Category: Uncategorized

Dear foolish Christians:

If your goal is to win the unchurched to Christ (rather than just displaying your smug self-righteousness for all the world to see) PLEASE do not name your website inquisition.ca
Congratulations: you have just doomed countless souls with your Pharasiacal pomposity. I can hear the unmistakable sound of hardening hearts all the way from Quebec:


Democracy in Action Calendar
Counter-demonstration : pro-choice
“Next Sunday, some reactionaries will be demonstrating in from of CHUQ in Ste.-Foy, to be in opposition to abortion and, most of all, to the right of women to make free choices. Conscious of the danger that this anti-feminist movement constitutes in the present context, we call for a massive demonstration of our opposition to this retrograde discourse by means of a pro-choice counter-demonstration.
“The reactionary demonstration on Sunday is organized by a small committee composed of Christian integrists [???] based in the west of the capital and supported by an anti-choice lobby (www.rvme.org). Presided over by Bernard Westerveld, pastor of the Reformed Church in Ste.-Foy, the main worker on the committee is Stefan Jetchick, one of the principal animators in Québec of the Christian Heritage Party and of the website www.inquisition.ca (yes! yes!) These people are dangerous. We refuse their religious delirium!”

Etc. etc.
You’re not supposed to make it harder for people to be good. Thanks for nothing, guys.

The Sound of Settle Science: Dirt

I wonder if the “models” accounted for dirt … likely not, as gool’ol dirt just ain’t as sexy as C02 or Ozone. Cleaning up ordinary pollution; something I can get behind:

The global warming debate has until now focused almost entirely on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, but scientists at the University of California – Irvine, suggest that a lesser-known problem – dirty snow – could explain the Arctic warming attributed to greenhouse gases.
Dirty snow is created when particulate matter from exhausts, smoke stacks, land use and forest-fires enters the atmosphere and infuses snow. Because dirty snow is darker than natural snow, it absorbs more sunlight and heat.

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crossposted @ Celestial Junk

The Canadian Way: tear down your heroes

It seems that some of the political and bureaucratic gremlins that infest Ottawa have been whispering in Bob Fife’s ear: Chief of Defence Staff General Rick Hillier has become too powerful, and must be put out to pasture. As expected, the government is denying the rumours – which they’d do no matter whether the story was accurate or not.
I know it’s like asking a tiger not to be striped, or a Liberal not to have his hand elbow deep in the public coffers, but I wish our political class could stop being political for a moment and look at what’s in the country’s best interests instead of looking after their own little pissing patch.
Because what they’d see is an officer that the soldiers love, a man who could say “Follow me!” as he kicked down the gates of Hell, and have every man and woman in the CF at his back. They’d see a leader, a rare and once endangered species at National Defence Headquarters.
If the politicians and the parasites who live off of them in Ottawa are indeed intent on tearing this man down, it’s because they’ve decided it’s in their own personal interests to do so, because by any objective measure, Rick Hillier has been the best CDS this country has had in my lifetime. Pushing him out might help them, but it certainly wouldn’t help the country.
If you’d like to help remind them of that, and of where their duty lies in this matter, feel free to participate in a little poll we have going over at The Torch. I’ll be sure to forward the results to the appropriate in-boxes in Ottawa.

More abortion clinics have been bombed on “Law & Order” than in real life

Or: Is Avi Lewis too dumb to really be Jewish?

Whether you’re on TV or debating some turtle-necked Harper’s type at a dinner party [or scrolling past the trolls in the SDA combox: ed.] , the phony rhetorical tit-for-tat is predictable. It doesn’t matter what Islamist barbarism is up for discussion, there is always someone willing to offer up some offsetting American sin — Hurricane Katrina, racism, fast-food culture, etc. — as proof that the United States is just as bad, or worse. (…)
“It’s not quite clear what Salutin means by ‘Western hypocrisy regarding gays’ given that in Iran, as in many Muslim countries, gays get whipped, stoned or executed; while in the West, they hop on floats and get feted in big urban parades. Nor have I any idea what he means about women. Or science.
“But that’s not the point is it? When you’re playing the equivalence game, you just spit the topics out and your target audience connects the dots based on some half-remembered Clinton-era factoid about abortion doctors…”

Aw, let’s not be too hard on aging hipster/mal vivant Rick Salutin. That line of bs was the only thing getting the boy well and truly laid for forty years now. It’s amazing what left wing women will sleep with, no?
Anyway, if America really was the ultra-violent nation that Michael Moore and his Euro-trash fanboys claim it is, O.J. Simpson would have been sniped in the skull on the courthouse steps.

The 5 Things I saw that make me support the war

Former gang member turned Marine and recipient of the Navy Cross expresses his thoughts after after returning from Iraq:

Liberals often like to say that “violence is senseless.”
That’s wrong.
Violence isn’t senseless. Senseless violence is senseless. And I should know. Before being awarded the Navy Cross and having the privilege of becoming a Marine, I was a gang member. Sometimes it takes having used violence for both evil as well as good to know that there’s a profound moral difference between the two.

Read the whole thing, but especially note this:

But if there was one lesson I learned from my past it is that there is a profound moral difference between using violence to destroy lives and using violence to save lives. Terrorists do the former; soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines do the latter.

Indeed they do. At least those on our side do.

If you’re not “aware” of AIDS by now, is it safe to say you’re pretty much retarded?

These concerts are really effective, huh?

“So far, the concerts have raised about $3 million to benefit AIDS awareness.
“An estimated 5.4 million South Africans are infected with the AIDS virus, more than any other country in the world. About 900 people die of the disease each day.”

So: was South Africa a safer, healthier nation under apartheid?
Discuss.

Ha! Gandhi can BITE us!

In a display of selfless solidarity and courage that will bring the Establishment to its arthritic knees and inspire oppressed people everywhere centuries hence, The Churches That Nobody Goes To Anymore (and their interfaith dupes) is organizing a one day fast to end the Iraq War.
Wow, will La-Z-Boys chairs be provided (like the ones at Gitmo…?)
As Simone Weil observed, there is nothing inherently holy about “waiting and fasting” — after all, any desperate gambler does as much.
Such self-aggrandizing, no-risk stunts, mounted by aging hippie leftists, make a mockery of the real discipline, courage and suffering displayed by 21-year-old grunts in the field, not to mention their Iraqi compatriots.

American exceptionalism: how can you doubt it?

Unfortunately, folks like these are increasingly outnumbered by those human threats to national security known as the “victims” of Katrina…
“Hey, listen, back to this health care issue with HillaryCare, I told your guy there, I’ve been taking care of my wife for over 20 years through a health care nightmare, 70 surgeries, both legs amputated and $6 million. Never once have we received a dime from the federal government. What we’ve done is we’ve made choices in our lives that we would take only jobs that would cover her, we would make career choices that would cover her, everything was geared toward what we would do to make sure that her health care and our access to insurance was preeminent in our lives. Why am I being asked to subsidize those who won’t make those kinds of responsible decisions? ”
“You go back and look at Ronald Reagan, he said, ‘Government exists to protect us from each other. It oversteps when it tries to protect us from ourselves.’ You probably have seen my wife. Mrs. Bush had her open up the second night of the Republican National Convention, her name is Gracie, and we work overseas and provide artificial legs to amputees in developing countries. We’ve gone on to achieve what this country sets out to help individuals achieve, which is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not life, liberty, and, hey, give us everything we want, get the shopping cart out and let’s go get it. It just rankles me that we are fostering a generation of people who will not take responsibility for their own lives.”
(…)
“Well, people assume that my wife is a liberal, because they assume that if you’re disabled and have all these things going on that obviously you’re a liberal, you’re disgruntled with the health care system. And when she stood up at the Republican National Convention (I think she’s the first disabled woman, by the way, or disabled person, to sing at any convention like this, disabled woman, Republican or Democrat), I think it shocked people because she’s not about taking handouts, she’s about, ‘Hey, look, I’m going to deal with the cards that I’ve been dealt with and live a productive life and live a life of meaning.’ It’s very frustrating to me to be in a position where we have to subsidize people who are not willing to make the kind of choices that she’s made.
“Now they’re looking at raising the poverty level up because we have so many people that are poor. Rush, we go to Africa. We put legs on people — we deal with people who — I saw a lady carry her husband in on her back into our clinic who was an amputee. We don’t understand poverty in this country.

The Sound of Settled Science: Chicken or Egg

Little by little the “concensus” that Anthropogenic Global Warming exists is being broken.
In what is becoming a death by a thousand cuts, AGW takes another hit:

A new peer-reviewed scientific study counters a major premise of global warming theory, concluding carbon dioxide did not end the last ice age.
The study, led by University of Southern California geologist Lowell Stott, concluded deep-sea temperatures rose 1,300 years before the rise in atmospheric CO2, which would rule out the greenhouse gas as the main agent of the meltdown.

cross-posted @ Celestial Junk
For newcomers to SDA, be sure to search the archives for “The Sound of Settle Science” or “Y2Kyoto” for a glimpse of what a thousand cuts look like. If load times are slow, try this or this.

Must Be the Bully in Me

I just can’t resist kicking this guy! I don’t know if it’s because of some “laytont” childhood need, or if it’s because he reminds me of those annoying bobble-heads people used to place in the back windows of their cars. With the advent of the hatchback, we don’t see many of those any more … unless that is if you’re unfortunate enough to turn on the Teli and watch another intellectually brilliant pronouncement from his eminence about sitting at the table of love and kisses to negotiate with the Taliban.
Update: Chuck Adler takes a kick at Layton’s Cat

Caution; Only for the Sturdy Hearted

As a guest blogger I hope I don’t overstep my bounds with the following post … as it is deeply disturbing.
If you are at all inclined to nightmares, or if you suffer from depression, paranoia, or even if you find Citoyen Dion to be disturbing in a sort of psychologically twisted way … DO NOT … I repeat … DO NOT … click the provided link.
If you’ve had a good day so far, I’ll apologize right now for ruining it … as what you are about to read may plunge you into weeks of depression or even psychosis.
CLICK
I suggest humbly, as a form of therapy, that you include your own “horrors” in the comments.
ht: Celestial Junk

From the Home Front

Here’s a series of posts from Celestial Junk … talking war:
I posted the following essay by Sgt. Eddie Jeffers several months ago. I reposted it again last week … why? … because Sgt. Jeffers was killed in Iraq:

I stare out into the darkness from my post, and I watch the city burn to the ground. I smell the familiar smells, I walk through the familiar rubble, and I look at the frightened faces that watch me pass down the streets of their neighborhoods. My nerves hardly rest; my hands are steady on a device that has been given to me from my government for the purpose of taking the lives of others …


We did Band of Mothers as well … it’s about the anti-Sheehan movement:

As I watched Cindy Sheehan and her misguided bunch in Crawford, Texas, she ignited in this mother my “protective instincts.” I raised three children myself and well, let’s just say “nobody ever messed with my kids!” I do not believe there is a force in this world stronger than a mother’s instinct to protect her children.

Then there’s the news … or lack of it:

What’s with this? Just this spring I could look forward to headlines like “Up to 200 Killed in Baghdad Bombs” … or, “Violence in Iraq Up Despite Surge” or, how about items like “Civilian Toll in Iraq May Top 1M”. You’d think Iraq dropped off the map; you’d think that just like that, over night, the quagmire had disappeared. And worst of all … I mean worst of all, is this crap about Ramadi … oh Puhlease, as if.

Put your links to The War in the comments … Islamic Terrorism; Iraq; Afghanistan; and of course our favorite dandy … Citoyen Dion.
May I suggest starting at The Torch or Mudville Gazette for great bits and pieces.

The DNC Needs Your Help

With Bumper Stickers

What’s So Great About America?
We Need Your Money More Than You Do.
Fighting Back Against Terrorism Is Too Hard.
The Decline and Fall of the West Is Inevitable Anyway.
Maybe al-Qaeda Will Be Gracious in Victory.
Everything’s Free if You Force Someone Else to Pay For It.
There’s Still Some Silverware Left in the White House.

Please be kind enough to show your support in the comments.
Cross-posted @ Cjunk

I Believe in Evolution

Let’s go back to the beginning:

Division of the human family into two distinct groups began some 12,000 years ago. Humans existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunter/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains in the summer and would go to the beach and live on fish in winter.
The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented by Man to get to the beer. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups: Liberals and Conservatives.

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Support for Afghan Mission Falls

NOT:

Canadian support for the military mission in Afghanistan remains surprisingly stable, including in Quebec, despite the loss of three soldiers from that province in the past week, a new CanWest News Service/Global National poll suggests.
Conducted by Ipsos Reid, the poll found 51 per cent of respondents across the country said they support the mission, while 45 per cent oppose it. The numbers remained virtually unchanged from a month ago.

I know that many of you disagree with me when I say that DND and the PMO have done a horrible job of explaining the mission to Canadians; but imagine the support, were our government to regularly inform us of the tremendous progress being made.

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