Reader Tips

Reader Tips 43 Comments

In light of the fact that America has its first president who is all but anti-American, and who in his travels around the world all but apologizes for America’s history, it’s time for a little musical rearguard action in anticipation of the resurgence that’s sure to come. Here’s upright, granite-faced American son-of-a-sharecropper Johnny Cash performing his unabashedly patriotic song-poem Ragged Old Flag. Enjoy, you refuge-taking scoundrels.
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43 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. American Digest has posted some rather timely excerpts of Patrick Henry’s 1788 speech in the Virginia Constitution Ratifying Convention:
    “Your President may easily become king. Your Senate is so imperfectly constructed that your dearest rights may be sacrificed by what may be a small minority; and a very small minority may continue forever unchangeably this government, although horridly defective. Where are your checks in this government? Your strongholds will be in the hands of your enemies.”
    and…
    “It is on a supposition that your American governors shall be honest that all the good qualities of this government are founded; but its defective and imperfect construction puts it in their power to perpetrate the worst of mischiefs, should they be bad men; and, sir, would not all the world, from the eastern to the western hemisphere, blame our distracted folly in resting our rights upon the contingency of our rulers being good or bad? Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt.”

  3. Barack Obama: The great jobs killer
    WAYNE ALLYN ROOT
    http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/barack-obama–the-great-jobs-killer-97758294.html
    “Obama is as hopeless, helpless, clueless and bankrupt of good ideas….”
    “….knows as much about private-sector jobs as Pamela Anderson knows about nuclear physics.”
    “So who is going to pay Obama’s taxes? Not his voters. They want government to pay them.”
    Maybe the article is on the edge of bombastic, though, the White House occupant deserves it due to the fact that he caused job losses of many thousands of taxpayers.

  4. Has the Stanley Park name change controversy reached fellow SDA’ers across the country?
    Most people think the idea is stupid but I wonder how long before the Racist Card is played. Here are two “choice” comments on the CBC website:
    7:31pm – What a shame. XwayXway is a beautiful name and this was the parks name for a very long time; much longer that it has been “Stanley Park”. How rude of us to be so presumptuous in this day and age to decide something so important, without more feedback. I am very disappointed in the powers that have made this decision so quickly. Not only that, the First Nations People should have a huge say in the name as we changed it on them!
    7:37pm – The name should have been changed long ago. Why should a colonialist be honored. Naming a public place is to honour that person. I would not honor any person representing a racist country that colonized native people and subjected them to all kind discrimination and even genocide. Change the name forthwith. But then, do not expect a Conservative Government to do the right thing.

  6. Syncro, so sad when members of the MSM allow objective analysis to be supplanted by their own wishful thinking. They keep repeating the same mistakes, over and over. Sad. Really sad.

  8. Jon
    I donno..I kinda smile and try to think of it as a societal study in natural selection.
    Bernie
    That is a keeper fer sure.
    Syncro

  9. Ontario has just implemented new ecofees on a range of products. The agency responsible (presumably) is something called “Stewardship Ontario”. It does not seem to be a government agency — but somehow they are mandated to collect these fees. I did not know I was to be paying a fee until after my purchase of one of those plastic bottles of detergent. The fee (on the $3.88 jug of detergent) was 60 cents. Isn’t that like about 15% tax? I think I also paid actual tax on the 60 cents. After investigating I discovered that this is happening on a whole range of new products but I cannot find a list anywhere to confirm where the fee is imposed and on what products. Is this even legal? I am particularly upset about no information being provided — the Website for the agency does not even provide info. Here is an article in the National Post: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/slips+under+radar+amid+changes/3238700/story.html

  11. “In 1998, four renegade German professors tried to stop the introduction of the euro with a legal challenge in Germany’s highest court. Now, 12 years later, they are fighting against a German bailout for Greece — and this time around, people are listening to them…”

  12. Christopher Hitchens has throat cancer, one of the more devastating and incurable forms of the disease. In a post at News Real Blog, Paul Cooper uses the news as an occasion to laud his own self-righteousness, and to provide a list of all the nasty things he could say, but won’t, of course, because he’s so very, very saintly:
    “Do we cheer what some might say is the vengeance of God? Do we tell Hitchens he got what he deserved? Do we feign sorrow but smile on the inside?…(…)…No, I personally pray that as Hitchens suffers….”
    He did say those things, though, didn’t he? Whose mind and soul did those thoughts – “do we cheer what some might say is the vengeance of God? Do we tell Hitchens he got what he deserved?” – come from, if not from Cooper?
    Yikes. Imagine that you are the only secular holdout in a highly religious small town – say, you are a single woman who is deemed by the townfolk to be a woman of loose morals because you drink beer and, I don’t know, take jazzercise classes – and you find out that you have acquired a nasty form of cancer. Now, imagine having a smiling, sanctimonious Paul Cooper over your bed side: “Do I cheer what some may say is the vengeance of God? Am I telling you you’re getting what you deserve? Do I feign sorrow but smile on the inside? No, I personally pray that as you suffer in your battle, that you will look to the One who suffered for You…”
    I’d be calling for security.
    It’s kinda like, “I could say that you’re fat, insane, and a pathological liar, and that your head’s too small for your body, but I’m too good a person to ever, ever to that; I’m merely pointing out to others, in a very public way, that I while could say those things, I’m not going to, because I’m such a good…”

  13. EBD
    Idiot savant is much better then plain idiot. I sure hope the savant angle gets played up for these old warriors.
    Hitchens and Cooper deserve each other. Opposite sides of the same coin.
    Syncro

  14. I congratulate Canada for not becoming involved with the Euro and your banking, mortgage, and investment sense.
    But do take some advice from a weary American that has lost much in this so called ‘global market.’
    Now is the time to remember Joseph of the bible, sold into Egypt,
    who then told Pharaoh his dream of a famine that was to come into ‘all’ the lands.
    Take some of your hard earned monies, just one percent would be plenty,
    and buy food storage/MREs Meals Ready to Eat- and store water if at all possible.
    And if allowed by law.
    We have 40 million government,
    socialized food stamp recipients in America and if that program ever fails-
    Millions will starve.
    Money, stocks, bonds, gold, and diamonds are great investments.
    But you and your children can not eat/drink them.

  15. Our ancestors knew more than we think.
    This device from classical times proves it.
    Video is worth watching , just to understand what we don’t know is the norm. We sift through other garbage. Once & while we see the furniture.
    Imaging the Antikythera Mechanism
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxNg-tXPPWc

  16. Disturbing link, EBD. Cooper’s naked and malicious glee at Hitchens’ medical misfortune is vile, deeply repulsive, and, it needs to be said, profoundly un-Christian. A person of genuine faith would be incapable of such uncharitable thinking. Cooper can’t even come close to doing a competent job of faking it. What a shame for him.
    I went looking for some genuinely compassionate commentary on the subject to wash the unpleasant taste of Cooper’s spite-fest out of my head, and found an interesting variety of generally kind, respectful, and comparatively reasonable responses at this site – a Yahoo UK discussion thread on the topic “Atheists. What’s [sic] your thoughts on Christopher Hitchens [sic] cancer scare [sic]?”
    http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100701160834AAogubU
    I felt better – and stopped reading, because, really, what else is there to be said – when I reached this insightful observation:
    “My thoughts are WOW…I thought he’d die of psoriasis of the liver.”

  17. Very interesting. I was aware of the Antikythera Mechanism but the imaging stuff was new to me.
    Seemingly an exquisite astronomical mechanical computational device of the first order.
    Nice.
    Syncro

  20. The incomparable Johnny Cash. They don’t make ’em like him anymore. God rest his soul.
    “We’ve got the freedom to burn the flag (to boos and cheers) and, wait a minute, listen, we’ve also got the right here in America to bear arms [pause] and if you burn my flag, I’ll shoot you — but I’ll shoot you with a lot of love like a good American (to wild cheering).”
    Oh Canada. Would that we felt the same way about our flag and our national heritage. Our flag, unfortunately, is a Liberal logo, because the Librano$ took no account of the different strands that went together to make Canada a democracy the envy of the world. They usurped our British heritage, airbrushed it out of our history books — and off our mail boxes — and deprived far too many generations of history based on fact.
    Now, kids get a revised version of Canadian history, where the Natives are always noble, not at all war-like or lacking technology, including the wheel, where the French are swell (heck, Louis Riel is a national hero) and, well, where the British didn’t do anything right, were elite, and need a good thrashing. The revisionists have elevated the reformer crazy man, William Lyon Mackenzie King, to cult status, having left out earlier and much more significant reformers, Robert Baldwin and Louis Hippolyte Lafontaine, the original bilingual English/French partnership which got the whole ball to responsible government rolling here in Canada WITHOUT A DROP OF BLOOD BEING SHED — an astonishing accomplishment.
    No wonder our kids slouch, talk, lean on desks, put their hands in their pockets, yawn, while our national anthem is playing. I don’t like it. I correct it every day. But when you don’t know your history and there’s seemingly nothing to be proud of — another of Trudeau’s legacies, depriving those of British heritage of any pride in their forebears’ many accomplishments — it’s not all that surprising.
    We need a song like Johnny’s. Gordon Lightfoot could do it, a song similar to his Railroad Trilogy, maybe a Canadian Trilogy, extolling the virtues of English, French, and Native instead of putting one strand of history down in order to elevate the others. That’s always been the Liberal way. Well, there’s a better way, the appreciation of gift upon gift.

  21. Liberal Mao Ziffy & The Treason of the Liberal-left-liberal Intellectuals.
    Red Liberals, red socialism/communism = Red Terror.
    “*But where is the third side now for China — for all the Chinese students and workers who still rot in the Chinese gulag, for all their friends and families living in silence and shadow, for all Chinese who despise the Communists and, yes, for all Chinese who say let us be as we are, because they have never known anything but oppression, all their lives?
    Absent — but why? The reasons are in our political and intellectual “leadership” and, I believe, in racism.”
    …-
    “Ignatieff gets warm reception from Chinese students”
    “Michael Ignatieff meets with a Chinese student after address a crowd Monday at Tsinghua University in Beijing.”
    (TORedStar)
    …-
    “*On My Mind; The Third Side
    By A. M. ROSENTHAL
    Published: September 13, 1991
    When the slaughter begins again in China, the West will be horrified and indignant. After all, we are not made of stone.
    Of course, this time we will not actually see much of the murders by Communist troops. Beijing’s rulers have learned one lesson from their warm-up at Tiananmen Square — blind the cameras.”
    http://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/13/opinion/on-my-mind-the-third-side.html
    http://www.bluelikeyou.com/2010/07/06/long-live-the-queen/#comment-85155

  22. TO’s “Pride”: “a hot, dark day” in July.
    The “experts” fail … again: ““Those kinds of pressures on the lines are built in by the engineers.””
    …-
    “Toronto left powerless by a system designed not to fail
    Heavy load wasn’t beyond capacity, hydro officials say after 250,000 people have a hot, dark day
    Hydro officials say the system that caught fire and caused a extensive power outage on Monday in Toronto was built to withstand the increased demands for power that came on the hottest day of the year.
    The two-hour outage, which lasted almost four for some, was spotty but stole 920 megawatts of power from 250,000 customers in the city’s downtown and west end. Traffic ground to a halt as commuters leapt out of their vehicles to direct cars while they waited for police. Subway service shut down in part of the city. Towers in the financial district closed as workers trundled down flights and flights of stairs to the exits.
    While one can be quick to blame churning air conditioners for sucking up about 24,500 megawatts, more than the expected amount, from the grid, all of the chaos traced back to a fire in one breaker at a west-end transformer station belonging to the province’s Hydro One.
    It’s a breaker in a system that shouldn’t bend to the heavy demands of Toronto’s consumers, its operators say.
    “It is designed to operate in extreme heat in the summer and extreme cold in the winter,” said Hydro One spokesperson Danièle Gauvin, adding that the machines are inspected regularly. “Those kinds of pressures on the lines are built in by the engineers.””
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/toronto-left-powerless-by-a-system-designed-not-to-fail/article1629492/

  24. Isn’t it ironic that the christ principle Hitchens despises holds the key to his very existence on this plane of Consciousness?
    Sort of hating ones self, no?

  26. Ontario has just implemented new ecofees on a range of products.
    Posted by: LindaL at July 6, 2010 12:36 AM
    In my last motorcycle service in the Vancouver area, there were FOUR eco fees. Now to be sure, the sums are small but they DO echo the phrase “nickled and dimed to death”.
    – Eco handling charge oil filter: 0.55
    – Eco fee for recycling waste oil: 0.05
    – Eco fee for recycling container: 0.68
    – Eco fee for recycling waste oil: 0.23 (not sure how this differs from two lines up).

  27. Israel hatred has now become a valid criminal defense.
    Five pro-Palestinian activists have been acquitted of causing £200,000 worth of damage to a Brighton arms factory, after arguing they were seeking to prevent Israeli “war crimes”.
    Me: I’ve told an old Israel-hating friend that in due time he will revert to his 1967 view of Israel. I made the prediction at the time of the “Gaza aid flotilla” which he has been oddly quiet about, except to send a list of goodies on the ship, including, LOL, ginger. Over the years he’s been on the verge of swinging back, e.g., during the 2006 Lebanon War, but with MSM/Pallywood Productions agitprop be swung back again. We’ll see.

  28. re EBD @1:08 – horrible. “The two biggest causes of esophageal cancer are the combination of drinking and smoking***. Anyone who knows Hitchens knows he did both regularly much of his life.” I wonder if Paul Cooper is a member of a church that considers those things sins. Not that he’s saying Jesus has got it in for Hitch, or anything….
    I think that if Hitchens ever gets religion, he should sew a big scarlet A (for atheist) onto his shirt. Think Cooper’d be down with that?
    Oh, and yay Johnny Cash!
    (***We all make grammatical mistakes. It would be wrong of me to point out Cooper’s obvious failings in this area…)

  29. Why would Obama’s State Dept be issuing diplomatic Visas to Mexican Drug Organizations?
    [Quote]Enriquez was targeted by the Juarez cartel for having issued U.S. visas to members of rival drug organizations. [/quote]
    (FBI investigation was a cover-up, they reported it was random)
    http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=359695&CategoryId=14091
    The Corruption in the Holder/Obama Dept of Justice
    (Note the witness to Voter intimidation is part of the Kennedy Democrats)
    “ Bull is a prominent New York Democrat and longtime political adviser. He was Robert F. Kennedy’s New York campaign manager, went to the south in the 1960s to protect the voting rights of black voters and just came back from Afghanistan where he traveled with the troops”
    http://www.conservativerefocus.com/blog5.php/2010/07/06/ground-shaking-allegations-whistleblower-to-testify-against-justice-dept-before-us-civil-rights-commission
    The Republicans must demand an “Independent Council” to investigate the Corruption in the US Dept of Justice (black panther case dismissed by Holder/ Obama) and this illegal Issuing of Visas by the US Embassy… The US Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan must be stopped until this investigation is complete

  30. me no dhimmi – the judge, in my view, was egregiously wrong. The ‘activists’ had no right to consider that their views trump the law of the land.
    That is, breaking and entering and doing damage are criminal offenses. To use, as a defense, that you yourself have the opinion that the use for which the factory’s goods were being made, is wrong – is not a legal defense.
    What this ‘judgment’ – and it’s hardly a judgment by that ‘judge’ but merely an opinion, does, is set up a situation where ANY individual’s opinion trumps the law of the land. So, if I opine that ice cream is harmful to people, then do I have the right to break into and destroy an ice cream factory?
    If I consider that the CBC is harmful to the majority of people, then, do I have the right (sigh) to break into and destroy its studios? Ahh, the fervent wish.

  31. These ecofees are quite pernicious. I understand that there are costs involved in recycling things, but I object to the sneaky way in which these “taxes” are being implemented. First of all, there is a denial that these are even “taxes”. Stewardship Ontario insists they are “fees”. Yet, their ability to collect these fees is mandated by the Ministry of the Environment. I think they get around it by having the taxation and recycling issue being handled by an NGO (Stewardship Ontario), but I am concerned about what oversight is in place. How are these fees established. Looks like a tax grab to me, but one where they are trying to keep everything under the radar.
    Interestingly, Lowell Green featured this topic on his call in show today. I think people will become more aware of these fees because of a sudden increase in the range of things being taxed in this way — all kids of household cleaners, pharmaceuticals — tons of stuff now considered “toxic” and subject to an ecofee.

  32. Well, ET, I had no doubt at all that you’d condemn that decision, despite your having a different perspective than mine on the A-J conflict, which is why I have so much respect for your opinions.
    Kate’s gonna smack me, but I’m curious — genuinely — were you pro-Israel in 1967? My view has been constant since that time as I’ve seen nothing on the Arab side to change my mind.

  34. Looks like a tax grab to me, but one where they are trying to keep everything under the radar.
    – LindaL (on eco fees).
    A proliferation of tiny fees is a brilliant tax-raising strategy because they’re too small to sufficiently irk people to protest. And when you’ve got used to one eco fee on a invoice, a second, and third won’t be that startling.
    And ECO is pure genius. They’re not raising taxes, they’re “saving the planet” which noble objective dwarfs the tiny fees, you petty ingrate!
    In the abstract, I’m in favour of “user fees” but I never advocate them ‘cos I know that there will NOT be a proportionate reduction in taxes, qua taxes.
    And for a similar reason, I’m against the HST, and was against the GST as a putatively revenue-neutral replacement for the MST. There is no such animal as tax-neutral tax reform.
    Goverment “fees” aren’t fees. They’re taxes, period. A fee is something I pay for a voluntary transaction.

  35. Me No Dhimmi: “Goverment “fees” aren’t fees. They’re taxes, period. A fee is something I pay for a voluntary transaction.”
    Yes, exactly. I object to the deceit involved in “pretending” these are not actually taxes. With this strategy it would be possible to reduce taxes to practically zero — just by farming out all the government services to independent agencies and having them collect “fees”. It is the kind of cynical (and sinister) maneuver I have come to expect from the McGuinty government.

  36. me no dhimmi – I am neither pro nor against Israel as a nation. My view is that ‘it exists’. The fact that they want a Jewish majority population – that’s their business. But then, I also have the opinion that ‘the Palestinians exist’. So, my concerns are only about how to get these two realities to function in a peaceful and constructive manner.
    I also consider that water is a vital if not the vital resource of this part of the ME and that the aquifers of the W. Bank are crucial to both peoples. Then, I consider that another reality to deal with is the Arab hierarchical mindset, which sees Palestinians as the lowest rung of the many levels of arab social rungs. And there’s Iran, the Persian state, with its imperialist ambitions against the arab states. That’s a lot of realities to deal with.
    With regard to Israel’s occupation of the W. Bank, I understand it as a reality to deal with its stated agenda of a majority Jewish population which precludes its simply annexing the land, AND, its need for the aquifers. But, this acknowledgment on my part doesn’t justify what I see as the Israeli denigration of Palestinians and the harm done to them by forcing them to live as a ‘people without a nation’. Plus, there’s the reality of the violence by the settlers against the Palestinians..and don’t try to negate this; it’s real, it’s ongoing.
    But my view is that a single state won’t do – because of that Jewish majority; and two-states won’t do, because of Iran..so, my suggestion is that two-headed federation.

  37. CTV Newsnet is airing a commercial titled “What would we do” which is anti-hamas, pro-Israel. It is very telling that in Canada that one has to pay to get the truth out about hamas. Meanwhile,any anti-Israel BS’er just has to phone up the CBC and they will recieve free air time to condemn Israel.

    http://whatwouldwedo.ca/

  38. Well, ET, we continue to disagree, but all praise for your principled stand on the “aid flotilla” and the Brighton innocent verdicts. I was impressed, but not surprised.

  39. Me No Dhimmi and ET: this is a Reader Tips thread. I’ve been a bit lenient because it’s the tail end of the thread, but, once again, I’d like to remind you and others that Reader Tips is intended to be a resource in which SDA visitors can find links to interesting stories/essays/news items, etc., without having to scroll through chat room-style discussions.
    Readers are free to comment on the contents of someone else’s Reader Tip, but this isn’t the place for extended side-discussions.

  40. “A proliferation of tiny fees is a brilliant tax-raising strategy because they’re too small to sufficiently irk people to protest. And when you’ve got used to one eco fee on a invoice, a second, and third won’t be that startling. ”
    That’s the “boiling a frog” strategy. If you try to drop a frog in hot water it will jump out, but if you bring up the heat slowly it wont even notice it’s being boiled until it’s too late.

  41. “Liberals pressing for details on politicians under foreign sway”
    http://www.canada.com/news/Liberals+press+details+Fadden+accusation/3242732/story.html
    …-
    Disclaimer:
    Any resemblance to persons,living or dead, is purely coincidental.
    “Jean Chretien and the Sidewinder Report ****
    Chretien’s position as an advisor was a lucrative one and left him a wealthy man. … Jean Chretien’s ties to China have become more indirect, but no less troubling,”
    http://www.primetimecrime.com/contributing/2005/20050120Gray.htm

  42. Further to what Dave said … Charles Krauthammer chimed in on Dennis Miller’s show today:
    “We created NASA to put a man on the moon. Now they seem focused with making Muslims feel better about past achievements in Algebra.”
    In your wildest, craziest thoughts, did you ever envision that things would have devolved so greatly by the year 2010?!? 🙁

  43. Re: “Five pro-Palestinian activists have been acquitted of causing £200,000 worth of damage to a Brighton arms factory, after arguing they were seeking to prevent Israeli ‘war crimes’.”
    If one person can be acquitted of a crime (as in the case cited) because of political beliefs, then another person can be convicted of one because of them too. This may initiate a regime of political prisoners in the U. K. Not that there’s no chance of one here too.

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