No trick is too dirty or too low for American public schools. Brainwashing little 6 year olds. This is why I never did, and never will, trust teachers.

Here’s Bernice Young Elementary’s phone number
(609) 386-3520

Hey Sven, now just hear me out.
What if…
JUST WHAT IF…
we actually lowered corporate taxes to help spur economic growth and create jobs?

Good god man! You’re insane!!!

From everybody’s favourite novelty newspaper:

By imitating Trudeau, Ignatieff could recast himself as a leader with a bold vision for Canada, a man who offered voters a stark alternative to Harper, rather than the uninspiring leader whose main policy positions seem merely to mirror those of the Conservatives.

…

[Trudeau] was internationally famous and he made Canadians believe we mattered on the world stage.

…

And he had flair, dating a series of beautiful women and once performing a pirouette behind Queen Elizabeth’s back.

In contrast, Ignatieff, a man of intellect and international experience like Trudeau, comes across as too packaged, stiff, seemingly afraid to take a stand on any issue that pollsters tell him is unpopular.

…

To regain momentum, Ignatieff needs to offer voters bold programs for the future. To do so, he should steal from Trudeau’s agenda, running on just two or three overriding themes that resonate with Canadians, such as championing medicare or restoring our image as global peacemakers.

…

Being bold, taking risks, speaking his mind, promoting programs that made this country better: they all worked for Trudeau.

They might just work for Ignatieff, too.

Dare we point out that there’s a difference between making “Canadians believe [they] mattered on the world stage” and Canada actually mattering on the world stage? Or perhaps that’s the columnist’s point, the cynical scamp. The emphasis should really be on that word “believe” then, shouldn’t it? As in: making Canadians “believe” that championing medicare and restoring our image as global peacemakers are bold, risk-taking stands that the pollsters consider unpopular.

I apologize in advance if Kate had already posted this before, but I do not believe she has (nor could I find it anywhere in previous postings). This is a rather lengthy seminar, so I am authorizing you to pour 2 martinis, grab 2 cigars and getting yourself into a very comfy recliner. Below is the You Tube version (which is broken up into 14 separate 10 minute segments, which makes it more digestable, to see the other 13 segments it’s probably best just to go to You Tube and view it from there)

There is also the full version available for download here if you wish to view it all in one shot or e-mail it to friends or have a long flight.
In short it is the most comprehensive seminar on the merits of capitalism, designed to arm viewers with the emprical economic proof needed to effectively argue for free markets and a capitalist economic system. It IS lengthy, but (at the risk of sounding arrogant) it is almost mandatory you watch it – when you have the time of course – because the data, research, etc., really is that vital and necessary for those who believe in freedom and free markets.
I hope you enjoy it.

CAW death wish?
Mark
Ottawa

… [W]hen feminism exploded onto the scene, I was often mistaken for a supporter of the movement. But I have never been a feminist, because, having experienced my mother’s violence, I always knew that women can be as vicious and irresponsible as men … Indeed, when I later opened my refuge for battered women, 62 of the first 100 to come through the door were as abusive as the men they had left.

…

Feminism, I realised, was a lie. Women and men are both capable of extraordinary cruelty. Indeed, the only thing a child really needs – two biological parents under one roof – was being undermined by the very ideology which claimed to speak up for women’s rights.

This country is now on the brink of serious moral collapse. We must stop demonising men and start healing the rift that feminism has created between men and women.

Harriet Harman’s insidious and manipulative philosophy that women are always victims and men always oppressors can only continue this unspeakable cycle of violence. And it’s our children who will suffer.

(via 5Fo’F)
And speaking of the country on the brink of serious moral collapse: shag-bands, anyone?

When Anna asked him what they were, he replied: ‘If I snap a black one, the girl has to “do sex” with me.’

Quite a few of the blogs and commentators in the media from the left
wing of the political perspective aren’t decrying Count Iggy and the
Liberal Party’s lack of coherent policy. Many of them are actually
calling it a strategic decision in order to eliminate negative
feedback from the Conservative advertising juggernaut. These pundits
all use the Green Shaft and the Dion experiment as proof that you
can’t tempt fate.

These Liberals are completely wrong.

The Green Shaft didn’t become the albatross around Dion’s neck
because of the Conservatives. The Green Shaft was just bad
policy and Canadians rejected it. Sure the “Tax on everything.”
slogan was catchy, but more importantly, it was true. Dion wasn’t
rejected because the CPC was convinced he wasn’t a leader, he was
rejected because he wasn’t the leader Canadians wanted.

Dear Liberals,
Policy is what I want to hear. Yeah, I may call it out,
investigate it, run the numbers, insult it and tear it down but the
fact remains that if it’s good policy one of two things will happen.

• The Conservatives will do a Microsoft and embrace and
  extend.
• Canadians will say, “Hey, good idea. Let’s give this set of
  jokers a chance.”

Either way, it’s good for us. Us, being Canadians, as opposed to just
Liberal Canadians, or more specifically the LPC. I know that
previously you’ve run on the idea that Conservative values aren’t
Canadian values, but seeing as that too was rejected I’m hoping that
you’re thinking that just maybe Canadians are more important than the
LPC. Maybe when Canadians get the idea you care about them more than
what elite pure laine Quebec Liberal gets to be the Lieutenant that
decides Montreal’s Outremont they’ll give you and your policies a
chance.

Why don’t you see if you can get more than a “blue-ribbon panel” and
more of a “billion for unemployed” like the soft spot to your left,
eh?

Cheers,
lance

Un-Liberal Prime Minister Stephen Harper, speaking in Oakville today:

Ahmadinejad’s declarations, particularly recently, particularly…not just the detention of Canadian citizens, not just the flagrant abuse of human rights, but his recent declarations – just disgraceful, insulting declarations denying the holocaust – there is no way I’m going to permit any official of the Government of Canada to be present and give any legitimacy to remarks by a leader like that.

President Ahmadinejad has said things, particularly about the state of Israel, the Jewish people, and the holocaust, that are absolutely repugnant. It is unfitting that somebody like that would be giving those kind of remarks before the United Nations General Assembly. Canada does not want to be equivocal at all in terms of our view on that; we find it disgraceful, unacceptable, and we’re going to be absolutely clear on that. There are other things that bother us as well beyond these repugnant comments; also, obviously, the crackdown in Iran on all kinds, any kind of legitimate dissent; the fiasco around the elections is quite disturbing. As well, the holding of a Canadian journalist – Mr. Bahari, I think it is – without charge continues to be unacceptable (and) we continue to demand his release. But as I say, there are times when things are being said in this world that it is important that countries that have a moral compass stand up and make their views known, and our absence there will speak volumes about how Canada feels about the declarations of President Ahmadinejad.

Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister.

… and the winner is …

Asphyxiated.

The confusion surrounding the ban results in part from the tight timelines that Congress inserted into the tobacco legislation. Dr. Lawrence Deyton, director of the F.D.A. tobacco center, has been on the job only a week and has barely begun hiring staff members. But the ban on flavored cigarettes had to go into effect 90 days after the legislation was signed, and so it did.

…

Dr. Deyton was asked several times on a conference call with reporters if the ban applied to any small cigars or cigarillos. “According to the law, if something is wrapped in a tobacco leaf, that would not be considered … ” he said and then stopped and added, “Hold on just a second.”

After a delay, Catherine Lorraine, a lawyer in the agency’s tobacco center, got on the call and said that if consumers believe a product is a cigarette, then the law defines it as one no matter how it is wrapped or labeled.

How they will gauge what the consumers (more than one) believe (as one) is another matter. But it’ll be a simple enough procedure, I suppose, now that we know the technique. It’s a kind of alchemy.
But I just love this idea of banning something before you’ve bothered to define what it is.

In the modern world, nothing is more predictable than the spectre of left-wing animosity to Israel. Many on the left – not that they’ll admit to it – clearly see the tiny nation as nothing more and nothing less than a country full of Jews who won’t own up to it, and we’re all familiar by now with the persistent, angry demands for more accountability: CUPE leader Sid Ryan, for example, in response to criticism of his support for a ban on any Israeli teaching in Ontario universities, clarified that he only wished to ban academics who refused to condemn Israeli military actions against Gaza.
On and on it goes. In a column in yesterday’s National Post, Naomi Lein vs. the “angry Jewish males”, angry woman – and Jew – Judy Rebick executes a stunning public act of moral inversion by portraying Naomi Klein and others who protested against the Toronto International Film Festival’s decision to focus on Israel as being the victims of an “hysterical response.”
Rebick feels “heartsick” on behalf of her fellow assailant:

Naomi Klein didn’t start the protest, but she used her contacts and her celebrity to make it more effective. The focus is on her because she is today one of the most prominent Jewish intellectuals in the world….I hope that the pile-on of angry Jewish males will not stop her or others of her generation from continuing to speak out…

In response to Rebick’s “hey, don’t blame her, she was just joining the crowd, plus she’s a woman” defense of Klein, Barbara Kay steps forward, in broad daylight, to mercifully hoist the sodden debate forcefully back onto it’s own two feet:

Rebick says “(Naomi Klein) is risking a lot to speak out so passionately on this subject.” Risking what? A testy editorial in the National Post? Israel-hating is about the safest occupation in the world today, in fact. Indeed, Klein is much loved by the people who actually do put honest intellectuals at risk. It isn’t Klein who needs a bodyguard when she speaks on campuses; it’s supporters of Israel like David Horowitz and Alan Dershowitz who take the risks and get the death threats.

Mrs. Kay precisely hits the Achilles heel of Rebick’s “victim” plaint: In the activist circles Naomi Klein inhabits, attacks on Israel are, far from being even nominally uncool, shortcuts to progressive credibility. In stark contrast, anyone who makes public expressions of support for Israel is sure to be mercilessly assailed at every appearance. Klein, in other words, is certainly not the victim.
Back to Rebick, though: how could it come to pass that a Jew could be so staggeringly blind to the eternal and storied hatred that lies at the core of the eternal force she diligently throws her support behind? Perhaps we should let Rebick herself provide the answer:

In my family, neither the pogroms, nor the Holocaust were ever discussed.

Well, sure, yes. Willful, diligent, muscularly applied excision of essential, real-world context, starting from an early age, should do the trick. What stands out, though – read her column – is that in relaying this ignorance, she’s bragging about it.

You just can’t make it up.
Hella-cool (though optional) economic analysis here.