Actually, it does kinda look like Saskatchewan.
We’re at the halfway point on a show cluster in Topeka, Kansas and it’s “so far, so good”. Venus is extending her points lead for “top bitch” nicely, and a client’s dog will go home with a new championship title.
And for those who keep pestering me for photos – here is the ungrateful creature who has hijacked your blog mistress, in the group ring in Calgary (taken earlier this month).
Thanks once again to the guest bloggers who have so ably filled in the gaps for us. Another 8 weeks or so and we should be able to call it a year.
Reader Tips
Prompted by a lyrical snippet posted last night by SDA commenter Eskimo, here’s Stompin’ Tom Connors’s 1973 classic The Consumer.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.
It’s Probably Nothing
A telling sign of how bad things have gotten for the housing industry: Prices have dropped more since the recession started, on a percentage basis, than during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
But Glenn Beck Is The Crazy One
Having studied the Middle East professionally for 35 years, written or edited more than 40 books on the region, and having a PhD in Middle East history, let me make it perfectly clear: Glenn Beck, who is holding several rallies in Israel this week, has a better grasp of Middle East politics than most Western experts, not to mention Western leaders.
Via Kathy Shaidle
Are All CBC Drones Passive Aggressive?
Ezra Levant clearly pushes the buttons of a few folks:
h/t Matt from Mississauga
“So why the rush to the polls?
This is interesting. – “Now, will the Ottawa Press Gallery go after Weston like they did similarly to the NP’s Christie Blatchford for her column yesterday?”
h/t Marina
Have Canadian Booksellers Finally Smartened Up?
A long standing pet peeve of mine has been the unwillingness of Canadian booksellers to acknowledge the fact that the Canadian dollar is no longer worth 30 – 40% less than its U.S. counterpart. Even though the two currencies have been around par since March 2010, booksellers north of the border have been pulling a Deaf, Dumb, & Blind act similar to this.
I was therefore most pleasantly surprised, when I went to order Mark Steyn’s latest book, to discover this:
Canadian Price:
American Price:
Trick Or Treat!
h/t Brad
No Blunt Truth, or, the Fourth Man Forgiven…
…by the Beeb, natch:
When will the BBC ever tell the truth about Anthony Blunt?
Charles Moore reviews an edition of The Reunion (Radio 4) that focused on the disgraced art critic and his treachery...
The Reunion propagated the theory that spying for the Soviets in the Thirties and Forties was nothing worse than an excess of zeal. This is a shocking untruth. Hitler and Stalin were moral equivalents. Indeed, at the time when Blunt signed up for the Soviet Union, Stalin had actually killed far more people than Hitler because the Führer was only just getting into his stride. The BBC would (rightly) never dream of making a programme which sought to excuse traitors who worked for the Nazis.
In our generation, Blunt’s equivalents are the intellectual apologists for Islamist extremism. No doubt it will turn out that some of them worked secretly for countries like Iran, and no doubt, in due time, the BBC will laud them too.
The audio is here should you choose to suffer the Beebism.
Breaking: Washington DC Hit By Earthquake
Secret Service reports the President has been removed to the safety of a golf course… developing…
Update: Officials have now pinpointed the epicenter.National Earthquake Center reports the quake occurred in the region known as “Bush’s Fault”.
The Sound Of Settled Science
Scientists chasing a particle they believe may have played a vital role in creation of the universe indicated on Monday they were coming to accept it might not exist after all.
But they stressed that if the so-called Higgs boson turns out to have been a mirage, the way would be open for advances into territory dubbed “new physics” to try to answer one of the great mysteries of the cosmos.
[…]
Under what is known as the Standard Model of physics, the boson, which was named after British physicist Peter Higgs, is posited as having been the agent that gave mass and energy to matter just after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.
But it’s way too soon to give up.
“There are many models out there; we simply need to be nudged in the right direction,” added Gagnon, an experimental physicist.
All we really need to know about models, we learned in climate science.
h/t Kevin
Absolutely
Let’s think outside the box! (h/t Paul)
The Tolerant Left
“Why couldn’t Stephen Harper die instead of Jack Layton. 🙁 “
Related – “Oh, that liberal media!”
Carter vs. Reagan: A Lesson from History
It is often said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In America these days there appears to be a growing uncertainty amongst those who want President Obama defeated in November 2012 as to who would be the best Republican candidate.
Obama’s foot soldiers in the mainstream media are convinced that Jon Huntsman is the best candidate for the GOP. Any serious person should be most wary of their opinions because their ultimate goal is clear.
But still, the question of whether a true conservative candidate is electable is running through the minds of many on the Right. Several recent polls suggest that the likes of Bachmann and Palin cannot defeat Obama. However, if we look back 31½ years ago, something very interesting can be found. Back then, 7 months before the election, polls indicated that Jimmy Carter lead Ronald Reagan by an enormous 25 percentage points. Yet we all know what eventually happened.
The America of 2012 is arguably in a lot worse financial shape than in 1980. Indeed, life was not grand back then either, with unemployment & interest rates through the roof. While the latter is not the case right now, the former definitely is. Plus, America’s overall fiscal position is in much worse shape, with its debt at truly frightening levels.
Can a true conservative candidate get elected President in 2012? With America’s financial situation in terrible shape, and getting worse, and a sitting president unwilling to deviate from his Far Left Spend-Spend-Spend mantra, the odds seem probable.
h/t Mark Levin & Ken Kulak
Gotta Stop Gettin’ Oil from those Evil Dictators
Oh wait, it’s from Canada.
The view from the No Progress Cave Dweller Wannabes (who somehow always ignore how much energy it takes to run their computers & servers). Oh, whatever!
A quick reminder for the no progress hypocrites.
Reader Tips
See over traffic – and small houses – in the naugahyde-interiored behemoth known as the Futurliner.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.
The Delusions of the Left may be coming to an end
Janet Daley has just published a stunning column that gets to the heart of the aftermath of the UK riots. It begins as follows:
There is no national debate about the epidemic of riots and looting that spread through our cities like a bush fire. Out there in the real world, where people go about the normal business of life, there is no sign of the heated argument that the media is so determined to air. In fact, I cannot remember a time when there has been such crushing unanimity on a matter of public importance: the answers to the questions of why this happened, what went wrong when it began to happen and what needs to follow in its aftermath are considered so blindingly self-evident as to be beyond rational disagreement.
And then continues later:
What real people know – and have known for quite a long time – is that the great tacit agreement which once held civic life together has been deliberately blown apart. There was a time within living memory when all reasonable grown-ups were considered to be on the same side. Parents, teachers, police, judges, politicians – decent citizens of every station and calling – formed an unspoken confederacy to uphold standards of behaviour within their own communities. But their shared values and expectations about human conduct were systematically undermined by a post-Sixties political ideology that preached wholesale disrespect for authority, and legitimised anti-social activity in the name of protest.
What real people saw on their television screens this fateful summer seemed to them to be the final vindication of their instinctive judgment: they may have been shocked but, on some level at least, they were not surprised that it had come to this. What else were these terrible events but the definitive disproof of a doctrine that had subverted adult authority in all its official and unofficial forms?
You can read more of Daley’s great work on her blog.
Life After Granite
Some years ago, I started to notice the granite counter tops.
In our grandparent’s generation, only shipping magnates and Hollywood stars could afford homes in which the most mundane of functional surfaces doubled as displays of wealth.
Today’s middle income neighborhoods are paved with them.
Granite counter tops never struck me as evidence of wealth creation. (For one thing, too many civil servants buy them.) Instead, they seemed to me a signal that something was going very wrong in the wage-to-wealth creation ratio: that people were either spending more than they were being paid, being paid more than they were worth, or most likely – a combination of both.
It got so I couldn’t see one without thinking that debt was accumulating; if not with the home owner, then somewhere up the chain.
Lots and lots of it.
***
Update: Read this if you think this is about the falling price of granite..
Who Is John Paulson
“And why should the Globe and Mail care?” (h/t Adrian)
Jack!
Dies at 61.
Keep it civil please. The mans politics might be anathema to most everyone here but a family did lose a a father and husband.
Edit: Due to the inability of some to prove that they aren’t anything better than Muslims celebrating 9/11, I’ve decided to lock this thread. Go elsewhere to express your vitriol.