31 October 2008

Thank your lucky stars...

...these guys are so inept... the F-L-Clouseau swings and fans yet again.

-- VANCOUVER -- A third attack has been discovered on a pipeline in the Dawson Creek area of northeastern British Columbia.

The target was a natural gas wellhead about 12 kilometres northwest of Tomslake, a small town near Dawson Creek.

A small amount of gas leaked, but the public is not in danger, the RCMP said in a statement. EnCana engineers were containing the leak, and the blast was in a rural, isolated area.
*

Iran, North Korea... another 9/11?

You melt down over some paparazzi... what's gonna happen when the pressure's really on?

"That's enough. You've got a shot. Leave us alone," Obama told reporters as he walked down the block with his 7-year-old daughter Sasha in her costume on the way to a party at a neighbour's home.
*

You can say this with a straight face...

...you know you're truly ready to do the job...

“I think it's just a misinformation campaign or a disinformation campaign and I just think it doesn't speak well of what goes on in our business.”
**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:
"Rae and Iggy in a naked, olive oiled, intellectual, roomie, death match for the bragging rights to a corpulent carcass."

"Fuck the beer and popcorn... I'm gonna watch with Dom and Cubans."
*

Today's "Geek Me Out" moment

"The issue here is that the Mediterranean is a genetic jacuzzi, if you will, it's had people moving around all over the place for millennia," said Spencer Wells, director of the Genographic Project.
*

Drugs... the victimless crime

A Montreal man is accused of recruiting a 24-year-old woman to smuggle $3.5 million worth of heroin into Canada via Toronto.

RCMP allege the suspect is part of a ring that recruited human couriers -- mostly single moms -- to smuggle dope into Canada through Pearson International Airport.

Jimmy Miudo, 33, is slated for a bail hearing at Maplehurst Correctional Complex today.
*

Who says...

...size doesn't matter?
**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:

"I guess they're feeling pretty confident that terrorists won't be flying airplanes into that thing."
*

I guess that's how...

...you get to be a millionaire...

"What A Family Man."

"Aunt in the projects, Brother living in the slums... maybe he ought to spread his own wealth before trying to spread ours."

"Another hypocrite in Washington - I am SHOCKED!!!"

Posted by Sally October 30, 08 06:17 PM
*

Sure you wanna say that out loud?

Isn't this sorta like getting an endorsement from Jimmy Hoffa?

Call me uppity...

...but if the junkies get pristine, taxpayer funded syringes... why should anyone else have to settle for sloppy seconds.

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS: But hospitals are safe, right?

"An estimated 220,000 Canadians develop hospital-acquired infections each year, of which MRSA is one type, according to Canadian Nosocomial Infection Surveillance Program figures."

"About 8,000 people die of them annually."
*

Well, Toronto

How do you like him now?

“When this mayor got elected, the debt was $1.4-billion, and now it’s going to be $2.9-billion and we’ve got a plethora of taxes.”
*

30 October 2008

"They gotta stop that"

Another case of people getting their information from the boob tube...

"They just gotta stop that. If he was out of hand, shoot him in the leg or something."

"It's not going to kill him."
Wanna bet? See, the thing is... when the pistols come out... police officers are trained, for very good reasons, to fire center-mass.

Be careful what you wish for.

*

Easy come... easy go

"They told us they didn't suffer long."
What the hell is that... the moral of the story?
The Canadian Press reported that the shed was on the same property where a house burned down less than a month ago in a suspicious fire.
Let's chew on that one for a little while.

Another senseless waste of life.

**********

RELATED: Somebody help me out here
"The rate of deaths from injuries is 3 to 4 times higher for Aboriginal children than for other children in Canada."

Source: Government of Canada (2002) Healthy Canadians – A Federal Report on Comparable Health Indicators 2002. Ottawa: Health Canada.
**********

LAST WORD: The numbers don't lie
-- VICTORIA -- First Nations people on reserves die in house fires five or six times more often than the rest of the country, Canada's director of fire protection services said Thursday. "The reserves are bad."

The council's 2002 report on Fire Losses in Canada, the most recent available, showed a fatality rate on reserves nearly four times that for the rest of Canada. There were 3.7 deaths per 100,000 people on reserves that year compared to one death per 100,000 in Canada.

The average death rate on reserves for the decade ending in 2002 was more than seven times the national average.
*

Chinese Roulette

If you have any type of foodstuff in your house (and, chances are, whether you know it, or not... you do) that contains any type of ingredient made in China... it's like sticking a loaded gun in your mouth...

-- BEIJING -- Animal feed producers in China commonly add the industrial chemical melamine to their products to make them appear higher in protein, state media reported Thursday, an indication that the scope of the country's latest food safety scandal could extend beyond milk and eggs.

It is forbidden to deliberately add melamine to food and animal feed, but its apparent prevalence highlights the inability of authorities to keep the food production process clean of toxins despite official vows to raise safety standards.
From the same caring folks who brought you lead-painted baby toys.

Go clean out your pantry and your fridge.

Do it now.

**********

RELATED: Think this doesn't apply to you?

Think again...
"Made in Canada" simply means that 51 per cent of the production cost was incurred in Canada; the ingredients could come from anywhere, and increasingly they come from China.

For example, manufacturers can import apple juice concentrate from China - for about one-fifth the cost of Canadian concentrate - add water to it in Canada, and mark it "Made in Canada."

"We eat food from China every day, we just don't know about it," says Dr. Keith Warriner, an assistant professor of food science at the University of Guelph.
*

It's "Chainsaw Therapy" week

So I'm sittin' here yesterday afternoon... thinkin' if I hear one more word about recidivist convicts and innocent victims... or how Saint Barack is JFK reborn... I'm gonna start screamin and bustin' stuff.

It was obviously time to get my head on straight.

So yesterday, to that end, I spent a couple hours out back just tryin' to clear out all the cobwebs.

I'd started out thinking I'd buck some lengths of already downed trees to feed the splitter, but my "backwoods muse" intervened and I ended up starting to clear a rough road to the western edge of the woods. It's my biggest premeditated solo project to date and a saner man might have just called in a dozer... but we'll see how it goes.

I cleared about 50 yards (yeah... screw metric) of mostly scrub in two hours and apart from a few creaky joints, I feel like a new man. I figure I've got an 800 foot run to the fenceline and I'm looking to pop out near a huge oak that has broken off about 15 feet from the ground.

It's a crisp, sunny day and I've got 2 pristine chains, 10 litres of premix and a Lewis and Clarke bug up my ass.

We'll see where I end up today.

Blogging will be light.

**********

UPDATE: 16:30 and I'm back

So I get down to the woods and there's a bit of a deadfall crowding the road. All the leaves have dropped off the trees, it's a little weird to be able to see for hundreds of feet... and a rare chance to be able to scope out the topography.

I decide I'm gonna do a quick cleanup before proceeding to the new road. There's a couple of big aspens that appear to have been blown over about 40 feet off the road and the resulting tangle will be a bugger to sort out if I leave it 'til spring.

Three hours later... the mess is all cleaned up into three largish brush piles and the trees are bucked into lengths. Now that's good news for the rabbit-tat... but I don't have much energy left to extend my road.

I settle for a little housekeeping... clearing out yesterday's leftover stumps and call it a day.

It was the perfect day for cutting though... sunny, bright and cool enough to keep up a steady rhythm. A couple hours in, Mrs Neo, on her daily constitutional... showed up with much-appreciated sandwiches and fluids.

And cutting with a new chain is such a pleasurable experience. The saw almost pulls itself through the logs, like it has a mind of its own.

Anyway, I should be able to run the truck about 60 yards back off the clearing and into the woods tomorrow. It may not seem like a lot, but you're carting tools and gas around... every little bit helps.

All in all, a very satisfactory afternoon.

*

29 October 2008

Toronto "Red" Star outdoes itself...

...with its online reportage on "the measure of a man."

Today we've got heroes... versus, well... zeroes...

One of these men has lived an extraordinary life, triumphing over adversity and is a model to us all... the other, apparently... is just a senile old nobody.

Go figure.

*

Just another victim

"Trial by media!", a family member yelled as she left the court house.
I wonder if this guy would agree.

**********

RELATED: And a cry rang out across McSlipperyland...
More social workers!!!

Two youths are accused of pepper spraying two groups of teenagers and holding a machete to another youth's throat during unprovoked attacks in Pickering last week.

A 16-year-old and a 17-year-old, both of Ajax, face 19 assault and weapon charges.
*

Good news... bad news

Hey, this is Canada... what were you expecting?

Mr. Khawaja, a 29- year-old who took terrorist training in Pakistan while on leave from his job fixing computers for Canada's Foreign Affairs Department, is the second person convicted under antiterrorism laws passed in 2001.
Hmmm... two convictions in seven years... not exactly the landslide of persecution the lefties have been screaming about, huh?

And what does this mean for the now convicted terrorist?
While Mr. Khawaja faces a life sentence, it is standard for Canadian prisoners to be credited two days for every one day served in pretrial custody.

If that holds true in this case, it means Mr. Khawaja has in effect already served more than nine years of his eventual sentence, and parole eligibility could be only a few years away.
Yup... no surprise there.

**********

RELATED: If only we had more social workers

*

First it was...

"I won't cut your taxes... but I won't raise them either."

Then there was a billion dollars in hospital construction cost overruns.

So where does Dalton McGuinty draw the line on wheelin' & dealin'?

-- TORONTO -- Kyle Weese's plea bargain that saw gun charges dropped in 2006 came at a time when the provincial government was proclaiming the success of a policy not to make such deals.

"We absolutely fully prosecute gun crimes to the fullest extent and oppose bail on gun crimes. We already do that," then-attorney general Michael Bryant said in the legislature in November 2006.
Funny how that works.
"Runciman blasted Ontario's attorney general Tuesday for allowing a plea deal that saw the Crown drop six of seven serious charges against Kyle Weese for a shooting-related incident in 2005."
*

It's a No-Brainer

How smart do you have to be... to realise that the lack of a proper education, especially in today's knowledge-based economy, will make or break your child's future?

In fact, here in Canada, without that piece of paper, you can be condemning yourself to a lifetime of menial, low-paying jobs... or worse... a life of penury.

And, what exactly, is the deal with Canada's aboriginal communities?

Using data from the 2006 census, Prof. Richards demonstrates that a high-school diploma makes any Canadian, whether aboriginal or not, nearly twice as likely to hold a job.
That just makes sense, right?

So can anyone explain why so many fewer native children are failing to achieve the most basic of educational footholds... the high school diploma?
But for aboriginal people aged 20 to 24, the group that most recently went through the Canadian school system, barely 60 per cent have completed high school, compared with nearly 90 per cent of non-aboriginals.

That rate drops to nearly 50 per cent among those that identify themselves as first-nations members, as opposed to Métis or Inuit, and declines to less than 40 per cent for those living on reserves.
Now... this is where Zorpheus and Rob Budde and Dr Dawg all jump in and start to sing a merry song of racism.

But hey, guys... hang on just a second.

Other so-called visible minorities, immigrants who come to this country penniless and without even basic English language skills, are blowing right past aboriginals... grabbing hold of that idealised Canadian dream and becoming wildly successful.

This isn't about race and racism... it's about culture.

It's about a culture of defeat, a culture of victimisation.

And don't tell me there are no opportunities for aboriginal people. The taxpayers of this country pour 10 billion dollars every year into trying to float that shoddy, leaky First Nations cultural boat. If native children manage to get that high school diploma, there are, in this uber politically-correct environment, companies and government programmes that will fall over backwards to help them get ahead.

Just ask folk hero and convicted criminal Shawn Brant about his $430,000 government loan, which... by the way... he defaulted on.

Stop pissin' and moanin' and get your collective asses in gear... because it's not just your lives you're wasting.

Do it for your kids.

**********

RELATED: And anarchy... that ain't gonna help.

If these folks spent as much time actually working... or building up their community... as they did in these paranoid fantasies... everybody would be way better off.

Not gonna happen though, huh?

(h/t reader mike)

McCain outgunned

"On Sunday, Oct. 26, McCain ran just 331 TV ad units in those seven states — 308% fewer than the 1,350 ad units Obama ran that day."
**********

WELCOME, YET AGAIN, READERS OF CANADIAN CYNIC

Oh boy... two links in two days... that CC must really like me. But that's just the kind of guy he is... a champion of the oppressed.

Well, except... you know...
Yessirree... good ol' Canadian Cynic... brave, principled and way beyond articulate.

*

28 October 2008

This is McSlippery country...

He'll probably be out on bail by the end of the week...

Kyle Weese, the suspect in the Duke of York tavern shooting that left an innocent woman dead, has turned himself into police.

Weese arrived at 55 Division at 7:50 p.m. Tuesday.
**********

RELATED: Dalton... where art thou?
Runciman blasted Ontario's attorney general Tuesday for allowing a plea deal that saw the Crown drop six of seven serious charges against Kyle Weese for a shooting-related incident in 2005.

"If the Crown had fulfilled its responsibilities and pursued all those charges, Bailey Zaveda could well have been in our midst today," he said.
*

Screw it... let's start shifting resources...

...and personnel over to people who actually care if they live or die...

One inmate has been found dead in his cell at the Toronto West Detention Centre and an inmate who shared the same cell is in hospital.

The second inmate was taken to hospital with “little or no vital signs” when guards made the discovery at about 7:25 a.m.
*

There's hope for us all...

...if even infamous lonely-heart Dr Dawg... can find true love.

*

"Aren't you gonna' open your gift?"

"If it's a severed head, I'm going to be very upset."

A plague upon the land

Yes... lawyers...

-- MEDICINE HAT -- An Alberta girl convicted last year of the premeditated slayings of her parents and little brother is doing well in therapy and should be given more freedom as she completes the maximum 10-year sentence for her crimes, a court heard Monday.

The girl, who is now 15 but who killed her family at the age of 12, is “engaging well and participating” in psychotherapy and group activities, and has exhibited “very few difficulties” since being sent to secure custody in a forensic psychiatric hospital, defence lawyer Tim Foster told the Court of Queen's Bench in Medicine Hat.
"Very few difficulties, Tim? You mean she hasn't murdered anybody else yet?"
A jury convicted her last year of three counts of first-degree murder in the 2006 stabbing deaths of her mother, father and eight-year-old brother in their Medicine Hat home.
**********

UPDATE: Two more stabbings... another Liberal solution

So... first to Don Mills...
"I think that having the adults in the schools paying attention is the most important thing that we can do."
And, wait for it...
Four teenagers are facing assault and weapons charges after a 16-year-old girl was stabbed in the torso and chest in a fight over a boy near Dennis O'Conner Catholic High School in Ajax on Friday.
**********

RELATED: Toronto "Red" Star, unlike Toronto Police Service...

... a firm adherent of "If you can't say anything nice..." policy...
"He had recently helped an acquaintance move a sofa, said another one, who expressed shock at his death."
**********

LAST WORD: In Dalton McSlippery's Ontario...

...there's no such thing as a bad boy...
On Feb. 9, 2005, in the early evening, Mr. Weese shot a man in the arm on Sherbourne Street. He faced eight charges, including aggravated assault and carrying a concealed weapon.

The Crown withdrew all of the charges but one and on Jan. 18, 2006, Mr. Weese pleaded guilty to discharging a firearm.
*

TERROR UPDATE:

Syria gets its pants pulled down on international stage...

Al Qaeda leader Abu Ghadiya was killed in yesterday's strike inside Syria, a senior US military intelligence official told The Long War Journal.

But US special operations forces also inflicted a major blow to al Qaeda's foreign fighter network based in Syria. The entire senior leadership of Ghadiya's network was also killed in the raid, the official stated.
Hasta la vista, baby.

**********

UPDATE: That's their story...

...and they're stickin' to it.
"All of them are civilian, unarmed, and they are on Syrian territory," he said, adding that among the dead were a farmer, three children and a fisherman.
*

Every vote should count

Everybody... and I do mean everybody... makes a huge deal out of getting out and exercising the franchise... but then we're not gonna count all the votes?

-- VANCOUVER, B.C. -- A Vancouver Conservative candidate who lost a federal election recount last week is appealing the result in court.

Wai Young lost the judicial recount to Vancouver South incumbent Liberal Ujjal Dosanjh by just 22 votes on Friday but Conservative party official Ray Leitch says she's unhappy that not all the ballot boxes were rechecked in the process.

Leitch says a lawyer for Young will appear Thursday in a B.C. Supreme Court to ask a judge to check every vote cast.
Good for her.

**********

WELCOME, YET AGAIN, READERS OF CANADIAN CYNIC

Like I said previously.

Hey... notice any similarities?

Well, look who's here.

It's poor little CC... and he's so frightened, he has to post anonymously these days...

27 October 2008

How good are the drones?

Pretty damn good...

According to the Times, one of the targeted commanders "was believed to have been visiting the compound ... to pay his respects to the families of those killed in an American drone strike on Friday" in a different location.

The machines find and kill you, and then, when your boss shows up somewhere else to console your relatives, the machines are waiting for him there, too.
**********

UPDATE: But you still need the "snake-eaters"
US special operations hunter-killer teams entered Syria in an attempt to capture Abu Ghadiya, a senior al Qaeda leader who has been in charge of the Syrian network since 2005.

US officials contacted by The Long War Journal would not comment if Ghadiya was killed or captured during the raid.

The raid is the first of its kind against Syria. The US has been striking regularly at Taliban and al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan’s tribal areas since the beginning of September.
*

Two deep-south skinhead nutbags...

...held in alleged Obama assassination plot...

The men, Daniel Cowart, 20, of Bells, Tenn., and Paul Schlesselman, 18, of West Helena, Ark., are being held without bond. Agents seized a rifle, a sawed-off shotgun and three pistols from the men when they were arrested.
Anybody else hearing duelling banjos?

**********

UPDATE: Take two imbeciles... add beer...

...and Barack Obama becomes even more of a saint...
Senior federal officials tell NBC News that the Feds are skeptical about whether there ever was a well-conceived plan to attack Sen. Barack Obama by two alleged neo-Nazi extremists in Tennessee.

The officials say that there is no evidence at this early stage of the investigation that the two men, Daniel Cowart and Paul Schlesselman, had ever taken the plan beyond the talking stage.
My guess is, we'll find out... this nefarious assassination plot failed... on these idiot's combined inability to raise bus fare to Washington.

But watch the MSM pick this one up and run with it.

**********

LAST WORD: Apparently this was Plan B...

...which they turned to... only after failing to clone copies of Adolph Hitler... and implant them in sympathetic girlfriends...
The men planned to wear white tuxedos and top hats during the assassination attempt, which would have involved driving as fast as they could toward Obama and shooting him from the windows of the car.

The men stole guns from family members and also had a sawed-off shotgun.
Yup... stay tuned for a made for tv movie.

*

So... what's the deal here?

He tried to smoke his own brother?

-- TORONTO -- The brother of Kyle Weese, a suspect in the Leslieville shooting that claimed the life of an innocent bystander Friday night, was also shot in the melee.

But Matthew Weese, 23, wasn't counted among the injured from that incident. He walked into a hospital emergency room last night, suffering from a bullet wound, a source told thestar.com this morning.
*

New life for old stuff

For the first few days after setting up Mrs Neo's Paypal account... I have to confess... I was walking around feeling like a man who'd caused a train wreck.

Turns out though, she has been zeroing in on some interesting stuff... in particular antique tin chocolate molds. The molds are very often pieces of art in themselves, but some enterprising folks are also using them to turn out non-chocolate replicas of, well... just about anything.

The running rabbit, above... is a chalkware piece cast from Mrs Neo's latest acquistion... an Anton Reiche mold, circa early 1900s, that has yet to be delivered.

How's that for recycling?

*

What's life without a dream, huh?

"Who are we? We’re just two regular guys who love grilling and football on Sunday afternoons, eating until we can’t get off the couch and of course, the taste of great bacon."

"And it’s our dream to make everything taste like bacon."
Oh, man... I'm jonesin' already... and that was before they started talkin' about Bacon Salt®.

*

Just for the halibut

Meet the Sashimi Tabernacle Choir...

26 October 2008

If only there were a law...

...wait a minute...

Kyle Weese, 25, has an extensive criminal record and is well known to police in the Leslieville neighbourhood where he lives, said Det. Sgt. Gary Giroux of the homicide squad.

"This is an extremely violent man with an extremely violent history."


Giroux added Weese is prohibited from owning weapons.
Well, you know... maybe we just didn't ask nice enough, huh?

**********

UPDATE: C'mon Dalton, I double-dare you...

...tell us again, how all we need is "more social workers"...
According to news reports, a 21-year-old man with the same name faced numerous weapons and assault charges in February of 2005 after a man was shot on Sherbourne Street.
**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:
"Time and time again I am told by Liberals that tougher sentences don't work. They don't reduce crime rates and they don't stop reoffenders."

"What I don't understand is that if this loser had been locked up say, after his second violent crime, how it wouldn't reduce the crime rate? I mean I can think of one extra murder that wouldn't have occurred if they had locked him up for good last time around."
**********

LAST WORD: And rounding out the weekend...
-- TORONTO -- At around 5:30pm, police responded to calls about a person with a gun at 25 Bishop Tutu Blvd. in the Lakeshore and Bathurst area.

It's alleged the youth had just attended a birthday party for an acquaintance's four-year-old daughter when he and two still-unidentified males got involved in an argument with several other guests.

The 15-year-old suspect, a Toronto resident is charged with 13 firearms and weapons charges as well as aggravated assault, breaching a firearms prohibition
and probation.
Yeah... farmers, hunters and gun clubs... that's the real problem here.

*

I can't wait for Mayor Miller...

...to propose rerouting all train traffic around Toronto...

A 20-year-old woman is dead after being struck by a train as her younger sister and a friend looked on. The three women apparently ducked under a lowered railway crossing arm on Denison Rd. E. near Jane St. and Weston Rd. at about 11:30 p.m. last night.
And... in a display of unintended cosmic irony...
The death comes at the end of Safe Crossing Week 2008, an initiative launched by Safe Kids Canada, a division of the Hospital for Sick Children.

According to Safe Kids, 84 children were killed in incidents involving trains last year.
**********

RELATED: Of course it makes sense...

...just like banning gun clubs will stop psychotic gangbangers from shooting people...
-- CALGARY -- A man and a woman are dead and two men are recovering from wounds after a restaurant shooting in northeast Calgary.

Police say the two people who were killed were in their early 20s but their names have not been released.
**********

LAST WORD: Mayor's office strangely silent...

...YET AGAIN... on which gun club was involved...
-- TORONTO -- A woman walking her dog along a quiet North York suburb Sunday morning stumbled upon a man who was shot to death inside his vehicle.

The shooting comes a day after a woman in her twenties was shot to death outside an east-end Toronto bar. She was an innocent bystander caught in a shootout.
*

Thinning the herd

"If bile doesn't rise in your throat at the very notion of an Obama presidency, then you are NOT a conservative."

"It's all about class, people. Class class class. 'Ew! Snowmobiles! Ew! A non-designer baby!! Ew! They both know how to fire guns!!!'"

"The cowardly careerist urban latte beta male lawyer class vs. the rest of us."
*

Lies, damn lies... and statistics

Drugs... the victimless crime...

While the rate fell provincially, in Vancouver it remained much higher at 2.41 per 100,000 people, largely due due to the number of gang-related slayings. There were 55 homicides in Vancouver last year, 19 of which were gang-related. That's about one-third of the total, significantly higher than the national ratio of one in five homicides being gang related.

Corp. Dale Carr, spokesman for the Lower Mainland's Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, said gang-related homicides take more time and money to investigate, and are less likely to be solved by police.

Police solve only 40 per cent of gang-related homicide investigations, compared with 80 per cent of domestic and other homicides, Carr said.

"It is no secret that the drugs and organized crime files are a lot more complex."
*

Voice of Reason

"If I had been tortured -- and I have been -- my primary grievance would be against my torturers and their masters. But Messrs El-Maati, Almalki and Nureddin turned their guns on Canada, not Syria and Egypt."
*

"What came first..."

"...the melamine... or the egg?"

-- HONG KONG (AP) -- Excessive levels of the industrial chemical melamine in Chinese eggs might be traced to feed given to chickens, the Hong Kong government said late Saturday.

In an earlier egg-related food safety scare, the banned cancer-causing industrial dye, Sudan Red, was used to color egg yolks.
*

25 October 2008

How Green my valley?

McDonald and the spokesman told The Canadian Press the party was unaware of the garnishment order when the Greens hired him last year in an unusual dual-contract arrangement between the party, McDonald and a company owned by McDonald's wife.

Under one of the contracts, the party was obligated to pay McDonald $1 year as executive director while paying the company owned by his wife, Carol Day, $74,999 annually for the services McDonald would provide the party on behalf of his wife's company.

McDonald said in an interview Friday that the complicated arranged was not designed to duck the garnishment an Ontario Superior Court judge ordered in February 2006.

"No it wasn't," said McDonald.

We have seen the enemy...

...and it may be us...

"King Barack the Benign, Spreader of Wealth and Healer of Planets."
*

Altercation, huh?

What's that... big-city speak for bloody gun battle?

-- TORONTO -- Bullets flew after "an altercation" outside Duke of York Tavern on Queen St. E., just west of Leslie St., around 12:50 a.m., Toronto Police Const. Fred Scofield said. "As a result of "the altercation", we have one deceased and four people injured."

Three women and two men were found with apparent gunshot wounds, a police press release said.

"One of the women was found just inside the tavern," the release said. She was pronounced dead at the scene, while the other victims are expected to survive.
Remember when you were a teenager and a disagreement at a bar would start the bullets flyin'?

Yeah... me neither.

**********

RELATED: "If you can't say anything nice..."

**********

UPDATE: Suspect named in Queen St. killing

*

A little late to the party...

...but she wore her best dress...

Pakistani Major General Tariq Khan says military forces gained control of Loi Sam, a strategic town at the center of militant supply routes. He told reporters visiting the area Saturday that the military victory followed heavy resistance from militant fighters.

Pakistani security forces have been battling al-Qaida and Taliban militants in Bajaur since August. Khan says nearly 1,500 suspected militants and 73 troops have died in the operation so far.
*

Hey, Scarborough... ready or not...

...here he comes...

-- TORONTO -- Reacting to news that a military commission judge hearing pretrial motions had set a start date of Jan. 26, 2009, Khadr’s mother expressed delight.

“Oh good,” Maha Elsamnah said from her home in Toronto.

“His lawyers kept asking us to pray for the delay.”
Welcome back Khadr.

**********

RELATED:
Paging Taliban Jack Layton
Negotiate this, bucko!
*

A severed head in a bucket?

Call me crazy... but why on earth is ANYBODY walkin' away from this one?

*

22 votes?

Sounds like he's the perfect replacement... for Stephane Dion.

-- VANCOUVER, B.C. -- One of the federal Liberals' high-profile western MPs won a squeaker recount Friday and said he's now pondering a run at the party's race to replace leader Stephane Dion.

Former NDP premier Ujjal Dosanjh, who first won Vancouver South for the Liberals in 2004 and was re-elected handsomely two years later, retained his seat by only 22 votes in a judicial recount of the Oct. 14 general election results.
Go, Ujjal, go.

*

24 October 2008

Guess again, you self-involved nobody

How about... if your child was one of the victims of this evil, hateful monster?

"My scar hasn't gone away and it never will, but I know the worst is behind me. I can't imagine worse sufferings than what I have already been through."
And help me out here, folks... why isn't there a single, solitary mention of the name "Gamil Gharbi"?

**********

UPDATE: CTV, of course, plays its own victim card
"Enough. Someone must speak out. By emerging from my self-imposed exile into the public gaze, I have only one goal: Although it may seem impossible, I want to put an end to these killings."
Yeah, sure, we believe you... the book is gonna be given away for free, right?

Funny... not a single mention of the word "Gharbi" here either.

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:
"Yes, but victimization has a lineage that needs to be respected. No?"
*

Speak softly...

...or get beaten by a big government stick...

If convicted, Pankiw can face massive fines. He could also face other orders, ranging from a forced apology to a lifetime ban on commenting about aboriginal issues. If Pankiw refuses to comply with such an order, he could serve time in jail.
*

Toronto police haiku...

...Gangland retribution edition...

Toronto Police Service
News Release
Homicide #29/2008, Justin Brunet, 21, Update, Homicide cleared
Friday, October 24, 2008 - 1:09 AM
Homicide Squad
416-808-7400
On Wednesday, July 9, 2008, at 7:09 p.m., police received a call for a shooting near 1979 Victoria Park Avenue.

See previous release.

Police have identified the man allegedly responsible for homicide #29/2008 as Dominic Shearer-Hanomansingh, 20, of Toronto.

On Saturday, July 26, 2008, at 11:10 p.m., police responded to a call for the sound of gunshots in the Eglinton Avenue West/Bicknell Avenue area.

See previous release.

On Tuesday, July 29, 2008, the victim, Dominic Shearer−Hanomansingh, 20, of Toronto, was pronounced dead at hospital.

Homicide #29/2008 has been cleared.

Constable Tony Vella, Public Information, for Detective Mike Carbone, Homicide Squad
There are no files attached to this release
.
The hits just keep on coming.

*

Another thrilling encounter...

...with our health care system.

The thing is, I'm feeling a little torn about this. We finally got a family doctor after being up here since 2001... and after waiting for so long, I swore I'd be the most appreciative patient ever.

That being said... I've gotta confess it sure isn't easy... and that's completely apart from my totally unreasonable general dislike of being anywhere near any hospital for any reason.

First off, I show up at x-ray for my appointment this morning (actually 20 minutes beforehand, as instructed) and still, like at the local deli counter, had to take a number for service.

Here's something I don't get... they already had all the paperwork faxed over from the specialist... but apparently won't put it into the computer until you present your face at the intake window.

It makes for a bit of a circus, as there was the usual crowd of tottery older folks, as well as... and I'm not making this up... a blind woman and her service dog milling around in the waiting room (and I can't even begin to imagine how much more frustrating this is for her).

Call me wacky, but here's a suggestion... hire some word-processing grunt to pre-input all the requisitions into the hospital computer as they come in. It'd cut the processing time at least in half and, as a side benefit, no one would have to stand there watching all that painful two-finger typist bullshit.

When I got to the lab there was, despite my scheduled appointment, another half-hour spent waiting for the technologist.

Suggestion #2... don't tell people they have a fixed appointment if you can't deliver. I can be there at a certain time AND I can sit there for hours... my personal best is seven hours with a sick fevered child... but I resent being played.

Now the testing itself, was done in a very professional manner by very pleasant and obviously competent people and I am grateful that someone is willing to do this sort of work, but again, I wish we weren't always behind the eight ball here. At one point, in the middle of almost three hours of testing, I was shuffled off the machine table and into the hallway for 20 minutes, presumably to hot-swap some other unfortunate soul in for a gamma-ray quickie.

Frankly, it's more than a little alarming and I obviously only see one tiny piece of the puzzle. I'd hate to think what hoops dialysis or chemotherapy patients have to leap through.

Apparently the system is on the brink of imploding and I hate to think what it's gonna be like when I'm actually old and frail.

Anyway... had to get that off my chest.

*

Obama campaign thrilled...

...with another huge endorsement...

Money, money, money... money

"Michelle Obama's wardrobe costs $0 because she makes it out of Grandma Madeyn's slip covers."
*

23 October 2008

"What's an antonym..."

"...for racism?"

“In a nutshell, this isn't government interference, it's AFN interference.”
**********

RELATED: Justice doesn't suck up to anyone
As Mr. Justice Harry LaForme agonized over whether to stay on as chairman of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he was faced with the question of whether he wanted to spend five years fighting for his own independence and authority.

The 61-year-old Ontario Court of Appeal judge consulted commission counsel Owen Young, whom Judge LaForme had stood by despite the opposition of some native groups to his hiring.

Mr. Young tried to persuade Judge LaForme, the country's highest-ranking aboriginal judge, to stay. “Harry, the country needs you,” he said.
One people... one law.

*

Reach out and touch somebody

Where is your god now?

Pakistani officials say a suspected U.S. drone has fired missiles into a tribal region in the country's northwest, killing at least five people.

Security officials and witnesses say the missiles struck a religious school Thursday in a North Waziristan village near the Afghan border, a stronghold of al-Qaida and Taliban militants.

Suspected U.S. drone aircraft have launched about 12 missile strikes against targets in North and South Waziristan in the past two months.

There was no immediate confirmation of the strike from U.S. officials.
In'shallah baby.

**********

RELATED: When you care enough to send the very best

*

The numbers game

Try to imagine what the tally would have been... if the Liberals had put 2 billion dollars into actual law enforcement... instead of the imbecilic "Farmer Bob Rifle Registry"...

In 2007, 126 homicides were committed with a handgun, 16 more than in 2006. The rate of homicides committed with a handgun has more than doubled over the past 20 years. At the same time, the use of rifles/shotguns to commit homicide continues to decline.
Translation: Illegal, unregistered handguns are the problem. Nobody's getting smoked with Farmer Bob's varmint rifle.
Homicides committed with handguns are primarily an urban phenomenon. Within the nation's metropolitan areas, 81% of all firearm-related homicides were committed with a handgun in 2007, compared with 29% in the rest of Canada.
Translation: Ganged-up urban thugs are the ones pulling the trigger. Farmer Bob's too busy working his ass off.
Gang-related homicides, which include the killing of gang members as well as innocent bystanders, have been increasing since this information was first collected in 1991. In 2007, just over two-thirds of gang-related homicides were committed with a firearm, compared with about 20% of homicides that did not involve gangs.
Guns don't kill people any more than cars drive... or hammers build houses.

Target the criminals.

**********

RELATED: Meanwhile... across the pond
Some police forces have been undercounting some of the most serious violent crimes in England and Wales, the Home Office has admitted.

Some crimes that should have been classed as "grievous bodily harm with intent" were recorded as lesser crimes.

As a result, overall crime and overall violent crime remain down on last year - but the official total of most serious violent crime is up by 22%.
Yeah, sure... hide the truth.

Look at how well that's working out for China.

*

Funny how that works, huh?

Mustafa Rizvi says he's been labeled a "traitor to Islam" for running against a Muslim MP in last week's federal election. Rizvi ran a distant third for the NDP in Mississauga-Erindale, won by Conservative Bob Dechert, who eked out a 239-vote win over Liberal incumbent Omar Alghabra.

Rizvi, a 28-year-old insurance adjuster, said he's received nearly two dozen threatening phone calls since election day, accusing him of splitting the Muslim vote and costing Alghabra his seat in Parliament.

"I've been getting harassment and phone calls from angry people," he said. "But this isn't faith-based politics; this is a democracy.

"Everybody has a right to run anywhere in the country."
Well, Mustafa... enjoy it while you can.

*

I betcha Wendy Cukier's...

...gonna have a heart attack...

-- CALGARY -- Members of the Canadian women's biathlon team are taking their clothes off to raise money for training and competition expenses heading into the 2010 Olympic Games.
*

The New Entrepreneurs

Who says kids today don't have any drive or ambition?

Toronto police have cracked a shoplifting ring that used diversions to steal tens of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise from LCBO and big box stores.

Since May, ring members have allegedly stolen $25,000 worth of alcohol, such as cognac and scotch, from LCBO stores across southern Ontario.

They are alleged to have stolen computers, lotions and about $1,400 worth of bubble gum from big box stores, such as Staples, Home Depot, grocery stores and pharmacies.
**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:
"It gets better. It seems that the alleged ringleader, a certain Kathleen Barry, was already on bail for an October 8th shoplifting arrest, which she committed while on parole for an even earlier conviction for thefts dating back to 2005 -- a conviction that netted her 75 days to be served on week-ends."
*

22 October 2008

Just say no

Sorry, folks... if we don't get to hang him... this guy should be serving, at minimum... six life sentences...

A man who killed six members of the same B.C. family more than 25 years ago will face his first parole hearing Wednesday at Bowden Institution in central Alberta.

In August 1982, David Ennis, who then went by the last name Shearing, killed George and Edith Bentley, their daughter Jackie Johnson, son-in-law Bob and grandchildren Janet, 13, and Karen, 11.
**********

UPDATE: Back to the slammer, you evil p.o.s.
Mr. Ennis told the board that he should be granted parole because he'd like to make a positive contribution to society.

The board did not immediately give any reasons, but denied his request for both day and full parole.
*

That sound you just heard...

...is 50,000 physicists worldwide... simultaneously peeing themselves...

It turns out that if you peel the popular adhesive tape off its roll in a vacuum chamber, it emits X-rays. The researchers even made an X-ray image of one of their fingers.

“We were very surprised,” Juan Escobar said. “The power you could get from just peeling tape was enormous.”
In the world of "pure science"... it doesn't get much better than this.

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:
"Does this mean the fabric of the universe can be destroyed or fixed with scotch tape?"
I gotta say... I just wanna know what led up to this little stunt.

I mean, was some grad student just goofin' on his buddies... "Holy crap, the vacuum chamber's sittin' there with nothin' in it... now's my chance to peel a little tape."

Somebody tell me there wasn't any reefer involved somewhere here.

*

Ah... so it's only an "economic update?"

Funny how... when it's not the saintly Liberal party... it's all about lies, broken trust and Conservative "warlords"...
Bias? What media bias?

*

Jordanian intelligentsia snorts...

"...What is this candy-ass CHRC?"

However, despite the critical praise Mr Samhan has now been remanded in custody for two weeks while awaiting trial.

Grand Mufti Nuh Qdah said in a recent radio interview that poetry in which words from the Koran were combined with sexual themes was "a type of atheism and blasphemy", the AFP news agency reports.

The penalty in Jordan for insulting Islam or the Muslim prophet is up to three years in jail.
It's all relative, I guess... apparently the Afghans think the Jordanians are pussies.

*

From the merciful Islam files

-- KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- An Afghan appeals court overturned a death sentence Tuesday for a journalism student accused of blasphemy for asking questions in class about women's rights under Islam. But the judges still sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

In January, a lower court sentenced him to death in a trial critics have called flawed in part because Kambakhsh had no lawyer representing him.

Muslim clerics welcomed that court's decision and public demonstrations were held against the journalism student because of perceptions he had violated the tenets of Islam.
**********

UPDATE: Oh-oh... this one brought out all the Moonbats...

...nasty little Robert McClelland and my own personal troll...
Well, nonny-bot... I thought I was doing you a favour, but okay...
Hey, Robert... that's your cue.

Don't tell me you're gonna let nonny outspew you.

**********

LAST WORD: The mask finally slips...
Curiously, this seems to be a recurring theme for my own personal (cough, cough) "anonymous" troll...
But, strangely enough... if you go into Canada411... there is no Simon J. Walter in the Waterloo area... hmmmm.
Of course... those of you who are late to the party might be asking... who is this mysterious "sjwalter"?

*

"I guess the looming crisis..."

"...that most worries the Obama campaign right now is Joe Biden's next speaking engagement."
*

I wanna be

One toke over the line sweet Jesus...
One toke over the line...
Sittin' downtown in a railway station...
One toke over the line
*

21 October 2008

How green my valley?

Looks like it's time to thin the herd...

In the Ministry of Natural Resource’s eyes, the return of elk to the Bancroft area is a success story, born out of the work of environmentalists’ concern for an indigenous species that once disappeared.

But to the agriculture sector, they are a nuisance, causing farmers thousands of dollars in crop damage for which they can’t find compensation.

“Imagine a 500-cow beef herd running loose in the Bancroft area,” he said. “They eat a lot of feed. And the best grazing is on improved pastures and in field crops. You can’t blame the animal, but that happens to be farmer’s livelihood.”
*

Sounds like their first witness...

...is gonna be Martha Stewart...

"One notes that the colours of the pamphlet (white of the paper, red and black inks) wittingly or unwittingly utilize colours very much associated with aboriginal people, for whom four colours have come to be associated with the four cardinal directions and have great spiritual significance."
The pseudo-legal dreamworld of the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission.

*

Everything you need to know...

...about Bob Rae's dodgy relationship with truth...

In an interview with CBC News, Rae insisted he had "NOT YET DECIDED" whether he would run for the position, which Dion announced a day earlier he would vacate once a successor was chosen.
Now that the king is dead... "let the games begin in earnest"... yet again.

**********

UPDATE: Who cares what I said this morning?

**********

RELATED: And while we're on honesty...
And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.
(via kate)

You figure the families...

...of outlaw bikers and mafia sluggers get "special support" from the local constabulary?

Five men have been arrested under the Terrorism Act in a series of dawn raids across the Birmingham area.

Meanwhile, specially trained officers have been supporting the men's families and have been speaking to community leaders.
Perhaps the fuzzy-bunny Brits could take a lesson from Indonesia.

*

Gonna be a slow day at the Halls

We have a stand of dead elm downhill from the house, so this weekend I got out and cut a little more firewood. Always a good feeling to nail down more fuel for the stove... (I'm running behind this year)... and policing up deadwood just makes it all that sweeter.

I cut by myself, so it's important to think stuff out before you actually fire up the saw. I'm tryin', these days, to be a little more careful about taking breaks and staying hydrated. A couple times in the past, I've kept on sloggin' after getting too tired and ended up fannin' my leg with the saw... which, by the way, is lots more exciting than it sounds.

I think I'm also getting better at reading where stuff is gonna end up. You always try to lay them down where there's space to work, but so many things... proximity, asymmetry, incline, wind, woodrot... can turn things sideways in a second.

The biggest one I tackled this go-round ended up falling off to one side, spinning with the weight of uneven branches... but I'd actually anticipated the possibility and was able to step off as it lurched left and spiraled down.

It wasn't a huge amount of work, but I was feeling pretty pleased with myself... no real aches or scrapes... until this morning when I reached out for my coffee and my back spasmed.

Simply amazing.

The day before, I'd been carrying 40 pound rounds of elm a couple hundred meters to where I could trailer them up the hill... and this morning I just about collapsed in my own kitchen.

It was something I'd almost forgotten about... that incredible electric whap as your muscles decide to snap tight seven ways from Sunday. And it zapped me another couple of times during the day.

Managed to get some comfort and mobility after an overlong, scalding shower... but I think I'm off hard labour for the rest of the week.

Shouldn't complain... it's been a while since I've had any real trouble. Might just be time to pull out a good book.

*

20 October 2008

Boy... have I got a wedge issue...

...for Steffi to champion when Parliament gets off the ground...

-- VANCOUVER -- Two British Columbians serving time for drug offences in the U.S. have filed a lawsuit against Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day for blocking their transfers to Canadian prisons.

Mr. Czinege and Ms. Lam also claim their constitutional rights have been violated and that there should be an immediate order for their return to Canada.

Mr. Czinege was convicted in January 2007 after he was caught trying to smuggle 110 kilograms of cocaine from Washington to Canada inside a truck's fuel tanks.

Ms. Lam is serving a seven-year jail sentence after she was caught with 1,000 ecstasy pills at the Seattle airport.

They are also seeking to have their legal fees reimbursed.
C'mon... they're at least as deserving as this guy.

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:
"What, no Human Rights Complaint?"
*

Dion... the diabolical genius

I guarantee, you'll only get this sort of shrewd political analysis... from a graduate of the "Rainman Institute of Leftospherics & Social Policy."
Oh, no... we've been outfoxed again!

**********

UPDATE FROM THE COMMENTS:

He might not ever win a battle... but he'll never lose a moment...
See nonny... I know you felt kinda stupid and were looking for a zinger here... but maybe you should have used up some of the nine minutes it took you to respond... to look up the word "lugubrious" (mournful, dismal, or gloomy) in a dictionary.

I think maybe the word you were actually looking for was "pathetic"... also strangely and ironically appropriate.

And Nonny... at the risk of bursting your uber-academic bubble...

"The MSM seems to be missing the notion that Dion has also made it incredibly easy for the CPC to do what it wants over the next several months as there is no way the Liberals will want to go into another election under this guy."

"Dion has made yet another blunder."
**********

LAST WORD: "...when nobody reads your blog"

Hey Nonny... I think they like you
Feeling a little "lugubrious"?


*

The Little Engine... that couldn't

For all them fightin' words... looks like he's a quitter after all.

Say... has anybody checked on Frodo?

*

"Today... we are all..."

"...'Communication, Energy and Paper Workers'... whether we like it... or not.

" -- CANADA -- Around CAN $500,000 of federal funds will be used to process ground pork from animals slaughtered through the new federal cull breeding swine program."
Whaddaya wanna bet there's a sudden, massive lack of curiosity about this story in the mainstream media... a la Obama-Ayers...
Is there a single mainstream reporter out there who will ask Winnipeg Harvest executive director David Northcott about his sudden surplus of food?

Will any reporter go to any of the agencies that get food form Winnipeg Harvest and ask they why they suddenly don't need any donations?

Who was the Winnipeg Harvest volunteer who allegedly made the decision on his own to feed the strikers ahead of the truly needy.

Wouldn't that be a lovely good news story?
Don't count on seeing that story anytime soon.

Funny how that works.

*

Just don't...

...call it a newspaper...
Reminiscent of Obamamania... the Globe and Mail is in full "eco-flight mode" this morning.

Today... it's miracle houses...

Homes are such energy guzzlers because they're not airtight. They're typically so full of cracks they replace all their inside air with cold outside air at the rate of four to five complete exchanges every hour, forcing furnaces into overdrive.
Of course, there's a solution for every problem, right?
Mr. Braden has built a house that is so airtight and insulated it needs next to no heating. The house is so efficient, he claims, that it "doesn't make any sense" to spend $4,000 on a furnace.
Anyway, Mr B. admits his house is so tight, he needs an air-exchanger... which... hang on a second... as I understand it...
"...replaces inside air with cold outside air multiple times every hour."
And, as someone who actually has a tight house and a high-end air-exchanger unit... lemme tell you, solar gain included... this guy ain't gonna go all winter on that claimed "single pick-up truck load" of wood.

You don't need to be a physicist to know that mixing the warm air inside your house with the minus 25 degree air in the rest of the world is a constant and totally one-sided losing battle. On another note... the only air-exchanger units I'm familiar with, run off the blower in the furnace... perhaps Mr. Braden has one of those new squirrel powered units.

The fact is, so much of this miracle technology is so far beyond the reach of ordinary people, it's really a joke to be touting them as actual real-world solutions.

This isn't news... it's propaganda...
Currently, the homes are at the demonstration stage, making them costly and unaffordable, except for the well heeled. The Toronto CMHC renovation cost about $85,000, to achieve a $1,000 cut in gas bills and a 60-per-cent cut in electricity use, but the hope is that economies of scale will eventually bring expenses down.

Because he wanted to live without accessing the electricity grid, Mr. Braden did spend $42,000 on his solar panels and wind turbine, an expenditure he confesses "is a little bit over the top," but his high-efficiency house doesn't rely on them.
So, despite the fact that the MSM has been screaming for the last little while about how we're all gonna be eating catfood in our retirement years... the Globe presents this one house as a shining beacon of environmental hope.

Speaking of hope, you'll notice that the main innovation in this home, the double wall with the unconventional vapour-barrier setup... is also totally experimental, and I quote...
"...he doesn't THINK he'll have condensation problems."
Again... this is all about "HOPE & CHANGE."

That remind you of anything?

*

You know...

...as opposed to the certitude of Obi Wan Ignatieff and the rest of the Fiberal Jedi...
Thank you, once again, Canadian Press.

*

Forget about Dion...

...taxpayers are already getting the "Green Shaft"...

The TTC is going back to buying diesel buses because the batteries on its newer hybrid diesel-electric models are proving too "hit and miss."

Batteries that should be lasting five years are surviving only about 18 months, which affects service because those buses have to come off the road for repairs, he said. The hybrids have also failed to live up to projected fuel savings because the technology is most beneficial in stop-and-go downtown traffic and there are a limited number of such routes.

Much of the financing for the new buses came from Ottawa, which gave the TTC $303.5 million last March – enough to buy almost 700 of the new hybrids.
Ouch.

*

19 October 2008

Is Hanoi Jane Taber...

...floating a trial balloon for Stephane Dion?

If so... its name may be Hindenburg.

Over the weekend, Mr. Dion told one defeated candidate to “stay strong and trim and be ready,” surmising that the budget that the Harper Conservatives deliver in February “is going to be a mess.”

The Harper Tories were held to a minority government last Tuesday and a budget vote is a confidence matter that could bring down the government.

“He didn't sound like someone who is leaving,” a senior Liberal source said.
**********

RELATED: From the obituary page...
"Stephane is politically survived by a bankrupt party, his professorial pals Bob and Iggy, Jane Taber, Craig Oliver, Jim Travers and TorStar (for now), Justin Trudeau, Warren Kinsella and a myriad of socialist Canadians who are entitled to their entitlements."

"He will be sadly missed by both large and small C conservatives alike."
**********

LAST WORD: Best comment bar none...

...on Dion's self-imposed exile at Stornoway this last week...
"For most people, this triggers a visit from a hostage negotiator."
*

Of course, he skips right over...

...ACORN, Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright...

It was an important high-profile endorsement for Obama from a fellow African-American who served first as the nation's top military officer and later as its chief diplomat.
**********

RELATED:
"The Left is already rejoicing at the news, despite the fact that some of the the very same people spent endless hours cataloging Powell's alleged lies and deceptions to the UN in 2003, essentially destroying the man's public reputation."
**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:
"It will be transformational with Robin Hood in the White House."
And...
"There will be a lot of American companies 'spreading their wealth' to other more tax hospitable countries once Obama is done socializing the nation."
*

And once again we have...

...the capricious and unknowable "Will of Allah."

Defense Ministry spokesman General Zahir Azimi says the militants hijacked the bus and its 50 passengers Thursday in the Maiwand district of Kandahar province, a Taliban stronghold.

The spokesman says about 30 dead bodies have been found, six of them beheaded.
That's some bloodthirsty deity.

**********

RELATED: Allah... he's flexible
Taliban militants have launched dozens of suicide bomb attacks this year, about half of them aimed at international troop convoys.

But only some 4 per cent of the victims are foreign soldiers, and the vast majority of those killed, some 80 per cent, are Afghan civilians, security experts say.
**********

LAST WORD: A "made in Afghanistan" solution...
The woman, Gayle Williams, was a UK and South African national. She was killed by two men on a motorbike, witnesses told the BBC.

The Taleban are reported to have said they killed her because she was working for a Christian organisation called Serve Afghanistan.

In August the Taleban killed three foreign women near Kabul.
And...
Gunmen in Somalia have killed an aid worker employed by the United Nations during an attack against humanitarians in the war-ravaged country, witnesses reported Monday.

Southern Somalia resident Abdi Aden said three gunmen shot the Somali employee of the UN Children's Fund, UNICEF, late on Sunday evening as he walked home in the southern town of Hudur.

Another UN employee was shot three days ago as he left a mosque in the port of Merka. Fourteen humanitarian workers have been killed in Somalia so far this year.
*

Gotta have priorities

Must be nice to live in a place... your biggest problem is, somebody's kidnapping your beaches...

"It's a very complex investigation because it involves so many aspects," he told the BBC.

"You've got the receivers of the stolen sand, or what we believe to be the sand. The trucks themselves, the organisers and, of course, there is some suspicion that some police were in collusion with the movers of the sand."
**********

RELATED: Got kids? Live in Toronto?

Then my only question would be... "Are you nuts?"
Sixteen months ago, Toronto discovered a cancer under its streets.

Old lead pipes, installed in the 1950s and earlier, was leaching the potent neurotoxin into tap water -- posing a serious health risk to pregnant women and children in particular.

Frank Zechner, the executive director of the Ontario Sewer and Watermain Construction Association, said he believes the city will take longer than nine years to replace its lead service connections.

But even its stated timeline, he charged, is far too slow. Similar programs in the U.S. have mandated timelines to replace lead pipes tied to test results. "Replacing 5,500 out of 65,000 in just over a year is still a pretty lax pace," Zechner said.

That work also does nothing to address lead pipes and connections that run on an individual's property.
**********

LAST WORD: The other "lead-poisoning"
Police patrolling the area saw a man fire a round of bullets at the back of a nightclub in a parking lot near Richmond and Simcoe Streets. A suspect was then seen entering a white stretch SUV limousine that was parked nearby on Richmond Street.

Authorities stopped the vehicle and held it until the ETF arrived on the scene a short time later, around 3:30 a.m.
Just another reason.

*

Poor old Parizeau finally snaps...

Compares Quebec to oppressed Soviet client states...

Mr. Parizeau said he doesn't share Mr. Sarkozy's vision of the world, pointing to the emergence of numerous sovereign states in recent years, such as those from the former Soviet Union, as a sign of the growing need for people to obtain their political independence.
Ol' Jacques decides to ice this particular cake by crapping all over one of Quebec's strongest supporters in the community of nations...
“What this implies is that it is a judgment that is very anti-Quebec sovereignty that says: ‘We do not agree with Quebec sovereignty, we do not want additional divisions. We accept divisions everywhere in the world but not that one.'”
Yet another victim of Canada's evil, racist oppressive society... and, of course, France.

NEXT!!!

**********

UPDATE: On further reflection... I'm thinkin'...

Quebec IS starting to resemble Chechnya...
The fire was started around 9:30 p.m. on Saturday when witnesses reported seeing a tanker truck ram into the hideout. Police confirmed on Sunday that a truck was found in the wreckage.

A large security perimeter was set up Saturday night and dozens of people were evacuated from nearby homes. Quebec provincial police are investigating the possible link between the bunker fire and two other criminal fires in Sorel-Tracy the same night.
*

I guess they drew straws...

...and McCallum lost...

Ontario Liberal MP John McCallum has been tapped to take over the reins of his party as interim leader if Stephane Dion steps down as expected on Monday, CTV News has learned.

"People in the Liberal Party are still telling us Dion intends to quit Monday afternoon," CTV's chief political correspondent Craig Oliver said Saturday. Oliver said that McCallum was chosen because he is bilingual, an authority on finance and well-regarded by the Liberal caucus.

"He's thought of as a consensual interim leader, he's not going to be flying off on his own making decisions that they can't support," Oliver said.
Hmmm... John McCallum... flying... why does that sound so familiar?

**********

UPDATE: Not over 'til the stout party hack sings...
-- OTTAWA -- Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale is pushing hard behind the scenes to line up caucus support to become interim leader if Stephane Dion steps down Monday, party insiders say.

Sources say the unilingual Goodale appears to have substantial caucus backing but his team understands it needs a francophone MP as a deputy leader.
And don't miss Canadian Press stirring the pot even further.

*

18 October 2008

"Can the rest of Canada..."

"...ever fully satisfy the demands of Quebec?"
Another Globe & Mail poll goes horribly, terribly... inevitably... wrong.

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:

"Wish the rest of us could vote for Quebec separatism..."
And...
"As Duceppe mentioned many times during the election, Quebec has a smaller carbon footprint (because of the use of hydro power) than the rest of the country.

Why not institute a 'carbon equalization plan' so that Quebec has to foot the bill for the rest of us that burn dirty energy, & yet keep the economy going?"
It should certainly appeal to Quebec's compassionate socialist bent.

Why not, indeed?

*

“A man with a seventh-grade education..."

"...won the French Legion of Honor for scholarship,” Mr. Stere said. “I don't know of anybody who started with so little and did so much."
**********

WELCOME, YET AGAIN, READERS OF CANADIAN CYNIC

Sitemeter tells me I'm getting some traffic (well, 5 hits out of my last 100) from nasty, little Canadian Cynic.

The Cynic has been keeping a pretty low profile since his most recent appalling burst of anti-semitism. It seems though... with the death of a prominent member of Canada's Jewish community... he just couldn't contain himself any longer.

I guess it's true... you really can't change who you are.

I have to wonder though, how "sjwalter", the Cynic's twin blogger from Waterloo... feels about being associated with his vile spew...
And don't forget... he's a versatile hater.

Of course, there's a special place in his heart for the ladies...
What a guy!

*

Wasn't this the big, hairy-ball issue...

...that turned around all the voters in Quebec?

I'm holding this book, I'm thumbing through the pages with their luxuriant displays of vaginal flora and naked women smeared in paint or bound with twine and – due to the presence of the two men seated on either side of me – it's getting a little weird until I break the ice and explain that I am on my way to a feminist art exhibition in Vancouver.

I am an art critic. I am a feminist.

This is art.
Good grief.

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:
Finally, a few key works were cut from the Vancouver show, like Mary Kelly's landmark Post-Partum Document (which famously displayed the soiled diapers of the artist's newborn son, accompanied by records of his food intake)
*

"They stab it with their steely knives..."

"But they just can't kill the beast..."
**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:

"Rockstar politics is great from my perspective... Sing along now kids......Ya might as well JUMP!!!...Go ahead and JUMP!!!"
*

Touching the "third rail"...

...of British politics...

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, which argues for balanced migration, told BBC Five Live Mr Woolas's remarks showed a significant development in the immigration debate.

"This is the very first time that a government minister has recognised the link between immigration and population. The government have been in denial about that for years."
*

One of the boys

Cross, a history professor at Pennsylvania State University, believes contemporary men are refusing to grow up. "They are boy-men, engaged in a veritable rejection of maturity in all its meanings."

He elaborates on this: “Mocking of convention in celebrations of amoral violent fantasy, crude vulgarity and unrestrained appetite, the boy-man makes a fetish of the ‘cool’."

"He turns maturity into a joke, a pitiful loss to be avoided at almost all costs.”
*

Too bad we can't just...

...ask a French missionary...

An aboriginal rights group has reported former International Olympic Committee vice-president Dick Pound to the IOC's ethics committee, accusing him of making racist and intolerant comments about Canada's native peoples and demanding that he be denounced ahead of the 2010 Games in Vancouver.
And how does evil, patriarchal, racist old white guy respond?
“Yes, I'm sure that there's probably a more politically correct way of expressing it in this day and age. But I was saying think back to what it was like 200 or 300 years ago before you start lecturing a 5,000-year-old society."
C'mon... let's have a little respect for the noble stone-age hunter-gatherer.

**********

RELATED: Yeah, c'mon now... what savages?
And then, suddenly and terribly, in 1649, the whole work of the French Jesuits was swept away in a seething wave of blood and terror, as the Iroquois destroyed the Huron nation, burning all the Christian villages, murdering the warriors, and carrying off the surviving women and children to be slaves.

When the Iroquois captured the famous giant Echon, they were jubilant over their special prize. They devised unique tortures for this man who had been a legend for almost twenty-five years.

Because he would not curse them, but instead, forgave them and preached courage to the other captured Christians, the Iroquois cut out his tongue.

They scalped him while he was still alive, and when, finally, the death blow was struck, they pounced upon his body and cut out his heart, to eat it and drink his blood that they might have courage like Echon's.
And the Globe isn't taking any chances with its apparently racist audience...
FYI... it seems that my comment got censored, er... "moderated" -- but look what made it through...
William Malofy from First Nation, Canada writes: "I am not sure if Mr. Pound was refering(sic) to the 10,000 racist savages from Europe in the 17th century who came over here to Turtle Island (North America) that raped and pilaged(sic) the First Nations people and the earth OR was he refering(sic) to the Native Culture that were the Keepers of the Earth; the First Nations peoples."
Fair AND balanced.

*

I dunno...

...maybe there's some kind of unique cultural thing goin' on here.

-- MONTREAL -- Police have linked the seizure of a nearly a ton of explosives northeast of Quebec City to another cache found Friday after they searched an apartment a block away from Quebec provincial police headquarters in Montreal.

Quebec provincial police Sgt. Joyce Kemp said about 200 kilograms of commercial explosives was found inside the Montreal apartment after police cleared a number of neighbouring buildings and locked down a nearby school.

The investigation began after provincial police received a call on Oct. 14 that reported about 1,000 kilograms of explosives had been stolen from a site in the lower St. Lawrence region.
*

17 October 2008

Call me a troglodyte...

...but I'm thinkin'... you can't make a non-leaded pacifier -- we don't want your business.

-- OTTAWA -- About 10,000 baby pacifiers sold in Canada were recalled Thursday after they were tested positive for high levels of lead, according to Health Canada.

The soothers were manufactured in Thailand.

Exposure to lead can cause vomiting, diarrhea, convulsions, coma or even death. Infants, young children and pregnant women are the most susceptible to lead poisoning, Health Canada said.
*

No word, yet again, from Mayor Miller...

...on which Toronto area gun club is responsible...

Police are searching for three suspects after gunshots prompted the lockdown of a North York public school. Police say two parents heard gunfire at about 1:26 p.m. near Shoreham Public School.

The sound of gunshots were coming from Grandravine Drive in the Jane Street and Finch Avenue area.
**********

RELATED: Weekend's just getting started
A shooting just before midnight in the Jane-401 area left two men wounded, with one man requiring hospital car.

Friday's incident occurred at the community centre of the Falstaff housing project.
*

"Yeah, well, he's a quitter... I'm not"

"I will fight for my country. I love Canada," Dion said. "I'm the leader! I am the leader! And I'm working to win."

"I'm not a quitter."
**********

RELATED: It takes one... to know one

*

We have the technology

Remember back in grade three, when Mrs. Doodlemeyer used to say... "Class... it's time to put on our thinking caps?"

Well, apparently, NOW... it is time...

The cap uses tiny magnets to change the process by which we think. Tests have shown that it can improve artistic and mathematical ability by turning off the part of the brain that controls our innate view of the world.

The magnets let the brain experience raw sensory information, untainted by preconceptions - just as a child might see the world.
*

Well, I know they visit here...

...on a daily basis...

The City of Toronto is being asked to spend $200,000 to more closely monitor the Internet use of its employees.

In a report to next week's meeting of government management committee, the city's Chief Information Officer Dave Wallace said funds are needed to hire two full-time employees to handle the additional workload of analysing and reporting on Internet use.
What cracks me up here, is that the first two hours of pissin' around in cyberspace... is apparently deductible.
Griffiths defined "excessive" use as more than two hours of surfing, looking at more than 500 pages on 10 different web sites. He estimated the city could be losing at least $3 million a year in productivity.
**********

RELATED: Once upon a taxpayer
Councillors, following an often heated debate, voted 31-5 Monday to spend an additional $2.6 million this year and $4.9 million in 2009 to get panhandlers into housing and social programs through the existing Streets to Homes program.

“They want some choice in their food and they want to deal with their addictions."
Of course they do... that's why they eat out of dumpsters and would cheerfully strangle granny for their next spike fulla' smack.

*

So, how is it...

...that politicians of all stripes can look us straight in the eye... and say that no one will be interested in the job unless they keep jackin' up the money?

A total of 65 ex-MPs from the last Parliament qualify for generous pension benefits or a $77,700 severance payment if they were not MPs for the six years required to qualify for a pension.

Former prime minister Paul Martin, a millionaire who spent little time in the Commons following his government's defeat in 2006, topped the list with an indexed lifetime pension of $167,051.

Liberal Joe McGuire, a former cabinet minister who was first elected in 1988, will receive an annual pension of $131,330. He announced his retirement months before the election, though he kept his P.E.I. Commons seat until the election, in which Conservative Gail Shea defeated the Liberal candidate who succeeded McGuire.

Another Liberal, former Welland MP John Maloney, will receive a pension of $79,331. Maloney first won election to the Commons only 15 years ago, and the highest position he held in successive Liberal governments was parliamentary secretary.

Retiring New Democrat MP Bill Blaikie will collect a $122,224 annual pension, while defeated Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer, 36, qualifies for minimum pension of $53,540, which he can begin collecting at age 55. By then, retroactive inflation indexing to the year he lost his seat will have increased Jaffer's pension substantially.

By comparison, a federal public servant who retires at age 60 after 35 years in pensionable service, and has earned an average salary of $50,000 for the five highest-paid years, will receive an annual pension of $35,000.
*

Weaselly, weaselly words

Yeah, guys... the most important thing here... is to pretend you're not actually shoveling dirt into the hole...

What representatives of would-be candidates made clear in conversations was their strong wish to avoid the optics of any indecent clamouring for Mr. Dion's job while he still occupies it.
*

16 October 2008

I'm sitting here utterly gobsmacked...

...as Canada continues its slow slide into utter madness...

A multiple killer has been awarded $6,000 in damages because prison officials in Ontario failed to comply with his request for specialty running shoes, in a case that could make it easier for inmates and others to sue government agencies.

The Federal Court of Canada ruled that Correctional Services of Canada engaged in "misfeasance in public office" by repeatedly stalling Gregory McMaster when he asked for his $125 pair of New Balance running shoes.

Four people were killed by McMaster during a six-day spree in the summer of 1978. His victims included a police officer in Minnesota and three other victims in Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec.
I got nuthin'.

(h/t reader pissedoff)

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:

Okay... it took me a while to absorb this one, but I think I've got it...
"my personal feeling here is we should buy them all top-quality construction boots and gloves and re-implement that daily exercise regimen of turning big rocks into tiny ones."

"see... we're always gonna need gravel... tired, introspective convicts are just ice-cream."

"win-win."
*

I agree... no more dickin' around

These dumbsticks think they're ready to run with the big dogs... it's time to bring in SWAT...

“We will no longer negotiate with terrorists which you are as you keep endangering our families with crazy expansion of deadly gas wells in our home lands,” said the anonymous letter, parts of which were published by the Dawson Creek Daily News.
You know what, Fidel... you're absolutely right... it's time to pull out the kevlar.

Less yap - more slap.

*

First there was Mallick...

...now Potter and O'Malley...

"Did CTV get in touch with Maclean's and tell them that the posting crossed the line? Or did Maclean's management have second thoughts, perhaps about the suitability of the language?"

"Or perhaps management had doubts that Andrew Potter was even right on the issue of airing the interview from a journalistic point of view."
*

And a cry spread across the land...

"Please, oh wonderful government... give us more social workers!!!"

A man accused of slaying two women in their east-end home Monday morning had been out on bail since March while facing charges of sexual assault, a police source said yesterday.

Nathaniel O'Brien, 31, was released from jail last spring but is scheduled to appear in Superior Court in May next year to answer to six charges, which include two counts each of aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault with a weapon and attempted choking, court documents show.

O'Brien was arrested earlier this week in connection with the deaths of his neighbours, Saramma Varughese, 65, and Susan John, 43, and an attack on John's 20-year-old daughter, Sara.
In Dalton McSlippery's socialist paradise... there's no such thing as a really bad boy.

*

Of course... Quebec... the arts...

...what Philistine wouldn't be behind this argle-bargle... hook, line and boat anchor...

While Mouawad certainly knows how to make an entrance, it's his exit from the stage two hours later that will truly imprint itself on the memory of spectators. For the final 20 minutes of the solo show, Mouawad alternates between violently and joyously rolling around in gallons of paint onstage.

Again in his underpants, he uses almost every part of his body as a paintbrush in an extraordinary sequence that starts off shocking, then veers dangerously close to the realm of masturbatory performance art, but finally wrenches back into something that slaps a glove in the face of description.

It's a daring and disturbing and delirious sequence, and I wouldn't sit in the front row without bringing a poncho.
From your lips, to Leonardo DaVinci's ears.

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:
"Apparently we're going to be 10 billion in the hole this budget."

"I can think of a few places to save a few billion right now. One starts with the letters CBC..."
*

He didn't need a Weatherman

Touching for the first time in a presidential debate on some of the negative campaigning of which the Republican camp has been accused, Mr McCain challenged Mr Obama about his relationship with William Ayers, former Weather Underground leader.
**********

RELATED: Breaking down the debate
Obama is the debater, yes. But we’re not electing a debater. These are incredibly difficult, even perilous, times — and I hope McCain pulls it off. I hope he and Sarah have a superb, surprising last few weeks.
*

Watch Jane Taber bleed from her eyes

“How do you do a putsch on a guy who doesn't understand he's being putsched?”
**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:

"If nothing else, it's interesting to note that at least four of the primary contenders for leader of the Liberal party are from Toronto."

"I guess that from the secure bastion of the holy-of-holies one gets a real sense of what the rest of the country is thinking."
*

15 October 2008

Enough to make you wanna scream

You know what I mean... all the nonsensical, fluffy yip-yap from Bob and Iggy... about what a great job Stephane Dion did with the Lemming, er... Liberal campaign.

Maybe we can just ask somebody who doesn't have to carefully conceal any ulterior motive. You know... like somebody who isn't actually looking to take Dion's livelihood away from him...

Political consultant David Herle, who chaired the two previous Liberal campaigns, said the party will hold Dion responsible for what he describes as last night's "crushingly bad defeat."

"We are now again, virtually irrelevant in Western Canada and have lost the beachhead we had in British Columbia. The problems in Quebec remain widespread and deep. The NDP and Greens are encroaching on the Liberal party's territory from the left."

Since Dion was the author and the designer of the campaign, Herle said he can't see him leading the party during another election.
There... wasn't that refreshing?

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:
The punch-line?

Take a look here and in my sidebar.

*

Terrific...

...now we've gotta go to war with the "Eco-Jihadis"...

RCMP spokesperson Sgt. Tim Shields told The Canadian Press that police are not characterizing the incident as an act of terrorism, but as an isolated crime.

"Fortunately the gas line didn't rupture when the explosive was detonated but rather it was dented in," said Shields. "If it had ruptured there would have obviously been a massive explosion and fireball."
*

More AQ job postings

WANTED: Fanatical, bloodthirsty maniac with proven organisational skills... previous experience with explosives an asset...

The raid, likely carried out by the special operations hunter-killer teams of Task Force 88, resulted in five al Qaeda operatives killed, including Abu Qaswarah.

"Evidence after the operation indicates he was shot by Coalition forces who were acting in self defense and that he detonated his suicide vest after receiving mortal wounds from Coalition forces."

"The innocent Iraqi victims were three women and three children who were also killed during the operation. This deliberate disregard for the safety of innocent Iraqi lives is characteristic of Abu Qaswarah’s nefarious operations."
**********

RELATED: Get your Canadian content here
Tarek Fatah says... Tonight, the CBC Radio show "Ideas" will air an interview with me about my life and my book, Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State

The interview airs at at 9:05 p.m. EST on CBC Radio One (99.1 FM in Toronto) and can be heard on-line around the world at http://www.cbc.ca/radio/
Darcey from DMB just spent some time with Tarek this last weekend. This one should be worth tuning in.

**********

UPDATE: Darcey has the Tarek interview

*

Well... apart from almost...

...grabbing CTV's Roger Smith... by the testicles...

Mr. Dion conceded defeat with grace, but appeared to indicate that he expects to lead the Liberals in opposition in coming months, saying he told Mr. Harper in a phone call that he would work with him in the new Parliament to confront the global economic crisis.
"Work with him" indeed.

I recognise a quality here... that in a working dog... would be called "gun-shy."

**********

RELATED: In other "almost" news

[*]

Plan 9 from Outer Cherniak

"I am quite confident that Stéphane Dion will lead the Liberals in the next election, win, lose or coalition. This is a defence of Mr. Dion's leadership for the election tomorrow.

My point is that Mr. Dion is not just a leader, but a great leader. He has done everything a leader of the Liberal Party could have done to win this election."

"In my view, he has proven that he is the best man to be prime minister of Canada."
And Jason... you're not alone...
"Speaking on behalf of conservatives everywhere, we'd really like you to stay Stéphane - you're no quitter!"
**********

MINORITY REPORT:
"This is an epic disaster," one party insider told The Canadian Press as dismal figures poured in from across the country. "Everybody's up except us."

"They're just picking at our bones," said the insider, referring to election night projections that put the party's total seat tally at near-historic lows.

Worse yet for Dion, Liberal brass told CTV News on Tuesday night that a May leadership convention in Vancouver was already in the works.
**********

LAST WORD: Jason... the post is somewhat superfluous...

...didn't you fall on your sword yesterday?
"This is my last post on politics. After almost four years of blogging, I have decided that I have had enough. I had my time in the spotlight and that is enough for this 29-year old."

"I will no longer take the risk of making enemies by being too honest in public."

"I have a life to live and I have 'come to the conclusion that I cannot live it in public unless I have a job that pays me' to live in public. That is going to be my life for the foreseeable future."

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
I love the part about "come to the conclusion"... that only took, what... almost 30 years?

Hey Jason, here's a thought... maybe you were just targeting the wrong demographic.

*

So...

...let's tally up the numbers...

And a historic low turnout... just 59%.

*

14 October 2008

Well... we did our part

The Belleville region and the ridings on both sides are staying blue.

Incumbent Conservatives Daryl Kramp, Rick Norlock and Scott Reid have all been declared the winners in their respective ridings by Canadian Press.
Interestingly... although Bob and Iggy were very careful to dance around questions of Stephane Dion's continued leadership of the Liberal Party... CTV reporter Beverly Thompson gleefully reported the "snickers and whispers" down at Ignatieff H.Q.

Just now watching Duceppe taking credit for denying the Conservatives a majority government.

The big story tomorrow, according to CTV anyway... will be what valiant coalition of Opposition parties will take up the cudgel against scary, hidden Stephen Harper.

And here comes Taliban Jack... yapping about how he ran for Prime Minister to... you must be shittin' me... save Canada?

Sorry... I gotta go throw up...

Okay, I'm back... looks like Dion has finally shown up.

Guest pundit Brian Tobin just came up with some foolishness about the Liberals being in a "dominant" position in Parliament... whaaaa... maybe a joke?

Wow... Steffi just ripped reporter Roger Smith -- "...CTV is the last person I want to speak with." Hmmm... maybe Mr. Bean does have a little fire in him after all.

Lot's of rah-rah, blah-blah... now Steffi's bailing. Looks like Dion and his people have decided to shut Lloyd and Craig out.

And, whaddaya know, it's working... the CTV Spin Twins are obviously feeling chastened... this has suddenly turned into a Steffi love-fest.

Sorry... gotta go puke again.

*

No word yet from Mayor Miller...

...on Toronto's latest outbreak of "lead poisoning"...

One man is dead after he was shot in the head Tuesday afternoon in east end Toronto. He is Toronto's third murder victim in two days and the 59th homicide of the year.
*

More "taxpayer-funded" hugs & kisses

I'm from the "interwebs"... I'm here to save you...

In 2000, a Canadian poll of labour unions revealed that more than 75 per cent of those surveyed reported incidents of harassment and bullying at work.

She also remembers one bullied worker who used a long drive home every evening to help him calm down from his stressful workplace. But she said that every now and then, when he was crossing a bridge on his route home, he would think about driving off it.
*

Scratch a raving socialist...

...find a heartless bastard...

"All Ian Jenkins wants is to stay alive as long as possible."
**********

FLIP SIDE: Good point, Gomer...

We should have done this a long time ago.
“You (expletive) haven't paid any attention to anything I've said in the last 22 1/2 years, why would anyone pay any attention to anything I've had to say now.”
*

So, get out there... make your mark

Canada is now routinely recording only two-thirds voter turnout and, if disinterest manifests itself as a no-show epidemic Tuesday, this election could dip below 60 per cent for the first time in history.
You can't put this one on me... Mrs Neo and I hit the advance poll last week.

See... I hear people talk about how their puny vote doesn't count... and I just shake my head. I guess, in this country anyway, much like indoor plumbing... people tend to take the franchise for granted.

I know a guy... a pretty smart, successful guy... who claims that voting just makes things worse... makes you a party to the crime, so to speak. Of course, he also believes that legalising heroin would separate the men from the boys... so he loses me on two counts. But this is Canada. He's still allowed... however his neighbours might feel about his ideas... to speak his mind.

I guess the point I'm trying to make... is that despite all my beefs about all the stuff that's constantly goin' sideways... we've still got a pretty good thing going on here. The thing is... it's up to you to keep that ball rolling.

So get out there... and be a full-blown Canadian. To my mind, if you don't vote... it's like you've given up the right to criticise all the shit you don't agree with. It's the difference between the free countries and the hellholes.

Freedom isn't free. Get involved.
"I am a Canadian, a free Canadian, free to worship God in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledege to uphold for myself and for all mankind."

Prime Minister John G. Diefenbaker, from the House of Commons, Debates (on the Canadian Bill of Rights), July 1, 1960.
**********

RELATED: Yes, yes, you dumbsticks... we hear you

"When the Communists show up to protest the Nazis, you're supposed to pray for an asteroid, not pick a favourite."
Just another reason, folks.

*

13 October 2008

So, does this mean...

...we'll be spared the further spectacle of semi-hysterical Steffi... running round in circles squawking... "Liar, liar... pants on fire"?

Give yourself a shake.

*

I understand Ignatieff's handlers...

...have been quietly removing... plastic bags, lengths of rope and sharp objects... from his election headquarters...

"Yeah, well, he's a quitter. I'm not," Dion said. "I will fight for my country. I love Canada."

"I'm the leader! I am the leader! And I'm working to win. I'm not a quitter."
*

Duceppe dumbs it down

Good ol' Gilles and his scary bedtime stories...

"The leader of the Bloc has called me all sorts of names. He says that I am the devil himself -- the devil who is going to take you right to hell. A devil in a cowboy hat."
Steffi, meanwhile, redefines the word "chutzpah"...
"I think I have shown through this election how much I will change not only the orientation of the country, but the tone," he said. "I'm here answering every question; where is Mr. Harper?"
Well, Mr. Bean... I know he's not melting down on national TV.

Good grief.

**********

UPDATE: Dion unmasks latest scary, hidden conspiracy

*

Less Hope... more Change

I bet he ain't too fat for a "firing squad"...

-- WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An Ohio death row inmate who says he is too overweight to be executed took his plea to the Supreme Court on Friday.

His lawyers have argued that the inmate-- at 5-foot-7 and 267 pounds -- is "morbidly obese," and has gained about 70 pounds since his incarceration at age 19.

Prison food and confinement in his cell for 23 hours a day, limiting his opportunities for exercise, contributed to his weight problem, his legal team said in recent court filings.
And there's the usual fuzzy-bunny, socialist argle-bargle...
Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center, a data-resource group that opposes capital punishment, said the Supreme Court indicated that "how you're going to be executed is a civil rights matter, the same as if you were discriminated against on the basis of race or gender or something like that."
Richard... there's just no way around it... you're a moron.

This guy and his buddy, over a period of hours, raped, tortured and murdered two young women.

If there were any real justice in the world... they would already have been beaten to death by their cellmates.

*

Right there on the cusp of success

... but I guess he just couldn't decide whether to be... a player... or a "playa"...

Adrian Charles, the record-setting running back with the Saskatoon Hilltops, has been arrested on a Canada-wide warrant on two counts of attempted murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder.

Charles, a 22-year-old native of Whitby, Ont., was arrested by the Saskatoon RCMP Major Crimes unit following a lengthy investigation conducted by the Durham, Ont., Regional Police Service following a May shooting in Pickering, Ont.

Although the targets of the shooting did not suffer any injuries, police say they believe this was "a targeted attempt on the life of a material Crown witness for the province of Ontario."
**********

RELATED: Is it just my imagination?
-- EDMONTON -- Police say two teenagers charged through the streets of downtown Edmonton on Saturday night, stabbing and robbing several people. The string of crimes began when a man was robbed after being threatened with a knife.

The pair then went to a transit station and assaulted and stabbed another man. Police say two bystanders who saw the attack intervened, but they were also stabbed by the teens.
I don't ever remember this sort of stuff happening when I was young.

What has happened to Canada?

**********

LAST WORD: Ooops... spoke too soon
A 31-year-old man is in custody after two women were found stabbed to death at 81 Rotary Dr.

Homicide detectives are investigating on the scene.

Shocked neighbours said three women lived in the double-storey house – a grandmother, her daughter and a granddaughter who attends university.

Nathaniel O'Brien, 31, of Toronto, has been charged with two counts of first degree murder and one of attempted murder.
*

12 October 2008

See, Lizzie... the way this works is...

...you're supposed to pee outside the tent.

Hmmm...

"If I were a member of the Greens, if I were a candidate for the Greens, I would see her as a traitor, how could I possibly think of her as someone who wants to grow the Greens. She is simply behaving as an agent for the liberals".
**********

UPDATE: Five alarm fire at Green Party HQ...

...switchboard melts down... as constituents and candidates alike phone home to scream... "Are you out of your tree-huggin freakin' skull!!??"

**********

LAST WORD:
"Hope and (quickly, for gawd's sake) Change."
*

TALI-BAM!!!

So, Timmy... where is your God now?

Two battles in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan have killed as many as 100 Taliban fighters, according to Afghan and international military officials.

It is believed to be one of the fiercest encounters in months in Afghanistan's main opium-producing province. Taliban fighters, armed with rockets and other heavy weapons, attacked the city of Lashkar Gar from three sides.

Military officials say the insurgents were repulsed by air strikes conducted by the NATO-led force in Afghanistan.
Once again, the much vaunted Taliban... illustrating, in blood-drenched iambic pentameter... the folly of "bringing the figurative knife to a gunfight."

*

The "Lyin'" King

I 'ave plan to be boss of da jungle for da longtime future... R'AAAAAR!!!....

This year I'll give thanks...

...that I don't live in Mississauga...

A murderous Thanksgiving weekend left three people dead and three others seriously injured in Mississauga.

The first victim was shot dead at 11:30 p.m. Saturday at a Malton house party on Pickfair Dr.

One man was pronounced dead at the scene and two others were wounded, one seriously, but are expected to survive, Peel Regional Police said. The suspect was described as male, South Asian, in his mid-20s, and about 5-foot-8 with short black hair.

The next victim was stabbed to death in a separate house party on Rosewater Court, in the Airport Rd.-Steeles Ave. Area, at 12:25 a.m. Sunday. A second man is in critical condition.

The third murder victim was shot at the Sugar Bush Bar at Dixie Rd. And Britannia Rd. At 3:45 a.m. Sunday and died in hospital, police said.

The three murders raised the region's homicide tally to a record high of 23 so far this year. The previous record — for all of 2007 — was 17.
**********

RELATED: And, it goes without saying... Toronto
A man is in hospital after a shooting at Oakwood Ave. and Vaughan Rd.

At 11:53 p.m. Saturday night, police received a tip about a shooting in the city's northwest end. When officers arrived in the area, they found the victim with a gunshot wound.
**********

UPDATE: Triple-shooting victim dies
One of three men who were shot behind the North York Sheridan Mall on Thursday has died in hospital.

Burrell Bennett, 26, of Toronto, was shot around the neck and shoulder shortly after 6 p.m. on Oct. 9. He was rushed to Sunnybrook Hospital, where he died yesterday.
Remember... these were the three gentlemen who refused to cooperate with the police.

It's so nice to have standards.

**********

LAST WORD: Gimme my "hope and change"...
"...and I want it now!!!"
*

Meanwhile... over at Freakonomics

Barry O gets another spanking...

It’s one thing to criticize McCain for inaction, but I disagree with Obama’s claim that we know how we got into this mess. In fact, if pushed, I would say I knew a lot more about the causes of 9/11 than I do about the causes of the mortgage crisis.

I just read Robert Shiller’s excellent book, The Subprime Solution, and he makes a powerful case that the end of the price bubble in residential real estate was the crucial triggering factor.
Or, call me wacky... how about, if all the greedhead punters who bought the bonds that backed the sub-prime mortgages had said... "Hey... wait a minute..."

**********

RELATED: Hmmm... what about "Monkeynomics"
Once upon a time in a place overrun with monkeys, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for £10 each.

The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to and as supply started to diminish, they became harder to catch, so the villagers stopped their effort.

The man then announced that he would now pay £20 for each one. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. But soon the supply diminished even further and they were ever harder to catch, so people started going back to their farms and forgot about monkey catching.

The man increased his price to £25 each and the supply of monkeys became so scarce that it was an effort to even see a monkey, much less catch.

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys for £50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on his behalf.

While the man was away the assistant told the villagers. 'Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has bought. I will sell them to you at £35 each and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for £50 each.'

The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys.

They never saw the man nor his assistant again and once more there were monkeys everywhere.
(via reader bob)

So, being the ultimate atheist infidel...

...I'm sitting here, wondering how this works.

You're just sitting down to dinner, when something that sounds like a runaway bullet-train... jets across your back yard, enters the livingroom of the, uh... "guest house" down the street and detonates like a scale model supernova... turning every living thing within a 40 meter radius into fine pink mist.

Do you freak out and head for the hills? Do you sit there and blubber?

Or do you just shrug it off as yet another instance of the capricious and unknowable "Will of Allah"?

'Cos... "not a sparrow falls"... right?

Or am I missing something here?

*

11 October 2008

People actually pay for this stuff?

I swear... I'm in the wrong business, because... now you see it...
...now you don't...
**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:

"Citytv reported on a poll that showed the CPC had dropped by 3 points... the news anchor uses the term "tumbling" to reference the drop. The next day another poll showed the CPC up 3 and the LPC down 5. How was the drop for LPC reported? "Dropped slightly" said the news anchor."
*

My good buddy Bob...

...now known reverentially around "The Halls" as St. Bob of Plentiful Firearms... wrote me this morning...

I just don't understand Canadians, I guess we deserve what we get. As part of my Saturday morning ritual I read all the local free rags with several cups of coffee. All of them are so left leaning, bleeding heart liberal.

The editorials, the letters to the editor etc., even coverage of the local debates all slam the Conservatives. Makes me want to buy a bird so I could line the bottom of the cage with these rags.

I just pray that the NDP and the Greens grab enough votes from the Liberals to let the Conservatives run up the middle and get a majority. Then Steffi and Jack will have to fall on their swords and we'll have all new leadership on the left.

Tuesday's gonna be a long day.
**********

RELATED: Which way will the media roll?

*

If only the NDP were in power...

...then we would have true and perfect justice.

-- VANCOUVER -- The parents of homicide victim Amanda Zhao are dismayed that David Emerson cancelled a planned meeting with them yesterday, and plan to stay in Canada for much of this month in hopes of meeting with the Foreign Affairs Minister and the Justice Minister.

Canada is wary about co-operating with China because Mr. Li could face the death penalty.
Hmmmm... who is it that's alway's moaning about the rights of those poor guys on death row? As I recall... it wasn't the Conservatives.

So what, according to the Globe and Mail... is the solution here?
The case has drawn the attention of New Democratic MPs Libby Davies and Bill Siksay as well as MLAs Mike Farnworth and Jenny Kwan. All pledged yesterday to act as the family's champions even after they return to China.
Yeah... the crime-fighting NDP... they'll fix this one right up. Because, you know... Bill and Libby... they're all about "the family"...
The bill would raise the age of consent to 16 from 14 and rename it "age of protection." It provides a five-year near-in-age exemption for 14- and 15-year-olds and a "transitional" exemption for those already in some non-exploitive relationships with people aged 14 and 15.

Davies and gay Burnaby NDP MP Bill Siksay spoke out against the bill on second reading - the only MPs to do so.
**********

RELATED: Dippers profess shock and outrage...

...call for multi-billion dollar childcare plan...

Sgt. Mike Quinn carries baby found in back seat of car allegedly used in home invasion.

They nabbed the bad guys, the handgun and the two stolen laptops. All in a day's work, they thought, until they looked in the backseat and found a 2-month-old boy sound asleep.
**********

UPDATE: So where exactly... is crime falling?
A 45-year-old man suffered a gunshot wound to the back close to his home near Finch Ave. W. and Kipling Ave. at around 10:36 p.m. He was transported to hospital and is expected to survive.

Officers who responded arrested a suspect in possession of a loaded .12 gauge pump-action shotgun.

Devon Vaughn Edwards, 18, faces a number of charges including, attempted murder, discharged firearm intent to wound and unauthorized possession of a firearm.
**********

LAST WORD: The right to remain, now & forever...

...a loyal disciple of the criminal subculture...
The wall of silence has been erected yet again.

Following the triple shooting behind a Jane St. and Wilson Ave. area mall before the sun set Thursday, not even the victims were offering up information, Toronto Police Staff-Sgt. Carl Ashley said.

"There are still no witnesses coming forward and the victims don't want to talk to us," Ashley said yesterday.
*

Remember back in High School...

Somebody would show up uninvited at a party... and things would instantly start to degenerate into a really bad "slasher flick"?

Officers arrived to find five young men, some high school age and others slightly older, who had all been stabbed, police said.

One was taken in critical condition to hospital, and underwent emergency surgery late Friday. Another was taken to hospital in serious condition, while three others were treated for minor wounds, Toronto EMS officials said.

The house party was hosting many East York Collegiate Institute students, and came on the heels of the school's football game yesterday evening.
Yeah... me neither.

*

Let's make a small wager

I bet, by the time you finish reading this book... you will have forever discarded, at a minimum, the idea of embalming... if not the whole idea of a traditional funeral.

Oh yeah, I should warn you -- Chapter 1 -- not for the squeamish.

*

10 October 2008

There's no whore...

...like a blatant old media whore...
The Globe says... "Screw subtle, we're goin' for it!"

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:

"If Harper wins here and Obama wins in the States we might lose all of our radical socialists to the paradise they'll create down south."

"Who will run the CBC?"
*

Can you appeal when you win?

'Cos let's face it... that's really the $64,000... or more likely $640,000 question...

"NOTE: The foregoing represents the views of the writer only, and should not be mistaken for those of Rogers or Maclean’s, their management, employees, lawyers, shareholders, window-cleaners or bonded couriers."
**********

RELATED: Don't be in such a hurry...

...to bust out the champagne...
"The 'Nice' Forces still too have way too much power, and we, the not-always-so-nice, continue to live in a freaky Twilight Zone episode, where we’re at the mercy of an adorable, freckle-faced moppet, who, if we’re not careful is apt to think us into the cornfield."
*

Who's Smarter than a 5th Grader?

All I know is... my kid could have done a better job answering that question...

So this morning, Mr. Dion was asked about the Conservative leader's comments. "Mr. Harper's reaction is shown how much this man has no class and no plan," Mr. Dion said on CBC Newsworld.
Good grief.

**********

UPDATE: Interesting take over at SDA...
"That outrage has less to do with what happened to Dion than it does the fact that Canadians just caught a glimpse of how this business operates, and they don't like it."

"It's a "gotcha" moment all right, but this time it's the media with their pants down. The restarts, the admission that ATV had first agreed to bury it before succumbing to sober second thought - that's too much information."
**********

LAST WORD: "Dis question of da heconomy is bias..."
"...what about herconomy?"
*

No word yet...

...on which Toronto area gun club is responsible...

A North York shooting left three young men riddled with bullets last night and police scouring a neighbourhood all too familiar with violence.

Gunfire rang out just after 6 p.m. between the rear parking lot of Sheridan Mall, at Jane St. and Wilson Ave., and 180 Chalkfarm Dr., one of three community housing high-rises on the notorious street.
*

So, correct me if I'm wrong...

...but what this actually amounts to, is a very public... but kinda jihadi... version of Jenny Craig.

*

My own personal liberal campaign

Now... anybody who reads me regularly knows that I have my own personal anonymous troll.

And while it's true, he's not especially bright...
... what he lacks in smarts and imagination... he makes up for in nazi-obsessed persistence.
And, how's this for a deal... he supplies his own laugh track.
***

Now... I'll spare you the rest of the two dozen silly taunts he salted throughout my blog tonight... but you get the idea.

The thing is, he keeps promising to post all the instances of me deleting his accumulated wisdom... but, you know, he musta forgot... he's anonymous... so that just wasn't gonna happen.

Anyway, I thought I'd help out here.
So to my buddies Dawg and Stoogeleft... (the latter of whom, kindly directed a little traffic my way tonight)... I'd like to say thank you for inspiring my own personal cc-nonymous troll to greater effort.

It's a perfect illustration of how you guys conduct yourselves.

It's not too often you get your adversaries making your points for you.

**********

LAST WORD: The hits just keep on comin'...

Poor cc-nonymous... he's even too cheap to pay for actual phone sex.

And here's the latest... Mr Dumbstick discovers reverse psychology...

Move over Sigmund Freud.

*

You know that scene in "The Matrix"...

...where Keanu Reeves wakes up naked and flailing in the liquid-filled pod... all wired up with the tube down his throat... I'm thinkin' Steffi's people were wishing... he'd been THAT composed.

**********

SPIN CYCLE: Liberals decide to go with...

"Don't make fun of the handicapped guy."
And, oh yeah... while they're at it... they've decided to kill the messenger.

**********

LAST WORD: Here's how simple this is...
"A man who was able to keep up and listen to four other debaters and a moderator during the debates is now using a disability as an excuse for not being able to answer questions intelligibly one on one?"
*

09 October 2008

Soft power, my ass

It's about time to part somebody's bizarre "up-do"... with a Tomahawk.

*

She's Number One!!!

The first person ever to be charged with drug-impaired driving in Toronto is set to appear in court Thursday.

Police say a Toronto woman was under the influence of drugs while driving after she crashed her vehicle into a collision-scene investigation.

Police officers from 14 Division were investigating a crash near 625 Richmond Street West when they witnessed a motorist drive into a parked car on Wednesday.

Littoya Blackman, 27, is charged with impaired driving by drug and is scheduled to appear in court at Old City on Thursday.
**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:
"Ms. Blackman, the poor thing, she's the victim here. If drugs and cars had been properly restricted, this terrible tragedy never would have happened."
*

I know one 12 year-old boy...

...who's gonna have a very Merry Christmas.

Calling all cars... be on the lookout...

...for a buzzing, clacking, vibrating, mini-van...

Cotie said she has insurance but she doesn't plan on filing a claim.

"You just have to swallow it," she said.
(via reader rich)

Gotta love that "fuzzy-bunny" Star...

See, the thing is... if he were actually that "devoted"... perhaps he wouldn't have been murdered and dumped in a field.

The family was very close but Ngo's children had no idea how he made a living, according to police.

"As days go by we are learning what Mr. Ngo was all about," Sheppard said.

"It is our belief that Mr. Ngo has contacts with people involved in gambling," he said. "I believe there is some contact with people who are involved in the distribution of illicit drugs.
"Distribution", huh? You mean it was a sort of charitable endeavour... like a food bank?

Some "contact", indeed.

*

Local genius "talk radio" host...

...interviewing Conservative incumbent Daryl Kramp...cuts right to the heart of the global financial crisis... "What do you say to the poor folks who are struggling to pay for hotdogs and Kraft dinner?"

Hmmm... there's a toughie... I've seen some of these folks who've been affected by the stock market slide... slumped up against the City Hotel in Belleville waiting for the opening bell.

I guess I'd say... "Hey, scumbucket.... put down the freakin' crackpipe and start looking for a job!!!"

**********

WELCOME READERS OF HUG-A-THUG STOOGELEFT

It's true, Stooge... I have no sympathy for people who choose to throw their lives away. I have even less, when they choose to prey on others to feed their nasty drug habits.

Actions have consequences... take responsibility for your life.

Don't be a parasitic criminal.

*

The oblique genius of Mayor David Miller

I understand "his blondeness" is now thinking of banning cameras in certain select Toronto neighbourhoods.

**********

RELATED: Well, Toronto... you elected him

And funding for social services is top concern, said Councillor Shelley Carroll, chairman of the budget committee.

The city's social services reserve is depleted, she said, but there will likely be an increase in demand for welfare and social housing during an economic slowdown.

"That's the one that's the real concern," she said.
**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:
"I guess they COULD take money out of the Lake Buying Fund."
*

I think I read somewhere...

...that both Iraq and Afghanistan had better turnout rates for their recent first-time elections... than we do here in Canada...

Across Ontario, almost 76,000 fewer people cast their ballots in the three-days of advance polling which ended this past Monday. There were 575,605 this year compared to 651,193, about 2 1/2 years ago.

And across Canada, there were a total of 101,786 fewer people compared to 2006: 1,459,253 went to the advance polls compared to 1,561,039.
Seems folks may not be as fired up and freaked out as the MSM swears we all are.

Funny how that works.

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:
"I think most Canadians are too busy trying to figure out how to vote for Obama."
*

08 October 2008

Those poor, innocent children

-- MONTREAL -- A friend and cousin of Fredy Villanueva, the teenager shot and killed by police in August, were arrested on Sunday after police found a prohibited machine gun in an apartment.
*

Wow... talk about transference...

Apparently Jane Taber really, really misses her mummy...

In fact, Mr. Dion noted that Mr. Harper did not acknowledge “the fear and hurt” being felt by Canadians.

“Canadians, we worry about our savings, our jobs. For many of us it is more than worry."

"It is the hurt, the harm.”
Yeah... for some of of us more than others, huh Stef?

**********

RELATED: Okay... before you start to quiver & weep
-- READ THIS --
Now you're ready to vote.

*

McSlippery street theatre company...

...springs into supporting role... apparently the sky IS falling...
Of course, the good news is, this time around, Dalton crosses his heart and hopes to die.

*

The media is panicking...

...Steffi's constantly on the brink of tears... we never needed a cool, collected Stephen Harper... (remember, the man with the masters degree in economics)... more than we do right now...

We also are not impressed by Mr. Dion's plan-- and general attitude -- in regard to Canada's economic challenges. In recent days, he truly has sounded like a hysteric, trying to convince Canadians that our relatively sound economy is on the brink of a cataclysmic depression.

There is no evidence of this: Indeed, the latest economic numbers on jobs and growth are excellent. And as a stack of reports from our major banks attest, the fundamentals of our real estate market bear no comparison to America's sub-prime mess.

Indeed, the only thing that could tip this country into full-blown depression is wide-scale investor panic of the type Mr. Dion seems intent on fomenting.
This one's a no-brainer, folks. You can go with the party of more taxes and more social workers... or the steady hand that has, despite being a minority government, steered us safely through the shoals to this point.

I'm gonna go with the guy who isn't screaming about the "sky falling" down on our heads.

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:
"Oh my gawd. Richardson just reported on CTV that Duceppe is making a subtle offer to the Liberals that he wants a coalition government.!!!"

"A Liberal leader sooo weak the seperatists see themselves as a partner in a Dion government!!"
*

So... let's do the math

In the last nine months, in Toronto alone... we've had roughly half the number of Canadians murdered... as we've had killed in Afghanistan since 2001.

Few details are emerging as Toronto Police investigate the city's latest murder.

The man was found lying on Fieldside Dr. with apparent stab wounds last night, near McCowan Rd. and McNicoll Ave., police said.

This is the city's 54th homicide victim of the year.
As someone who chose to "get the hell outta Dodge" some 7 years ago... I really don't have a dog in this particular fight.

We bailed on the big city when it came time for the boy to go to school. It wasn't a difficult decision at all. I simply couldn't stand the idea of feeding our only child into the inner-city Hogtown meat grinder. It was the right choice for us and we've never looked back.

So really, the carnage in the streets of Toronto shouldn't bother me at all.

Except that this is still my country. I do care. Unless people care enough to speak up, it's a problem that will spread and take hold in other places.

Law and order, civil society... it's what sets Canada apart from so many other places. It is, I hope, what makes this country a magnet and a model for so many people around the world

It's something that's worth holding on to. And that is why I choose not to turn away.

**********

UPDATE: And our latest player is...
An arrest warrant has been issued in connection with the Friday night slaying of a north Etobicoke teen.

Nahoor Araya, 18, of no fixed address, is wanted for second-degree murder, Toronto Police announced Wednesday.
*

07 October 2008

Yeah... I'm with the Toronto Star

Let's just dial back all the racist cops and the nasty, medieval jails... and put these experts in charge of everything...

Calling Canada's youth justice system a "perfect act" that already allows for stiff sentences for youth found guilty of serious violent crimes, a newly formed national coalition of lawyers, youth groups, and front-line youth workers took aim at Conservative election promises of tougher sentences for young offenders.
Yup... if you're an underage thug, er... "young offender"... I can see where you'd see this as a "perfect act."

I'm just not sure everybody's ready to climb on the "Peace Train" just yet.

**********

RELATED: Ask a defense lawyer...
“Toronto police Chief Bill Blair is addicted to tasers and that addiction has to be stopped.”
Geez, Clay... were you off sick the day they covered "slander & libel"?

*

The McSlippery Doctrine

Don't sweat it, pal... in Dalton McGuinty's Ontario, you can always apologise...

-- Spence Cole from Vancouver, Canada writes: "Sorry officer. If I didn't have that last beer, I would have probably seen the stop sign. Hope the guy in the other car is ok." --
Posted 07/10/08 at 12:16 PM EDT
*

“Obama says I need to have hope.”

“I believe in Obama.”

“And the Tooth Fairy.”

“Yeah, the Tooth Fairy. I love you, Tooth Fairy.”

“And aliens.”

“Yeah, I saw an alien once.”

“The alien told me to vote for Obama.”
*

Wait just a minute...

Those mysterious (allegedly) Conservatives who are supposed to be sabotaging people's cars... they also know who lives in all of their houses?

How exactly does that work?

Liberal supporters in St. Paul's are facing a new intimidation tactic -- anonymous, threatening phone calls.

Lynne Steele, MP Carolyn Bennett's campaign manager, said residents with lawn signs reported receiving threatening phone calls telling them, "Take your sign down."

"It's a crime against the Liberals and a crime against people that believe in the democratic process," Steele said yesterday.
Unlike those "unbelievers" in the evil Conservative Party, huh?

Who exactly, besides the "Red" Star and the Toronto Sun, is dumb enough to eat this stuff up?