The Stupid ... she is strong with this one.

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Monday Funnies ....

"Rep. Barney Frank, House Financial Services chairman, predicted Monday that a deal for a short-term bailout of the auto industry could be struck by the end of the day, with one last funding issue still to be resolved. ....."

Cross-posted ...

Morons ...

It's all here, here, here and here.

Giggles ...

VIA

Canada Post's crack kit ....

"Some people go to their mail boxes and get bills, letters, maybe a flyer advertising what is on sale at the grocery store or at Canadian Tire but I am a citizen living in the centre of the universe - dead centre ........."

True story.

S.T.F.U ... I mean ... really ... just S.T.F.U.

... A divorce lawyer from Lethbridge [Alberta] with a second-rate patronage job just ordered a Canadian pastor to stop communicating to anyone, ever, about gays. Not to stop "hate speech" -- whatever that malleable legal definition is. She just told him to shut up, period.

And then she orders that Rev. Boissoin and his group are:
...prohibited from making disparaging remarks in the future about Dr. Lund or Dr. Lund's witnesses relating to their involvement in this complaint..

Again, not banned from "hate speech", whatever that is today; but banned from disparaging remarks about Lund, an anti-Christian activist, who now is "protected" not just from Rev. Boissoin's alleged anti-gay remarks, but from his political criticism of his own tormentor. Apparently, being a busy-body human rights complainant-of-fortune is a new "protected ground" of hate speech. Become one, and no-one can ever say anything "disparaging" about you again. Ever. Not even in an e-mail. ...

I'll do it, and I'll say it:

IMO, Lori Andreachuk is a moron.

Garden Nazis ....

Dear [name redacted], [name redacted], and [name redacted] and other Members of the Board of Directors of Carleton Condominium Corporation [number redacted]

Re: Gardening areas per your note of May 28, 2008

Thank you for responding so quickly, however, I have a few questions:

You wrote:

Your plans for hostas and impatiens along the back path, north to the gate of #5, are aligned with our original plan, as discussed on Sunday. Throughout the grounds, we tend to use white and several shades of pink impatiens – we’ll drop off a plug or two to illustrate, but any shades of pink and/or white would align well with the common grounds impatiens. (We prefer to avoid orange impatiens.)

So … what about the orange nasturtiums? What about fruity nasturtium which often gets pickled? Can they be supplanted by any other colour?

What’s so great about white or pink impatiens? What have you got against orange impatiens? What about peach impatiens?

If I didn’t hope for a better future, I’d call you garden variety racists.

Very best regards,

c.c. [good neighbours, so I’ll keep them out of it]

And then there were breastses .....

MT. LAUREL, N.J. – The Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association (JPMA), which represents the leading manufacturers of baby bottles in the United States, stands by the scientific research indicating that plastic baby bottles are safe. JPMA supports the rigorous scientific evaluation process of the National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction.

Does anyone ... anyone .... remember when we suckled our young?

h/t

What's wrong with this picture ...

' I've got some meth in my pocket.'

Ugh.

via

Short-bussted ...

"When I go to a dictatorship, I only have to talk to one person and that's the dictator, because he speaks for all the people."

Can't you people find a little peanut plantation somewhere to park his ass?

via Ezra

Where in the world is ....

Al Gore?


The bastard is


hiding


so he doesn't have to GIVE IT BACK!

Darwin Awards Winner 2008!

A WOULD-be suicide bomber fell down a flight of stairs and blew himself up as he headed out for an attack in Afghanistan, police say. ...

Still ... it's early yet.

Home is where the heart is .........

John Robson .......

" ... In Britain, the National Health Service is planning to make people do their own health care to save money.

OK, not appendectomies. But, the Daily Telegraph reported Wednesday: "Millions of people with arthritis, asthma and even heart failure will be urged to treat themselves as part of a government plan to save billions of pounds from the NHS budget ..."

The report says patients will find themselves: "Monitoring their own heart activity, blood pressure and lung capacity using equipment installed in the home; reporting medical information to doctors remotely by telephone or computer; administering their own drugs and other treatment to 'manage pain' and assessing the significance of changes in their condition; using relaxation techniques to relieve stress and avoid 'panic' visits to emergency wards."

New prime minister Gordon Brown naturally spun it as giving "all of those with long-term or chronic conditions the choice of greater support, information and advice, allowing them to play a far more active role in managing their own condition." But a document obtained by the Daily Telegraph indicates that while the public rhetoric is about empowerment, the private incentive is to save money.

It would be. It's curious that people attack private markets because providers think about money, but never admit that it's bad when governments don't and often worse when they do. A company that cuts costs so much it can't provide decent service goes out of business. Governments face no such incentives, and it matters.

......... "

Bah! Humbug.

He's right, of course (as in "correct") ...

Dr. Richard North ....

... As we try to chart EU issues and write interesting and informed comment about the government-across-the-water [EU continent], therefore, we are truly becoming a lone voice. Not only are the newspapers and media generally bereft of EU coverage, even the blogs have largely dried up. ...

Darfur

Darfur


Darfur

Darfur

..... On a political level, as well as humanitarian, this should be big news – politically because the EU is on trial and, when the chips are down, it cannot even deliver the pitifully limited resources needed to provide even the minimal aid promised. For a nation that is on the verge of having a new EU treaty foisted upon us – which gives the EU even more powers to devise spectacular failures - this should be of some interest. But other matters claim attention. ...

Darfur.

They're dying. They're dying in droves.

For want of a helicopter or two.

Fer Chrissake.

Who cares?

Apparently, no one.

The Democrat dominated US Congress ....

"... Mr. Bush has asked Congress to approve $725 million for efforts in Darfur, initially attaching his request to a $50 billion emergency supplemental bill largely containing funds for the conflict in Iraq. Sadly, this $725 million request, along with $70 million Mr. Kiir has requested for help to administer democratic elections in 2009, were rejected by House Democrats, who chose not to include them in the Iraq funds approved by the lower chamber on Wednesday. A Democratic leadership aide told The Washington Times that congressional leaders plan to approve these Darfur funds sometime next month. ...."

not so much.

Canada sends postcards.


They're dying.

"A World Toilet Summit has opened in the Indian capital, Delhi, with more than 40 countries taking part."

... According to estimates, 2.6bn people around the world lack access to a hygienic toilet.

The United Nations hopes to halve this figure by 2015 as part of its millennium development goals.

... The UN wants to remedy the situation by 2025.

With the UN involved, you know they'll accomplish squat.

Raging Racists?

Don Martin, The Calgary Herald ....

"The floundering Bloc Québécois couldn't wait to put its stamp against an "unreasonable accommodation" for visible minorities. They rushed forward a bill this week to block Muslim women from voting behind their burqas.

Never mind that the ruling Conservatives last week proclaimed their intent-to-legislate on this contrived controversy or that Muslim women already comply with face-revealing requirements to obtain a driver's licence or passport, the risk of a covered female face in a ballot booth was so horrifically galling, two federal parties raced to put their name on its prohibition. (Note to the million rural residents in Canada now ineligible to vote because they don't have a street address: Hang in there. Your government will help you after fixing this farcical threat.)

Given the various actions of separatist forces this month, with a surprising assist from the provincial Liberals, the only face that needs to be uncovered is that of thinly veiled racism now raging in Quebec politics.

In the scramble for a purified and cleansed Quebec identity, various politicians are proposing or mulling over a shocking series of democratic limitations on anglophones or "foreign nationals," including newcomers from the other nine provinces.

The right to run for office, vote in any election, even pick a neighbourhood to live in would be limited by a person's French-speaking prowess, if assorted kick-around proposals of highly questionable constitutionality come to pass.

The Bloc has been kicking up a daily fuss in the House of Commons this week, demanding that provincial French-language handcuffs be applied to all federal employees, lest the few workers now exempt from Bill 101 utter a few words of illegal English in the process of earning an Ottawa-issued paycheque.

That line of attack was so bizarre, even lightweight cabinet minister Josée Verner sounds uncharacteristically forceful in denigrating the Bloc for taking 17 years to finally raise objections to a 30-year-old situation.

The hullabaloo continued with a Parti Québécois bill filed in the National Assembly by leader Pauline Marois proposing Quebec citizenship that would require French-language testing for future election candidates. That went too far even for former PQ leader Bernard Landry, no stranger to ethnic-bashing himself, but it was given the okeedokee from Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe.

Even while that bill was being ridiculed by federalists in Quebec, the PQ language critic was musing on an open-line radio show that anglophones in Montreal might lose the right to vote if Quebec became sovereign. To be fair, he did beat a slight backtrack in the angry aftermath.

Sadly, it's not just a separatist purge of linguistic impurity that should be giving rights advocates the shivers. Immigration Minister Yolande James, who lives in Montreal, was caught in a memo proposing immigrants be forced to "live their Quebec values concretely" through forcible confinement to francophone communities. After a few years of French-only isolation in Jonquière, she figures, the internment would "awaken them to the realities, the language, and the ways of Quebec."

I wish I was making this up. Alas, no.

What's worse, all this is playing against the soundtrack of the "reasonable accommodation" hearings of the cultural differences commission, where witnesses sound increasingly unreasonable in accommodating anti-immigrant sentiment.

The drift of all this is impossible to miss: Non-francophones are not wanted, welcome and may, if Quebec ever achieves sovereign status, be denied Canadian taken-for-granted freedoms of voting, working, speaking and living according to their desires. And you thought Afghanistan had trouble with the democratic concept.

Imagine, if you can, Albertans engaging in such aggressive cultural protectionism -- rolling out special oil patch citizenship and demanding all jobseekers live, speak and limit their religious practices according to established standards backed by a skill-testing question on Ian Tyson music.

There'd be coast-to-coast condemnation, a frenzy of national outrage against knuckle-dragging rednecks who apparently married inside their immediate family a tad too often to accept worldly cultures.

The studied silence from the federal government as Quebec turns increasingly and inwardly xenophobic has been unsettling. Clearly they don't want to be seen badmouthing the Quebecois as they struggle to define their newly recognized "nation" as an unjust francophone society built on ethnic suspicion and cultural intolerance.

But the emotions, opinions and positions now dominating political discourse in Quebec smack of a class-divided racism that should not be tolerated -- in either official language."

© The Ottawa Citizen 2007

This really cracks me up ...

Click

Oh, and the costs come in around $600,000.

That's before the lawsuits.

Stupid Sunday Story ...

... "It's illegal for camels to live in a park, but city officials say the animals can use public roadways as long as they follow local traffic ordinances."

Stupid camels.

Puffin' Stuff ...

... "It's a noble bird because it has good family values. They stay together for 30 years,'' Ignatieff said Thursday outside a Liberal caucus retreat in the Newfoundland capital.

"They lay one egg (each year). They put their excrement in one place. They hide their excrement. ... They flap their wings very hard and they work like hell.

"This seems to me a symbol for what our party should be.'' ...

Man ... that's just way TMI.

Heh.

via Hot Air

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