27 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  5. “I love you, man…”
    Kyle Smith at the New York Post:
    “In ‘Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside Obama’s White House,’ MSNBC analyst Richard Wolffe, a writer sympathetic to the president, reports the prosaic backroom details of the White House struggles from early this year, but occasionally stumbles upon an off-the-cuff revelation that’s much more interesting.
    “One staffer was conspicuously overweight. The president, in an incident that Wolffe believes proves how caring the man is, took it upon himself to present the aide with a salad for lunch — “‘then listened to him protest that he could take care of his own health. ‘I love you, man,’ Obama said. ‘I want you to look after yourself. Eat the salad.’ ”
    “I love you, man. Eat the salad. That is the Obama presidency in a plastic see-through clamshell.”
    (…)
    “Obama’s self-regard is at its most resplendent when he delivers a remark attributed to Abraham Lincoln: ‘I am not bound to win, but I’m bound to be true. I’m not bound to succeed, but I’m bound to live up to what light I have.’ That the words are actually those of Ronald Reagan is an amusing but trivial detail.
    “What’s telling is that Obama set up the remark by saying he takes great pleasure in the White House library, and that he stumbled upon the remark in the process of searching out the wisdom of his predecessors. This was not a true statement. In fact Obama later admitted to Wolffe that he had found the quotation while reading one of his own diaries, in which he had mistakenly attributed the Reaganism to Lincoln.
    “So: In times of worry and strife, Obama looks for comforting inspiration in the sacred, timeless words of . . . Obama.”
    (h/t americandigest.org)

  9. WE WON! First,Second and Third Prize.
    Canada’s first place award is granted for killing the Climate Change Accountability Act.
    Our second place award goes for Federal efforts to gut climate change programs, including: The only major federal support program for renewable energy program funding energy efficiency upgrades for homeowners, funding for Canada’s climate science foundation, and clean fuels policies in other countries.
    And our third place award goes for a general commitment to regain title of “colossal fossil“: the country making the least constructive contribution to the negotiations.
    http://adoptanegotiator.org/category/canada/
    In other news from CanCON (or CanCOM):
    CanCON – 10 inconvenient truths
    http://www.twawki.com/?p=10052

  11. What hope do we have that muslims will integrate over time, slim and none.
    “Canadian cultural-competency expert Aruna Papp suffered honour-motivated abuse growing up in India. She was the first academic in Canada to conduct door-to-door research in order to expose the worrisome levels of female abuse in Toronto’s South Asian communities. For 30 years Aruna has been counselling South Asian families in crisis, where the safety of girls and women is at stake. Her experience tells her that HMV does not automatically abate in the second and third generation. Girls and women from her culture — even amongst highly educated and seemingly integrated families — continue to suffer the burdens of a persisting tribal honour code.
    In a speech Aruna gave last weekend to the Ending Violence Association of B.C., she said: “On June 10, 2010, the day Aqsa Parvez’s father and her youngest brother were sentenced to second degree murder [for strangling Aqsa over her refusal to wear a hijab], I [spoke] to … 21 South Asian women. Some had admitted to being victims of domestic violence. I asked them what they thought about the sentence of these two men.
    “While one or two hesitated to speak up at first, most soon agreed that ‘It was too bad that the girl had to be killed [emphasis added].’ Each one of them felt that murder was justifiable…. [One said]:
    “‘We have our ways. We have our culture. We don’t want our children to be like white girls or black girls. That is not who we are. We have to marry our girls and they have to be pure for their marriage.’
    “[Another said]: ‘Our culture is in our blood. How can we change that?’”
    In one way or another, Papp said, all the women justified the killings on cultural grounds.”
    Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/11/30/barbara-kay-the-shame-of-honour-killings/#ixzz16rsfM0PF

  13. (PDF warning) David S. Maxwell, Irregular Warfare on the Korean Peninsula
    Thoughts on Irregular Threats for north Korea Post-Conflict and Post-Collapse: Understanding Them to Counter Them
    The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the potential outcomes on the Korean Peninsula following either collapse of the Kim Family Regime or following conventional and unconventional conflict with north Korea as well as to examine some of the possible ways to prepare for and deal with those outcomes. While optimistic planners and policy makers hope for a co-called “soft landing” and peaceful reunification of the Peninsula, prudence calls for planning for the worse case scenarios. This contradicts the current focus of the United States on having to “win the wars it is currently fighting” as stated in the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). However, the worse case scenarios are, in the author’s opinion, at once both the most dangerous and the most likely threats in [Northeast Asia] and they should be considered. Therefore soft landing and peaceful reunification scenarios will not be addressed. (however, the author hopes they would become a reality). This paper is intentionally provocative, yet only focuses on one of the many complexities of the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia, namely Irregular Warfare….

  14. The Ontario government is scamming Ontarians by a new electricity billing. This year, Ontario Hydro introduced ‘smart meters’ which bill use of electricity according to different rates…according to different times of use.
    The change was announced as a strategy to save consumers money; they’d be able to choose the LOWEST rates for their major use of hydro..and reduce their bills. Sounds great?
    Problem. The government failed to inform the public that their lowest rates were HIGHER than the old rates. The old rate was 5.0 to 5.2 per kwh at all times. The new lowest rate is 5.3.
    The highest rate is DOUBLE. It’s 9.9.
    And when is the lowest rate available? Only at night. And on the weekends.
    And when is the highest rate in force? At the time from 5 to 9 pm, when families most require electricity for preparing meals, children doing homework, baths, and so on.
    There’s a ‘midpeak rate’ available just before you start that meal; when it’s already dark outside. That rate is 8.0 per kwh. Almost as high as the 9.9 rate..so, even if you try to prepare the meal early or do the daily wash early – you still get hit.
    The government touted this change as a major strategy to help consumers CHOOSE their time of use, and so, save money. But consumers can’t CHOOSE when their families require meals, must do homework and so on. Or..does the Ontario government recommend keeping schoolchildren up for their evening meal until 10:00 pm?
    Customers have seen that their bills have now gone up at least 25% per month. That’s even with trying to do ‘the wash, the cleaning’ on weekends.
    Here’s a link.
    http://opinion.financialpost.com/2010/11/30/ontarios-power-trip-plug-your-toaster-into-%e2%80%98conservation%e2%80%99/

  15. David Axe, Marines’ Instant Gunship Blasts Taliban, Pentagon Bureaucracy
    At first glance, the Marine Corps’ hottest new weapon looks just like a standard cargo plane. For the “Harvest Hawk” gunship, the external differences are subtle. A sensor pod jutting from one of the under-wing fuel tanks of the KC-130J aircraft. A rack under the left wing for four Hellfire missiles. A clutch of 10 smaller Griffin missiles fixed to the ramp. With these $10-million add-ons, plus extra training for the crew, any similar plane in the Marine Corps inventory becomes a cheaper version of the Air Force’s powerful, custom-made AC-130 gunship.
    The first Harvest Hawk-modified C-130 arrived in southern Afghanistan in October — just 18 months after the Marines first announced the program — and launched its first air strike on Nov. 4….

  16. Seth Blumsack, How the Free Market Rocked the Grid
    It led to higher rates and rolling blackouts, but it also opened the door to greener forms of electricity generation…
    The United States is far from being the only nation that has struggled with electricity deregulation. But the U.S. experience is worth exploring because it highlights many of the challenges that can arise when complex industries such as electric power generation and distribution are subject to competition.
    Unlike many other nations grappling with electricity deregulation, the United States has never had one government-owned electric utility running the whole country. Instead, a patchwork of for-profit utilities, publicly owned municipal utilities, and electric cooperatives keeps the nation’s lights on. The story of how that mixture has evolved over the last 128 years helps to explain why deregulation hasn’t made electric power as cheap and plentiful as many had hoped….

  17. I hope they have better luck with the “whole new approach” than Dr. Richard Daystrom did on Star Trek, “The Ultimate Computer”:
    Massimiliano Versace and Ben Chandler, MoNETA: A Mind Made from Memristors
    DARPA’s new memristor-based approach to Artifical Intelligence consists of a chip that mimics how neurons process information

  18. Imagine my shock when I went to the front page of the Winnipeg Free Press and the picture up there was of a controversial bus poster done by atheists.
    My shock comes from the fact that it says, (emphasis mine)
    “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
    Allah – Bigfoot – UFOs – Homeopathy – Zeus – Psychics – Christ”
    Really? Wow. Let’s see how the Religion Of Peace ™ likes this one. If they take it peacefully (as I, a Christian, most certainly will), perhaps I will no longer mock their peacefulness or lack thereof.
    No story link yet.

  19. AGW Progress Report: “the heart of Europe”.
    Liberal socialist IggyMcGuinty’s socialism under attack from within and without.
    …-
    “European Crisis Spreads to Core as Belgian Bond Yields Surge”
    (Bloomberg)
    …-
    “Heavy Snow, Cold Hit Millions in U.K, Europe”
    “Abnormally early bitter cold and heavy snow have disrupted life for millions from the British Archipelago to the heart of Europe.”
    http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/story/42383/heavy-snow-cold-hit-millions-i-1.asp
    …-
    “Belgium’s survival at stake
    NEW YORK – There is nothing attractive about a country going down into an economic crisis. It usually includes panicked investors, angry citizens, and, in some cases, riots and demonstrations. In 2010, we have watched Greece tumble into an International Monetary Fund/European Union bailout and later in the year, Ireland.
    The second case should be of particular alarm to global policymakers and investors as the Irish government made a very strong effort to avert a bailout, imposing tough austerity on the country for two years running. Now there is more pain coming in the form of the 2011 budget and an IMF/EU support package, a situation complicated by elections in January 2011.
    (Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com”
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2635727/posts

  20. Yet more on Bhagwan Barack:
    Peter Berkowitz, Obama and the State of Progressivism, 2011
    Nearly two years in office have gone a long way toward showing that Obama’s vaunted moderation, pragmatism, and post-partisanship were, if not elements of a pose to conceal the hardball-playing partisan progressive, then qualities that stood for something other than the devotion to balance, accommodation, and conciliation that the terms in their ordinary, everyday sense suggest….

  22. “Liberals won’t back human smuggling bill”
    http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/12/01/liberals-will-vote-against-human-smuggling-law.html
    *Because it Violates the Canadian Charter of Rights
    ***SO someone please tell me or answer me this ?
    If this bill violates the CofR are the Liberals saying that those who smuggle & those that are smuggled in are protected Automaticaly? They are not Citizens of Canada & they have rights under the Liberal interpetation of the charter?
    Boy have they just opened a CAN of WORMS,IMO

  25. Wikid
    Can there be such a thing as treason?
    This is a question no one thought to ask, or at least no one sane, until recently. But part of the general insanity that has come from loss of faith — in God, then progressively in everything else — is the questioning of such things in isolation.
    http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/

  26. Oh I am so angry right now. Avon has boycotted the use of Alberta oil sands products. They are asking their delivery people etc to purchase gas from other sources.
    I am so sick of this. I am done – I have boycotted Avon and just told them so. A makeup company called ‘Lush’ and a trucking company I can’t remember the name of are also boycotting Alberta oil sands.
    I urge all here to stand up for ‘ethical oil’ and continue to take a stand against this AGW crap!! If you live in Eastern Canada find out where your oil comes from.
    Whew – feel a little better……..

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