Rest in Peace... and obscurity

You start shilling for the Breathe-Rite Nasal Strips of the television world... you've gotta know your days as a serious journalistic enterprise are truly over...

"The Real Housewives franchise comes to Canada for the first time with the promise of 'all the juiciest storylines, drama, power, wealth and glamour that viewers love about the huge, international hit franchise'.”

How exactly is it... people refuse to recognise that "reality" tv is the most over-manipulated, cynically manufactured string of dog turds in the entire media universe.

I mean, you've seen someone eat their first donkey penis... isn't it all really downhill from there?

**********

RELATED: Stand by for breaking news...

...on gravity holding shit down...
Your taxpayer-funded CBC in action.

Move over Oxycontin withdrawal...

...make way for digitally deprived second-class citizens...

"Once a number of zoos have iPads, Zimmerman hopes orangutans can get to 'know each other' via a video chat app. He has no doubt orangutans can recognize other orangutans when they see their images."

Say, Toronto Star... not to be horribly humanist... but how about an update on Dalton McGuinty's promised doctor housecalls?

Don't blame me...

...I didn't vote for 'em...

• TORONTO • "Before Ontario can start reducing the web of business subsidies it distributes, it has to first figure out exactly how much money is going out — and to whom - Liberal Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid said Tuesday."

Hey, Brad... maybe you can start over here...

Stop... or I'll yell stop again!!!

Hang on a sec... isn't one of the the definitions of insanity... doing the same thing again & again while expecting different results?

• "The United Nations' main human rights body was set to condemn Syria on Tuesday for using heavy weapons on residential areas and persecuting opponents, its fourth rebuke to Assad in an 11-month uprising." •

Just curious... how many starving children could you feed with the billions of dollars the UN pisses away every year?

**********

UPDATE: Weasel words keep on coming

"Secretary of State Hilary Clinton told a Senate subcommittee that President Bashar al-Assad fits the definition of a war criminal. But, Clinton said, an official designation by the international community may make it more difficult for Assad to step down from power."

I'm guessing that random artillery fire might be making things more difficult for Syrian civilians... but apparently that's not the Obama administrations problem. They just have to pretend to be concerned.

Hope, change and turn the other way.

**********

RELATED: Another lefty suckfest unmasked

So much for the myth...

...of the criminal mastermind...

“Who is this person?” Ms. Simone asked.

“I can’t tell,” said S.M., then added helpfully, “It’s my clothes.” A minute later, he elaborated: “My shoes. My cousin’s shoes. I have a hoodie like that too.”

It gets better...

She showed him another picture, this of a stack of money, a bank card and a scale; S.M. said half the money was his, the remainder belonging to his older brother.

Ms. Simone showed him another picture. “What’s this?” she asked. “Plastic bag with ammunition,” S.M. said. “Whose ammunition?” she asked. “I don’t know,” said S.M.

Then he peered more closely at the picture.

“Is that a .22?” he asked, then answered himself: “I think it’s .22 calibre.”

“Do you know what .22 calibre is?” she asked. “No I don’t,” S.M. said, adding a minute later, “Why would I have ammunition?”

Thank gawd for morons.

And they had the audacity to do it...

...in February too ••• Toronto's National Post about to lose its rainbows & unicorns codetalker credentials...

That evil, controlling Stephen Harp..

...wait a minute...

Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae says one of his staffers was responsible for a series of anonymous Internet attacks aimed at Public Safety Minister Vic Toews.

“I was advised yesterday that an employee of the Liberal research bureau in fact is responsible,” the chagrined Liberal chief told the House of Commons Monday.

Rae, Rae... that sounds so familiar...

“The prime minister has created a Nixonian culture. This stuff doesn’t happen unless the boss lets it happen.”

“He has allowed to seep into his party and into his organization a culture of attack and, frankly, a culture of deception and dirty tricks, where almost anything goes.”

I look forward to seeing Mr Rae fall upon his not so ethical sword.

Yeah... I know.

**********

COMPASSIONATE INTELLECTUAL LEFT REPLIES:

"Bob Rae set a trap. And you BTs are too stupid to realize it."

A trap, huh? I dunno Nonny... what say we get a second opinion...
Hmmm.

**********

LAST WORD: CTV's Lisa LaFlamme...

...breathlessly announced there would be "explosive revelations" about robo-calling on the 11 o'clock news. When it came to the actual item... she changed her terms of reference to how "murky" things were... which, if you'll pardon me for pointing out... is almost an antonym for "explosive."

The item itself proved to be neither... but instead featured yet another Pat Martin diatribe... this time, comparing the Prime Minister to Tony Soprano.

The gist of the whole thing was the implication that Lisa and Bob Fife were on the verge of cracking some 23 year-old Conservative campaign worker from Guelph... who apparently had the goods on the PM.

It was, in its entirety... a donkey-load of innuendo & misdirection... or as it's known in Toronto... news, CTV style.

Maybe it's time to actually ask someone who has more than a passing familiarity with the process and what's actually within the realm of possibility.

The life of a modern Toronto teen

Apparently, it ain't all sockhops, sodas and greased back hair...

The police dog search led police to the accused who was hiding under a porch.

Police say they also found a nine-millimetre handgun.

A 17-year-old is facing charges.

**********

RELATED: Your CBC Moonbat moment

CBC Radio is still beating the sacred victimhood drum over the reformulation of Oxycontin. For those not in the loop, said reformulation is designed to make the pills harder to shoot & snort.

That's a good thing, right? Well, not according to CBC. Apparently making junk harder to shoot will cast a biblical plague of misery across the land. Well... somebody's land, anyway.

I confess I had some difficulty deciphering the code. For instance...

"There are 10,000 addicts living on aboriginal reserves."

My first thought was, whoa... there's hospitality and then there's HOSPITALITY... until I realised what they meant was that there were 10,000 aboriginals abusing oxycontin.

My favourite quote, though, has to be... "Clients are using alternative sources of supply"... which translates, roughly, into... "I bought it off Biker Bob at the bar"... which, not too surprisingly, has very little to do with health care or Big Pharma.

But that won't stop the dedicated professionals at the Mother Corpse.

Just you wait & see.

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:

"One of the interesting theories is that northern communities are being intentionally flooded with Oxycontin."

"The gist is, when they couldn't get us with smallpox and TB, they're trying again, this time, with pharmaceuticals."

I swear... there are boneheads...

...and then there's liber, er... 'nonny'...
I usually make it a point to ignore the various iterations of mindless trollery that any blogger worth his keyboard must come to expect.

Sometimes though, my biggest fan goes one toke over the line and I just have to share...
The blue [click] will take you to my long established commenting policy... but you can also click on the second comment directly above to see just how far this dumbstick will go to try get my attention.

Once again, the compassionate, intellectual left shows us what's really behind the mask.

You can almost...

...smell the science.

"Let them eat hypocrisy"

Cause...

“My friends, love is better than anger; hope is better than fear; optimism better than despair. So let us choose love, hope and optimism.”

...and effect...

“The prime minister has created a Nixonian culture. This stuff doesn’t happen unless the boss lets it happen.”

“He has allowed to seep into his party and into his organization a culture of attack and, frankly, a culture of deception and dirty tricks, where almost anything goes.”

I guess rainbows & unicorns farting sunshine just weren't getting the job done.

**********

RELATED: Hang on, Bob...

...who's gonna save us from you & your friends?

**********

COMPASSIONATE, INTELLECTUAL LEFT REPLIES:

"Calling the CPC MPs bastards isn't just hyperbole. Some really are illegitimate."

Nonny also throws in a "Heil Harper" and accuses someone of child abuse.

Thank you comment moderation.

But, he's so McDreamy

Who cares if he doesn't give a crap about some silly Syrians?

Well, I guess... Marie Colvin...

She concluded the interview, saying: "The Syrian army is shelling a city of cold, starving civilians." The report featured an account of the death of a small child -- a child who died in front of her -- after a previous military attack.

"What is going on and why is no one stopping this murder in Homs?" she said. "This is happening every day."

And Barack continues to fiddle... as Homs burns.

**********

RELATED: He's apologising for what?

That a large percentage of the Afghan population is criminally insane?

In the deadliest day of unrest so far, at least 12 people died across the country, as mobs charged at US bases and diplomatic missions.

More than 20 people have been killed since the unrest began, including two US soldiers who died on Thursday.

President Barack Obama has apologised for the Koran-burning incident.

Once again, the capricious and unknowable "Will of Allah."

Seriously, now... it's a "migrant tragedy?"

I wonder how the widow of non-migrant transport driver Chris Fulton feels about that...
Ah well, enough blather... here in fuzzy-bunny, politically correct Canauckistan... "diversity" is Job #1 & Only ...

"Over the weekend, she journeyed out to the fateful intersection. She discovered no smoking gun. Only a stop sign that should have prevented the van from entering into oncoming traffic but somehow failed to do so."

The stop sign?!!! You're gonna blame the freakin' stop sign?!!! 'Cos it should have been, what... more forceful? More stoppy?

Or is it just possible... even in a culture that apparently values diversity above common-sense... to apportion some of the blame here to van driver David Blancas-Hernandez?

Yeah, you know... the guy who apparently blew through that stop sign... a man who, in violation of Canadian law, had been driving without the proper license for years.

And what of Chris Fulton, by all accounts a hard-working family man and professional driver... a man who played by the rules and was on his way home to celebrate his wedding anniversary?

Pointedly, he gets mentioned, only once by name... and I quote...

"Chris Fulton, the Canadian truck driver whose rig hit the van."

Well, the inference there seems pretty clear, if not actually libelous.

I guess balanced, "professional" journalism truly is a thing of the past.

Thank you, Globe & Mail.

In other "Crime is Down" news

• TORONTO • "One of the two brothers executed in a North York apartment building recently became a dad."

"Jerome Waterman, 22, and his 18-year-old brother, Justin, were found dead of multiple gunshot wounds in an apartment complex on Family Day."

And while we're on families...

Toronto Police have charged two Scarborough brothers with the murder of popular barber Chris Thompson.

Kevin Perez, 27, and brother Christopher Perez, 22, are each charged with first degree murder.

You mean like the coal plants...

...Dalton McGuinty keeps promising to shut down?

• NATURE - Sunday, Feb. 19, 2012 • One of the world’s top climate scientists has calculated that emissions from Alberta’s oil sands are unlikely to make a big difference to global warming and that the real threat to the planet comes from burning coal.

“The conventional and unconventional oil is not the problem with global warming,” Dr. Weaver said. “The problem is coal and unconventional natural gas.” The paper concludes that burning all the globe’s vast coal deposits would create a 15-degree increase in temperature.

Burning all the oil in the world would only raise temperatures by less than one degree, the paper concludes.

Bright lights, big city

Detectives busily rounding up farmers, deer hunters & skeet shooters as we speak...

"A man was rushed to hospital after he was shot in the arm in Etobicoke Sunday afternoon. Police say the shooting took place around 4 p.m. on Tandridge Crescent near Islington Avenue and Elmhurst Drive."

"Police haven't released any information about a possible suspect and say it's too early to tell whether the shooting is related to a similar incident that took place in the same townhouse complex."

In other local news...

"A suspect was shot near Lansdowne Avenue and Dupont Street after officers were called to the area for reports of a person with a knife, police said Monday."

Happy "Family Day" Toronto.

**********

UPDATE: Another dead dumbass...

In Monday's incident, Josh Pimentel said, his wife watched a plainclothes police officer shoot a knife-wielding man who was wearing a mask. Pimentel said he wasn't home at the time, but his wife called him in a panic because a knife-wielding man was in their backyard.

Police have offered little information about the incident, but said officers were in a foot pursuit with at least two males, including one who may have been armed with a gun.

Hey... must've been some big score to risk your life, right?

It's not known why police were chasing the suspects, but people who live in the area told CP24 the pursuit may have originated from a robbery at a nearby church.

Yup... sheer criminal genius.

**********

UPDATE2: Miscreant identified

"A man shot to death during an alleged showdown with Toronto Police was identified Wednesday as 48-year-old Frank Anthony Berry."

Well, of course they did...

...it's British Columbia.

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:

"Asinine nannystatism. Where the alcholics go to live in sunshine and the fog of free drinks."

And...

"So now that B.C. has determined that penalties for alcohol consumption don't work, are they going to get rid of the 'sin tax' associated with it?"

**********

MORE WEST COAST STORY:

"For the next two years, the recipients will report to a heavily secured safe injection site in Vancouver's downtown Eastside three times a day, seven days a week. Once there, they will be given their physician-approved fix and allowed to inject themselves under the supervision of a nurse."

Junkie see, junkie do

I'm thinkin' Oprah and Diane Sawyer had better start hustlin' if they wanna get that crucial... "How I turned my life around" interview...
Before it's too late.

Once again, compassionate, intellectual...

...left manages to ignore Jack Layton's message of love & respect...And look who decided to pile on...

Most MPs kept their distances from the Twitter attack but Liberal MP Justin Trudeau quickly embraced it and made a point of republishing the account name of the anonymous feed for his more than 110,000 followers.

Later Wednesday afternoon Mr. Trudeau followed up with a plainly sarcastic message that once again rebroadcast the anti-Toews Twitter account to his readers.

Hmmm... I wonder how the heir transparent would feel if people started publishing pictures of a certain partially-clad flower child partying with the bad boys of rock & roll?

Oh, right... that's different.

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:

"I would like to know the details of the Trudeau/Sinclair divorce - or perhaps the dissolving of Jack's first marriage. Here is mud in you eye - turnaround is fair game. Cheers."

Playing by big city rules

"It’s alleged that Mr. Mark was killed – shot once in the back of his head as he walked to work on Dec. 29, 2009, headphones on — purely and simply because he had broken the code of silence, co-operated with Toronto police and testified in court against Mr. Skeete and his brother in an earlier proceeding."

The Toronto Star aka X'pertz R'Us

Now, I'm no "addiction expert"... but would a hooker shortage be classified as a "social relations" emergency?

• Megan Ogilvie - Health Reporter • "The narcotic painkiller OxyContin will soon be pulled from pharmacy shelves across the country, and 'addiction experts' warn the move will spark a public health crisis in Northern Ontario where thousands of people in remote communities face involuntary and potentially dangerous withdrawal from the addictive drug."

Oh my gawd... some evil corporation is refusing to send a crucial medication to aboriginal communities?

Well... not exactly.

"Purdue Pharma, the company that manufacturers OxyContin, is set to replace the controversial medication with a new formulation of the drug called OxyNEO at the end of February. The new drug is formulated in such a way that it is more difficult to crush, and therefore less likely to be abused through injecting or snorting."

So, experts notwithstanding... what Purdue Pharma is actually gonna do is make it harder for people to abuse oxycontin to get high. If you merely ingest the medication as prescribed... the world will surely keep on turning.

That still leaves the question though, of white corporate North America making scurrilous... indeed racist... inferences about addiction in our aborigin... wait a minute...

"Among the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, or NAN, which represents 49 First Nation communities in Northern Ontario, at least half of residents are addicted to OxyContin, said Grand Chief Stan Beardy."

Uh, Stan... are you sure? I mean, if I said something like that, I'd have Peter Mansbridge poundin' on my front door demanding an explanation.

"'In some communities, it’s as high as 70 to 80 per cent of people addicted to OxyContin, including kids as young as 9 years old to people as old 65,' Beardy said."

And there's a problem with, what... trying to remedy that situation?

Thank goodness for the Toronto Star and their never-ending grab bag of experts.

**********

UPDATE: CBC Radio piles on

Ditzy talkin' head (who refers to the new non-crushable pill as Oxy-Neon) interviews a Deputy Grand Chief who claims that addicts in the community will be suffering withdrawal en-mass.

Apparently these folks will all choose to quit cold-turkey rather than simply swallow the new pills.

Dumb bunny interviewer characterises this situation as a "failure of Canadian healthcare."

**********

LAST WORD: A soft, fuzzy-bunny world

More special rights for special people. It ain't just the MSM... the federal bureaucracy buys in.

I miss the meritocracy.

Uh... transparency is for "little people"...

...or what the legal system refers to as "consciousness of guilt."

Compassionate, intellectual future...

...is closer than you think...

"The newspaper reported that the four-year-old girl brought a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, potato chips and apple juice in her packed lunch from home. That meal didn’t meet with approval from the government agent who was on site inspecting kids’ lunches that day."

Government intervention in our children's lives? That sounds so familiar...

"No wonder little Emma doesn’t know her times tables. She’s way too busy learning how her Western position of privilege entrenches gender relations. Or something like that."

The NEW New Democratic Party

...making it up as they go...

Rathika Sitsabaiesan, at 31 the youngest MP in the Toronto area and the first MP of Tamil heritage, was elected last year to represent Scarborough-Rouge River. She won the seat previously held by Liberal Derek Lee quite handily (by 5,000 votes).

Now I'm guessing there's nothing a newly minted Member of Parliament wants more, than to really shine on their first taxpayer-subsidised international junket. Rathika was likely pumped to stand up and do Canada proud.

Which makes me wonder how she could screw up a fact most Canadian primary school kids could recite in their sleep.

Of Tamils living in Canada, she said: “When united in Canada, we’re about 300,000 strong. But Canadians united in Canada, we’re a huge force to be reckoned with — almost nine million, if I remember the number exactly.

“That’s nine million Canadians standing together to fight for human rights.”

Except, of course, that it isn't.

In fact, that's not even in the ballpark.

Someone in the audience interjected and said Canada’s population was 33 million. Sitsabaiesan seemed a bit flustered, but recovered quickly: “You know what I was thinking of … I was thinking of the people that came out and voted in the last election.”

Sorry, ma’am, you’re 4.8 million out. According to Elections Canada, 14,823,408 Canadians voted in the federal election that gave Sitsabaiesan her seat in Parliament.

In fairness, Ms, Sitsabaiesan belongs to a party whose most infamous shot-caller apparently couldn't tell a government-licensed medical clinic from a seedy Chinatown bordello.

Still... it's something to ponder the next time some dumbstick tries to tell you..."we don't pay these outrageous salaries & pensions, we won't get the best qualified candidates."

Hey... at least she actually lives in her riding... which is more than you can say about some of her NDP colleagues.

Iran, yet again, scampers up on EU porch...

...yells grade school threats through open window... and runs away...

Iran’s Mehr News Agency said that the ambassadors of six European nations had been summoned by the foreign ministry to warn they must extend their long term oil contracts or face having imports cutoff.

Earlier, Iran’s English language Press TV had said Tehran has stopped exporting oil to France, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Netherlands and Spain, a report later denied by Iran’s Oil Ministry.

Ah, yes... we've seen this sort of wily Iranian tactic before... better known as "Operation Kick Yourself in the Balls"...

"Unperturbed European officials said they were looking for other suppliers anyway, mainly Saudi Arabia, which has promised to make up any shortfall in the market from curbed exports from Iran."

Hmmm... now that President McDreamy has nixed the Keystone pipeline... doesn't Canada have a little extra dino-juice?

Carry on, Ahmadinejad.

I dunno... maybe all those Occubots...

...have some sort of magical immunity...

"A 400-milligram vial of Avastin — the size that was counterfeited — costs $2,400, according to the Genentech spokeswoman."

Anyway, enough about boring ol' cancer... let's get back to fighting the oppressors...

"Occupy Wall Street supporter Russell Simmons was quick to make amends after he and a brunette model briefly occupied a bathroom stall together at a glamorous Fashion Week party."

"The vegan Def Jam founder has been sober for years, so we can only assume the bathroom break was to get to know the model better."

Hey... somebody's gotta do it.

Playing by McSlippery rules

Don't blame me... I didn't vote for him...

The subdivision– festooned with warrior flags, still occupied by militants, featuring a burnt-out tractor trailer and hydro tower barricade– sits undeveloped and untouchable, as do nearby yet-be-wired hydro towers, as a reminder of mistakes made and perpetuated.

It has been six years of lost economic opportunity across Haldimand, Brantford, and Brant as businesses, homeowners and investments continue to be scared away by threat of confrontation and violence.

Actually, the bigger question here is...

...when Mini-Pierre establishes his sovereign Empire of Quebec, will his wife be able to keep her Canadian E-Talk gig?
**********

COMPASSIONATE INTELLECTUAL LEFT REPLIES:

"At least Quebec can get out when Harper makes Canada an unrecognizable fascist police state."
Posted by Anonymous to halls of macadamia at 1:22 PM, February 15, 2012

Oh nonny, bad timing... looks like Shiny Pony Trudeau just pulled a 180...

"Outside the Commons, an emotional Trudeau declared his love for a united Canada, adding this country is in his bones and every breath he takes."

Well then, that settles that... except, of course, for poor nonny.

**********

TWEET OF THE WEEK:

Even the leftosphere is devouring its young over this...

"Just finished watching Justin Trudeau’s interview on #PnP. Pierre Trudeau isn’t spinning in his grave, he’s asking for a DNA test."

Poor Leroy Smickle... got himself in a pickle

For right now, anyway, his "crime" is his punishment...

"When officers burst in, he was on the couch in boxer shorts, tank top and sunglasses, a pistol in his left hand and a laptop computer in his right, apparently taking pictures of himself looking 'cool' for his Facebook page."

It's funny though, how the same folks cheering Leroy's release... want to crucify Ian Thompson.

Not a mention of "unsafe storage" in Mr Smickle's case.

**********

RELATED: Now, wait just a minute...

"Sending a first-time offender to prison for three years for possessing a loaded gun is 'cruel and unusual punishment,' an Ontario judge ruled Monday in striking down the mandatory minimum sentence as unconstitutional."

Tell me, your Honour... isn't a first-time offender precisely the person you want to make an impression on?

Or do we just wait for another Jane Creba? Or another Kenneth Mark?

**********

THANK YOU COMMENT MODERATION:

"and not only that, there's niggers in the white house! And they're in charge!!"
Posted by Anonymous to halls of macadamia at 3:56 AM, February 15, 2012

Oh, nonny, you do all the work for me. I think we'll skip over your Nazi Harper stuff, though. Perhaps being up at 4am trolling the blogosphere has popped your cork.

Regardless, I'm sure poor Mr Smickle appreciates your standing up for him against the slings & arrows of racist Canadian society.

**********

LAST WORD: Somehow, guns are less horrifying...

...when the left tries to make a point...

A left-wing freebie newspaper in Toronto, called NOW magazine, has published a photoshopped picture of the conservative mayor, Rob Ford, pointing a gun to his head.

This from a magazine that claims to be against guns and gun violence.

NOW magazine is unimportant to most people, but there is an important point buried amidst its smut: Liberals don’t mind promiscuous suggestions of gun crime, if it’s someone they hate in the crosshairs.

Compassionate, intellectual left replies...

Once again, the dirty tricks people reveal their inner Machiavelli...

“We should hire private investigators to look into the personal lives of Fox News anchors, hosts, reporters, prominent contributors, senior network and corporate staff.”

No real surprises... sleight of hand & misdirection are their stock in trade...
Josef Stalin would be proud.

Well... that explains why Itunes...

...crashed last night...

Journalism's Golden Rule... if it bleeds...

...(or drowns in its own vomit)... it leads...Of course, there's also (barring, for example, actually dropping that baby off the balcony) a certain amount of obligatory celebrity ass-kissing/ rationalisation going on...

Price added that Houston "didn't look like she was under the influence of anything. She drank some champagne and toasted Kelly Price's three Grammy nominations Thursday night. That's what Whitney Houston did."

And, it's true... if you cherrypick the dozens of pictures taken that night you can actually, like ABC news, come up with an image that doesn't scare the shit outta your average citizen... unlike, say...

(Feel free to click on the picture directly above if you're interested in reality.)

Then there's the malarkey about Houston's daughter being "stressed out"...

On Friday night, Houston's 18 year old daughter Bobbi Kristina FELL ASLEEP in another bathtub at the Beverly Hilton. Friends had to contact hotel security so she could be removed from the tub.

And, incidentally... carted off to the hospital in an ambulance.

Drugs? Pish-tosh... perish the thought.

Which is precisely the Oprah/Diane Sawyer mindset (Whitney beat addiction... clap, clap, clap) which brought everyone here in the first place.

Whatever happened to actually telling the truth? When did being "judgemental" become such a bad thing?

Just ask Whitney Houst... oh... right.

C'mon now... let's not assume anything

Do you have any idea how many Alfred Apps there must be in the local phonebook...

"Alfred Apps, the key legal adviser to Ornge, is resigning from Fasken and joining Wildeboer Dellelce, the law firm where his brother, Eric, also practises."

Wait a minute...

Really, Ron... a group?

A group of what... farmers, deer hunters or skeet shooters?

• TORONTO • Two suspects and a man wounded in an apparent daytime gun battle at an Etobicoke high-rise complex aren’t cooperating with police.

That leaves Toronto Police suspecting the 1:50 p.m. Thursday shooting is part of some sort of push into Tandridge Cres., in the Albion Rd.-Hwy. 401 area, by a group from Dixon Rd.

Hmmm, that's a little vague... apparently, this "group" is divided into shooters and neat-freaks.

Supt. Ron Taverner said two women were charged for being accessories after the fact for trying to destroy evidence and mislead investigators.

“They were helping dispose of evidence, trying to clean up blood.”

Gotta be careful with those g-words, right?

We sure don't wanna offend anybody.

**********

RELATED: Bright lights, big city

• TORONTO • Scarborough mechanic Merhawi Tekle was sentenced Friday to 32 months imprisonment in the beating death of a homeless alcoholic in a dispute sparked by a stolen Metropass.

The prosecution wanted a six to eight-year penitentiary sentence less eight months credit for time served.

The judge found 29-year-old Tekle punched 70-year-old Jackson once in the face and twice in the abdomen, inflicting cracked ribs and a lacerated liver.

I'm guessing it's almost as brutal...

...as lacrosse...

"In a development drawing horror, amusement and skepticism, a group of Torontonians has formed a team and joined the California-based Ultimate Tazer Ball league."

A website? Of course they do.

But that's not where the real entertainment lies...

I blame Stephen Harper

“I have to go to Canada, for the well-being of my husband,” she said, adding that she has not heard from Canadian officials.

Hmmm... maybe she could bunk in with Lisa Laflamme.

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:

"So let me get this straight: a foreigner gets hurt in Canada, it's our government's responsibility to reach out to his family back home; a Canadian gets hurt in a foreign land, it's our government's responsibility to look after him there."

"By this logic, no matter what transpires, it's ALWAYS the Harper government's fault."

**********

UPDATE: Just another media spinfest?

The son of the dead van driver, David Blancas-Hernandez, told Peruvian newspaper La Republica his father had been safely transporting staff to chicken farms for more than four years and demanded an impartial investigation into the collision.

Wait a minute... this guy had been flouting the law for four years?

Neither government officials nor police would release the name of the company that hired the workers, and provided the van for which the driver held an improper licence.

Try imagine the media shitstorm if non-Peruvian transport truck driver Chris Fulton (who, incidentally was also killed that night) had not held a valid Class A licence... or had been the one to blow through that intesection like a multi-ton missile...

They were in a van going west on Line 47 in Hampstead when driver Blancas-Hernandez ran the stop sign, colliding with a truck driven by Londoner Christopher Fulton and going south on Perth Rd. 107.

I agree... it's time to take a closer look at "the murky world of foreign farm workers."

How exactly is it... with everybody screaming about unemployment, we're still importing people from halfway around the world to do Canadian jobs?

A teenagers delight...

...or a society's downfall?

Sites such as Twitter and Facebook represent a virtual world in which Saudis are free to share opinions, ideas and develop relationships, a fact that recently prompted the top Saudi cleric to denounce them as “a great danger.”

Those darn intertoobs.

Meanwhile... back at the ranch...

Hope, Change and...

...lots of "consideration"...

The United States said it was considering ways to get food and medicine to them - a move that would deepen international involvement in a conflict which has wide geopolitical dimensions and has caused division between world powers.

So who's more useless... the United Nations or the United States?

A Syrian doctor, struggling to treat the wounded at a field clinic in a mosque, delivered an emotional plea via YouTube video. Standing next to a bloody body on a table, the man, named only as Mohammed, said to the camera, and to the outside world:

"We appeal to the international community to help us transport the wounded. We wait for them here to die in mosques. I appeal to the United Nations and to international humanitarian organizations to stop the rockets from being fired on us."

Chalk up another pretty little dance for President McDreamy & Shrillary Clinton.

**********

UPDATE: Dear Barry... what's that smell?

Syria's military has begun stockpiling chemical weapons and equipping its soldiers with gas masks near the city of Homs, opposition sources reported on Thursday.

News agencies reported over 130 killed in Syria on Thursday, as Bashar Assad's government intensified its crackdown on an expanding uprising against his regime.

It was a made for CTV story...

...and they surely milked the shit out of it... poor migrant farm workers, killed en-mass... betrayed by their Canadian dream.

Lisa LaFlamme, heir to the corpse that was Lloyd Robertson... in their lead story on national television last night... called upon not one, but two separate reporters... to make media hay out of the bloody, battered corpses in the demolished van. The subtext of the story was, of course, how these poor people had left their homes & families to be exploited in a foreign uncaring land... and now they were dead.

Lisa & company went as far as to show grieving friends at the crash site (always media gold, right?) and assorted television clips... from Peru.

It seemed pretty obvious what had actually transpired, but CTV never lets the facts get in the way of a good multicultural fable... whether it's brutal cops, sociopathic Canadian soldiers, or bloodsucking capitalist gringos.

In actual fact, though... the blame for this sad tale falls squarely on the driver of the migrant's van.

Police now believe that the crash that killed 11 people on an Ontario rural road happened after 45-year-old David Armando Blancas Hernandez, the driver of a van carrying migrant farm workers failed to yield at a stop sign and got hit by an oncoming trailer truck.

Mr. Blancas needed a class-F licence to operate a 15-seat van but only had a class-G driver's permit, police said.

So, to recap... David Armando Blancas Hernandez, who was not even properly licensed, blew through a stop sign... and caused the deaths of 11 innocent people... what we would usually refer to, in non-CTV circles, as negligent homicide. But heck... where's the pathos in that?

Note also... the story made quick work of the other victim in this tale... Chris Fulton. It was left to Mr. Fulton's employer to speak to his good name.

It appears, his employer Speedy Transport said in a news release Tuesday night, Fulton tried to dodge the van carrying 13 Peruvian farm workers -- and in doing so, lost his life.

Then again... Chris Fulton was just an ordinary Canadian who followed the rules.

And we all know there's no worthy television moral in that story. Right, Lisa?

**********

UPDATE: The eighth stage of grief...

...hire a shyster...

A lawyer representing the families of four of the victims of the crash Monday that claimed 11 lives in southwestern Ontario says he'll explore whether the van the men were riding in had anything to do with the tragic outcome.

"We will be filing the paperwork with the (Workplace Safety and Insurance Board) and the police to get more details as to what happened and to explore the liability situation," Toronto lawyer Juan Carranza told Postmedia News on Thursday.

Lemme see... improperly licensed driver... who ran a stopsign... yeah, it's gotta be a DEFECTIVE VAN.

Not much detail (one media report so far) on the other 2004 crash that also killed Peruvian farm workers in the Kitchener area.

Once again, the Toronto "Red" Star...

...attempts to mythologise a dangerous sociopath...

"Michael Eligon Jr. remains mostly a man of mystery several days after he was fatally shot in a confrontation with police while wearing a hospital gown on an east-end street, blocks from the hospital."

The implication here is that, somehow... this poor guy was taken down by a police death squad... but even the rainbows & unicorns journos at the Star have to include a few facts.

"After leaving the hospital, the 5-foot-11, 160-pound man is believed to have injured someone (the Globe & Mail has a witness saying Eligon stabbed a shopper and injured a police officer) inside a nearby convenience store before trying to hijack a car."

"Shortly after, neighbours on nearby Milverton Blvd. reported that a man in a hospital gown was trying to break into a house at the back door."

I'm not sure what the Star finds so mysterious... we're talkin' straightforward cause & effect here.

If ever there was such a thing as "a good shoot"... this was it...

"Eligon was carrying two pairs of scissors, according to witnesses, and kept walking toward the officers with his hands outstretched despite being ordered to stop as police backed up."

Professional journalists... your moral & intellectual superiors.

**********

BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY:

Police have charged two Toronto men in connection with a shooting Thursday afternoon in a west-end neighborhood. The shooting happened after a fight broke out between two people near 75 Tandridge Cres.

Police arrested three men leaving the scene, and seized two loaded firearms. Two of the men face 35 charges, while the third has been released.

Abdullah Abdullahi, 24, and Mohamud Duale, 20, face several charges.

**********

THANK YOU, COMMENT MODERATION:

"More fascist whining here I see."
Posted by Anonymous to halls of macadamia at 10:39 AM, February 08, 2012

Oh, nonny... you do all the work for me.

**********

LAST WORD: Ask a Justice Minister

OTTAWA - There's no appetite in Canada for vigilante justice but the occasional warning shot over the head of a thief or trespasser may have its time and place, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson agreed Tuesday.

Surprise, surprise... he lied about Gitmo...

...and suddenly, he's okay with all that "dirty" money...

“Yet again, Barack Obama has proven he will literally do anything to win an election, including changing positions on the type of campaign spending he called nothing short of ‘a threat to our democracy.’”

I can't wait to hear the MSM and the pinkosphere start yammering about President McDreamy's "flexibility."

If there's anything that's a ‘a threat to our democracy’, it's a Commander-in-Chief who'll cross previously stated moral & ethical lines to garner votes.

Mr. Obama has consistently spoken out against the new rules that allow unlimited contributions from corporations and wealthy donors.

“But for 2012, our campaign has to face the reality of the law as it currently stands,” said campaign manager Jim Messina.

Chalk up another slick move to the most impressive product of the Chicago Machine.

Yeah, a curfew...

...that's the answer...

• NEW ORLEANS • Officials here are considering tightening a youth curfew in the latest attempt to fight crime in a city with the nation's highest murder rate and what its mayor has called "a culture of death."

Oh relax, lady... if someone at the CBC...

...hasn't already put together a half dozen movie treatments... I'll eat my hat...

When Mr. Sharif was arrested, his bags had been packed. Ms. Rain plays down all this now, saying the arguments often stemmed from misunderstandings – his English was limited.

“Despite all of our arguments, we always started our morning making each other coffee and making breakfast together, for each other,” she said.

Terrorism... what terrorism?

This is a love story.

Dear Toronto "Red" Star... let's face it...

...this is exactly why Torontonians elected this guy...

Mayor Rob Ford has squeezed unprecedented concessions out of 6,000 city workers in a tentative contract that puts other unions on notice and guarantees more outsourcing and layoffs.

Mark Ferguson, president of CUPE Local 416 said his team had made “numerous concessions” to avoid a lockout or strike. He has said outside workers “learned our lesson” from lingering public anger over the summer 2009 strike.

Right, Mark... the public... that'd be the folks who pay all those salaries.

That's just the way it is...

...baby...

According to the Alberta government, the province's employment growth has accounted for 61.6 per cent of Canada's employment growth in the past 12 months.

"While other regions are simply treading water, Alberta seems to be hanging on to its hiring momentum. We expect this trend to continue throughout 2012," said TD Economics.

Canadian trifecta of political correctness...

...missed it... by that much...

"Haitian-born killer taught respect for women by aboriginal elders."

If only this poor dear had a wheelchair... or a learning disability.

Oh yeah... Gregory's little act of disrespect?

He stabbed 15-year-old Tara Manning 51 times.

**********

RELATED: How about we rename it...

...the "War on Stupidity?"

FROM THE COMMENTS:

"At $73,000 per year, where can I sign up to become a 2nd class citizen."

From the folks who brought you...

..."Little Subsidy on the Airwaves"...

"The benefit of the Chop-o-matic is that it has multiple settings, and the opportunity we do have is the fact that we can offer people chopping when they need it."

"It's not necessarily just what you see in the kitchen, I think that's a really small view, I think you have to look at what the Chop-o-matic services overall, it's quite a wide variety...."

Don't miss all that hot lawyer-on-blogger action!!!

**********

RELATED: Please, please... make it stop

Egypt's amazing Arab Spring...

...apparently not quite there just yet...

• (CBS/AP) EL-ARISH, Egypt • Bedouin gunmen intercepted a tourist minivan and snatched two female American tourists and their Egyptian guide at gunpoint Friday near St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula, the region's security chief said.

The brazen daylight abduction along a busy highway was a new blow to Egypt's vital tourism industry, which has been heavily battered by the unrest following last year's uprising that ousted former President Hosni Mubarak.

Hang on, Mr Prosecutor...

...you're saying, what... the guys with the molotov cocktails... they're the victims?

Man... we've just gotta do something about all those gun-crazy, dumb as dogshit country boys... wait a minute...

"That’s at least 352,000 icky firearms, right in the Toronto Star‘s backyard. For a paper still trying to wrap their minds around a Harper majority and a Rob Ford mayoralty, it’s gotta be a tough pill to swallow."

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:

"I'd bet that every off-duty cop in Canada would have shot the firebombers if it was THEIR house under attack."

**********

THE COMPASSIONATE, INTELLECTUAL LEFT REPLIES:

"Sounds from the gun nuts here that the penalty for stealing an ipod should be to be shot to death."
Posted by Anonymous to halls of macadamia at 10:43 PM, February 05, 2012

**********

LAST WORD: Bright lights, big city

Toronto’s two most-recent murder victims will be laid to rest Saturday, while police are busy trying to track down their killers.

I guess that's where Ian Thomson messed up... he survived.

Remember... Israel doesn't bluff

"Any facility protected by humans can be infiltrated by humans. It's possible to strike all Iran's facilities, and I say that out of my experience as IDF chief of staff."

When booing just isn't enough

"At least 74 people have been killed and 1,000 injured after a football pitch invasion in Egypt, according to reports."

**********

UPDATE: More G&M "lipstick on pig" journalism
The mighty Globe & Mail now claims that Egyptians are "outraged" by the massacre... inconveniently forgetting that the original article had already detailed what people were really pissed off about...

As details of the violence emerged, a football match in Cairo, 200km (125 miles) away, was called off in mourning and television footage showed sections of the stadium on fire.

An announcer said the blazes had been started by fans angry over the cancellation.

Apparently "mourning & outrage" are only for infidel pussies.

More sparkly socio-political gems...

...courtesy of the Globe & Mail...
And I quote...

• "No mention of the stench of Canadian bacon." •

Who says professional journalism is easy?