Ok, after my Gary Doer goof-up I’ll propose an election platform for the CPC. Pass a law to stop telephone solicitation! I don’t want to pay a fee to register for an absolution. I want it to STOP!
I haven’t met anyone yet who enjoys a half dozen or so phone calls a day from someone who wants their money!
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Here’s the latest leftbot skullduggery… false flag entries
intended to undermine conservative posts.
905neocon.blogspot.com — the blog doesn’t exist, he
just uses the id — has been busy running around
Conservative blogs dripping his poison. He slags the
Prime Minister, he lays out false positions.
A new Fiberal low.
*
Looks like the Quebecers have more guts that I gave ’em credit for:
— Rural Quebec Town Bans Stoning Women
Immigrants wishing to live in the small Canadian town of Herouxville, Quebec, must not stone women to death in public, burn them alive or throw acid on them, according to an extraordinary set of rules released by the local council.
…
“We wish to inform these new arrivals that the way of life which they abandoned when they left their countries of origin cannot be recreated here,” said the declaration, which makes clear women are allowed to drive, vote, dance, write checks, dress how they want, work and own property.
—-
Ofcourse, Reuters plays the whole thing off as a huge setback for Muslim-Canadian relations, and the result of bigoted small-town folk and their racist opinions. No big surprise there.
The official declaration is available here [warning: PDF], or in HTML courtesy of Google’s PDF to HTML translator.
Just checked my thermometer. It reads 32 above F, or +2C. and I wondered, who translated all the pre 1970 records of temperature, recorded in F. to C readings. Did anybody. Was this entered into a computer by several different govt employees, and during this process did any americans work on it. Remember, they still use the F system. Lots of possibilities for errors. So is it possible that somewhere along the line, younger clerks were hired, and used + or – for below and above zero. That would sure throw calculations showing global warming or cooling. Our neighbor had a weather station on his farm, and had 50 years of records. He had to take the temp every day and record the weather conditions and send them to the govt once a month. They were all in F. and he quit when our system changed. There is a huge difference between 32 above zero and +32C. Wouldn’t it be great to discover that this whole global warming crap was based on an error in converting from F to C.
Sure would throw Strongs plan to get billions of dollars from cdn taxpayers into the gutter.
I noticed dr didlittle wasn’t wearing his hezzie ribbon today.
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An open thread, how nice. The topic is electronic medical records (EMR), something that hasn’t come up here unless I’ve missed it. Governments want GP’s to get into EMR and are pumping large amounts of money into the process; just preliminary projects in EMR have been funded to the tune of $1.2 Billion in Canada. Recently the BCMA and BC government came to a very secretive agreement in which the BC government would pay 80% of the cost of a physician switching from paper records to EMR BUT this would require storage of all patient records on a central server.
Right now patients have considerable privacy, especially if records are maintained on paper. Medical records now are physically dispersed and someone who wants your medical records has to first go the your doctors office and then find your chart. There is the additional barrier that most doctors handwriting is almost illegible and I sometimes have problems reading my own handwriting. As I type faster than I write, I keep a pseudo-EMR on patients, but encrypt this. Lab results are available through central lab servers and hospital records are centralized. In BC, the pharmacare program results in ones prescriptions being available to anyone who has the power to access the database, but patients can prevent this by making a password mandatory (very few do and this feature is not publicized).
The BC government scheme would put ALL medical records in a central server and accessible to anyone in government. The only reason I can see for this centralized scheme is control. The BC government has tried to spin this by saying it relieves doctors of the burden of ensuring proper backup of their EMR’s, but this has about as much validity as Taliban Jack’s proposal to require all gun owners store their firearms in central repositories to relieve them of the burden of protecting their firearms against theft (one of his proposals when he was a Toronto city councillor).
The control aspect of this only became clear when I attended a meeting on EMR ignorant of all of this (after all most of my time is spent practicing medicine, not dealing with the idiotic minutae of medical politics). I naively suggested that Oscar, an open source EMR that runs on Linux would be ideal as the cost to government would be a fraction of that of closed source EMR implementations and all that would be needed would be to hire a few programmers to add necessary features to Oscar. This software was originally developed at McMaster and was geared towards Ontario practices, but was quickly adapted to BC practices and people I know who run Oscar are very satisfied with it, especially as they have source code available and can hack it to their hearts content. Only very few doctors are into this, but it’s nice to have the option.
My suggestion was rejected because the government is not into open source. Instead, they are going with M$ based closed source solutions which cost significantly more than an open source program and are insisting on central storage of records. The reasons for not chosing open source were very telling: “there is no-one who is responsible unlike closed source”. Anyone who has read typical software licenses soon finds out that the typical closed source product is guaranteed to do nothing except take up space on your hard disk and, in the case of M$ products, take away your control of your computer from you.
This is because the government is interested only in control, not saving money. While grumbling constantly about how much medicine costs in BC, the BC government some years back proposed putting physicians on salary instead of the fee for service system they currently use. Doctors were scratching their heads over this as this would at least double the amount they spend to reimburse physicians and now it is clear that control was the goal, not money saving. I do a bit of sessional work and might see 4-5 patients in a 3.5 hour session for $380 whereas I would have to see 12 patients to make the same amount of money under a fee for service arrangement. Sessional work is nice and relaxing sometimes, but I’m not working for myself here and, probably more important for governments, they are calling the shots here. I prefer fee for service as I work for myself even though I’d probably do better financially if I relinquished control and went to a salary arrangement.
So, for those people in BC, next time you see your doctor, ask them if they are thinking of using EMR. There’s a lot of money being spent on this in the next 4 years and doctors will be tempted. If you feel comfortable having all of your medical records stored in a central database, then don’t worry, big brother is going to take good care of you. If, on the other hand, you happen to be of the persuasion that whatever you mention to your doctor should stay between you and your doctor (unless the records are requested via court order), then you should let your doctor know that you don’t want to have your medical records stored in a central database. If enough patients object to this system then it will be dead before it event gets started. Once this idiotic totalitarian proposal is terminated, then maybe we can get back to doctors being sole custodians of medical records and not the government. I’m going ahead with Oscar due to it’s open source nature, but it will require that I learn to program in Java which I was going to do anyway as there is no way I want to go to VB.NET.
mary T:” … It reads 32 above F, or +2C”
Time to get a new thermometer … 32 above F = 0C.
There are a few checks and balances to validate the data. For instance the first (maybe the first few) runs at the data look for anomalies and attempt to “correct”. For instance, if every station in Edmonton is reporting 20C and one in the middle is reporting 10C … the data for that station may be adjusted or taken out (it’s been over 20 years since I last discussed this … I can’t remember).
There are a lot of reasons for bad data, it happens all the time, and they take care of it. However, it’s no stretch to believe that the equipment used today is more accurate and less prone to problems than even 20 years ago.
DISASTROUS PROSPECT
The nation will spin into chaos if Dion becomes PM
My political colleagues describe Liberal Leader Stephane Dion as a twit or a twerp. Being somewhat more polite — but only somewhat — my own description would be feckless. As environment minister under Paul Martin, he accomplished nothing at all. If he becomes PM he will literally spin the nation into chaos.
…
I recall that back in the 1970s, when Canadians were complaining about higher oil prices, Marc Lalonde — sometimes health minister (and that turned out to be a mess) — sometimes finance minister (and that turned out to be a mess — and sometimes energy minister ( what a mess that turned out to be) — shrugged and told us to save money by turning down the thermostat and putting on an extra sweater. Lalonde blithely informed Canadians we used and wasted far too much energy.
He hardly gave a thought that Ottawa is the coldest capital in the world after Mongolia’s Ulaanbaatar.
It wasn’t long after that snub about turning down our thermostats and putting on an extra sweater that he actually did close down the energy sector in our province and thus spurred a recession that swept coast-to-coast.
That’s the trouble with putting amateurs in top positions. Their incompetence generally results in catastrophe, often not for them, since they bail out with huge severance packages or gold-plated pensions, but for the rest of us.
…
Again, this is what is so worrying about Dion, who already naively makes comments about issues he knows little — if anything — about.
Even worse than someone who is incompetent and realizes it is someone who is incompetent but whose pseudo-intellect prevents him from realizing his shortcomings.
For 33-million Canadians, the fall-out from a Dion government — should the good Lord not save us from such an apocalypse — will be dismal indeed….- http://calgarysun.canoe.ca/NewsStand/News/Columnists/Jackson_Paul/2007/02/06/3539897-sun.html
Mary T! Look! Lorrie says it’s the “weather”.
We have said it first here on/at SDA: It’s the weather. …-
It’s the weather, stupid!
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
So much for media reports of our ‘mild’ winter being a sign of global warming.
Another day, another chance to shoot down more nonsense about global warming. Let’s get started. …
Federal Liberal environment critic David McGuinty was predictably trashing the Conservative record on global warming on CTV’s Question Period Sunday, without ever mentioning his own party’s dismal history on this file.
Why doesn’t he phone his brother, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, and urge him to shut down Ontario’s Nanticoke coal-fired generating station, Canada’s single largest greenhouse gas emitter?
If he did, Dalton would tell his brother that he can’t, despite his 2003 election promise to close all of Ontario’s coal-fired plants by the end of this year.
Why? Because Ontario’s power supply would instantly be thrown into total chaos. …- http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Goldstein_Lorrie/2007/02/06/3540042-sun.html
Gulf nuclear plans take shape, says Al Attiyah
Gulf News ^ | Feb. 6, 2007 | Mohammad Ezz Al Deen
Abu Dhabi: The Gulf states are expected to begin building a nuclear industry as a “sustainable and clean” source of power by 2009, a top official said yesterday. …-
Meanwhile, China is looking for a windfall? How? Mao Strong’s Kyoto scam will do the trick.
Citoyen Dion would send $$$$$$$ from Canada to China in exchange for carbon credits; a worthless scrap of paper; the indulgences, to atone for our climate sins. China continues to pollute/smog the air/water,etc. Canada gets zero, zilch, nada. But, Canadians will have atoned for their guilt and like Bam, Dion’s mutt, go to sleep.
This would salve the guilt of everyone in Canada, appease the Mao Strong’s earth goddess, and we shall all die anyway in the long run. …-
China to research global warming but lacks resources to cut critical emissions
BEIJING (AP) – China will spend more to research global warming but lacks the money and technology to significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are worsening the problem, a government official said Tuesday. (canoe news)…-
In Canada:
Feud threatens Ontario’s energy supply
Nuclear watchdog at odds with Ottawa over safety standards for new reactors
KAREN HOWLETT AND MURRAY CAMPBELL
TORONTO — A high-level conflict between the federal government and Canada’s nuclear safety regulator, combined with the Ontario government’s foot-dragging over building new reactors, is raising new questions about how the province will keep the lights on after 2015.
Relations between federal Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission have soured as the regulator seeks to impose stringent international standards on Crown-owned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. and take away its fast-track approval process of new reactor technology.
The dispute began a year ago when CNSC chief executive officer Linda Keen served notice that she did not have the financial or staff resources to deal with new reactor applications.
The budget of the regulatory commission has since been topped up by $100-million over five years, but energy industry sources say Ms. Keen remains at loggerheads with Mr. Lunn and that this threatens Ontario’s ability to bring new reactors on line after 2015 when the demand for electricity is forecast to exceed supply….- http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070205.NUCLEAR05/TPStory/TPNational/Politics/
Up from liberalism
Power Line ^ | Jan24,2007 | Paul Mirengoff
Being a full-time lawyer and conscientious blogger has really cut into my reading time, and I rarely find the time to read the books sent to me for reviews and/or plugs on Power Line. Why I Turned Right, edited by Mary Eberstadt, promised to be a partial exception to that unhappy rule. It consists of essays in which twelve conservatives explain how they ended up as such, I figured I’d read the three or four by the writers who interest me the most.
In the end, I read the whole thing, and so should you. The essays essentially narrate the intellectual voyages of twelve leading thinkers under a certain age (I’m guessing around 60, with the average age under 50) who can be considered conservative. They are: Peter Berkowitz, Joseph Bottum, David Brooks, Danielle Crittenden, Dinesh D’Souza, Stanley Kurtz, Tod Lindberg, Rich Lowry, Heather Mac Donald, P.J. O’Rourke, Sally Satel, and Richard Starr.
Not all of them actually turned right. Lowry was never other than a conservative — his tale is about how he became an armed and dangerous one. Crittenden was always conservative — her tale is about how she shed the feminism of the 1970s. O’Rourke came from good Republican stock and returned to something like his roots after getting (in his telling) as much sex as he could from the “fetching” girls of the left who wore “peasant blouses, denim skirts, and sandals” and “strummed guitars, smoked unfiltered cigarettes, and drank beer straight from the bottle.”
The essays I enjoyed most were by those who turned right as a result of studying or working in a discipline that isn’t (or, rather, that shouldn’t be) political. I’m thinking in particular of Heather McDonald and Sally Satel, whose movement Rightstarted when they were studying comparative literature and practicing psychiatry, respectively. (I could also include Peter Berkowitz and Stanley, who have studied many things — some political, some less so — and been influenced rightward in all instances).
Here’s Mac Donald on the deconstructionists:
The professoriate has been given the greatest luxury society can offer: studying beauty. All that they needed to do to justify that privilege was to help their students see why they should fall on bended knee before Aeschylus, Mozart, or Tiepolo, in thanks for lifting us out of our usual stupidity and dullness. Instead, they set themselves up as more important than the literature and art that it was their duty to curate and created a tangle of antihumanistic nonsense that merely licensed students’ ignorance.
And here’s Satel on what she learned working on mental health issues during a Capitol Hill fellowship:
My Hill experience gave me a startling insight: Liberals and conservatives seemed to have mirror-image approaches to paternalism. Liberals made intrusive laws for the competent while conservatives preferred to rely on individuals to make their own decisions. Conversely, conservatives preferred intrusive laws for the incompetent to whom liberals applied a hands-off policy. Liberals were comfortable with public health paternalism: intrusive nonsmoking laws, taxes on unhealthy products, strict risk-averse EPA and FDA regulations. . . .
. . .Yet, when a person was incoherent, defecating in the streets, or freezing a limb off in the park, then — and only then — did the principles of autonomy apply.
As I suggested, read the whole thing….- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1779996/posts
Kyoto Dion’s socialism leads to Zimbabwe; to Cuba; to North Korea; to Stalinism, Maoism, etc. To Death.
Down with Kyoto Dion; down with socialism. …-
Times | Editorial: A Distant Drum
Robert Mugabe has been sustained in power by a military and security apparatus that has successfully crushed the political opposition, and suppressed popular dissent by continual, overwhelming intimidation. People have become either too frightened to speak out against the ruin he has brought on Zimbabwe, or too exhausted by the daily battle for survival to protest. From the perspective of the ruling clique, military-style campaigns such as Murambatsvina, the forcible demolition of shantytowns two years ago that rendered some two million of the urban poor homeless, have been highly effective. Rootless, malnourished people make feeble opponents. An important part of Mr Mugabe’s own strategy for survival has been to convince Zimbabweans that opposition is futile. Up to four million have voted with their feet, fleeing to South Africa and other neighbouring countries.
But the catastrophic state of the Zimbabwean economy, where inflation is now 1,282 per cent, the dollar changes hands for 20 times the official exchange rate and an estimated 80 per cent are unemployed, is presenting Mr Mugabe with a new challenge, against which repression is less likely to be effective. In Zimbabwe, they call it “the politics of the stomach”, a national upsurge of despair. The Mugabe regime, like that of North Korea, critically relies on keeping soldiers, police, security agents and militias happy. They are happy no longer. Mr Mugabe may not be too disturbed that doctors, nurses and teachers are on strike for pay rises of up to 8,000 per cent; the health services collapsed some time ago, and, in a country where education has traditionally been highly prized, many children no longer attend school anyway because their parents cannot afford school fees or uniforms. Discontent among the security services and the politically potent “veterans of the revolution” is a different matter. (jack’s newswatch has the link)
we got foot & 1/2 snow yesterday & we got another foot& 1/2 last nite here in grey/bruce More on the way roads closed around owen sound i got into my store now waiting for a plow to clear the lot that should happen this time Next week, Blowing minus 18 with wind chill -28
Of course I blame the Prime Minister on this(sarc)
Two columns on the immigration mess:
Licia Corbella in the Calgary Sun:
“Working out immigration” http://calgarysun.canoe.ca/NewsStand/News/Columnists/Corbella_Licia/2007/02/06/3539898-sun.html
Her main proposal:
” Canada — and Alberta in particular — needs workers, and lots of them. But what Canada and Alberta do not need is more foreign-trained doctors or PhDs whose credentials we do not recognize and likely never will.
What Alberta needs in droves are skilled labourers, not dubiously trained foreign professionals.
Bricklayers, carpenters, pipe-fitters, welders, butchers and bakers have the kinds of skills that could be tested easily and therefore could be put to work in their chosen fields almost immediately upon arriving in this country.”
Jeffrey Simpson in the Globe:
“Why our immigrant assumptions are off” http://www.rbcinvest.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/PEstory/LAC/20070206/COSIMP06/Columnists/columnists/columnistsNational/3/3/6/
Mr Simpson makes a rather daring suggestion:
“Could it be that the source countries of immigrants are making integration and economic success harder? A few researchers have posed the question; no one has given a serious answer. Perhaps none can be given, since talented people come from everywhere.”
Mark
Ottawa
breaking…garth turner to liberal party….ctv
Garth Who is joining the Liberals, eh? I guess he can now start plugging those reverse mortgages again…he’ll be in the correct party for that.
Garth Turner: Minister of Translation!
…and Kate Wheeler of CTV is reporting that Garth Who was “kicked out of the party” (which is untrue…he was kicked out of the Ontario caucus) because he was “criticizing the government” (which is untrue…he was caught violating caucus confidentiality).
God, I love honest and fair reporting!
I too curse the Harper /Baird environmental fix! In -40 weather Mon.,my car heater decided to freeze up on a 250km trip home!Bring back Dion!..at least that never happened on his watch…oh yeah,nuthin’happened on environment under his watch!
I think it will be sweet justice for the Libs.to “inherit” the sh**-disturbing,Turner!Big move to happen at 5 p.m. today..cbc all over it!
Ural: You have proven my point that errors were probably made many years ago. I looked thru the screen, and didn’t go outside. What if those farmers back in the early 1900s took a guess, said thats close enough, and remember, they had no computers back then. Still want to know who and what methods were used to change all the figures. Then take into account that many farmers were immigrants and still used the bar across a 7, and that could be mistaken for a 4 or vice versa by some transcriber. My son, who had a german teacher in a one room school, grades 1-4, still makes his 7s that way. As I said, lots of room for errors.
Hey, Turners web site is down but will it re-appear. Will he release caucus discussions. Dion has said all sitting mps will not be challenged for nominations. In order to run in the next election being a liberal is the only way he could run. Will he be elected, I doubt it. Taking him in shows how desperate dion is. As for changing the numbers etc, remember, LaPierre is leaving so numbers don’t change. I predict that Turner will not be able to keep his mouth shut and will cause dion trouble. And watch for all his words re floor crossing come back to haunt him. At least the cbc is not saying he left the conservatives, but did mention he was kicked out of caucus for releasing information. Should be interesting.
Pollster talking about support. Finally admitted that the only place the libs are gaining is quebec. BC is iffy. Dion is not gaining anywhere else, maybe in the gta.
“Economists don’t agree on much, but there’s a broad consensus that cutting the GST isn’t very progressive. Along with benefiting the rich more than the poor, it’s a crude economic tool.”
Statements like this bug me. When we instituted the flat tax people were up in arms because it hurts poor people way more than it does the rich…. But now abolishing that same tax benefits the rich waaayyy more than the poor.
Is there anything out there that doesn’t proportionally benefit the rich more/hurt them less??
*
Not sure Garth thought this all the way through…
think of all the attention he could have focussed
on himself if he had just defected to Hamas.
*
Barcs-
yes, check out Cuba and Cambodia for a system that was made to hurt the rich and benefit the poor. short term pain on the rich turned into long term pain for everyone.
I guess Garth hasn’t been on the news in a while. He’ll be a great fit for the Liberal party.
On the subject of media bias, imagine the hand wringing and grave concern at the CBC if this story had occurred in small town Alberta instead of Quebec:
“I’m proud of Hérouxville,” Paulette Lalande, the mayor of Plaisance – a town of about 1,000 residents 75 kilometres northeast of Ottawa – said last week. “Because the municipality had the courage to consider in depth the debate over reasonable accommodations, even though it’s difficult to bring up.”
At least three neighbouring communities around Hérouxville are also entertaining the thought of mimicking Héerouxville’s charter, which probits everything from “stoning women to death in the town square” to covering one’s face in public outside Halloween and seeking to find out how beef was slaughtered.
Last Wednesday, town officials in Saint-Roch-de-Mékinac (population 308) sent out notices informing residents the Hérouxville charter would be on the agenda of Friday’s city council meeting. And it invited residents to send in their suggestions and comments regarding “reasonable accommodations.” http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/national/article.jsp?article=2007_2_2_1170457155
Turner loves attention for himself, and drama.
The Liberals will surely find out how well that works for them.
Turner is a rabid narcissist. His web site claims are incredible. According to him, he is the source of all wisdom, he is the source of all good motions and bills, he is behind the actions of all that is good.
He’ll join in with the other narcissists in the Liberal group – Dion and Chretien who are also focused completely on themselves.
The key to keeping Turner happy is to put him upfront. He’ll join in with Mark Holland to blab and rant.
Military probes abuse allegations in Afghanistan.
Last Updated: Tuesday, February 6, 2007 | 10:36 AM ET
CBC News
Military officials are investigating allegations three Afghan prisoners were abused while in the custody of Canadian soldiers.
The allegations come from University of Ottawa law Prof. Amir Attaran, based on government documents he obtained under the Access to Information Act.
The University Professor is of course a Muslim, more than likely put up to this by the hissing snakes at CAIR.
He alleges two of the prisoners have cuts and bruises on their faces, which proves that they were abused by the military. Not that they received a couple of scratches while resisting arrest.
Of course the fact that one was arrested for posessing bomb making materials and another for spying on our military has nothing to do with it.
They are Muslim afterall, so due to Islamophobia and profiling, they must be innocent. Even in a war zone. Even with feral savages who blow themselves up and cut off the heads of innocent civilians. Etc. Etc.
Bourque headline:
” ONE LOOPY FRUIT FLY”
[Dion is a loopy fruit fly? Suzuki’s fruit fly? Suzuki’s favourite pet fruit fly? Say it isn’t so, Steffie. The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has long been geneticists’ favourite pet.]
Links to:
Green regime stuck in the Trudeau years
Claudia Cattaneo, Financial Post
Excerpts:
“Because of that, and now that “going green” is the path to political redemption, the oil deposits are drawing critics like fruit flies.
One of the loopiest so far is the federal Liberal party’s natural resources critic, Ontario MP Mark Holland. In a couple of radio interviews last week, Mr. Holland made statements so absurd they must be nipped in the bud, before the governing Tories adopt them to one-up their political rivals on the green agenda, one of their tendencies lately.” …
Mr. Adler found the comments so stunning he described them in a column as “the most threatening words I have heard in a political conversation in years.”
They are also tired and unimaginative. Canada has evolved since the days of Pierre Trudeau and the National Energy Program, when shutting down the oilpatch was the easiest route to political riches in Eastern Canada.
The oil-and-gas industry is no longer an Alberta island. It is dominating the economies of British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, and is poised to take over that of the Northwest Territories.
It keeps busy Ontario’s steel mills, Quebec’s engineers and Newfoundland’s pipefitters. It accounts for a third of the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Putting limits on oilsands growth would maim Canada’s economy, while broadcasting to the world — now that the oilsands are widely known as the second-largest deposits after Saudi Arabia’s — that our energy sector is no longer open for business and that our federal government is competing with Hugo Chavez for the most insane oil policy.
It’s easy for Ottawa politicians to paint the oilsands as environment enemy No. 1. They’re far away in the bush. Restricting their growth shows them cracking the whip on the environment where it doesn’t hurt — such as forcing people into driving fuelefficient cars, building smaller houses or paying gasoline taxes for research….
“… the answer to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions in the oilsands — and other environmental impacts — is technology and attainable environmental standards, not election-motivated controls on development….- http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=4cb737ed-01cb-4ba8-a0c1-a81be5578513&p=2
In case anybody needs anymore convincing not to bother with the johnny-come-lately-lefty:
“Tell me, Daisy, how the Americans would have reacted if Canada sent a dual US-Syrian citizen to Syria? How would you have reacted?
Tell me, Daisy, will you stand up for Canadian citizens or for foreign governments.
Drop the “more in common with US” pretense. We both know that the US treats its own muslims with far more suspect than you would, and that that respect stems from the three ideals you quote – liberty, freedom, and democracy. If you actually believed in those, then you would behave like the Americans, who have managed to avoid stereotyping all muslims as terrorists, instead of dismissing the “vast majoirity of moderate muslims” as non existent because you cant see them.
I am a Canadian. I am a Canadian nationalist. I am proud of Canada. I am proud of being Canadian. I am proud of Canada for what it is, not for what it has in common with the US. I do not believe that Canada has to prove itself to anything or anyone. I do believe that we are priviliged to be Canadian. I am proud of Canada’s history. I am proud of Canada’s immigrants. There is much that we take for granted here. Chief amongst them is a quality of life that other nations can only dream of.
I am a Canadian. I may not speak for all Canadians (especially those on this board), but I do believe I speak for the majoriy of Canadians when I say that, if you arent willing to stand up for Canada and Canadians, get the hell out of my country.
(Note: “get the hell out of my country” a recurring theme from these snotty nosed types)
Posted by: jeremiah at February 6, 2007 3:51 AM
Muslims admitedly have a nation and allegiance that supercedes all other nations, you might have heard of it, it’s called the Ummah. Outside of Islamic states, the Ummah is in fact a foreign government with it’s own laws and values.
As I said before, until the so-called ‘vast majority of moderate’ Muslims publicly stand-up for their adopted country and it’s laws, over the Ummah and sharia – I will remain steadfastly suspicious.
Even more suspicious given their religious privilege and warfare tactic called taqiyya.
“if you arent willing to stand up for Canada and Canadians, get the hell out of my country.”
I couldn’t have said it better.
Posted by: irwin daisy at February 6, 2007 1:07 PM
Dion & Turner:
Did you hear about the two green frogs who jumped together onto the green lilypad? They grinned and said, in unison:
We are so happy, We could sdft.
…-
from Garth’s [Turner] townhall last year when he polled his constituents on what he should do:
1. Resign your seat – zero
2. Negotiate back into caucus – 17
3. Join the Liberals – zero
4. Go Green – 17
5. Stay independent – 31 http://www.stephentaylor.ca/archives/000783.html
So the Worm has Turnered. We predict that in time Garth will be equally unhappy or unwelcome in the Liberal party. Garth is too much of a maverick – even with as many co-leaders (egos) as the Liberals have right now. He should have stayed an independent. Unless of course he replaces Dion as leader and runs the show himself.
Islamic leader under fire
Toronto Star
Feb 06, 2007 04:30 AM
Michelle Shephard
Staff Reporter
What started as a mundane zoning proposal for a Newmarket mosque has now made Zafar Bangash the target of a neighbourhood’s wrath and once again ignited international debate about the separation of politics and religion.
Bangash’s name may not be well known to many Canadians but his writings and his stridently anti-Israeli views, forceful support for an independent Kashmir and advocacy for Iranian-inspired Islamic theocracies has attracted international notice and the attention of Muslims and politicians at home.
For eight years Bangash has been the president of the Islamic Society of York Region, often leading prayers at the modest mosque in Richmond Hill that sits on 13 hectares of property at the edge of the Oak Ridges Moraine. Now he hopes to build another mosque in Newmarket.
Yesterday, that proposal led to a packed Newmarket city hall meeting filled with residents who said they didn’t oppose the building of the mosque, but the man behind it. After the proposal passed, the debate continued with residents frustrated their voices weren’t heard.
Much of the opposition comes from Bangash’s writings in a publication known as Crescent International, which has a Markham office and advocates for an Iranian-inspired regime in Muslim countries.
“Muslims must strive to overthrow the oppressive systems in their societies through Islamic revolutions, and not by participating in fraudulent elections organized by the elites operating through various political parties that actually divide the people,” he wrote in a July 2005 column in the newsmagazine.
“And they must keep well away from the U.S., the greediest, most exploitative, most manipulative, most hypocritical and most ruthless power that the world has ever known.”
Bangash dismisses the concerns of the Newmarket mosque as Islamophobia and says people have taken his political comments out of context.
(Note: Islamic Parrots – Islamophobia and comments out of context. Check)
“There have been all sorts of allegations against me and you know I find that so offensive quite honestly,” he said in an interview yesterday. He pointed to the reputation of his Richmond Hill mosque as one of the “most inclusive centres in Canada.”
But others say community leaders and politicians, out of fear of being branded racist, often overlook the influence of those who support regimes whose values they say are contrary to Canada’s democratic ones.
(Note: This is how they use our values and laws against us)
“By permitting a known Islamist to literally monopolize the Muslim narrative, you’re shutting out modern, secular Muslims from having a say,” says Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress who is writing a book on the influence of Islamists in Canada.
Fatah claimed that Bangash is the “unofficial spokesperson for the Iranian regime in Canada.”
While Bangash’s writing is often cutting and his speeches at recent demonstrations protesting the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in Danish cartoons fiery, the 56-year-old Pakistani-born Canadian with the neatly trimmed beard and wearing a sweater cardigan appeared more like an academic befuddled by all the fuss.
(Oh, he has also said that Sharia should be adopted in Canada)
Today, 1st anniversary of PMSH swearning in. Made a major speech. Also, Turner is walking today, is that an attempt to take away the coverage of Harper today and get back on TV after months of absence. I thought Harper brought out a few suggestions of what causes green house gas. Basically said, everything we do, from eating, working etc causes ghg and every area will have to make changes. His charts were very interesting. Interest savings on paying down debt will be used for tax cuts. Best part, one could understand every word he said in english and he looked very confident and prime ministerial. Compare that to dion making a speech that one can not understand, and looks like a deer caught in the headlights.
Kate,
Re: Crawling around on concrete floors….
Here is the best (and IMHO, the only) pair of kneepads to use. Expensive, but they last forever and so will your knees. :0)
3w.proknee.com
I see Turner is a quick study on Liberal spin-speak. He says he will run in byelection when others, like Emerson run.
Quite the spin! He complains about floor crossers, says they must resign their seat and run in byelection. Get it, that’s his argument, not Harper’s or CPC. He has already spun this thing to mean Conservatives are arguing for resignation and byelection. They’re not; they’re simply pointing out his hypocricy.
Just watched a news report about how many cattle are being shipped to Mexico and Asia, and showing the I love alberta beef sticker on cars in Mexico.
To all you vegans out there, stop global warming and ghg emmissions. Eat beef so more cattle can be slaughtered to stop their emmissions. If you really care about the environment, eat beef.
*
I’m just sayin’…
I’m a freedom of speech
kinda guy… but maybe
Canada Post wants to rethink this one.
*
[Liberal MP] STEPHEN OWEN ANNOUNCES HE WILL NOT RUN IN NEXT FEDERAL ELECTION (national newswatch)…-
Owen was on STOPIGGY’s team? No. On Citoyen Dion’s Dream Team/Equipe des Reves? Non, merci. On Iggy’s team? Yes.
More to follow? Yes.
On the Record : Peter C. Newman: A Liberal Revolution
National Post Sat 23 Sep 2006 One week from today, the Liberal Party of Canada … Senior advisors include Senator David Smith, Stephen Owen, Alfred Apps, …
michaelignatieff.ca/MiCommunity/blogs/ontherecord/archive/2006/09/23/4395.aspx
Sounds like mandatory government CERS will be introduced by Conservatives. Yeesh. I wonder what the market will think of that. Hooped, I tell ya, we are hooped.
From PMSHs speech today…
-In the weeks ahead, for the first time ever, Canada’s New Government will move to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from major industrial sectors.
For the first time ever, we will also move to regulate air pollution from major industry sectors.
For the first time ever, we will regulate the fuel efficiency of motor vehicles, beginning with the 2011 model year.
And for the first time ever, we will set out enforceable regulatory targets for the short, medium and long term.
The era of voluntary compliance is over.-
Hey guys, I ran this over at Dust My Broom, and if I’m not too late with this thread, here’s a heads up for Ontario residents. This could happen to you.
My sob story and then I’d like some advice if anyone can give it: We, in Ontario, are having Ontario Hydro thrust “Smart Metres” upon us, which in principle is a good idea, so those of us who put our dishwashers on at 11:00 p.m instead of 6:00 p.m. get a break in our hydro bill.
My problem? Hydro Ontario installed in on Thursday and ever since, our wireless speakers, with which we listen to the radio and to our CD collection in any room in the house, have been encountering continuous–as in all the time–static ever since. It’s driving me CRAZY. We called Ontario Hydro and they say it’s because our speakers are 900 MGZ (megaherz (sp?)) and so is the metre. GREAT.
So, we went out and at great expense bought two 2.4 GHZ (gigaherz (sp?)) wireless speakers, which Ontario Hydro informed us would be sure to work. Guess what? They’re as bad or worse.
So what to do? Does anyone know what giga- or mega-herz we need so we can get back to enjoying our music?
This seems Machiavellian to me that the state can thrust “Smart Metres,” on households, which operate on a common frequency and thereby, wreck one’s listening enjoyment.
I know that we can wire speakers into every room. But what a drag. We don’t want to do that. We could move the two speakers we had around and listen in any room we wanted to, even outside. That’s all been shot to Hell.
Any tech geniuses out there who can help. HELP!!!!#@!%&*@#^%*
Been around the block,
I work with 2.4,5.7,5.2 and the deadly for interference, 900 mhz. I install these radios for high speed internet on acreages. Is there an option to change channels on your speakers? Why I say this is because I have come across telephones that cause interference. On the telephone, you can change the channel, but the freq. stays the same. Sometimes it works, other times I have to advise the client to buy a phone on another freq. Can you call the company and ask them is there any possiblity to change channels on your meter? It may not have that option but I’m just trying to troubleshoot it for you. It doesn’t make sense to me that you’ve changed speaker freq. but still you have the same issue. You may have to hard wire them. It’s not that hard, let me know and I can give you some good tips.
“What’s wrong with this world” revealed here:
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/monkeysphere.html
Ok, after my Gary Doer goof-up I’ll propose an election platform for the CPC. Pass a law to stop telephone solicitation! I don’t want to pay a fee to register for an absolution. I want it to STOP!
I haven’t met anyone yet who enjoys a half dozen or so phone calls a day from someone who wants their money!
*
Here’s the latest leftbot skullduggery… false flag entries
intended to undermine conservative posts.
905neocon.blogspot.com — the blog doesn’t exist, he
just uses the id — has been busy running around
Conservative blogs dripping his poison. He slags the
Prime Minister, he lays out false positions.
A new Fiberal low.
*
Looks like the Quebecers have more guts that I gave ’em credit for:
—
Rural Quebec Town Bans Stoning Women
Immigrants wishing to live in the small Canadian town of Herouxville, Quebec, must not stone women to death in public, burn them alive or throw acid on them, according to an extraordinary set of rules released by the local council.
…
“We wish to inform these new arrivals that the way of life which they abandoned when they left their countries of origin cannot be recreated here,” said the declaration, which makes clear women are allowed to drive, vote, dance, write checks, dress how they want, work and own property.
—-
Ofcourse, Reuters plays the whole thing off as a huge setback for Muslim-Canadian relations, and the result of bigoted small-town folk and their racist opinions. No big surprise there.
The official declaration is available here [warning: PDF], or in HTML courtesy of Google’s PDF to HTML translator.
Just checked my thermometer. It reads 32 above F, or +2C. and I wondered, who translated all the pre 1970 records of temperature, recorded in F. to C readings. Did anybody. Was this entered into a computer by several different govt employees, and during this process did any americans work on it. Remember, they still use the F system. Lots of possibilities for errors. So is it possible that somewhere along the line, younger clerks were hired, and used + or – for below and above zero. That would sure throw calculations showing global warming or cooling. Our neighbor had a weather station on his farm, and had 50 years of records. He had to take the temp every day and record the weather conditions and send them to the govt once a month. They were all in F. and he quit when our system changed. There is a huge difference between 32 above zero and +32C. Wouldn’t it be great to discover that this whole global warming crap was based on an error in converting from F to C.
Sure would throw Strongs plan to get billions of dollars from cdn taxpayers into the gutter.
I noticed dr didlittle wasn’t wearing his hezzie ribbon today.
Shameless Plug:
CPC YouTube Channel – latest CPC videos. Make sure you subscribe to stay up to date.
Shameless Plug:
CPC YouTube Channel – latest CPC videos. Make sure you subscribe to stay up to date.
An open thread, how nice. The topic is electronic medical records (EMR), something that hasn’t come up here unless I’ve missed it. Governments want GP’s to get into EMR and are pumping large amounts of money into the process; just preliminary projects in EMR have been funded to the tune of $1.2 Billion in Canada. Recently the BCMA and BC government came to a very secretive agreement in which the BC government would pay 80% of the cost of a physician switching from paper records to EMR BUT this would require storage of all patient records on a central server.
Right now patients have considerable privacy, especially if records are maintained on paper. Medical records now are physically dispersed and someone who wants your medical records has to first go the your doctors office and then find your chart. There is the additional barrier that most doctors handwriting is almost illegible and I sometimes have problems reading my own handwriting. As I type faster than I write, I keep a pseudo-EMR on patients, but encrypt this. Lab results are available through central lab servers and hospital records are centralized. In BC, the pharmacare program results in ones prescriptions being available to anyone who has the power to access the database, but patients can prevent this by making a password mandatory (very few do and this feature is not publicized).
The BC government scheme would put ALL medical records in a central server and accessible to anyone in government. The only reason I can see for this centralized scheme is control. The BC government has tried to spin this by saying it relieves doctors of the burden of ensuring proper backup of their EMR’s, but this has about as much validity as Taliban Jack’s proposal to require all gun owners store their firearms in central repositories to relieve them of the burden of protecting their firearms against theft (one of his proposals when he was a Toronto city councillor).
The control aspect of this only became clear when I attended a meeting on EMR ignorant of all of this (after all most of my time is spent practicing medicine, not dealing with the idiotic minutae of medical politics). I naively suggested that Oscar, an open source EMR that runs on Linux would be ideal as the cost to government would be a fraction of that of closed source EMR implementations and all that would be needed would be to hire a few programmers to add necessary features to Oscar. This software was originally developed at McMaster and was geared towards Ontario practices, but was quickly adapted to BC practices and people I know who run Oscar are very satisfied with it, especially as they have source code available and can hack it to their hearts content. Only very few doctors are into this, but it’s nice to have the option.
My suggestion was rejected because the government is not into open source. Instead, they are going with M$ based closed source solutions which cost significantly more than an open source program and are insisting on central storage of records. The reasons for not chosing open source were very telling: “there is no-one who is responsible unlike closed source”. Anyone who has read typical software licenses soon finds out that the typical closed source product is guaranteed to do nothing except take up space on your hard disk and, in the case of M$ products, take away your control of your computer from you.
This is because the government is interested only in control, not saving money. While grumbling constantly about how much medicine costs in BC, the BC government some years back proposed putting physicians on salary instead of the fee for service system they currently use. Doctors were scratching their heads over this as this would at least double the amount they spend to reimburse physicians and now it is clear that control was the goal, not money saving. I do a bit of sessional work and might see 4-5 patients in a 3.5 hour session for $380 whereas I would have to see 12 patients to make the same amount of money under a fee for service arrangement. Sessional work is nice and relaxing sometimes, but I’m not working for myself here and, probably more important for governments, they are calling the shots here. I prefer fee for service as I work for myself even though I’d probably do better financially if I relinquished control and went to a salary arrangement.
So, for those people in BC, next time you see your doctor, ask them if they are thinking of using EMR. There’s a lot of money being spent on this in the next 4 years and doctors will be tempted. If you feel comfortable having all of your medical records stored in a central database, then don’t worry, big brother is going to take good care of you. If, on the other hand, you happen to be of the persuasion that whatever you mention to your doctor should stay between you and your doctor (unless the records are requested via court order), then you should let your doctor know that you don’t want to have your medical records stored in a central database. If enough patients object to this system then it will be dead before it event gets started. Once this idiotic totalitarian proposal is terminated, then maybe we can get back to doctors being sole custodians of medical records and not the government. I’m going ahead with Oscar due to it’s open source nature, but it will require that I learn to program in Java which I was going to do anyway as there is no way I want to go to VB.NET.
mary T:” … It reads 32 above F, or +2C”
Time to get a new thermometer … 32 above F = 0C.
There are a few checks and balances to validate the data. For instance the first (maybe the first few) runs at the data look for anomalies and attempt to “correct”. For instance, if every station in Edmonton is reporting 20C and one in the middle is reporting 10C … the data for that station may be adjusted or taken out (it’s been over 20 years since I last discussed this … I can’t remember).
There are a lot of reasons for bad data, it happens all the time, and they take care of it. However, it’s no stretch to believe that the equipment used today is more accurate and less prone to problems than even 20 years ago.
Since we appear to be on the topic, some of you may find this interesting:
http://www.mcculloughsite.net/stingray/2007/02/04/environmental-prophesying.php
…with apologies for the self-promotion. I shall be blogging there every week or so.
DISASTROUS PROSPECT
The nation will spin into chaos if Dion becomes PM
My political colleagues describe Liberal Leader Stephane Dion as a twit or a twerp. Being somewhat more polite — but only somewhat — my own description would be feckless. As environment minister under Paul Martin, he accomplished nothing at all. If he becomes PM he will literally spin the nation into chaos.
…
I recall that back in the 1970s, when Canadians were complaining about higher oil prices, Marc Lalonde — sometimes health minister (and that turned out to be a mess) — sometimes finance minister (and that turned out to be a mess — and sometimes energy minister ( what a mess that turned out to be) — shrugged and told us to save money by turning down the thermostat and putting on an extra sweater. Lalonde blithely informed Canadians we used and wasted far too much energy.
He hardly gave a thought that Ottawa is the coldest capital in the world after Mongolia’s Ulaanbaatar.
It wasn’t long after that snub about turning down our thermostats and putting on an extra sweater that he actually did close down the energy sector in our province and thus spurred a recession that swept coast-to-coast.
That’s the trouble with putting amateurs in top positions. Their incompetence generally results in catastrophe, often not for them, since they bail out with huge severance packages or gold-plated pensions, but for the rest of us.
…
Again, this is what is so worrying about Dion, who already naively makes comments about issues he knows little — if anything — about.
Even worse than someone who is incompetent and realizes it is someone who is incompetent but whose pseudo-intellect prevents him from realizing his shortcomings.
For 33-million Canadians, the fall-out from a Dion government — should the good Lord not save us from such an apocalypse — will be dismal indeed….-
http://calgarysun.canoe.ca/NewsStand/News/Columnists/Jackson_Paul/2007/02/06/3539897-sun.html
Mary T! Look! Lorrie says it’s the “weather”.
We have said it first here on/at SDA: It’s the weather. …-
It’s the weather, stupid!
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
So much for media reports of our ‘mild’ winter being a sign of global warming.
Another day, another chance to shoot down more nonsense about global warming. Let’s get started. …
Federal Liberal environment critic David McGuinty was predictably trashing the Conservative record on global warming on CTV’s Question Period Sunday, without ever mentioning his own party’s dismal history on this file.
Why doesn’t he phone his brother, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, and urge him to shut down Ontario’s Nanticoke coal-fired generating station, Canada’s single largest greenhouse gas emitter?
If he did, Dalton would tell his brother that he can’t, despite his 2003 election promise to close all of Ontario’s coal-fired plants by the end of this year.
Why? Because Ontario’s power supply would instantly be thrown into total chaos. …-
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Goldstein_Lorrie/2007/02/06/3540042-sun.html
Gulf nuclear plans take shape, says Al Attiyah
Gulf News ^ | Feb. 6, 2007 | Mohammad Ezz Al Deen
Abu Dhabi: The Gulf states are expected to begin building a nuclear industry as a “sustainable and clean” source of power by 2009, a top official said yesterday. …-
Meanwhile, China is looking for a windfall? How? Mao Strong’s Kyoto scam will do the trick.
Citoyen Dion would send $$$$$$$ from Canada to China in exchange for carbon credits; a worthless scrap of paper; the indulgences, to atone for our climate sins. China continues to pollute/smog the air/water,etc. Canada gets zero, zilch, nada. But, Canadians will have atoned for their guilt and like Bam, Dion’s mutt, go to sleep.
This would salve the guilt of everyone in Canada, appease the Mao Strong’s earth goddess, and we shall all die anyway in the long run. …-
China to research global warming but lacks resources to cut critical emissions
BEIJING (AP) – China will spend more to research global warming but lacks the money and technology to significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are worsening the problem, a government official said Tuesday. (canoe news)…-
In Canada:
Feud threatens Ontario’s energy supply
Nuclear watchdog at odds with Ottawa over safety standards for new reactors
KAREN HOWLETT AND MURRAY CAMPBELL
TORONTO — A high-level conflict between the federal government and Canada’s nuclear safety regulator, combined with the Ontario government’s foot-dragging over building new reactors, is raising new questions about how the province will keep the lights on after 2015.
Relations between federal Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission have soured as the regulator seeks to impose stringent international standards on Crown-owned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. and take away its fast-track approval process of new reactor technology.
The dispute began a year ago when CNSC chief executive officer Linda Keen served notice that she did not have the financial or staff resources to deal with new reactor applications.
The budget of the regulatory commission has since been topped up by $100-million over five years, but energy industry sources say Ms. Keen remains at loggerheads with Mr. Lunn and that this threatens Ontario’s ability to bring new reactors on line after 2015 when the demand for electricity is forecast to exceed supply….-
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070205.NUCLEAR05/TPStory/TPNational/Politics/
Black biological engineer Prof is denied tenure at MIT. He opposes embryonic stem cell research– goes on hunger strike. He claims because he’s black, he doesn’t have the same right to dissent as white colleagues. Noam Chomsky supports his cause.
Up from liberalism
Power Line ^ | Jan24,2007 | Paul Mirengoff
Being a full-time lawyer and conscientious blogger has really cut into my reading time, and I rarely find the time to read the books sent to me for reviews and/or plugs on Power Line. Why I Turned Right, edited by Mary Eberstadt, promised to be a partial exception to that unhappy rule. It consists of essays in which twelve conservatives explain how they ended up as such, I figured I’d read the three or four by the writers who interest me the most.
In the end, I read the whole thing, and so should you. The essays essentially narrate the intellectual voyages of twelve leading thinkers under a certain age (I’m guessing around 60, with the average age under 50) who can be considered conservative. They are: Peter Berkowitz, Joseph Bottum, David Brooks, Danielle Crittenden, Dinesh D’Souza, Stanley Kurtz, Tod Lindberg, Rich Lowry, Heather Mac Donald, P.J. O’Rourke, Sally Satel, and Richard Starr.
Not all of them actually turned right. Lowry was never other than a conservative — his tale is about how he became an armed and dangerous one. Crittenden was always conservative — her tale is about how she shed the feminism of the 1970s. O’Rourke came from good Republican stock and returned to something like his roots after getting (in his telling) as much sex as he could from the “fetching” girls of the left who wore “peasant blouses, denim skirts, and sandals” and “strummed guitars, smoked unfiltered cigarettes, and drank beer straight from the bottle.”
The essays I enjoyed most were by those who turned right as a result of studying or working in a discipline that isn’t (or, rather, that shouldn’t be) political. I’m thinking in particular of Heather McDonald and Sally Satel, whose movement Rightstarted when they were studying comparative literature and practicing psychiatry, respectively. (I could also include Peter Berkowitz and Stanley, who have studied many things — some political, some less so — and been influenced rightward in all instances).
Here’s Mac Donald on the deconstructionists:
The professoriate has been given the greatest luxury society can offer: studying beauty. All that they needed to do to justify that privilege was to help their students see why they should fall on bended knee before Aeschylus, Mozart, or Tiepolo, in thanks for lifting us out of our usual stupidity and dullness. Instead, they set themselves up as more important than the literature and art that it was their duty to curate and created a tangle of antihumanistic nonsense that merely licensed students’ ignorance.
And here’s Satel on what she learned working on mental health issues during a Capitol Hill fellowship:
My Hill experience gave me a startling insight: Liberals and conservatives seemed to have mirror-image approaches to paternalism. Liberals made intrusive laws for the competent while conservatives preferred to rely on individuals to make their own decisions. Conversely, conservatives preferred intrusive laws for the incompetent to whom liberals applied a hands-off policy. Liberals were comfortable with public health paternalism: intrusive nonsmoking laws, taxes on unhealthy products, strict risk-averse EPA and FDA regulations. . . .
. . .Yet, when a person was incoherent, defecating in the streets, or freezing a limb off in the park, then — and only then — did the principles of autonomy apply.
As I suggested, read the whole thing….-
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1779996/posts
President of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities seeking the nomination for the Federal Tories in Guelph
http://www.guelphtribune.ca/trib/news/news_713714.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqjLkZMrmKA
Kyoto Dion’s socialism leads to Zimbabwe; to Cuba; to North Korea; to Stalinism, Maoism, etc. To Death.
Down with Kyoto Dion; down with socialism. …-
Times | Editorial: A Distant Drum
Robert Mugabe has been sustained in power by a military and security apparatus that has successfully crushed the political opposition, and suppressed popular dissent by continual, overwhelming intimidation. People have become either too frightened to speak out against the ruin he has brought on Zimbabwe, or too exhausted by the daily battle for survival to protest. From the perspective of the ruling clique, military-style campaigns such as Murambatsvina, the forcible demolition of shantytowns two years ago that rendered some two million of the urban poor homeless, have been highly effective. Rootless, malnourished people make feeble opponents. An important part of Mr Mugabe’s own strategy for survival has been to convince Zimbabweans that opposition is futile. Up to four million have voted with their feet, fleeing to South Africa and other neighbouring countries.
But the catastrophic state of the Zimbabwean economy, where inflation is now 1,282 per cent, the dollar changes hands for 20 times the official exchange rate and an estimated 80 per cent are unemployed, is presenting Mr Mugabe with a new challenge, against which repression is less likely to be effective. In Zimbabwe, they call it “the politics of the stomach”, a national upsurge of despair. The Mugabe regime, like that of North Korea, critically relies on keeping soldiers, police, security agents and militias happy. They are happy no longer. Mr Mugabe may not be too disturbed that doctors, nurses and teachers are on strike for pay rises of up to 8,000 per cent; the health services collapsed some time ago, and, in a country where education has traditionally been highly prized, many children no longer attend school anyway because their parents cannot afford school fees or uniforms. Discontent among the security services and the politically potent “veterans of the revolution” is a different matter. (jack’s newswatch has the link)
we got foot & 1/2 snow yesterday & we got another foot& 1/2 last nite here in grey/bruce More on the way roads closed around owen sound i got into my store now waiting for a plow to clear the lot that should happen this time Next week, Blowing minus 18 with wind chill -28
Of course I blame the Prime Minister on this(sarc)
Two columns on the immigration mess:
Licia Corbella in the Calgary Sun:
“Working out immigration”
http://calgarysun.canoe.ca/NewsStand/News/Columnists/Corbella_Licia/2007/02/06/3539898-sun.html
Her main proposal:
” Canada — and Alberta in particular — needs workers, and lots of them. But what Canada and Alberta do not need is more foreign-trained doctors or PhDs whose credentials we do not recognize and likely never will.
What Alberta needs in droves are skilled labourers, not dubiously trained foreign professionals.
Bricklayers, carpenters, pipe-fitters, welders, butchers and bakers have the kinds of skills that could be tested easily and therefore could be put to work in their chosen fields almost immediately upon arriving in this country.”
Jeffrey Simpson in the Globe:
“Why our immigrant assumptions are off”
http://www.rbcinvest.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/PEstory/LAC/20070206/COSIMP06/Columnists/columnists/columnistsNational/3/3/6/
Mr Simpson makes a rather daring suggestion:
“Could it be that the source countries of immigrants are making integration and economic success harder? A few researchers have posed the question; no one has given a serious answer. Perhaps none can be given, since talented people come from everywhere.”
Mark
Ottawa
breaking…garth turner to liberal party….ctv
Garth Who is joining the Liberals, eh? I guess he can now start plugging those reverse mortgages again…he’ll be in the correct party for that.
Garth Turner: Minister of Translation!
…and Kate Wheeler of CTV is reporting that Garth Who was “kicked out of the party” (which is untrue…he was kicked out of the Ontario caucus) because he was “criticizing the government” (which is untrue…he was caught violating caucus confidentiality).
God, I love honest and fair reporting!
I too curse the Harper /Baird environmental fix! In -40 weather Mon.,my car heater decided to freeze up on a 250km trip home!Bring back Dion!..at least that never happened on his watch…oh yeah,nuthin’happened on environment under his watch!
I think it will be sweet justice for the Libs.to “inherit” the sh**-disturbing,Turner!Big move to happen at 5 p.m. today..cbc all over it!
Ural: You have proven my point that errors were probably made many years ago. I looked thru the screen, and didn’t go outside. What if those farmers back in the early 1900s took a guess, said thats close enough, and remember, they had no computers back then. Still want to know who and what methods were used to change all the figures. Then take into account that many farmers were immigrants and still used the bar across a 7, and that could be mistaken for a 4 or vice versa by some transcriber. My son, who had a german teacher in a one room school, grades 1-4, still makes his 7s that way. As I said, lots of room for errors.
Hey, Turners web site is down but will it re-appear. Will he release caucus discussions. Dion has said all sitting mps will not be challenged for nominations. In order to run in the next election being a liberal is the only way he could run. Will he be elected, I doubt it. Taking him in shows how desperate dion is. As for changing the numbers etc, remember, LaPierre is leaving so numbers don’t change. I predict that Turner will not be able to keep his mouth shut and will cause dion trouble. And watch for all his words re floor crossing come back to haunt him. At least the cbc is not saying he left the conservatives, but did mention he was kicked out of caucus for releasing information. Should be interesting.
Pollster talking about support. Finally admitted that the only place the libs are gaining is quebec. BC is iffy. Dion is not gaining anywhere else, maybe in the gta.
“Economists don’t agree on much, but there’s a broad consensus that cutting the GST isn’t very progressive. Along with benefiting the rich more than the poor, it’s a crude economic tool.”
Statements like this bug me. When we instituted the flat tax people were up in arms because it hurts poor people way more than it does the rich…. But now abolishing that same tax benefits the rich waaayyy more than the poor.
Is there anything out there that doesn’t proportionally benefit the rich more/hurt them less??
*
Not sure Garth thought this all the way through…
think of all the attention he could have focussed
on himself if he had just defected to Hamas.
*
Barcs-
yes, check out Cuba and Cambodia for a system that was made to hurt the rich and benefit the poor. short term pain on the rich turned into long term pain for everyone.
I guess Garth hasn’t been on the news in a while. He’ll be a great fit for the Liberal party.
On the subject of media bias, imagine the hand wringing and grave concern at the CBC if this story had occurred in small town Alberta instead of Quebec:
“I’m proud of Hérouxville,” Paulette Lalande, the mayor of Plaisance – a town of about 1,000 residents 75 kilometres northeast of Ottawa – said last week. “Because the municipality had the courage to consider in depth the debate over reasonable accommodations, even though it’s difficult to bring up.”
At least three neighbouring communities around Hérouxville are also entertaining the thought of mimicking Héerouxville’s charter, which probits everything from “stoning women to death in the town square” to covering one’s face in public outside Halloween and seeking to find out how beef was slaughtered.
Last Wednesday, town officials in Saint-Roch-de-Mékinac (population 308) sent out notices informing residents the Hérouxville charter would be on the agenda of Friday’s city council meeting. And it invited residents to send in their suggestions and comments regarding “reasonable accommodations.”
http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/national/article.jsp?article=2007_2_2_1170457155
Turner loves attention for himself, and drama.
The Liberals will surely find out how well that works for them.
Turner is a rabid narcissist. His web site claims are incredible. According to him, he is the source of all wisdom, he is the source of all good motions and bills, he is behind the actions of all that is good.
He’ll join in with the other narcissists in the Liberal group – Dion and Chretien who are also focused completely on themselves.
The key to keeping Turner happy is to put him upfront. He’ll join in with Mark Holland to blab and rant.
Military probes abuse allegations in Afghanistan.
Last Updated: Tuesday, February 6, 2007 | 10:36 AM ET
CBC News
Military officials are investigating allegations three Afghan prisoners were abused while in the custody of Canadian soldiers.
The allegations come from University of Ottawa law Prof. Amir Attaran, based on government documents he obtained under the Access to Information Act.
The University Professor is of course a Muslim, more than likely put up to this by the hissing snakes at CAIR.
He alleges two of the prisoners have cuts and bruises on their faces, which proves that they were abused by the military. Not that they received a couple of scratches while resisting arrest.
Of course the fact that one was arrested for posessing bomb making materials and another for spying on our military has nothing to do with it.
They are Muslim afterall, so due to Islamophobia and profiling, they must be innocent. Even in a war zone. Even with feral savages who blow themselves up and cut off the heads of innocent civilians. Etc. Etc.
Irwin, you can’t lump all muslims together, it’s just a few…ah forget it. Link is not for the faint of heart.
http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13967
Bourque headline:
” ONE LOOPY FRUIT FLY”
[Dion is a loopy fruit fly? Suzuki’s fruit fly? Suzuki’s favourite pet fruit fly? Say it isn’t so, Steffie. The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has long been geneticists’ favourite pet.]
Links to:
Green regime stuck in the Trudeau years
Claudia Cattaneo, Financial Post
Excerpts:
“Because of that, and now that “going green” is the path to political redemption, the oil deposits are drawing critics like fruit flies.
One of the loopiest so far is the federal Liberal party’s natural resources critic, Ontario MP Mark Holland. In a couple of radio interviews last week, Mr. Holland made statements so absurd they must be nipped in the bud, before the governing Tories adopt them to one-up their political rivals on the green agenda, one of their tendencies lately.” …
Mr. Adler found the comments so stunning he described them in a column as “the most threatening words I have heard in a political conversation in years.”
They are also tired and unimaginative. Canada has evolved since the days of Pierre Trudeau and the National Energy Program, when shutting down the oilpatch was the easiest route to political riches in Eastern Canada.
The oil-and-gas industry is no longer an Alberta island. It is dominating the economies of British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, and is poised to take over that of the Northwest Territories.
It keeps busy Ontario’s steel mills, Quebec’s engineers and Newfoundland’s pipefitters. It accounts for a third of the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Putting limits on oilsands growth would maim Canada’s economy, while broadcasting to the world — now that the oilsands are widely known as the second-largest deposits after Saudi Arabia’s — that our energy sector is no longer open for business and that our federal government is competing with Hugo Chavez for the most insane oil policy.
It’s easy for Ottawa politicians to paint the oilsands as environment enemy No. 1. They’re far away in the bush. Restricting their growth shows them cracking the whip on the environment where it doesn’t hurt — such as forcing people into driving fuelefficient cars, building smaller houses or paying gasoline taxes for research….
“… the answer to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions in the oilsands — and other environmental impacts — is technology and attainable environmental standards, not election-motivated controls on development….-
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=4cb737ed-01cb-4ba8-a0c1-a81be5578513&p=2
In case anybody needs anymore convincing not to bother with the johnny-come-lately-lefty:
“Tell me, Daisy, how the Americans would have reacted if Canada sent a dual US-Syrian citizen to Syria? How would you have reacted?
Tell me, Daisy, will you stand up for Canadian citizens or for foreign governments.
Drop the “more in common with US” pretense. We both know that the US treats its own muslims with far more suspect than you would, and that that respect stems from the three ideals you quote – liberty, freedom, and democracy. If you actually believed in those, then you would behave like the Americans, who have managed to avoid stereotyping all muslims as terrorists, instead of dismissing the “vast majoirity of moderate muslims” as non existent because you cant see them.
I am a Canadian. I am a Canadian nationalist. I am proud of Canada. I am proud of being Canadian. I am proud of Canada for what it is, not for what it has in common with the US. I do not believe that Canada has to prove itself to anything or anyone. I do believe that we are priviliged to be Canadian. I am proud of Canada’s history. I am proud of Canada’s immigrants. There is much that we take for granted here. Chief amongst them is a quality of life that other nations can only dream of.
I am a Canadian. I may not speak for all Canadians (especially those on this board), but I do believe I speak for the majoriy of Canadians when I say that, if you arent willing to stand up for Canada and Canadians, get the hell out of my country.
(Note: “get the hell out of my country” a recurring theme from these snotty nosed types)
Posted by: jeremiah at February 6, 2007 3:51 AM
Muslims admitedly have a nation and allegiance that supercedes all other nations, you might have heard of it, it’s called the Ummah. Outside of Islamic states, the Ummah is in fact a foreign government with it’s own laws and values.
As I said before, until the so-called ‘vast majority of moderate’ Muslims publicly stand-up for their adopted country and it’s laws, over the Ummah and sharia – I will remain steadfastly suspicious.
Even more suspicious given their religious privilege and warfare tactic called taqiyya.
“if you arent willing to stand up for Canada and Canadians, get the hell out of my country.”
I couldn’t have said it better.
Posted by: irwin daisy at February 6, 2007 1:07 PM
Dion & Turner:
Did you hear about the two green frogs who jumped together onto the green lilypad? They grinned and said, in unison:
We are so happy, We could sdft.
…-
from Garth’s [Turner] townhall last year when he polled his constituents on what he should do:
1. Resign your seat – zero
2. Negotiate back into caucus – 17
3. Join the Liberals – zero
4. Go Green – 17
5. Stay independent – 31
http://www.stephentaylor.ca/archives/000783.html
So the Worm has Turnered. We predict that in time Garth will be equally unhappy or unwelcome in the Liberal party. Garth is too much of a maverick – even with as many co-leaders (egos) as the Liberals have right now. He should have stayed an independent. Unless of course he replaces Dion as leader and runs the show himself.
Islamic leader under fire
Toronto Star
Feb 06, 2007 04:30 AM
Michelle Shephard
Staff Reporter
What started as a mundane zoning proposal for a Newmarket mosque has now made Zafar Bangash the target of a neighbourhood’s wrath and once again ignited international debate about the separation of politics and religion.
Bangash’s name may not be well known to many Canadians but his writings and his stridently anti-Israeli views, forceful support for an independent Kashmir and advocacy for Iranian-inspired Islamic theocracies has attracted international notice and the attention of Muslims and politicians at home.
For eight years Bangash has been the president of the Islamic Society of York Region, often leading prayers at the modest mosque in Richmond Hill that sits on 13 hectares of property at the edge of the Oak Ridges Moraine. Now he hopes to build another mosque in Newmarket.
Yesterday, that proposal led to a packed Newmarket city hall meeting filled with residents who said they didn’t oppose the building of the mosque, but the man behind it. After the proposal passed, the debate continued with residents frustrated their voices weren’t heard.
Much of the opposition comes from Bangash’s writings in a publication known as Crescent International, which has a Markham office and advocates for an Iranian-inspired regime in Muslim countries.
“Muslims must strive to overthrow the oppressive systems in their societies through Islamic revolutions, and not by participating in fraudulent elections organized by the elites operating through various political parties that actually divide the people,” he wrote in a July 2005 column in the newsmagazine.
“And they must keep well away from the U.S., the greediest, most exploitative, most manipulative, most hypocritical and most ruthless power that the world has ever known.”
Bangash dismisses the concerns of the Newmarket mosque as Islamophobia and says people have taken his political comments out of context.
(Note: Islamic Parrots – Islamophobia and comments out of context. Check)
“There have been all sorts of allegations against me and you know I find that so offensive quite honestly,” he said in an interview yesterday. He pointed to the reputation of his Richmond Hill mosque as one of the “most inclusive centres in Canada.”
But others say community leaders and politicians, out of fear of being branded racist, often overlook the influence of those who support regimes whose values they say are contrary to Canada’s democratic ones.
(Note: This is how they use our values and laws against us)
“By permitting a known Islamist to literally monopolize the Muslim narrative, you’re shutting out modern, secular Muslims from having a say,” says Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress who is writing a book on the influence of Islamists in Canada.
Fatah claimed that Bangash is the “unofficial spokesperson for the Iranian regime in Canada.”
While Bangash’s writing is often cutting and his speeches at recent demonstrations protesting the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in Danish cartoons fiery, the 56-year-old Pakistani-born Canadian with the neatly trimmed beard and wearing a sweater cardigan appeared more like an academic befuddled by all the fuss.
(Oh, he has also said that Sharia should be adopted in Canada)
Today, 1st anniversary of PMSH swearning in. Made a major speech. Also, Turner is walking today, is that an attempt to take away the coverage of Harper today and get back on TV after months of absence. I thought Harper brought out a few suggestions of what causes green house gas. Basically said, everything we do, from eating, working etc causes ghg and every area will have to make changes. His charts were very interesting. Interest savings on paying down debt will be used for tax cuts. Best part, one could understand every word he said in english and he looked very confident and prime ministerial. Compare that to dion making a speech that one can not understand, and looks like a deer caught in the headlights.
what is the opposite of “the right stuff”
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/02/06/astronaut-love-070206.html
bullets are way cheaper.
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/Oddities/070206/K020615AU.html
Kate,
Re: Crawling around on concrete floors….
Here is the best (and IMHO, the only) pair of kneepads to use. Expensive, but they last forever and so will your knees. :0)
3w.proknee.com
I see Turner is a quick study on Liberal spin-speak. He says he will run in byelection when others, like Emerson run.
Quite the spin! He complains about floor crossers, says they must resign their seat and run in byelection. Get it, that’s his argument, not Harper’s or CPC. He has already spun this thing to mean Conservatives are arguing for resignation and byelection. They’re not; they’re simply pointing out his hypocricy.
Just watched a news report about how many cattle are being shipped to Mexico and Asia, and showing the I love alberta beef sticker on cars in Mexico.
To all you vegans out there, stop global warming and ghg emmissions. Eat beef so more cattle can be slaughtered to stop their emmissions. If you really care about the environment, eat beef.
CDS Gen. Hillier on CBC Radio Wednesday morning, “The Current”, at 0837 EST. Gird your loins.
http://forums.army.ca/forums/index.php/topic,57213.0.html
Mark
Ottawa
*
I’m just sayin’…
I’m a freedom of speech
kinda guy… but maybe
Canada Post wants to
rethink this one.
*
[Liberal MP] STEPHEN OWEN ANNOUNCES HE WILL NOT RUN IN NEXT FEDERAL ELECTION (national newswatch)…-
Owen was on STOPIGGY’s team? No. On Citoyen Dion’s Dream Team/Equipe des Reves? Non, merci. On Iggy’s team? Yes.
More to follow? Yes.
On the Record : Peter C. Newman: A Liberal Revolution
National Post Sat 23 Sep 2006 One week from today, the Liberal Party of Canada … Senior advisors include Senator David Smith, Stephen Owen, Alfred Apps, …
michaelignatieff.ca/MiCommunity/blogs/ontherecord/archive/2006/09/23/4395.aspx
Sounds like mandatory government CERS will be introduced by Conservatives. Yeesh. I wonder what the market will think of that. Hooped, I tell ya, we are hooped.
From PMSHs speech today…
-In the weeks ahead, for the first time ever, Canada’s New Government will move to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from major industrial sectors.
For the first time ever, we will also move to regulate air pollution from major industry sectors.
For the first time ever, we will regulate the fuel efficiency of motor vehicles, beginning with the 2011 model year.
And for the first time ever, we will set out enforceable regulatory targets for the short, medium and long term.
The era of voluntary compliance is over.-
Hey guys, I ran this over at Dust My Broom, and if I’m not too late with this thread, here’s a heads up for Ontario residents. This could happen to you.
My sob story and then I’d like some advice if anyone can give it: We, in Ontario, are having Ontario Hydro thrust “Smart Metres” upon us, which in principle is a good idea, so those of us who put our dishwashers on at 11:00 p.m instead of 6:00 p.m. get a break in our hydro bill.
My problem? Hydro Ontario installed in on Thursday and ever since, our wireless speakers, with which we listen to the radio and to our CD collection in any room in the house, have been encountering continuous–as in all the time–static ever since. It’s driving me CRAZY. We called Ontario Hydro and they say it’s because our speakers are 900 MGZ (megaherz (sp?)) and so is the metre. GREAT.
So, we went out and at great expense bought two 2.4 GHZ (gigaherz (sp?)) wireless speakers, which Ontario Hydro informed us would be sure to work. Guess what? They’re as bad or worse.
So what to do? Does anyone know what giga- or mega-herz we need so we can get back to enjoying our music?
This seems Machiavellian to me that the state can thrust “Smart Metres,” on households, which operate on a common frequency and thereby, wreck one’s listening enjoyment.
I know that we can wire speakers into every room. But what a drag. We don’t want to do that. We could move the two speakers we had around and listen in any room we wanted to, even outside. That’s all been shot to Hell.
Any tech geniuses out there who can help. HELP!!!!#@!%&*@#^%*
Been around the block,
I work with 2.4,5.7,5.2 and the deadly for interference, 900 mhz. I install these radios for high speed internet on acreages. Is there an option to change channels on your speakers? Why I say this is because I have come across telephones that cause interference. On the telephone, you can change the channel, but the freq. stays the same. Sometimes it works, other times I have to advise the client to buy a phone on another freq. Can you call the company and ask them is there any possiblity to change channels on your meter? It may not have that option but I’m just trying to troubleshoot it for you. It doesn’t make sense to me that you’ve changed speaker freq. but still you have the same issue. You may have to hard wire them. It’s not that hard, let me know and I can give you some good tips.