39 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. “Four obese children are on the brink of being permanently removed from their family by social workers after their parents failed to bring their weight under control.
    “In the first case of its kind, their mother and father now face what they call the ‘unbearable’ likelihood of never seeing them again.
    “Their three daughters, aged 11, seven and one, and five-year-old son, will either be ‘fostered without contact’ or adopted….”
    […]
    “Dundee City Council said: ‘The council always acts in the best interest of children, with their welfare and safety in mind.”
    Appalling.
    (h/t Bookworm Room)

  3. EBD, Stephen Harper once said at an election rally that parents are the best people to raise their children; he was boo’ed by hecklers at the back of the room. I was shocked by that, but the Brit article you linked to reveals where the hecklers’ attitude can lead.

  4. EBD,I’m dosappointed,no alliteration along the lines of “Mild-mannered Muslim man, maybe mildly mentally maladjusted.

  6. Israel’s Home Front chief’s dose of reality flusters defense establishment
    debkafile’s military analysts point out that while Gen. Eisenberg’s outlook is substantially credible for the long term, the events rushing forward in Libya, Syria and Egypt and the uncertainty in Jordan are rapidly shrinking the foreseeable time scale to weeks and making his words a wakeup call, whereas Gilead’s words aim at obfuscating six pertinent facts:
    http://debka.com/article/21275/

  7. Just heard a report today … provided by a Lib MP who was forced to attend the Layton deification ceremony.
    His comments… Would have gone to Layton ceremony in any case because it was the right thing to do.
    Reality … he had no choice … once there was a virtual prisoner for the sole purpose of the dippers political stunt.
    Summary … a total disgrace … NDP = No Dignity Present.

  8. So, some in California want to pass a law that a mortgage-holder cannot [re-]possess a home. Sounds a bit like the homestead provision in Massachusetts, but with less paperwork.
    Best hope they do not read this news from England –
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2033944/Judge-orders-Camden-Council-publish-list-homes.html
    in which a judge orders that the government publish a list of “empty” housing, so squatters can more easily find them and move in. OK, it is an extension – they are not “empty” if the owner-of-record is living there – but the Judge uses somewhat strange reasoning:
    “Squatters aren’t criminals and can be good for society.”
    Tell that to the family that went on a two-week vacation and found squatters living in their home when they got back – and learned that it would take months to [MAYBE] get them out, they were not even technically trespassing!

  15. National Post, Tuesday, Sep. 6. ‘Post 9/11 era’ reveals cultural biases: paper …
    http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/09/06/post-911-era-reveals-cultural-biases-paper/
    The paper is apparently called “The 9/11 Fetish: Manufacturing Fear, Horror and Terror Through Event-ness”.
    “Amanda Watson, a doctoral candidate at the University of Ottawa, argues in a paper to be presented at a U.K. conference this week that the common expression of the ‘post-9/11 era’ reveals troubling biases in Western culture: That time is linear, homogenous and simply measured, and that history is a terrain to be colonized, mapped and controlled.”
    “This ‘lazy shorthand,’ as she describes it, quoting another scholar, divides history such that certain types of grief are privileged, others are marginalized and the events of Sept. 11, 2001, become a lens through which we see the world of today. It promotes nationalist rhetoric, creates fear of the ‘terrorist monster’ and recasts the victims of terrorism as liberators of other victim groups, such as women and children in the Middle East. The recent killing of Osama bin Laden, for example, ‘was fetishized as the event to bookend a new historical chapter in American culture.'”
    “‘It’s not my aim to make pronouncements, but rather to depict what’s going on and argue for its interruption. It’s not really to create a story or a memory of my own, rather to question the kinds of privileged voices that rise to the surface at times like these at the expense of others.'”
    Who are the “privileged voices”? Whose grief is “marginalized”? No answer.
    What are the “biases” in western culture and why are they “troubling”? No answer.
    It’s quite an effrontery to reality, truth, freedom and justice to claim that fear is “manufactured” in the context of the Islamist war on the west, that the terrorists are not monsters, and that outrage against terrorism is a mere “fetish”.
    This paper appears to be filled with the standard sociological garbage that passes for university work these days. You can tell by the haughty tone, the use of jargon like “privileged” and “marginalized”, and made-up terms like “event-ness”.
    Another mind destroyed by Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel.
    The reporter gives an undeserved dignity as “cultural theory” to a pile of trash. He got suckered.

  16. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/business/global/in-euro-zone-banking-fear-feeds-on-itself.html?_r=2

    “This crisis has the potential to be a lot worse than Lehman Brothers,” said George Soros,
    the hedge fund investor, citing the lack of an authoritative pan-European body to handle a banking crisis of this severity.
    “That is why the problem is so serious. You need a crisis to create the political will for Europe to create such an authority, but there is still no understanding as to what the authority will do.”

    Georgie Porgies worried that European tax payers will fail to bail out his investments..
    ‘need a crisis’
    Where have we heard that before?

  17. Here’s an essay from American Thinker;
    Bottom of the ninth. Republicans are ahead by a run. Dems have the bases loaded with two outs. Boehner’s on the mound. Things don’t look good for the GOP. Whom will the Dems send up to hit? There’s a roar (and a groan) from the crowd as the pinch-hitter steps out of the dugout. It’s Obama!
    Of course, the roar is from the R’s and the groan is from the D’s, because everyone knows that a couple of curve balls from Boehner and Obama is toast. Strike three, game over.
    http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/09/obama_leaves_the_bases_loaded_dems_lose.html
    Stolen from Maggies Farm

  18. Neo-AGW Progress Report.
    Solyndra want a cracker of a bargain?
    H/T Our Enemy, The State.
    …-
    “Solyndra Looking for a Buyer
    Solyndra is for sale.
    The Fremont-based solar company, which shut down most of its operations last week and laid off 1,100 workers, announced in a bankruptcy filing Tuesday that it will spend the next four weeks looking for a buyer.
    A buyer would not have to repay the $527 million in loans backed by the federal government that Solyndra owes.
    Though Solyndra’s panels are estimated to have been installed on more than 1,000 commercial and industrial roofs in 20 countries, the company lost money on nearly every sale, the bankruptcy filing shows.
    In the filing, W.G. Stover, the company’s chief financial officer, wrote that Solyndra “was forced to reduce its average selling prices to remain competitive.” He said that Solyndra had sales of $142 million in 2010 but lost $329 million.”
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2774681/posts
    …-
    “Why did it take so long to uncover the green jobs racket?
    It seems like just a week or so ago when “green jobs” were still the rage. But in the wake of the Solyndra debacle, there is now a stampede to cough up the truth: It’s pretty much been a racket from the get-go. David Brooks is the latest to discover the scam:
    “A study by McKinsey suggests that clean energy may produce jobs for highly skilled engineers, but it will not produce many jobs for U.S. manufacturing workers.”
    It’s not like green jobs have been working up until now. Brooks, for example, cites a 2009 book written by a Harvard business professor on the poor results from government-supported entre­pre­neur­ship. (It’s an oxymoron, actually.) It seems government is also very bad at figuring out when it is wasting money.
    In this regard, the Obama administration has been edifying. It turns out that government, aside from growing the federal bureaucracy, is really bad at creating jobs out of thin air. There’s not so many shovel-ready jobs, after all. Rather than do the things that Brooks refers to as “table-setting” (“funding academic research, establishing clear laws, improving immigration policies, building infrastructure and keeping capital gains tax rates low”), government has been either inert or counterproductive.
    Green jobs, like any federal program, stick around as a plaything of government well past they’ve been shown to be a failure. That is the nature of government — a constituency forms, agencies are set up, and lobby groups arise.
    The lesson should not be simply that government can’t create green jobs; rather, it is that government spending is a hugely inefficient way to promote job growth.”
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2774675/posts

  25. PET Cemetery Report: Mohammedanism, aka Islamicism.
    “*To Bob Rae, however, there is more to dealing with terrorism than changing the law.”
    “Bob Rae blasts Harper ‘jihadis'”
    http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Politics/2011/02/24/17396346.html
    …-
    *Liberal leader Basement Bob Rae is a nephew of Red Terror’s Mao Stlong.
    “*Harper’s ‘Islamicism’ quip draws heavy opposition fire”
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/harpers-islamicism-quip-draws-heavy-opposition-fire/article2156458/

  26. Gorebull & Choo-Choo & O, all “winners”, all “laureates”, do not even receive honourable mention. Why is that?
    “It was drafted after an American environmental group approached the organization that represents six of the seven living female peace prize laureates.”
    …-
    “Noble Peace Prize winners ask Obama not to approve oilsands pipeline”
    “Nine winners of the Nobel Peace Prize have written a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama asking him not to approve a pipeline that would ship oilsands crude from Alberta south to Texas.”
    http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/breakingnews/noble-peace-prize-winners-ask-obama-not-to-approve-oilsands-pipeline-129382408.html

  27. “The Marcus Hook plant is where NASCAR racing fuel is produced.”
    O’s Revenge.
    See O’genda*.
    …-
    “Blame The Democrats For Sunoco Closings”
    “Sunoco announced, Sept. 6, that it will be closing its refineries in Philadelphia and Marcus Hook next July if it can’t find a buyer for them.
    Sunoco CEO and Chairman Lynn Elsenhans said the refineries have lost $772 million since 2009, which not coincidentally is the first year of the Zerobama Administration.
    It will be unfair to pin all the blame on President Zero, however. First year Congressman Pat Meehan, a Republican, has been practically screaming that this was going to happen since he took office, Jan. 3, while his Democrat predecessor Joe Sestak; and Democrat Chaka Fattah, whose 2nd District includes the Philadelphia plant; and Democrat Bob Brady, whose 1st District borders both facilities and includes many of the workers, have been silent partners in Obama’s plan to wreak economic ruin when they were not loudly marching in lockstep with it.
    So blame the Democrats and remember to shake the hand of Meehan, who has still not surrendered on saving the plants.
    By the way, the massive new unemployment that will result from the closings — the Marcus Hook plant has about 600 workers while the facility in southwest Philly has about 800 — may not even be biggest problem. What does one do with 2,200 idle acres of tanks, towers and hazardous waste?
    The Philadelphia plant is 1,400 acres while the Delaware County facility weighs in at 788.”
    http://blog.billlawrenceonline.com/2011/09/07/blame-the-democrats-for-sunoco-closings.aspx
    …-
    *O’genda:
    “4:45 pm || Honors Jimmie Johnson’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Championship”
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2774766/posts

  28. Government ineptitude – an American perspective.
    A clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year at 15 mpg uses 800 gallons of gas a year.
    A vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480 gallons of gas a year.
    So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year.
    The government claims 700,000 clunkers have been replaced so that’s 224 million gallons saved per year.
    That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil.
    5 million barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption.
    More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $70 per barrel costs about $350 million dollars.
    So, the government paid $3 billion of our tax dollars to save $350 million.
    We spent $8.57 for every $1.00 we saved.
    Not to mention the interest on the new debt incurred and additional insurance costs.
    I could go on but won’t.
    Can anyone think of anything, just anything, that government has done well? And when you come up short, please help me understand why people keep asking them to do more of the same.

  29. http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/09/07/russian-jets-could-top-f-35s-report/
    F35, dead before it even leaves the ground.
    Canada’s next generation of fighter jets won’t fare well in dogfights against newer Russian planes, says a report in an online forum. The story, based on an anonymous source who claims to have seen a presentation to an unnamed NATO country, says the F-35 “would be consistently defeated by the Russian-made SU-35 fighter aircraft.” Canada has already committed to buying $9 billion F-35s.

  30. A message from the Hope Party*:
    “As writ drops, Ontario Liberals, Tories and NDP place bets on fear”
    http://www.jacksnewswatch.com/
    …-
    *Place your bets on Hope*:
    “Hope* is charming, lively, blue-eyed wench, & I am always glad of her company,”.
    Charles Lamb

  32. Tequila Sheila to run for President of the Liberal Party. She was one of the elitists assuring doom for Canada if the Charlottetown Accord was rejected by referendum.
    “After the election and when the prime minister said that he was out to destroy the Liberal party and get rid of it altogether,” she told Postmedia News, “I thought it’s the time for all good Liberals to step up and do what we can to keep the country centred.”
    Liberals will vote in January on a new president.
    http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/09/07/copps-seeks-liberal-party-presidency/

  33. In today’s Washington Post, Richard Cohen has a piece “Barack Obama Has Lost the Hamptons.” So sad.

  34. explain to me again why ‘bama felt it necessary to rearm al-qaeda and hezbollah ???
    CNN Report: Up To 20K Advanced Surface-To-Air Missiles Looted In Libya, “We’ve Seen Cars Packed With Them”…
    (CNN) — A potent stash of Russian-made surface-to-air missiles is missing from a huge Tripoli weapons warehouse amid reports of weapons looting across war-torn Libya.
    They are Grinch SA-24 shoulder-launched missiles, also known as Igla-S missiles, the equivalent of U.S.-made Stinger missiles.
    A CNN team and Human Rights Watch found dozens of empty crates marked with packing lists and inventory numbers that identified the items as Igla-S surface-to-air missiles.
    The list for one box, for example, written in English and Russian, said it had contained two missiles, with inventory number “Missile 9M342,” and a power source, inventory number “Article 9B238.”
    Grinch SA-24s are designed to target front-line aircraft, helicopters, cruise missiles and drones. They can shoot down a plane flying as high as 11,000 feet and can travel 19,000 feet straight out.
    Peter Bouckaert, Human Rights Watch emergencies director, told CNN he has seen the same pattern in armories looted elsewhere in Libya, noting that “in every city we arrive, the first thing to disappear are the surface-to-air missiles.”
    He said such missiles can fetch many thousands of dollars on the black market.
    “We are talking about some 20,000 surface-to-air missiles in all of Libya, and I’ve seen cars packed with them.” he said. “They could turn all of North Africa into a no-fly zone.”

  35. Taliban Jack LaytoNDP said, “Hope is better than fear.”
    The other mots from Jack were ’bout love, er anger, er ’bout Jack.
    …-
    “Blow All Tanks”
    “Two articles, one in the Atlantic and the other in the Washington Post, suggest that a sense of crisis has finally struck home and ‘gone mainstream’ as the saying goes. Both are long pieces based on anecdotes. The Atlantic’s is called “Profiles of the Jobless: The ‘Mad As Hell’ Millennial Generation”. The other, from the Washington Post, is called “It’s no longer Obama-land in the Hamptons”.”
    “If the Atlantic piece were written a century ago it would have been authored by Wilfred Owen. It’s an ‘anthem for doomed youth’, who are marching not to the machine guns but towards decades of underemployment and probable professional extinction. What they face is the destruction of their human capital, the wastage of their potential, the loss of a chance to both learn and earn more with each year. Gone were the unlimited vistas of former generations. Instead they were looking, at best, at an endless stretch of make-work punctuated only by infrequent and subsistence paychecks.
    The subheads tell the story. “I want to blame the universities and grown-ups who should have known better. Instead, like my me-first generation, I blame myself.” “Serving people drinks was more rewarding than this full-time job, and it is killing me inside.” “Serving people drinks was more rewarding than this full-time job, and it is killing me inside.” “I truly regret what’s happening to the Millennial generation but the world shifted out from under them.” “My daughter and I are looking for a job at the same time.” “After hundreds of applications for assistant positions, I received zero calls back.” “I think we’ll go down as a Lost Generation.” “The Baby Boomers’ entire lives have been all take and no give.” etc, etc, etc.
    In other words it is bad news.
    The people voicing these woes aren’t the Billy Bob Zombies of the previous post. The guys bemoaning their fate are the Golden Youth; the people who expected to inherit the world.”
    http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2011/09/07/blow-all-tanks/#more-16969

  38. O’f O’narcissist*.
    “They are totally disheartened and demoralized. They now think it is all pointless and meaningless.”
    “*This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder.”
    Commenter at “Blow All Tanks” (see above):
    “3. wws
    Not many of the Faithful will openly renounce the faith – but I’ve noticed, especially starting this summer, that my once reliably liberal relatives and acquaintences seem to all have become extremely apolitical. They simply don’t want to talk about it at all. They’ll talk about sports, or weather, or entertainment, but politics they are just dropping out of. They don’t want to hear about it, period.
    Not only will they almost certainly not vote in the next election, I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them don’t show up to vote for several elections, if ever again. They are totally disheartened and demoralized. They now think it is all pointless and meaningless.”
    http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2011/09/07/blow-all-tanks/#more-16969
    …-
    *O’narcissist:
    “The “small people”, the “rank and file”, the “loyal soldiers” of the narcissist – his flock, his nation, his employees – they pay the price. The disillusionment and disenchantment are agonizing. The process of reconstruction, of rising from the ashes, of overcoming the trauma of having been deceived, exploited and manipulated – is drawn-out. It is difficult to trust again, to have faith, to love, to be led, to collaborate. Feelings of shame and guilt engulf the erstwhile followers of the narcissist. This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder.”
    http://www.globalpolitician.com/25109-barack-obama-elections

  39. Neo-AGW Progress Report.
    Gorebull “castigated Obama personally”.
    It’s O’gOreibblegate.
    Gorebull’s stinger: “Gore’s most stinging rebuke in the brief post came when he said: “President Obama appears to have bowed to pressure from polluters who did not want to bear the cost of implementing new restrictions on their harmful pollution,” saying the net result will be lung disease and asthma:”.
    Goreibble! Just Goreibble!
    …-
    “Al Gore accuses Barack Obama of bowing ‘to pressure from polluters'”
    “Al Gore makes a blunt public attack on the Obama administration for its failure to enforce stricter pollution standards”
    “If Barack Obama didn’t have enough on his plate – with the sagging economy, dismal employment figures and falling approval ratings – on Wednesday he also endured an unusual and highly public rebuke from Al Gore over environmental policy.
    The former US vice president turned environmental campaigner published a blog on his official website, entitled “Confronting disappointment,” that castigated Obama personally for pulling the Environmental Protection Agency off the trail of enforcing tougher emissions standards.”
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2011/sep/07/al-gore-barack-obama-attack
    P.S.:
    “Donate your Facebook account to Al Gore”

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