Breaking News from the NHL… Gary Bettman is now speaking about the status of the negotiations between the owners and NHL players association:

“Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blahblah blah blah blah blah, blablah blah blah blah blah. Blahblah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blahblah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah – bblah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah .”
[…]
“Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah.”

Bob Goodenow. NHLPA Executive Director responds;

“Beak beak beak beakbeak. Beak beak beak beak beak beak, “Blah blah blah blah”. Beak beak beak, beak beak beak beak beak beak beak beak, beakbeak beak beak beak – beak beak! Beak beak beakbeak beak beak beak beak beak. Beakbeak. “

Yawn.

Climate Control Bureau senior policy adviser and Environment Canada spokesman Burns Coutts*(link now dead) gets a 5 year jumpstart on the One-Tonne Challenge.
*Dorothy Halton [,,,] was found strangled to death in her condo. She was an emergency room physician who was described by her friends and family as compassionate, energetic and talented. Her ex-boyfriend, Burns Coutts, a senior policy advisor with Environment Canada, was charged with first-degree murder. (December 2004)
Hat tip – Kevin Jaeger

Federal Gun Registry – $2 billion
Official Bilingualism – (another) $750 million
“Queen” Adrienne – $19 million
Sheila Copps “free” flags – $15.2 million
Leaky, combustable used submarines – swap for land lease in Alberta.
Search and rescue helicopters for crashed Snowbirds at 15 Wing Moose Jaw – $0

(Currently shopping for: tattoo equipment for Federal Prisons; new money launderers advertising agencies… )

Canada’s Strategy To Combat Terrorism : “Be proactive. Do not wait for threat to emerge. Announce preemptive surrender.”

Iraqis living in Canada and Germany face problems in taking part in next month’s elections because the two countries are worried that polling centres might be attacked, Iraq’s electoral commission said.

The Axis Of Appeasals.

The Canadian government told the IOM that “for security reasons it could not hold foreign elections on its territory”, Ayar said in a statement.
This could lead to a deal on voting arrangements for the country’s 36,000 Iraqis, most of whom live in or near Toronto, being delayed or even scuppered, he said.

Huh. Wasn’t that easy? If only we’d know about this “scupper Toronto votes” thing in time for the last federal election.
Then again, there aren’t any Libranos on the IOM ballots.

As revelations about the Oil-For-Blood compete with news about the sex abuse scandal by staff in Congo, comes this latest tidbit out of Kofi Annanland;

Today, Mbarushimana remains a free man, living in Paris. But there are troubling questions about his conduct in Rwanda a decade ago and the actions of the United Nations.��
“They killed on his orders,” says Tony Greig, an investigator with the International Criminal Tribunal. “They manned road blocks, they killed people, they got rewarded with cows and beer.”
Greig says eyewitnesses directly linked Mbarushimana to more than 30 murders, including killings of fellow U.N. workers.
[…]
So what did the United Nations do?
After learning of the allegations in 1999, the U.N. kept Mbarushimana on its payroll. In fact, when he was arrested for genocide, he was working for the U.N. in Kosovo – on a project to stop genocide.

Details of UNScam – the connection of Clinton pardonee Marc Rich, payments to Kofi Annan’s son, among others – are conveniently tracked at Friends of Saddam.
Via Instapundit

Well, think about this way – just maybe, after these east European prostitutes fresh faced bright young girls have worked a few years, and have a little nest egg built up, they’ll use it to pay their way through medical school and help to offset the doctor shortage in Canada.
It could happen!
And, just maybe, when she’s canned completed her work as Immigration Minister, Judy Sgro can apply her talents in a field she’s equally qualifed for. After all, she’s made all the right connections.
It could happen!

VISITS TO DRUDGE 11/23/04 – 009,461,140 IN PAST 24 HOURS

John Podhoretz reviews Alexander…

Oliver Stone’s Alexander, which opens today, isn’t just bad. It’s Springtime for Hitler bad. I haven’t guffawed this hard since I saw Airplane for the first time 24 years ago. This is one of the colossal catastrophes of all time. At a screening on Monday night, during the death scene of Alexander’s lover Hephaiston, people were screaming with laughter as Alexander made a big speech while, behind him in soft focus, Hephaiston went into a conniption fit and croaked. Plus, Angelina Jolie plays Alexander’s mother like she was Natasha from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. It’s almost worth seeing, but don’t, because if you’re like me and want to see OliverStone utterly destroyed for his artistic and political crimes, you will make sure not to contribute to the box-office coffers of what is sure to go down in the annals of moviedom as Heaven’s Gate with rampaging evil elephants (no, I’m not kidding).

If it’s that funny, I might just try to get out for that one.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all doing direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, apart from living in that stinking hole, which, all things considered, sucked the big black camel dick.”

(Hat tip, Head Beeb via Charles Macdonald.)

Brace yourself for the flood of disturbing photographs and film clips from this breaking scandal.

The United Nations is investigating about 150 allegations of sexual abuse by U.N. civilian staff and soldiers in the Congo, some of them recorded on videotape, a senior U.N. official said on Monday.
�
The accusations include pedophilia, rape and prostitution, said Jane Holl Lute, an assistant secretary-general in the peacekeeping department.

Oh. Did I say “breaking”?

Lute, an American, said there was photographic and video evidence for some of the allegations and most of the charges came to light since the spring.
[…]
In May the United Nations reported some 30 cases of abuse among peacekeepers in the northeastern town of Bunia, where half of the more than 10,000 soldiers are stationed.
Last month, one French soldier and two Tunisian soldiers were sent home, U.N. officials said. Three U.N. civilian staff were suspended.
The United Nations has jurisdiction over its civilian staff but troops are contributed by individual nations. Consequently, the world body has only the power to demand a specific country repatriate an accused soldier and punish him or her at home.

Listening to Rawlco radio as I type this. Something about Baghdad… Ozzy Osbourne’s house break in…
Perhaps someone should splice in some footage of US Marines or prison guards, in order to bring this story the coverage it deserves.

Discuss.

More Darwinian trainspotting, this time with more substantive results!

A French antinuclear protester was killed yesterday in eastern France when his leg was severed by a train carrying radioactive waste to Germany, officials said.

oh.. sweet irony…

Paramedics quickly cared for protester Sebastien Briat, 21, after the accident near the town of Avricourt, but he died on the way to a hospital, officials said. He had been surprised by the train while trying to chain himself to the tracks as part of a protest.

21? Probably a clean cull.

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

A Jeannette woman who was slightly injured after being struck by a train while walking along railroad tracks sued Norfolk Southern Corp. Thursday for failing to warn pedestrians that trains travel on tracks.
Patricia M. Frankhouser, of 910 Scott Ave., is seeking an unspecified amount inexcess of $30,000 from the Norfolk, Va., rail transport company for the Jan. 6 incident that left her with a broken finger, cuts on her hand and pain, according to the suit.
Greensburg attorney Harry F. Smail Jr., who represents Frankhouser, didn’t return a call seeking comment.
Within the filing, he argues that the railroad was negligent for failing to post signs warning “of the dangers of walking near train tracks and that the tracks wereactively in use.”

I’d argue that any client too stupid to pull of a proper self-inflicted locomotive injury isn’t worth representing.
hat tip – King of Fools

Looking for a solution to high local property taxes? Ungovernment your town.

Going out of business appeals to small places like Cooper, where only 145 people live. With no jobs and an aging population, the tax base is shrinking even though the costs of government keep rising. “It just got to be more than we could handle,” says Sue Dorsey. Dorsey says that’s why the 26 residents of Centerville let the state take over their affairs – everything from education to snow removal. “There was more to do and less people that wanted to do it,” says Dorsey. Centerville not only locked the door to city hall, it sold it for $3,500.

8 out of 9 small towns in Maine that have done this have seen a drop in property taxes.
Hat tip – Dr.Joyner

I suppose it was bound to happen. As Powerline notes, the Democrats are now trying to “redefine the meaning of close” in a last gasp attempt to avoid conceding defeat. In so doing, they risk convincing a good percentage of fair-minded Americans who had given them the benefit of the doubt over the Florida fiasco, that they might well be renamed the Lawyer Party Of Losers. At the core of this party is a group of people who are intellectually corrupt and emotionally immature. Little is going to change in Democratic Party fortunes until they are purged.
Hugh Hewitt has been unwavering in his optimism during the campaign, and as it turned out, he was closer to being right than nearly anyone else. Hewitt’s blog should be an example for our local talk radio hosts – he has done a marvellous job of connecting his show to the voices on the internet, and it has made him all the more influencial. He writes;

Pete Coors is a gentleman.� Trailing by less than 50,000 votes out of nearly 1.8 million and with 12% of Colorado’s precincts yet to be tallied, Pete nevertheless took a calm look at the numbers and called Ken Salazar to concede. Classy.
�
Contrast that with Tom Daschle, Tony Knowles and Betty Castor, and of course John Kerry.� No reasonable interpretation of the data in any of these races can give any of these candidates a win, but they are hanging on.
�
This is not the conduct of a great party, but it is also not surprising for the party of Michael Moore. What an example for the new democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps sleep will bring wisdom to this group.� Sleep, and a good hard look at what Al Gore has become.

Hugh also notices that the gain of 4 senate votes breaks the Democrats ability to filibuster presidential judicial nominees – their last power wedge is gone.
Other big losers are the mainstream media – how badly and how permanently their credibility has been harmed is too soon to tell, but the results – the highest all-time popular vote total, the first majority won since Bush Sr’s 1988 win – are a repudiation to the attempts to sway the election. The American public is “onto them”.
update: Saner heads prevail …. but as we are still awaiting the speech, there’s still time for one last flip-flop!

You heard it here third.

I love rock ‘n’ roll
So put another tube In the pneumothorax, Baby

A problem best solved with a bullet, I say.

Nicholas Packwood notices that the Guardian’s website has been Drudgealanched/Instalanched off line. For this:

“On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And S**’s law dictates he’ll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr – where are you now that we need you?”

Apparently overlooked by the leftist rag from across the pond – the targets of those three gunman so “needed” were none other than Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.