Looking For JR

Media 4 Comments

“Bush’s spread lacks Southfork flash”
An actual headline, from the Globe and Mail – a proud member of the Canadian media establishment that is far too sophisticated to view the world through the distorted lens of American TV.

This may be Texas and President George W. Bush may like to walk with a bit of a regional swagger but his new house is no Southfork, the over-the-top pile of the Ewings on TV’s Dallas. Instead, it is a low-slung building with a large wraparound porch that appears to fit effortlessly into the landscape.

None of the rest is worth bothering with. Waste of electrons.

James Roszko’s “Twenty Plants”

Media 14 Comments

Sean at Pol:Spy has done a bang up job of unravelling the James Roszko grow-op story. For all of the “my illegal pot smoking didn’t kill those police officers – someone else’s stolen trucks did” defensiveness in the media and punditry in the confusing days following the murders, it seems the initial report was closer to the truth. The quonset was outfitted with water tanks, a $30,000 generator and close to 300 plants – with nary an engine puller to be seen.
Once the “only twenty plants” meme took hold, it appears that the major media outlets simply did their investigative journalism while reading someone else’s paper over the morning coffee. Quite the little echo chamber they turned out to be.

Citizen Journalist Radio

Blogging 2 Comments

Call.
A child’s life hangs in the balance.
Well, maybe not a child. But someone really, really immature.
cjfinal250.jpg
Right Talk Radio
Thursday Mar 24th at 3pm EST
1-866-884-8355 (866-884-TALK)
I’m going to be busy in the ring around then – but if someone with a low, breathy voice, sounding slightly drunk but fantastically funny and brilliant could just call in and pretend to be me, I’d very much appreciate that.

Updating

Blogging 8 Comments

Skimming some of the comments sections today, it seems that my readers have taken it upon themselves to declare war on the US. Or is it just Arizona? I’m not certain, but combines[1] may be involved. That’s thinking outside the box.
The dog show went well enough – if you can call helping train a competitor’s puppy to walk much, much better than it did before, only to go reserve to it with my own dog well enough. A five point major, too. Urgh.
I’m such a moron.
footnote
[1] The latest in Canadian military psi ops

Reader Links

Reader Tips 11 Comments

Well! If I had known this was so easy, I’d have stopped blogging a long time ago and just let the readers take over.
Spent today mostly resting up, a little shopping and getting very, very lost here in Raleigh, where the street system was designed by graduates of the Throw A Plate Of Spaghetti On the Floor School of Engineering.
News here seems to be wall to wall Terri Schiavo, (though my host just walked into the room and told me about the school shooting in Minnesota).
You folks know the drill by now – if you run across interesting links, post them in the comments. I’ll try to get online in the evenings, but it’s going to be 12 hour days at the shows for the next week, as I’m working for a handler friend to help offset the expenses and give myself something to do.
Unless I get fired, which is a distinct possibility.

Reader Links

Reader Tips 54 Comments

Hey folks. Kate writing from sunny North Carolina. There are daffodils here. Considering the snowplows we had to wait clear the runway in the stop in Regina, it’s an improvement.
No time to surf or blog, (or watch the news) so again, I’ll invite my readers to post any links to good news items or blog posts in the comments. And keep beating up on poor old Joe Green. He’s resilient, if nothing else!
My lucky seminar attendees are starting to congregate and I’m getting ready for the powerpoint presentation. (Topic is breeding, evaluating, training and grooming Miniature Schnauzers.)
Let the indoctrination begin!
And Kathy K. … if you’re surfing through. I’ve been trying to get hold of you!

Reader Suggestions

Reader Tips 32 Comments

I’m the one who usually does most of the work here, so while I’m away, I’m going to invite readers to pick up the slack. Just submit links to any blog post or news item you find that you think others may be interested in, in the comments of this post. A simple cut and paste URL and brief description should do it.
(To keep things clean and easy to follow, try not to use this post for other comments.)

Reader Tips

Reader Tips 7 Comments

Posting here is about to slow down considerably. I leave tomorrow for North Carolina to give a seminar, followed by a week of dog shows. While I will have computer access, time to write will be limited. If I can get the page loading restored, I may ask a couple of friends to guest, but as it is, I’m reluctant to post much anyway, as there is a risk that I’ve been corrupting data. In the meanwhile, a few of the tips passed along in the past couple of days. I confess I haven’t had time to check them all out.
World Tribune is reporting secret video of public executions in North Korea is about to be released.
I haven’t seen this, but I trust the source, who says its a “rather thought provoking look at the possible future of media.” Takes about 10 minutes to view, so I imagine its a hefty download. Page is here.
Toronto Sun editorial on grow ops.
Gomery is getting to the meat of the matter. Sponsorship contract recipients were expected to funnel cash back to the Liberals! Who knew?
There’s been a lot of buzz lately about the lack of women in op-ed pages, and the blogosphere, where there has been considerable whining that “the boys won’t link to the girls”. As I head towards my 300,000 visits and over 400 incoming links (or so Technorati says) in just over a year, all I can offer is this one word observation – bullshit.
And over at the Shotgun, Kevin Steele discovers a familiar figure pops up in – of all places – the investigation of the 1985 Air India bombing, in a post titled Who Erased The Tapes?.

Roszco’s Big Mistake

Roadkill 22 Comments

James Rosczo made a tactical error when he committed suicide after killing four young RCMP officers in Alberta two weeks ago. He should have simply gone back to his house, cleaned his guns, and proclaimed his innocence when the inevitable arrest came.
In the Canadian justice system, where serial murdering sociopaths are released back into society, rapists who kidnap,beat and torture teenage girls get 7 years (and identity protection from the court), and plane bombing terrorism investigations take 20 years and end in acquittals – James Roszco probably stood a better than even chance of walking away a free man.

Electric Powder Stupid

More Money Than Brains 5 Comments

Proof positive (not that more was needed) that the NHL is being run by hockey players.

“It’s an experiment, let’s leave it at that,” Sabres managing partner Larry Quinn said Tuesday while watching Rochester practice.
Quinn said the test came after NHL officials discussed whether changing the ice color from white would enhance how the game is viewed by fans in arenas and on television.
The Sabres offered to try it and, after some experimentation, settled on painting the sheet in what they call “electric powder blue.” To offset the new colored surface, arena officials decided
to make the blue lines fluorescent orange, which is also the color used for the faceoff circles.
The center line, normally red, is now dark blue.

Reports that the NHL is also considering enhancing team uniforms with coloured sequins remain unconfirmed.

There’s only one question left if the new colors ever came into
effect: what would you call a defenseman?
“Guess, I’d become an orange-liner,” Jeff Jillson said.

Or, in the immortal words of Guy Macon* just “a primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid”.

Cuba: Model In Health Care

Great Moments In Socialism 17 Comments
Havana (VNA) – Jack Chi-con Chow, Deputy Director of the World Health Organisation (WHO), after returning from a visit to Cuba, praised the country’s primary healthcare services as a model for other countries to employ.
The WHO official highlighted the fact that Cuba’s healthcare network is intended to reach every citizen and has been kept running constantly. He said that given its encouraging experiences in combating HIV/AIDS, Cuba should make more active contributions to devising a global strategy against the disease.
Jack Chi hailed the country’s regular HIV/AIDS campaigns which have drawn the voluntary participation of people from all walks of life, especially young people. One such campaign calls on people to learn to live with HIV/AIDS.
He reiterated WHO’s commitment to maintain its cooperation with Cuba.
While in Cuba, the delegation visited the Los Cocos health centre which provides free treatment for AIDS patients and other clinical facilities.		 Cubaho1

Cubaho13

Cubaho8

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Cubaho25

Photos are of El Hospital Clinico Quirurgico de la Habana.source
More, in English.

Reader Tips

Reader Tips 2 Comments

A few reader tips before I head to town.
Former CSIS agent is blunt. If you want to stay off Canada’s list of terrorist groups, vote Liberal.
An article from 1997 to disabuse you of any warm and fuzzy notions about UN peacekeepers.

0.83.jpg The Middle East Earthquake. As usual, Publius has everything you need to follow events in Lebanon.

Joe Wood and family are going to lose their house due to a tax bill on virtual money.
The Airbus that lost its rudder over the Caribbean?It’s happened before.

Armed Forces Spending: Thanks For Nothing

Military 2 Comments

It looks like defence analysts are beginning to catch up with blogosphere chatter on what the Liberal budget really promised them.
You can’t really blame them for the initial euphoria. The Liberals have been draining money from the armed forces for so many years, simply getting nothing must have felt like a windfall.
CNEWS

The initial exultation over military spending promises in last month’s federal budget is giving way to sober second thought by some in the defence community.
Upon closer scrutiny, the government’s promise of $12.8 billion in new spending over five years may not be all it’s cracked up to be, say observers.
For at least the next three years, spending – adjusted for inflation – will still be well below peak levels in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

And lest we forget – the military is to come up with $640 million in cost savings.

One-time increases in defence spending over the next two years have been pegged at $500 million and $600 million, most of which is targeted specifically for infrastructure upgrades.
But figures adjusted for inflation indicate this and next year’s budgets are only equivalent to or less than adjusted spending last year, when planes were grounded and ships tied up for lack of resources to operate them.
A look at defence spending from 1986 to the present suggests the military is still far below the peak 1988-89 level of $16.1 billion adjusted to 2005 dollars.
Keith MacDonald, a retired fighter pilot, told the Conference of Defence Associations recent annual meeting that the budget was “smoke and mirrors.”

The Libranos: Connections

The Libranos 4 Comments

Program Advisory: The following graphic may be disturbing to the naive, career Liberals and the Canadian left. For those who may find this material offensive, it is advised that you put fingers in ears and repeat out loud: “Halliburton…I can’t hear you ..Halliburton … I can’t hear you” until the segment is finished. Thankyou.

connectingchart.jpg
Read “The Scandal Spills North” at the Western Standard. (free registration required)
Note – original post and comments were deleted, as a result of attempting to correct the current site problems. My apologies for the confusion.

Syrian Baathists: Good Intentions Gone Awry

Insufferable Twits 5 Comments

Last night’s on-air coverage of this story by CTV’s Middle East correspondant Janis Mackey Frayer was augmented with on-the-street interviews with Lebanese citizens who are clinging in dread to the skirts of the benevolent Syrians who may withdraw and leave them to the mercy of George Bush.
In the event that any doubts lingered about the depths to which Frayer will sink to weave a story to conform to her astonishingly transparent anti-Americanism, this money quote:

“While critics accuse the Baathists of terrible mistakes”

That’s right – “mistakes”.
In the parallel universe of rock hard stupid in which Janis Mackey Frayer has taken permanent residency, Baathist torture, murder, and mass executions are just good intentions gone terribly awry – like picking up a ceramic vase and having it slip from your wet fingers, or going a little too fast for road conditions.
Funny. That wasn’t the song CTV was singing when US immigration officials in New York deported Canadian Maher Arar to an uncertain fate and alleged torture in a Syrian prison. Or, wait. Now that I think back upon things, it was the same song -the US were the bad guys in that story, too.
To Frayar and her enabling editors, such crimes pale to mere misdemeanors when weighed against the sinister, hidden agenda of an American oil-hungry chimpanzee who has liberated 50 million souls from tyranny.

Faster, Lighter, Sooner

Military 33 Comments

The Belmont Club deciphers the transformation underway in the structure of the US military – a helpful read for those who like to include context in their understanding of day to day developments in US foreign policy.

Rumsfeld’s response appears to be shaped by this reality. It is a search for systems, organizations and strategies which possess utility both against terrorism and rival states. In some cases a match will be easy to find. In others, most notably in the case of heavy divisions, manned aircraft and naval systems, there must be a trade- off between them. But implied within Rumsfeld’s reported plan is the startling aspect of time: it is above all a preemptive approach aimed at shaping the political and cultural battlefield in advance of actual hostilities involving American troops.
Although the concept is described by the WSJ in the traditional terms of “helping allies battle internal threats” it is impossible to separate it from the notion of creating a more functional world, which is related to the ideas of reducing disconnectedness and spreading democracy. How and whether this concept evolves into doctrine will be a fascinating process to watch. One suspects that the ultimate price of the Western European vacation from history will have been the transformation of the United States into the foremost revolutionary force of the age.

(A note to the peanut gallery – despite the frequency with which I discuss the US on this blog, I’m always open to including analysis and commentary on Canadian foreign policy. Please alert me when we get one.)

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