up the CBC and making sure we have competitive broadcasting in Canada. A nice side-benefit would be to get rid of all the sepratists in Radio-Canada.

If it is so frequent, ET, please find a single example - "a single" means just one, ET - of me writing that "The Media" is Conservative. I'm just asking for evidence to back your opinion, ET.

If you didn't have such a horrible reading comprehension problem, you would realize that I've never made such a claim. You see, ET, as most logical people with average reading comprehension would understand, by saying that "The Media" is not 90% biased in favour of the Liberals as you claim, I am not saying that the reverse is true. Typical of you to just make up facts to serve your purposes (like here, for another recent example: www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/007749.html#c227516)

Ah, well, your obsession with me personally is sad and has obviously infected your ability to read and comprehend. ET, to paraphrase you, your constant malicious comments against anything I write suggests that you have a psychological problem. It has moved out of any reliance on factual or rational evidence; your posts are automatically malicious. I suggest counselling.

TED, do you consider the appearance of Bob Rae on cbc, as a spokesman for various topics, to be unfair campaigning for the by-election.
Shouldn't those appearances be considered ads.

Ted, wondering where to find bias in the media ?

Left side of sda homepage. A few days/weeks work but there you will find a storehouse of information. Incriminating evidence that may well, someday, put an end to media propaganda.

Afraid of a little work, Ted ?

Oh, and you may also find your claims of Conservative media bias there too, lol.

ET

It is hopeless to try to reason with Ted (Scott Reid??) he is just another brain dead/washed $$Librano that must have been taken off the gravy train!

The CBC or the BDC or the Post Office should only be doing what no other commercial entity is capable of doing.

Let’s have a bi-partisan Parliamentary produce a list of what all these Crown Corps are doing that can’t be done elsewhere. Then publish it and have creative commercial bids come in that would perhaps take on some of these tasks. Maybe only half could be privatized. But that would cut down on 50% of the patronage appointments and 50% of the conflict of interest scenarios that the CBC finds themselves in … such as what MaryT mentions with Bob Rae.

Then if CTV wants to hire Bob Rae, well, that’s their business ,they’ll simply drive about 40% of their viewers away.

Al Gore honed his skills {sic} at Kennebunkport.

[Gore's book, "Earth in the Balance," gave credence to such environmental hoaxes as blind sheep and rabbits in the Antarctica, supposedly caused by increased levels of the sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation as a result of ozone depletion.] Dr. Thomas P. Sheahen

Gore fear-mongered over the Ozone whole, told lies, got away with it and no one took him to task, when 20 years latter it is, well, not a calamity after all.

[So what do we know now ? As far as ozone depletion is concerned, the thinning of the ozone layer that occurred throughout the 1980s apparently stopped in the early 1990s, too soon to credit the Montreal Protocol. A 1998 World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report said that, "since 1991, the linear [downward] trend observed during the 1980s has not continued, but rather total column ozone has been almost constant …" However, the same report noted that the stratospheric concentrations of the offending compounds were still increasing through 1998. This lends credence to the skeptical view, widely derided at the time of the Montreal Protocol, that natural variations better explain the fluctuations in the global ozone layer.] Ben Lieberman, Sept 14 2007

Fooled once, shame on him. Fooled twice, shame on you.

I bet even Big Al did not, in his wildest dreams think he would make a cool $100 Million. Will he get to keep it ?

Oh, and who do you think one of the Skeptics at the Montreal Protocol meeting might have been ? You got it, Tim Ball. He was literaly run out of town --- for crashing the party.

To the letter, Ted, you've not said that the media are (it's plural, people, the plural of "medium") conservative. However, in this very thread,

"No one ever said this government wasn't clever at hiding from bad news. But perhaps too clever by half? Don't expect the Conservative pliant media to pick up on this, though."
Posted by: Ted at January 4, 2008 10:14 AM

nomdeblog - do you seriously think that anyone is going to privatize and clean up the CBC? Just because it's the right thing to do, just because it's the functional thing to do, doesn't mean that our govt has the capacity to do it. It would take not merely a majority govt, but a long campaign against them and their union to achieve it.

The CBC, remember, as a public institution, is also run by members of the public unions. They are extremely powerful in socialist Canada.

nomdeblog - until we actually 'fix' the CBC (and CTV and Global and Jim Travers and Gloria Galloway and Jane Tabers and Mike Duffy and...)..how do you suggest that we deal with the current situation? Not the ideal situation but the current situation which is that the current govt cannot 'fix' the CBC, cannot 'fix' the current MSM. How does it deal, now, given this reality, with such a vast propaganda machinery that spews out endless misinformation to the public?

And remember, nomdeblog, that the USA has other MSM besides the 'leftist' ones. It has Fox, it has the Washington Times, it has others. The USA both enables and permits dissent and debate. Canada doesn't. We deal with dissent by the HRC, and by having a CRTC, by having a public news agency (CBC) and by our cultural relativism.

Oh, for heaven's sake, ted, stop behaving like a machine and parroting others (eg, me). Write your own posts.

And check your own posts; you'll see how you reject any claim of bias in the MSM; you reject any notion of Liberal bias. You inform us, for example, that the SUN is 'Conservative'; even that the G&M is 'conservative'. Check you own posts. And don't behave like a machine; write your own posts; don't copy others.

Oops, should be "Ted, you've not said that the media are conservative that I've seen".

Reading comprehension is your friend, ET. Try it sometime.

I have never said there is no bias. That is just pure fabrication by you. I have never said "The Media" is Conservative. That is just pure fabrication by you. I have also never said that the Globe is conservative or Conservative. Again, that is just pure fabrication by you.

I have said you can find liberal and Liberal bias in lots of articles. I have said you can find lots of examples every single day of articles that are favourable to the Conservatives. I have said that I don't know if, on balance, it is 50:50 or 60:40, but it sure ain't 90:10 as you claim. I have said that "The Media", even if you want to say it is liberal, has been just as attacking of the Liberals as the Conservatives, especially when they were in government. I have said that any idiot who claims that "The Media" is 90% against the Conservatives is looking at the Toronto Star and the CBC ONLY.

Does your obsession with me and my comments know any bounds, ET? Your constant malicious comments against anything I write suggests that you have a DEEP psychological problem. It has moved out of any reliance on factual or rational evidence as I've just shown; your posts are automatically malicious. You should stop behaving like a machine and automatically attacking. Trying reading comments first.

I sincerely suggest counselling.

ET “nomdeblog - do you seriously think that anyone is going to privatize and clean up the CBC? Just because it's the right thing to do, just because it's the functional thing to do,”

Kinda like the difference between Clinton saying in 1998 “we have to take out Saddam as soon as we can” and 5 years later Bush actually taking Saddam out? Or Ted not commenting at all on this and sticking to the emotional?

Yes, I’m saying we need to stop behaving like right wing utopians and walk the talk.

I think when this comes up in Parliament and we hear the opposition screaming about the ads, then Peter van Loan (or whoever) should retort with what you said, “We have to do it because we can’t get the message out any other way because there is a lack of diversity in Canadian media.”

Then we play ping pong for a few days with this in Parliament and eventually pounce with “we need to take a page from Paul Martin's many brilliant observations, one of them being, the government should not be doing what an entity in the Yellow Pages can do. Therefore we have decided to form a Parliamentary Committee to look into justifying why any Crown Corp exists.”

Will there be howling from unions? Sure. But most Canadains don’t belong to one and are getting upset with the Government union job security and benefits they don’t have. Finally, if in Iowa they can beat back the establishment, then we should have the courage to also at least try.

Meanwhile ET, I concede to you that we need the ads at the moment but that we have a duty to explain to Canadians why we are doing it and why we don’t think that practice is a good idea long run and how we will try to fix it.

GST:
Sorry if this is redundant but let's remember that merchants -- involuntary, unpaid tax-collectors -- are required to collect the GST. The GST cut announcements are essential because most people don't follow budgets and those that do often forget the content especially when a new rule comes into effect many months later. Merchats DO receive notifications but when you consider the sheer blizzard of envelopes emanting from the myriad government departments -- municipal, provincial, federal -- it is easy to loose these in the shuffle.

The announcements are a matter of public record and serve to notify the army of merchants and service providers of the reduction AND consumers of same so they can check their receipts. I vividly recall paying 7% GST at a restaurant a few weeks after it had been dropped to 6%. I politely reminded the merchant he needed to re-programme his point-of-sale software.

nomdeblog: Amazed you'd seriously suggest that the Conservatives should help the Liberals select a good leader. To use penny's delightful line: "Are you a young person?".

I don't think, nomdeblog, that we have as strong a grassroots population of individualists as in the USA. Remember, the very basis of the USA is freedom of speech and action, while in Canada, we reject such freedom and subsume it within the constraints of group homogeneities.

We have the HRC, which roots out free speech and insists on deference to group based beliefs and behaviour. We don't have many, if any, publications that present debate, dissent, discussions. Indeed, even in Parliament, the Opposition Party totally misunderstands its role and behaves like a machine and simply opposes any and everything the govt proposes. Without critical analysis, without thought.

So, I fully agree that we have to open up the argument to get rid of public systems such as the CBC, Via Rail and so on. As soon as possible. But, I'm sceptical whether Canadians, at least in Ontario and Quebec, can handle such independence of mind and action!

Ted, I know that you can't handle independence of mind and action; that's why you are copying my posts. That's the Liberal mode!
But, ted, you are doing your usual equivocation and slithering. The point is, ted, that there IS bias in our MSM; that this bias IS predominantly Liberal. And equivocating whether it is 90% or 95% or 85% is your usual slithering tactic. Stick to the basics - that the Canadian MSM is heavily biased in favour of your favourite party, the Liberals.

MND “nomdeblog: Amazed you'd seriously suggest that the Conservatives should help the Liberals select a good leader. To use penny's delightful line: "Are you a young person?".
Not young , maybe not wise either? BUT this is like in business; there’s no worse competition than stupid competition.

Also think about how much better the GOP would be if they had straonger competition than idiots like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid? Now Hilary.

But the LPOC does need a John Manley or his common sense ilk and maybe that’s what Harper is trying to do, allow Manley a chance to come back so that we have some real debate in Parliament instead of the childish antics of Pancho Villa ( spelling ?) who needs help from the CBC to ask a question.

al Qaeda is spoiling our fun and must be crushed!

Dakar rally canceled
By Mac Morrison | 01/04/08, 10:27 am et

The organizer of the annual Dakar Rally has canceled this year's event--planned to start on Saturday and run to Jan. 20--due to fears regarding safety after terrorist actions and threats against the rally.

Three men believed to be linked to Al Qaeda killed four French tourists in Mauritania in Africa on Dec. 24. The rally was set to spend eight days in Mauritania, and organizer ASO feared it would be unable to guarantee the safety of participants and others involved in the nearly 6000-mile trek.

The cancellation is the first in the rally's 30 years. The ASO says future Dakar events are not at risk.

**Based on the current international political tension and the murder of four French tourists [on] Dec. 24 linked to a branch of Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, but also and mainly the...

http://tinyurl.com/2uhuc8
=========================== AutoWeek
= TG

I suppose I should be flattered with your obsession over me, ET, but with your habit of inventing facts (and in particular fabricating things I've said), I think your obsession is a bit fanatical and tiresome. Let go of the obsession, ET; you'll feel better about yourself and it's a first step on the long road to recovery. Twice weekly counselling may also help.

US ranks near the bottom of when it comes to excessive surveillance and lack of privacy protection.

http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-559597

Canadian Juniors leading 4-1 over Americans with 2 1/2 minutes to go in the 3rd!!!!!!!!!!!

1998 was a crucial year for the AGWarmites; however, the crucialist year was 1934. Met Office (UK) repeats the Big Lie.
...-

2008 forecasted to be among hottest years on record
[...]

"although the Met Office said would be unlikely to beat the current warmest year of 1998, which was 0.94 degrees above the long-term average." ...-
http://tinyurl.com/2unlrs (ctv)

I must apologize to Vitruvius. He is right, this is the eighth year of the third millenium. I must stop posting at four-thirty in the morning. Y2K sill remains a scam.

No, the announcement of the GST tax cut is not an advertisement for the CPC; it's an informational announcement of this gov't. Would you prefer silence about the govt's actions, because to announce anything, in your mind ted, is equivalent to an advertisement for a political party.

I got mail when Martin cut taxes,

Egghead "expert" is a worshipper/adherent of the religion/cult of Science; egghead damns the heretic; consigns Huck to the trash bin.
Egghead says he has the Archangel Logic on his side. It's the same Logic used to "prove" AGW/Big Tobacco Bad.
...-

US 'doomed' if creationist [Huckabee] president elected: scientists
[...]

" "The logic that convinces us that evolution is a fact is the same logic we use to say smoking is hazardous to your health or we have serious energy policy issues because of global warming," University of Michigan professor Gilbert Omenn told reporters at the launch of a book on evolution by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)."

"I would worry that a president who didn't believe in the evolution arguments wouldn't believe in those other arguments either. This is a way of leading our country to ruin," added Omenn, who was part of a panel of experts at the launch of "Science, Evolution and Creationism." ...-
http://tinyurl.com/yt8vux (breitbart)

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet, but if you have a chance, view Rex Murphy's segement from the National last night, he defends Steyn with his customary eloquence.

http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/video/rex_murphy/human_rights_gone_awry.html

sorry for the long URL

New sunspot marks the start of a new, 11-year solar cycle

WASHINGTON - A new solar cycle is under way.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that the first sunspot of a new 11-year cycle has appeared in the sun's northern hemisphere. ...-
http://tinyurl.com/2uophy (canoenews)...-

Read the sunspots

The mud at the bottom of B.C. fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change - and that we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling.
[...]
" ... we need to continue research into this, the most complex field of science ever tackled, and immediately halt wasted expenditures on the King Canute-like task of "stopping climate change."

R. Timothy Patterson is professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University.
http://tinyurl.com/2xjwma (finpost)

Maz2 … “experts at the launch of "Science, Evolution and Creationism."

I’ve now heard that the same experts at the CBC that were called upon to plant questions on Stock Day will now plant a question for Regis Philpin to ask the Incredible Huck. And for $64,000 the question is “ which way does the Niagara River run?”

Obviously anyone that doesn’t know that isn’t fit to look into Social Security because they are directly related.

Nomdeblog,

All rivers run downhill except for Moncton*s
Petacodiac or [similar sounding].

DT, says,

view Rex Murphy's segement from the National last night, he defends Steyn with his customary eloquence.

http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/video/rex_murphy/human_rights_gone_awry.html

DT is correct! Rex was crystal clear and brilliant. Lawyers who waste our tax money on frivolous, smart-ass HRC actions need fines of $500,000 to make them feel important. = TG

I couldn't believe my eyes....

http://hardboild.blogspot.com/2008/01/call-in-military.html

take a look at this...

http://blog.canoe.ca/canoedossier/2008/01/03/highway_of_heroes

CBC drops its what?
BTW, NatPost/CanWest ran a full page colour ad today on behalf of CBC. Cost to you? Would CBC ombudsman give Canadian taxpayers the cost? Why is CBC advertising in the print media? It's a scratch your back/my back relationship between the CBC and the MSM.
It's AdScam, 2008 version, by the Liberal CBC/CanWest.
The winner is CanWest. The losers? ...-

CBS Drops Its Ombudsman
CBS News, which set up the website Public Eye in 2005 "to bring transparency to the editorial operations of CBS News," is shutting the site down, according to the TVNewser website. There have been no new postings on the site since shortly after editor Matthew Felling was abruptly let go last month. A spokesperson for CBS Interactive told TVNewser, "We weren't able to find a sustainable business model for Public Eye. We are exploring ways to maintain a similar spirit of public discourse by engaging the CBSNews.com audience and building a community around multiple voices." Kevin Roderick, who oversees the L.A. Observed website, commented, "It's sad to see a project begun with such excitement (and such a budget, oy -- there were THREE editors at one time!) come to such a quiet and unlamented end, without even time for a whimper." ...-
http://www.imdb.com/news/sb/2008-01-04/
(scroll down)

Manitoba has had an insane amount of murders this year.

One up north
One in selkirk
one in Steinbach
Two in Winnipeg so far, one was a woman that was pregnant

http://www.cjob.com/news/index.aspx?src=loc&rem=82750
http://www.cjob.com/news/index.aspx?src=loc&rem=82748

Maybe more of the problem with Canadian support for our soldiers lies with their superiors than we thought:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/01/04/military-ombudsman.html

If the military brass won't support them, how can Hillier complain about public support?

Maz2,

Diverted my attention with *CBS drops the Ombudsman* and so going over to the imdb.com/news, I stumbled onto destruction of some of the internet by a clumsy Jack Black and his request for help in rebuilding same.

http://bekindmovie.com./submit.html

To fix things, you get some stuff together and make a YouTube type video, then upload it to relace damaged net content.

It*s called sweding..
=========== Bekindmovie.com
= TG

This is just too disgusting for words.

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=60752a27-5e26-4e53-bd04-ac0c02c81d3b&k=55632

Teens broke into a house and apparently microwaved the family cat.

Sick.

BKG

PS,

When you go over to BeKindMovie.com and menu to the trailer cubes on the right, the bottom right selection is an entire French movie called *La Lettre. = TG

I guess "let there be light" has it shining through one ear and out the other. Runciman is a provincial politician and has no input to the federal Young Offenders Act.

Note that the federal Liberals constantly attack any attempt to toughen this weak, stupid act which was of their design. If Toronto wants to actively pursue and punish these murderers they will have to stop mindlessly voting Liberal!

BNG, it is too awful for words!

Is there anyone who can sit in on the court date Feb 7th, 9:30 AM Camrose, AB?

This needs attention in so many ways!

Has anyone else noted how Ted acts when he's caught out? (1:40 PM, 2:43 PM, 3:47 PM, perhaps others; batbacks of ET's post at 12:12 PM.)

Interesting. It makes a subthread of this thread a kind of a liveblog.

Dan
Some of us tiptoe around Ted's contributions. Unfortunately, neither torture of logic nor selective abuse of facts are offences in the GCs, and thus are not actionable.

Cheers