He may garner some of that Silicon Valley vote.
Crappy move by MassMutual Financial Group. ‘Knowledge transfer’.

Anyone who follows MP Michelle Rempel on Twitter knows that she has an affinity for wine. I share that enjoyment. (and for craft-beer, being an all-grain home-brewer)
You would also have noticed that she has been advocating strongly for the Canadian wine industry in recent weeks. Being unaware of any problems in the Canadian Wine industry, I was curious what the issues were, so I asked her. She pointed me to this Global News report. So, as gathered from that, she’s advocating for strict country of origin laws regarding grapes and grape juice.
This after the US Congress was nice enough to eliminate their Country of Origin labels on Alberta Beef. Nice!
Course anyone who actually cares about wine would immediately ask, isn’t that what VQA Ontario and the BC Wine Authority ensures. The VQA statutes state the VQA label be prominently displayed on the same face as the front label. What’s the problem here?
Well, apparently it is an issue. Instead of telling people what VQA is, we should run to the gov’t and have them lawfully sanction those Canadian businesses looking to just sell wine.
So, Michelle, consider this a public service announcement.
Buy this:

There, now we don’t need more stupid gov’t regulations on successful industries to make up for uninformed and uncaring buyers.

This is what the FBI wants from Apple.
The FBI wants Apple to create an image of the OS that allows them access to that specific device. The software image only has to bypass Apples device protection from brute-force password cracking attempts. This can be done at Apple’s facilities or the gov’t and if at the company then they must provide the government access to the device.
The devil is in the last part. It shouldn’t be too difficult to bypass the built-in brute-force protection but in order to do so Apple will give the FBI a system diff of the bypass. The FBI teams should be able to reverse engineer this to create an in-house version.
This is the top 10 countries using Apple’s products.
Now you know why Apple is balking.

The head of the group representing lobbyists across the country says recent directives from Lobbying Commissioner Karen Shepherd regarding lobbyist-hosted receptions could negatively affect an important source of input for government officials.

This lobbyist said that the giving of gifts to government officials, for the most part, is a throwback to 1950s-style lobbying. Yet, he said buying someone a coffee or a meal, or things that are “standard business courtesy,” should not be restricted.
“If I invite you for coffee and pay for the coffee, that’s just common courtesy,” he said. “No one’s going get bought off a coffee; it’s stupid.”

It’s not supposed to make sense. It’s supposed to demonstrate that no one trusts lobbyists, “gov’t officials” or politicians.
As a side note, the headline writer should be taken out back of the wood shed for using the word, ‘czar’.

Or maybe it’s just the cynic in me.

It was the tears, wasn’t it?
It will be interesting to see if the people the the fiscal conservatives, libertarians, tea-party put in place actually vote their constituents wishes or if it’s just more of the same.

You broke it, you bought it. Some people are more equal than others.

People “should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful,” Yuhas fumed recently on social media. “We pay significant property taxes based on where we live,” he added in an interview. “And, no, we’re not all equal when it comes to water.”

The utopia of failed social states continues unabated.

It isn’t just the U.K. that’s going to have to restructure because of this American intelligence failure.

China doesn’t like freedom. After the attack is done, I “trust” the various developers will be comparing checksums and going over the diffs of their code with a fine-tooth comb.
Here at SDA we use a reverse Great Firewall, I block each and every network block originating in China. 99% of the spam we used to receive originated from there, now it doesn’t.

US focused but valuable all the same.

At The Gods of the Copybook Headings:

…We as a nation deserve whatever a random Islamist or organized Jihadist group decides to serve up. After all we bombed their countries why should we be exempt from the price of war? Except that the murderer in question, I don’t intend on using his name, was a native born Canadian of partial Quebecois descent. He is not a foreigner he is one of us. His homeland was not attacked, his country was not bombed and his immediate family was not killed by the Canadian military. The only relationship was one of religion. Some of his coreligionists on the other side of the world, some violent and some peaceful, have been killed in a war by Canadian forces.
It is exceedingly odd that people who otherwise scoff at religion should be so sympathetic to such deep, albeit perverse, religious sensibilities…
These contradictions exist only if you miss the one consistent element. It does not matter what, when, how or why, all that matters is the who. The Western nations are always villians and all others must be victims…

“These encounters INCLUDE 13 SUBJECTS WITH TERRORIST-RELATED RECORDS [Emphasis Added] who have utilized this method of circumventing designated POEs.”
And Canadian Border Services? What’s up with you?

“Sources in the airlines said the slipping away of the PIA air hostesses highlighted the lack of discipline in the airlines and proper training.”

Don’t worry, Brian, your ‘legacy’ is safe.

Two articles today on CBC’s bias…except they aren’t from the usual suspects.
Now, I doubt that the CBC has an editorial bias in favour of the oil sands, but you know, there’s only one way to be sure.
Via Norman Spector.

Usually, I’m loathe to believe anything a non-Western country says. However, I’ve become a lot more cynical about the US recently.

The nonpaper deals with such important details as the operation of a joint commission to oversee how the deal is implemented and Iran’s right to continue nuclear research and development during the next several months, he said.

vs.

[Updated 8:45 p.m. Jan. 13: A State Department spokeswoman, Marie Harf, denied later Monday that there was any secret agreement.

Via Drudge

The irony.

What about the Republicans? Christie burned a lot of bridges in that debate, and in his embrace (literally) of Obama in those final days of the 2012 election. Ironically, it’s the Obama administration that is widening its probe into the use of those funds now. Don’t expect too many Republicans to rush to Christie’s side in this fight, except to point out that the $2.2 million difference between the two advertising campaign proposals amounts to 0.041% of the porkfest Barack Obama and Chris Christie demanded from Congress for Sandy relief.

Hurricane Sandy ended Mitt Romney’s presidential bid, now it’ll end Christie’s.

The right signals from the West. Well done, President Obama.
The ChiComs are not our friends.