24 June 2008

Hence the term... "going postal"

Think about how much money, and more importantly, aggravation... we could save... by contracting this out to someone like Federal Express...
In May, 74-year-old David Oke discovered Canada Post was -- after 40 years -- no longer delivering mail to his bright green mailbox at the end of his driveway in rural Ontario. His service was stopped, he was told, because his name appeared on only one side of the mailbox instead of the requisite two.

His Peterborough County neighbour, Bruce Warr, 82, also stopped receiving mail a few days later. The reason: His mailbox was on a crooked post.
Forget about going after criminals... let's punish everybody's rural grandparents.

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Oh yeah...

Let's see you prove it...
As the trial of the first man charged under Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act got under way four years after police raided his home in the Ottawa suburb of Orleans, the Crown gave a two-hour summary of its case, in which it will present dozens – perhaps hundreds – of intercepted conversations to show that the accused admitted he had a one-track mind.
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UPDATE: Lawrence Greenspon decides to help the prosecution
Mr. Greenspon contends that if the Crown wants to hear evidence about Mr. Khawaja's activities before the meeting, it should call any of the five terrorists jailed in London for plotting to detonate a fertilizer bomb, as their ties to the Canadian suspect date back longer.
Sure... those extremely helpful convicted terrorists.

We'll get right on that.

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23 June 2008

We're the Liberal Party...

...and we're just gonna "shift" all over you.
-- OTTAWA -- Stéphane Dion's cross-country tour promoting his “green shift” hit a potentially embarrassing pothole Monday as a Toronto environmentalist took legal action over what she describes as “blatantly unethical” trademark infringement.

A firm already operating as Green Shift sent a cease and desist letter Monday afternoon to the Liberal Party and the company is considering whether to sue for damages.

Ms. Wright recalls being told by the senior Liberal aide: “I just want to let you know that you're going to be getting a lot of hits on the website.”

Ms. Wright said she warned Ms. Telford the Liberals could expect a lawsuit if they went ahead and used the name.

“I said, more importantly, why would you do that to a nice, friendly, environmental organization?”
Of course, when the shoe is on the other foot...

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FROM THE COMMENTS:
"Dion wants to shift the green from your wallet into the Liberal's wallet."
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RELATED: The kindly face of Liberalism
A Liberal spokesman discounted the company's protests that the Liberals mimicked Green Shift's web domain name, by adding the article "the" before Greenshift.ca.

"We rightly own the domain name," said Dunn.
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LAST WORD: Craig Oliver forgets his meds...
CRAIG OLIVER: "However, they did offer us Jason Kenney, the Minister of Multiculturalism, to attack the government's green plan..."
You mean the Fiberal tax grab, right Craig?

(via sda)

Yeah, sure... we get it

The word according to CanLaw...
"Legal Aid Ontario -- Legal aid is officially available across the province, to lower-income people for a variety of legal problems, including criminal matters, family disputes, immigration and refugee hearings and poverty law issues such as landlord/tenant disputes and employment insurance."

"However in reality, it is largely reserved for women, gays and minorities."

"White men need not apply."
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RELATED: You might want a second opinion.

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I gotta tell ya, Mo...

I don't think shavin' off the beard... is gonna fool anybody.
-- OTTAWA -- Mr. Khawaja, beardless and with long wet hair parted in the middle, simply pleaded “not guilty” in a soft-spoken voice to each of the seven terrorism charges he faces.
A perfectly nice, successful Canadian life... but you just had to piss it all away.

Not so "Islamic Yeehaw" now, huh buddy?

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Who's kissin' up to "Big Corn"?

I thought Obama was touting himself as the "candidate of change"... the guy who wouldn't get sucked in by the lobbyists...
Nowadays, when Mr. Obama travels in farm country, he is sometimes accompanied by his friend Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader from South Dakota. Mr. Daschle now serves on the boards of three ethanol companies and works at a Washington law firm where, according to his online job description, “he spends a substantial amount of time providing strategic and policy advice to clients in renewable energy.”

Mr. Obama’s lead advisor on energy and environmental issues, Jason Grumet, came to the campaign from the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan initiative associated with Mr. Daschle and Bob Dole, the Kansas Republican who is also a former Senate majority leader and a big ethanol backer who had close ties to the agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland.
Sounds sorta like he's actually the "candidate of spare change."
Not long after arriving in the Senate, Mr. Obama himself briefly provoked a controversy by flying at subsidized rates on corporate airplanes, including twice on jets owned by Archer Daniels Midland, which is the nation’s largest ethanol producer and is based in his home state.
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RELATED: But no controls on ethanol... right?
U.S. Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has proposed a clampdown on energy speculation which he believes is responsible for record-high oil prices.
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Brits decide... "enough is enough"

Sorry, Tupac... "Use a gun... you're done."
A man has been jailed for at least 20 years for the murder of a woman caught in a "Wild West" style shoot-out. Magda Pniewska, 26, was shot in the head in New Cross, south London, in October last year.

The conviction for murder of someone who was known not to have fired the fatal shot was described by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) as "unprecedented".

CPS lawyer Jane Scholefield said: "Even though the defendant did not fire the fatal round, and even though Magda Pniewska was not the intended target of either gunman, the defendant bears a joint criminal liability for her death.

"Each fired their guns with intent to kill at a time when there were bystanders present between them."
Why didn't Canada bring this hammer down on Richard Steele?

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FROM THE COMMENTS:
"Actually, we had a similar law here in Canada."

"Unfortunately, it was struck down as being, you guessed it, unconstitutional."
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RELATED: Toronto cops 'tighten the net'
Homicide investigators, meanwhile, have traced evidence from cartridge casings found near where Dylan Ellis and Oliver Martin were murdered June 13 on Richmond St. W. to records of a handgun used in a previous crime. No details have been released.
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We're finally gonna start...

...checkin' tickets on the Gravy train...
The 19th-century Indian Act that governs most of Canada's 600 First Nations says little about fiscal transparency.

"So that's going to change and that's going to be of great benefit to First Nations individuals who say, you know, 'I want to hold the chief and council's feet to the fire, just like I would at city hall or ... with the federal government,''' Strahl said.
And even the opposition isn't gonna argue that this isn't necessary...
The policy shift echoes the failed First Nations Governance Act, a broader legislative attempt by the former Liberal government to tighten financial controls.

Former prime minister Paul Martin, as he took the Liberal helm, abandoned the bill after months of backlash from native chiefs who said they weren't fully consulted.
Well... at least we know Steffi doesn't get his intestinal fortitude from anywhere strange.

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Apparently John Bull...

...hasn't been totally neutered...
The British government views forced marriages, often performed after beatings or threats of violence, as a human rights abuse, far different from arranged marriages to which the bride and groom consent.

It is Rawlins's job to stop them. In an age of increasingly fluid migration, and aided by instant communication, the British diplomat works 3,700 miles from London to help women from her own country.
But it wasn't always so...
Before 2000, British officials tended to view forced marriages as a foreign custom not theirs to judge. But these British-raised young women are increasingly worldly and assertive, and many now have cellphones hidden in their burqas or handbags.

From even the remotest villages, they are increasingly calling for help. And the British government has set up a special group to rescue them.
Bravo.

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22 June 2008

A Tale of Two Shooters

Here's just one of the things that drives me crazy about the CBC... they're not above shilling the deaths of these two unfortunate young men... but in their blindly politically-correct madness... they won't even provide a description of the shooter.
The only possible suspect is a man seen riding away from the murder scene on a mountain bike. Police say they believe whoever was responsible for the shooting is "familiar with the area" around Niagara and Bathurst streets.
See how helpful that is? The CBC has winnowed down the pool of possible shooters to any one of the million or so males in the city of Toronto. Good work guys.

Thankfully, there are still folks in the media who are determined to provide actual details that may help apprehend the shooter.
It's expected they'll plead for information about the man who so callously took the lives of two such promising young men. Cops think he fled the scene on a mountain bike, and have only a limited description of him.

He's:

* Male,
* Black,
* Light complexion,
* Light coloured shirt,
* Dark coloured pants.
That description... and the fact that he's believed to be from the immediate area, narrows the suspect pool way down.

And with this thing beginning to look like a "thrill kill"... the cops are gonna need all the help they can get.

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WELCOME READERS OF DR DEMENTO, uh... DAWG
I think the Dawg... needs a good worming.
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The Leftbot Solution

Shoot a gun, deal drugs or assault a neighbour and your days in Toronto's public housing should be over.

"The truth is, nothing can be further from the truth," Harry Fine, a former adjudicator on the provincial body that resolves disputes between landlords and tenants, tells the Sunday Sun.

In fact, Fine insists, there's a revolving door for bad tenants in this city's troubled public housing projects.


The Toronto Community Housing Corp. evicts problem residents and the province's Landlord and Tenant Board lets them back in.

"In my informed position, the Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board is the most serious impediment to cleaning out the bad guys from social housing," Fine tells the Sun.

"The regulatory regime is out of control."
Yeah... let's drop another 300 million taxpayer dollars down this uber-socialist black hole.

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Hey, dumbass...

Here's a breaking bulletin... many Canadians don't appreciate being held hostage...
The Kelly Lake Cree Nation took down a highway blockade near the Alberta-B.C. border Saturday because of a close call with angry and dangerous drivers, band spokesman Clayton Anderson said.

Anderson said he was walking toward a vehicle at the blockade on Highway 52, about 180 kilometres southeast of Chetwynd, in northeastern B.C., when "this guy just steps on the gas and practically runs me over."
Hey, Clayhead... why don'tcha try this sorta shit over in Chechnya... I bet they'd love your lawbreakin' ass.

Better yet... just call a cop... and file a complaint.

And... oh yeah... next time you should try not to forget your spear.

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Toronto's Mayor Miller...

...renews call for city-wide "Cutlery Free Zone."
-- TORONTO -- Police were called to the rear laneway of 11 St. Joseph St. in the Yonge and Wellesley Sts. area at about 3:00 a.m. after witnesses reported a large fight.

A man had been involved in a scrap with several other people and had been stabbed 11 times and slashed in the throat during the melee.
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UPDATE: My mistake... that's 2 stabbings

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LAST WORD: And an attempted abduction
-- TORONTO -- Toronto police say a mother interrupted a man apparently trying to abduct her toddler through an open window Saturday night.

The three-year-old girl was playing alone in her bedroom when police say a man reached through an open ground floor apartment window and tried to take the child.

Just then the toddler's mother walked in and screamed.
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Blessed be his name

The capricious and unknowable "Will of Allah."
-- Diyala Province, IRAQ -- Fifteen people have been killed and 39 wounded by a female suicide bomber in the northern Iraqi city of Baquba.

The bomber detonated the device in front of a group of policemen at the entrance to a local government and law courts complex.

A number of civilians are said to be among the casualties.
C'mon now... it's all for a good cause, right?

If only we could bring back Saddam.

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McCain and O'Bama

Two Irish guys duking it out to become the next President of the United States.

With the exception of their Éire roots, no two candidates could be more different from one another - unless one of them had a vagina.

Which, to be honest, has yet to be determined.
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RELATED: Much like our own Stephane Dion...

...he's flexible.

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21 June 2008

Yes... by all means...

Because that's what we all absolutely want to do... "cater to it."
-- TORONTO -- New public housing complex "CATERS TO SINGLES" under age 25 who have a child.

A product of more than $2 million in federal funding, the centre near Jane St. and Sheppard Ave. W. will open its doors to 27 pregnant women or single mothers who are homeless or at risk of it.

Five women live in the centre already, and it is expected all units will be full by the end of July, project manager Leslie Gash said.
Yeah... no kidding.

If you FINANCE it... THEY WILL COME.

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RELATED: of course, there's always "Plan B"
"Look out Warren Buffett. There's a new sheriff in town."
(via sda)

"THE SLIGHT STUFF"

Yeah... here's what most people are looking for in a war-time Prime Minister.
-- TORONTO -- Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion has scolded Stephen Harper over his criticism of the Liberals' so-called green shift.

“I call on the prime minister to debate with me any time on TV on this issue in a respectful, meaningful and adult way,” an angry Mr. Dion said on Toronto's Centre Island.

“It was vulgar and I don't think Canadians are impressed by that.”
Yeah... not like this... huh, Steffi?

Hey, Milquetoast... did he use "hurtful words"?

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FROM THE COMMENTS:
"Did you see Dion squirm on Prime Time Politics on CPAC when he was asked that since he was so confident in his plan would he be willing to go to the people for a vote?"
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LAST WORD: Oooooh, Steffi... that's gonna leave a mark
"Our plan will be good for the environment and good for the economy — good for the planet, good for the wallet."
Of course... that'll be Revenue Canada's wallet.

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Maybe McCain should consider...

...switching sides... and joining the Republican Party.
-- OTTAWA -- Senator John McCain says he would favour returning Toronto-born Omar Khadr to Canada from Guantanamo Bay if Prime Minister Stephen Harper requested it.

On the environment, the Arizona senator appeared to align himself more closely with Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and Quebec Premier Jean Charest than with Harper.
This is the public face of Conservatism in America?

Good grief.

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