It’s hot here in Dallas – especially considering that the afternoon I left Saskatoon, the good weather news was that the frost warming had been lifted. It’s a bit of a shock to the system.
(I’m here teaching some a group of my Schnauzer competitors all the tips they need to beat me. Or at least, that’s what I want them to think… bwwwwaaahaaaa…)
An open thread for your own tips. I’ll be checking in when I can, but if your comments get trapped in the filter, it’s probably best to reconsider some of the words you’ve selected or cut down on the links and resubmit. There’s no guarantee anyone will check the junk drawer.
Chemical Pond
Kill Bill
As I’m in Texas at the moment, I guess this could be considered local content.
John Hawkins emails;
I’ve got a scoop from a Senate aide on the behind-the-scenes maneuvering in the Senate that killed the immigration bill yesterday. You may want to check it out to see why every conservative who opposed the bill owes a big debt of gratitude to Jim DeMint.
“We simply got it – whether we liked it or not”
More are questioning British immigration policy, defying the predictable reactions;
Given the scale of new arrivals here and the extent to which they are changing our society, the quality of debate over the desirability of this upheaval is miserable. And we all know why.
Those who favour open borders have in effect gagged opponents by accusing them of “racism”. You don’t have to be against welcoming newcomers to be smeared as a Nazi sympathiser. You just have to argue that it’s an important matter, with some serious downsides, that deserves proper analysis.
On that basis, I’m sure that this column will be met with abuse from the pro-immigration lobby. I’ll be branded as a closet racist for reflecting the concerns of millions of decent Britons who are worried about what’s happening to their country.
Cowed by human-rights campaigners, refugee groups and duplicitous politicians (mainly Labour and Lib Dem), seeking electoral advantage by demonising rivals who propose controlled immigration, we have created a monstrous democratic deficit.
In December 2004, just as the wave of arrivals from eastern Europe was becoming too big to ignore, a survey for the Economist revealed that nearly three quarters of British people believed that too many immigrants were coming here. The Government refused to listen; it didn’t want to know.
Labour encouraged, in some cases by stealth, one of the most impactful challenges to British life without asking anyone for permission or approval. Unrestricted immigration did not feature in any of Tony Blair’s election manifestos.
We simply got it – whether we liked it or not. Since Labour came to power 10 years ago, British citizenship has been granted to one million foreign nationals. More than 150,000 were given a passport in 2006, four times the number who were awarded the privilege in 1997. The rate of overseas settlement in Britain is running at its highest ever.
Build A Better Diet Drink
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Now, why didn’t I think of this? Because I’ve been too busy working on the prototype for the Katewerk 3000™ Personal Carbon Dioxide Filtration Unit, that’s why. |
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Or: you can’t base your immigration policy on a bad old poem on an ugly French statue
Mark Steyn skewers the “but what about all the great restaurants” “argument” beloved of urban elites everywhere, adding:
“What worries me is when settled nations start to fetishize immigration to almost absurd degrees. In 1997, the government in Ottawa festooned the land with posters marking the 50th anniversary of Canadian citizenship and showing people of many lands holding hands around a globe – ie, Canada’s idea of itself is as a great compilation of other people’s hits rather than as a concept album in its own right.”
Chapters-Indigo Boycott: the slo-mo Kristallnacht continues
Kathy here, guest blogging for Kate…
Time to go shopping again, kiddies!
The Jew-haters at Rabble are publicizing the latest Boycott Chapters-Indigo Picket this Saturday, June 9, in which handfuls of (literally) smelly (I know: I shoved through them last time) unemployed misguided losers protest outside bookstores because a Jewish woman owns them.
Here’s a chant you can use:
Hippies, hippies, you’re so sad/ We charge you with smelling bad!
Warning: this Rabble thread contains the words “apartheid” and “Chomsky.” Those with pre-existing medical conditions may want to consult their doctor etc. Note one lone voice of reason is manfully trying to argue using facts — poor thing…
Israel is the only nation in the history of civilization expected to give up land it captured in a war, and Palestinians are the only “refugees” still hanging around waiting to go back “home.” Watch old footage of Nassar and co. around the 6 Day War. They don’t talk about “Israel”, they always say “the Jews.” That’s all you need to know.
Montreal man killed for being a “bad Muslim”
“When a society imports large numbers of people from a culture that tolerates this kind of murder of the religiously deviant, or at very least from countries in which many people believe that if El-Mehdi really was a bad Muslim, then he deserved everything he got, then no one should be surprised when this kind of thing happens in the new land. No one dares address the idea that it is permissible to murder apostates in Islam. No one would dare require immigrants to renounce this idea. No one would dare require mosques to hold programs teaching against this idea, and other Sharia provisions, if they want to stay in the West. No, they’re imported wholesale, with no consideration of the ramifications…”
Reader Tips
Open thread.
(Note: I’m off on a working weekend, so things could be a bit slow around here until Tuesday.)
Never Mind The Pressure Points
Where do they find the volunteers?
Good Guys Vs Bad Guys
Keeping score.
A helluva way to score some extra frequent flier points
From the Boston Globe, via Blackfive:
Shortly before landing, Bob Hayden and a flight attendant had agreed on a signal: When she waved the plastic handcuffs, he would discreetly leave his seat and restrain an unruly passenger who had frightened some of the 150 people on board a Minneapolis-to-Boston flight Saturday night with erratic behavior.
Hayden, a 65-year-old former police commander, had enlisted a gray-haired gentleman sitting next to him to assist. The man turned out to be a former US Marine.
“I had looked around the plane for help, and all the younger guys had averted their eyes. When I asked the guy next to me if he was up to it, all he said was, ‘Retired captain. USMC.’ I said, ‘You’ll do,’ ” Hayden recalled. “So, basically, a couple of grandfathers took care of the situation.”
I’m with Blackfive on this, Hayden’s wife’s comments at the end of the piece are perfect.
“the greatest non-campaign campaign I’ve ever seen”
John Fund on Fred Thompson;
To that end, Mr. Thompson said the next president should have the courage to talk straight with the American people and bluntly say that Americans will have to confront both the soaring cost of entitlements and the need to remain committed in the war on terror, even when Iraq is “in the rear-view mirror.”
“This is a battle between the forces of civilization and of evil,” he said, noting that reports over the weekend of a foiled plot against John F. Kennedy Airport in New York was proof positive that terrorism remains a real threat. “I listen to the Democratic congressional leaders and I hear them talking about how many [House and Senate] seats they’re going to pick up because of this war,” he said. “I listened to one of their presidential candidates talk about that this is a phony war, the war on terror. This is what passes for policy today in the Democratic Party.”
Mr. Thompson also zinged Democrats for proposing a budget that boosts spending dramatically while remaining silent on the extension of investment-focused tax cuts that expire in 2010. “The Democrats are hot after repealing all of that, the engine that’s driving this economy.”
On judicial nominations, Mr. Thompson recalled his role in helping guide John Roberts through the confirmation process. He said nominees like Chief Justice Roberts are necessary because too many judges were “waking up in the morning and deciding what social policy should be.” He warned federal judges: “If they continue to act like politicians, the American people are going to start treating them like politicians, and that’s not good news for them.”
But Mr. Thompson’s biggest response came when he addressed immigration. “We are a nation of compassion, a nation of immigrants,” he told the crowd. “But this is our home, and whether you’re a first-generation American, a third-generation American or a brand newly minted American, this is our home and we get to decide who comes into our home.” At that, much of the crowd rose and applauded midspeech.
Hitchens Vs Hedges
HITCHENS: But, to what I think is the hidden agenda of the question: ‘Is George Bush on a Christian crusade in Iraq and Afghanistan?’ Obviously not, obviously not. Anyone who’s studied what’s happening in either of those countries now knows that the whole of American policy — and by the way a lot of your own future, ladies and gentlemen — is staked on the hope that federal secular democrats can emerge from this terrible combat. We can protect them and offer them help while they do so. We know that they’re there, that we are — I’ve met them, I love them, they’re our friends. Every member of the 82nd Airborne Division could be a snake-handling congregationalist, for all I know, but these men and women, though you sneer and jeer at them, and snigger when you hear applause and excuses for suicide bombers — and you have to live with the shame of having done that — these people are guarding you while you sleep, whether you know it or not. And they’re also creating space for secularism to emerge, and you better hope that they are successful.
CHRIS HEDGES: I feel like I should be reading Kipling’s White Man’s Burden.
Audience: Laughter.
HITCHENS: What you mean is you wish you had read it.
Videos at the link.
h/t
Canadian Press Vs Stockwell Day – UPDATED
“Corrective on gun crime statistics”
OTTAWA (CP) – The Canadian Press erroneously reported June 1 that there was a 16 per cent drop in the number of firearms crimes in the United Kingdom in 2006 compared with the previous year. In fact, figures from Britain’s Home Office show there was a 16 per cent drop in the number of handgun crimes in the year ended March 31, 2005, compared with the same period a year previous.
In addition, the story should have included information from the Home Office that supports Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day’s assertion that the number of overall offences involving firearms has increased in Britain each year since handguns were banned in 1997.
Bob Tarantino gets results!
h/t to Maz2 in the comments.
It’s A Quick Read
The Paris Hilton Prison Diaries.
“Mohammed And Jill Went Up The Hill”
“Little Mohammed Horner sat in a corner…”
“Mohammed Sprat could eat no fat, his wives could eat no lean…”
(From from the New Collection of 21st Century British Nursery Rhymes.)
Clpwned*
Leading up to tomorrow’s ill timed vote on a stem cell funding measure, the House Democratic leadership wanted to offer its members some cover from charges they were friendly to human cloning. So they scheduled a vote tonight on a so-called cloning ban that actually failed to ban cloning. Using a tried and true semantic trick, the bill defined human cloning as the transfer of a cloned embryo to a woman’s womb, rather than the creation of that embryo, thereby protecting the practice of cloning (and destroying) human embryos for research while pretending to ban it.
The fact that Speaker Pelosi thought it was necessary to do this already signaled a peculiar desperation on this issue, and left a lot of us scratching our heads. But the results of the vote are just downright amazing. The Speaker brought the bill up under suspension, which means it would have needed a two-thirds vote to pass. Not only did it not get two-thirds of the members, it didn’t even get a simple majority. The bill failed, with 204 votes in favor and 213 against—a full 74 votes short of the margin needed to pass.
[…]
None of this makes stem cell politics a huge winner for Republicans, of course, but somehow Speaker Pelosi just might have found a way to lose the Democrats’ edge on the issue. She’s that good.
“Ayatollah Jack”
Because I just want to be first to say it.
ABC News;
NATO officials say they have caught Iran red-handed, shipping heavy arms, C4 explosives and advanced roadside bombs to the Taliban for use against NATO forces, in what the officials say is a dramatic escalation of Iran’s proxy war against the United States and Great Britain.
“It is inconceivable that it is anyone other than the Iranian government that’s doing it,” said former White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, an ABC News consultant.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stopped short earlier this week of blaming Iran, saying the U.S. did not have evidence “of the involvement of the Iranian government in support of the Taliban.”
But an analysis by a senior coalition official, obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com, concludes there is clear evidence of Iran’s involvement.
You know what this means, don’t you?
The coalition analysis says munitions recovered in two Iranian convoys, on April 11 and May 3, had “clear indications that they originated in Iran. Some were identical to Iranian supplied goods previously discovered in Iraq.”
The April convoy was tracked from Iran into Helmand province and led a fierce firefight that destroyed one vehicle, according to the official analysis. A second vehicle was reportedly found to contain small arms ammunition, mortar rounds and more than 650 pounds of C4 demolition charges.
A second convoy of two vehicles was spotted on May 3 and led to the capture of five occupants and the seizure of RPG-7mm rockets and more than 1,000 pounds of C4, the analysis says.
Also among the munitions are components for the lethal EFPs, or explosive formed projectiles, the roadside bombs that U.S. officials say Iran has provided to Iraqi insurgents with deadly results.
It means that instead of entering into difficult negotiations with the reclusive Taliban, there is an opportunity at formal diplomacy and a Jack Layton style compromise with the Iranian regime.
We get “peace in our time” and Ahmadinejad gets to destroy only half of Israel.
Calgary Commute, June 5
Deerfoot Trail
Glenmore Trail
Thanks to reader Larry Weber for the photos. (The Glenmore underpass looked like that last time I was in Calgary, come to think of it.)