I didn’t know meth was a vegetable.

Via email;

“On October 5, 2005, the Canadian Government led at the time by the Liberals, took their first steps in court to seize the home of Bruce and
Donna Montague. This was done in response to their constitutional challenge of Canada’s failed “gun control laws”. Is this any less terrorism and tyranny? You might expect this to happen in some backwater third world country but this is taking place right now in Ontario, Canada!
For more details, click on www.brucemontague.ca
To help in the fight to eliminate Bill C68, there is an online petition here.

There were a few tense moments;

[…] including an encounter involving Joshua Sparling, 25, who was on crutches and who said he was a corporal with the 82nd Airborne Division and lost his right leg below the knee in Ramadi, Iraq. Mr. Sparling spoke at a smaller rally held earlier in the day at the United States Navy Memorial, and voiced his support for the administration’s policies in Iraq.
Later, as antiwar protesters passed where he and his group were standing, words were exchanged and one of the antiwar protestors spit at the ground near Mr. Sparling; he spit back.

“If they’re gonna support us, support us all the way.”

At CJunk – Open Season

The Great Leap Forward.
The Killing Fields.
Rabble.
h/t

Showing at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, a “smart”, “eloquent” film of “visual poetry” about “thresholds”.
Because it’s not really porn if the horse wears a body suit*
More, in the comments

Social conservatives have been warning about the normalization of pedophilia, bestiality etc for years. As usual, we are dismissed as hysterical cranks.
Then when we turn out to be right yet again, the same people will tell us to “lighten up” and “get with it.”
As surely as night follows day.
There will be a bestiality themed tv series on HBO within the next 5 years and it will win a bunch of Emmy Awards. You heard it here first.
signed, the Hysterical Crank.

Probing deeper into “The love that dare not comb its mane”… Jesusland lags behind an enlightened Europe.

Of John Baird’s growing list of successes on the global warming file, comes more news of a turnaround further south;

Arnold Schwarzenegger signed anti-warming legislation on September 27. Rather than risk prison or the Governator’s wrath, California’s climate is aggressively complying with Schwarzenegger’s new rules.

Well, now that that’s been taken care of, I’m calling Carol Skelton’s office to see if she can put in a good word for an Order In Council authorized warming spell.

I wasn’t going to link this, despite several private emails about it. But on second reading, I can’t help but think this bit of “speculation” from a member of the Canadian progressive blogging community reads more like a confession than it does an accusation. So, let him wear it.
Now, returning to the surreal world…

Whatcott’s exploits caught up with him when he handed out flyers, revealing that Saskatchewan’s leading gay magazine, Perceptions, had published an advertisement for a man seeking a relationship with a boy. Whatcott distributed his flyers with the photocopied ad in Regina and Saskatoon, warning that the magazine was freely available to children in public libraries.
“I put very little of my own commentary. The ads spoke for themselves. For that I was fined”–in total, $17,500, Whatcott says. And, ironically, more was read into his flyers than was actually there, he says. “I’ve never said all homosexuals are pedophiles. That’s simply not true. But certainly I wanted to show what Saskatchewan’s largest homosexual magazine was up to.” Four recipients of Whatcott’s flyer saw things differently, however, and complained to the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, with three of them subsequently netting $5,000 each and the fourth $2,500, to assuage their hurt feelings.

(free registration required)

Bryan Jones, director of the Center for American Politics and Public Policy* (University of Washington) on the problem of moving gun control legislation forward in the United States;

“I hate to say it but it’s going to take the kind of massacre that kills lots of children. That’s the only way we are going to see progress.”

“I have witnessed women living without what is fundamental… “

Now, before clicking the link, see if you can name those six things….

A million-dollar stone sculpture, intended to remind future generations of the Earth’s fragility, made its point a bit early _ just three months after its unveiling, it collapsed.
The 175-ton “Spaceship Earth” lay in ruins at Kennesaw State University after mysteriously falling to pieces last week.
The engraved phrase “our fragile craft” was still visible amid the debris.
“Kind of ironic,” said Mary-Elizabeth Watson, a university employee. “I had no idea it was made up of so many pieces.”
[…]
“How can stone collapse by itself?” [Finnish-born sculptor who goes by one name] Eino asked. “I’m devastated.”

Even more ironic – the notion that we should heed symbolic messages from people who are paid a million bucks to stick rocks together… and fail.

(h/t Maz2 in the comments.)

They picked a bad day to quit being the minority party.

It’s the one night of the year that the smoke in the air smells like cognac.

You just knew the day would come when the term “politically incorrect” would spawn young of its own;

I’m still attempting to absorb the news that Canada has an “Institute of Portrait Artists”.

More – the Kurds are likewise, unimpressed.

A women’s 800 meter runner has failed a gender test, stripped of the silver medal in Asian games.

The Indian Olympic Association said Monday it has been told by the Olympic Council of Asia that the 25-year-old runner was disqualified.
“IOA has asked the Athletic Federation of India to return the medal as desired by the Olympic Council of Asia,” the Indian Olympic group said.
The IOA also asked its medical commission to inquire into Sounderajan’s case and report within 10 days.
There are no compulsory gender tests during events sanctioned by track and field’s international ruling body, but athletes may be asked to take a gender test. The medical evaluation panel usually includes a gynecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist and internal medicine specialist.

But there’s always hope, honey – can you ride a bike?

… the commitment of the “progressive” left towards helping the poor and underprivileged in society stops well short of their wallets;

The book’s basic findings are that conservatives who practice religion, live in traditional nuclear families and reject the notion that the government should engage in income redistribution are the most generous Americans, by any measure.
Conversely, secular liberals who believe fervently in government entitlement programs give far less to charity. They want everyone’s tax dollars to support charitable causes and are reluctant to write checks to those causes, even when governments don’t provide them with enough money.
Such an attitude, he writes, not only shortchanges the nonprofits but also diminishes the positive fallout of giving, including personal health, wealth and happiness for the donor and overall economic growth.
All of this, he said, he backs up with statistical analysis.
“These are not the sort of conclusions I ever thought I would reach when I started looking at charitable giving in graduate school, 10 years ago,” he writes in the introduction. “I have to admit I probably would have hated what I have to say in this book.”
Still, he says it forcefully, pointing out that liberals give less than conservatives in every way imaginable, including volunteer hours and donated blood.

Let the squawking begin.

Prometheus;

More than anything else, even the misrepresentations themselves, the collective willingness to overlook bad policy arguments unsupported (or even contradicted) by the current state of science while at the same time trumpeting the importance of scientific consensus is evidence of the comprehensive and pathological politicization of science in the policy debate over global warming. If climate scientists ever wonder why they are looked upon with suspicion among some people in society, they need look no further in their willingness to compromise their own intellectual standards in policy debate on the issue of disasters and climate change.

Follow the link for the details. Roger Pielke, Jr. directs the University of Colorado’s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research and is an associate professor of environmental studies.

This morning at Drudge:

VIDEO: KERRY WARNS STUDENTS: EDUCATE YOURSELF, OR YOU’LL GET STUCK IN IRAQ…
VIDEO: BUSH: KERRY COMMENTS ‘INSULTING AND SHAMEFUL’…
Iowa candidate asks Kerry to cancel visit…
*Kerry Pulls Out Of Minnesota Appearance…
**No Casey/Kerry In Philly…
TN Harold Ford asks Kerry to apologize…
MORE DEMS PILE ON…
VIDEO: IMUS TO KERRY: ‘Please stop it. Stop talking. Go home, get on the bike’…

The joke gone wrong spin isn’t flying. Because it doesn’t make sense. From “Jummy”, in the comments at Hot Air ;

of course, a shorter route to disproving kerry’s spin is to try to parse bush into kerry’s statement:
“education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you [may become a president who get’s our country] stuck in Iraq.”
i mean, honestly.

And, that’s not all. IMAO Exclusive: John Kerry Testifies About Troop Stupidity Before Congress
Powerline examines the popular mythology that the US military is recruited from the poor and stupid of America. (The “soldier-victim of the rich and powerful” stereotype fits nicely with that other false construct of the left – the characterization of soldiers as “children”.)

The stereotype of the poor, dumb soldier is firmly entrenched among liberals of the Vietnam era. We often see it repeated by younger liberals today, even though the stereotype has no application whatever to our current volunteer army, which is demonstrably equal, at least, to the civilian population in talent and accomplishment.
Why are liberals so determined to hang on to these discredited stereotypes of the past? I suspect it is because the young men and women who serve in the armed forces are a constant reproach to liberals’ facile, politically-motivated pronouncements on foreign policy. Iraq is a disaster (never mind that I voted for it)! But the young men and women who are stationed there don’t think so. They re-enlist in remarkable numbers; a large majority believe in their mission; and they are working hard, risking their lives, and making considerable progress on many fronts. So it’s helpful for liberals to think: what do they know? They’re only soldiers–they must be dumb!

This analysis by the Heritage Foundation dispels that notion in its entirety;

In summary, the additional years of recruit data (2004–2005) sup­port the previous finding that U.S. military recruits are more similar than dissimilar to the American youth population. The slight dif­ferences are that wartime U.S. mil­itary enlistees are better educated, wealthier, and more rural on aver­age than their civilian peers.
Recruits have a higher percent­age of high school graduates and representation from Southern and rural areas. No evidence indicates exploitation of racial minorities (either by race or by race-weighted ZIP code areas). Finally, the distri­bution of household income of recruits is noticeably higher than that of the entire youth population.
Demographic evidence discredits the argument that a draft is necessary to enforce representation from racial and socioeconomic groups. Addition­ally, three of the four branches of the armed forces met their recruiting goals in fiscal year 2005, and Army reenlistments are the highest in the past five years. A draft is not necessary to increase the size of the active-duty forces. Our analysis using Pentagon data on wartime volunteers effectively shatters the case for reinstating the draft.

Finally, this post at The Torch touched on “the myth of the unlettered grunt” last month;

While higher education as an ideal has lagged within the CF until recently, strategic planning is a fairly specific skill set, and one which the military takes great pains to develop in a staff officer. Not only do many of the senior officers (and I mean that precisely: Major through Colonel and their naval equivalents) I know personally have post-grad degrees, they have real-life experience applying the academic to the practical in some of the most rigourous circumstances imaginable. They don’t set up shop in the ivory towers of academia, they learn for the express purpose of applying their knowledge.

Update – The apology isn’t flying, either.

Commentor “Shane” spots the plot flaw;

You can’t tell people the good news after they are dead!

London Fog;

That Union Thug who harassed and marginalized me at the late war protest — physically denying my right to peacefully photograph a public event in a public place — turns out to be Gil Warren, the Vice President of the NDP London-North-Centre riding association.
[…]
# Aggressively demanding my identity as the price of peacefully going about my business;
# Physically preventing me from going about said peaceful business of taking photographs in a public place;
# Shouting ridiculous accusations of me being a CIA or CSIS agent (now why would an NDP vice president have anything to worry about on that score, even if I were one?);
# Ascribing my odious views to my blue eyes and white skin;
# Equating the killing of Taliban with the murder of raped women by Taliban.