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.”

*

"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.

*

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.

*

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...

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...

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.

*

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.

*

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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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"What's an antonym..."

"...for racism?"

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

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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.

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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.

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RELATED: When you care enough to send the very best

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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"?

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