What’s Going on With Canadian Honeybees? (h/t Kevin B)

Marie Harf lifts off with another doozy.

Who’d a thunk it? It’s the ice that’s rising!

Second icebreaker sought for Great Lakes shipping

GREEN BAY – A brutal winter that slowed the start of the 2014 shipping season on the Great Lakes has one organization asking Congress for another heavy icebreaker.
The Lake Carriers’ Association said it would like to see a second vessel built to keep shipping lanes open on the lakes during harsh winter conditions. The group is requesting another ship similar to the Marinette Marine Corp.-built U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw.
“I want to stress that Lake Carriers’ Association and our members’ customers deeply appreciate the efforts of the U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards this past ice season,” James H.I. Weakley, president of the association, said in a news release. “It is clear that the ice conditions that prevailed last winter call for a reassessment of both nations’ icebreaking fleets.”..

The theme continued:

Great Lakes Freeze Cost Economy $705m, 3,800 Jobs [2013-14]

Great Lakes ice makes a leap after January cold snap [note map]
…
As of Thursday [Jan. 15], ice covered 34.1 percent of the Great Lakes, up from just 5.6 percent on Jan. 1, and 10.8 percent on Jan. 5 — the first day of a polar plunge that gripped most of the eastern U.S. for days to come.
“Last year, the Great Lakes were 21.2 percent ice-covered on Jan. 14, making this year’s ice cover 13 percent higher to date,”..

Not to be cynical but he had a Winchester 30-30, seven-round capacity, and slow re-load. See this twitter exchange. How many people could he have killed in any event before being killed himself?
As only to be expected none of our ace journos have noticed (nor would even know about) this simple fact. One wonders why the RCMP does not mention it.

Who would’ve thunk?!

The Beeb:

Imagine that: the BBC is more secretive than anybody

Mother Corpse:

CBC secrecy hurts its own cause

No worries! Clinton's sacrificing a virgin to Mount Kelud volcano. Afterwards, he'll buy her lunch. #climatechange @tan123 @mlhagood @Revkin

— Katewerk (@katewerk) February 18, 2014

More…

And still the sexiest man in Rock n Roll.

Fruits and vegetables are way more expensive than meat and poultry.
That, generally speaking, the poor is more obese than the rich.
A lot of couples adopt children, sometimes in spite of having their own, and treat them exactly like their own. (To me, this alone is a marker of a great people)
President doesn’t automatically become the richest person in the country.

1) Ontario.
A symptom:

Canada’s eroding auto industry

A cause:

Ontario drives manufacturers away with overpriced electricity [almost all the real news in the paper is in the business section]

2) The West:

Shale Storm Hits Canadian Gas
U.S. Gas Production Threatens Its Neighbor to the North

More from the WSJ this April.

China wants the space arm technology and the Swiss want a launch and recovery site.
Both to do exactly the same thing.

They have a bit of trouble over their own debts.
Just one more reason to grant the Senate and WH a debt limit increase.
Via, Drudge

Well, forget most of what you were told…

…the standard accounts also omit to mention that the decision to use the hazardous chemical MIC was the Indian government’s, not Union Carbide’s; that government directives also required the building of larger rather smaller facilities; that the Indian government was also pursuing an affirmative action programme, replacing Union Carbide’s foreign experts in engineering and agricultural chemistry with locals; and, finally, that the decision to situate the chemical plant in the middle of a residential community was the Indian government’s, not Union Carbide’s, exacerbated by a re-zoning policy that included giving thousands of construction loans to encourage Indians to build their homes near the chemical plant…

h/t Adrian

Can you spot the #IDF soldiers in this photo? (Hint: there are 9!) twitter.com/IDFSpokesperso…

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) May 9, 2013

Just remember he’s one of those one percent too–at least for now.

The world according to Sir Alfred:

Hitchcock’s iconic horror film Psycho was supposed to be a comedy

I rather suspect it was the master being tongue-in-double-cheek. Just consider the course of the flick until one gets to the motel. Any tee hees?
Now “North by Northwest” does have that cheek fully puffed out.

Literally too. Foreign Policy’s “100 Top Global Thinkers 2012” (for quite a few of whom the word “thinker” would not first spring to mind). The world did not need more Canada this year–though maybe Mark Carney next.

The rest of the world is not just like us–and isn’t going to be.

The common theme about the US Embassy attacks are that they were based on an insult to Islam from a movie. I’m having some difficulty believing that.
Point a: Both attacks happened on September 11th.
Point b: It was a Tuesday
Point c: Al Qaeda flag at the Cairo embassy.
Point d: Libya and Egypt are volatile, but not hostile to the US.
I don’t think anyone can claim the September 11th date as an unhappy coincidence. The entire world knows the significance of it. For two attacks to happen on that date seems a little too organized for two different mobs to spontaneously generate.
Muslims riot on Fridays. Friday is the day they go to the mosque and get inflamed over the insult of the week as dictated by their spiritual leaders. Danish cartoon riots…3 Feb 2006…a Friday. For these to have happened on a Tuesday means that the organization for them was separate from religion.
Al Qaeda flag at the Cairo embassy. Very inflammatory and reinforces a link outside of the political or religious leadership in Egypt. This doesn’t implicate Al Qaeda though, there are other actors in the M.E. that would have no bones about implicating a vastly diminished Al Qaeda.
Libya, in general, has moved away from the dictatorship and away from religious fundamentalism. The Muslim Brotherhood lost the election in Libya. The majority of the populace supports the US. For the murders to have happened there go against the grain of the population. Egypt’s gov’t understands the importance to them of US support even if they are the Muslim Brotherhood. I can’t speak to the general population as I don’t know their feelings. I see these points as further proof that external factors contributed more to the events yesterday.
So, to me, the only question that remains is, what entity wants to diminish US influence on the Arab Street. There are only really three possible answers and one makes no sense: Iran, non-Iranian backed terrorists, and Israel. The last being the one that makes no sense.