More Stuff...

...I like:



I like Thomas Sowell, to put it mildly.

What Did I Tell Ya?

Okay. I've been ignoring my blog again. That's because I've been following this whole Idle No More/Attawapiskat nonsense over at Sun News Network. In fact, that may be where I told ya this before, but when news that Shawn Atleo had booked some time off, on doctor's orders, my first reaction was that the Prairie Chiefs (the FSIN, especially) had got to him and we may see the end of the Assembly of First Nations. This article seems to confirm my hunches:

Norovirus, exhaustion leave Atleo sidelined as schisms deepen within AFN

The prairie chiefs, especially Saskatchewan's FSIN, have been a$$holes for decades now. The FSIN is corrupt and filled with thugs.

Philanthropy and Taxes

How many times have we heard folks on the left bitch and whine about people who don't pay taxes? They are the same people who whine about people with "too much money".

Here's a few stories about a very wealthy couple in Saskatoon who have done many things with their money that we tax payers would otherwise have had to either pay for or go without:

Leslie and Irene Dubé make generous donation to the U of S Health Sciences project

"The Dubé’s commitment will ensure the completion of the capital project. The Dubés, together with President Peter MacKinnon and Vice-President University Advancement Heather Magotiaux, unveiled renderings of the new state-of-the-art library and 500-seat lecture theatre in the Health Sciences building that will be named the Leslie and Irene Dubé Health Sciences Library and the Leslie and Irene Dubé Theatre.

“The Dubés are truly inspiring,” added President MacKinnon. “Their generous support brings us one step closer to turning our Health Sciences vision into reality. We are very thankful for their lead partnership in building the future of health education, research and practice.”

CHERISHED DONORS: Irene and Leslie Dubé

"In recognition of their philanthropy, the Irene and Leslie Dubé Centre for Mental Health was named in their honour, ushering in a new era of treatment for those in our community suffering from mental illness and addictions. The Dubé Centre opened its doors at RUH in early 2010.

“The Centre has exceeded our expectations,” say the Dubés. “Our hopes and prayers for each and every person who comes to the centre is that they find the peace, solace and healing that their lives require.”

Most recently, the Leslie and Irene Dubé Foundation Intensive Care Unit was named to recognize the Foundation's generous $500,000 donation that brought home the $2.5 million Royal Vital Care Campaign in 2011 that replaced 96 vital sign monitors in the ICU."

Les and Irene Dubé donate $6.5 million to Children’s Hospital Foundation

"The gift was announced Oct. 7 at a thanksgiving celebration honouring children’s hospital supporters and kicking off a $25 million fund-raising campaign.

The Children’s Hospital Foundation of Saskatchewan said the donation will be designated to the creation of the Leslie and Irene Dubé Centre of Care for Children, a main core area in the new children’s hospital.

“By the grace of God, we are able to pour out our love on all our children. When we wake up in the morning we have two choices; go back to sleep and dream or get up and chase those dreams,” said Leslie and Irene Dubé.(Emphasis mine)"

I don't know if the Dubes don't pay taxes, but if their substantial donations don't net them a tax break, they sure do net us taxpayers with something worth a helluvalot.

Now, for something about that 47% that Romney talked about:

Tax Policy Center analysis details the '47 percent'

"GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s comment that 47 percent of voters pay no income tax appears to come from a study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

The most recent study by the Center, in 2011, found that 46 percent of taxpayers would not be eligible to pay the federal individual income tax either because of their low income or owing to specific tax breaks.

But in 2009, it estimated that threshold was set at 47 percent. Of that group, roughly half will not pay taxes because their income is below $26,400.

In 2011, a family with two children making less than $26,400 will pay no federal income tax, the center said. Such a family would get the $11,600 standard deduction, as well as four exemptions of $3,700 each that would reduce its taxable income to zero."

[---]

"About three-quarters of the remaining people who do not pay income tax are either senior citizens or low-income working families with children who are eligible for specific tax breaks. These taxpayers get breaks excluding some Social Security benefits from being counted as taxable income, as well as targeted tax credits and deductions for the elderly and children.

The Center determined that a family of four could make up to $45,775 and still not have to pay income tax because its tax liability would be erased by a $2,000 child tax credit and $57 from the Earned Income Tax Credit.

All told, households with an income of less than $50,000 make up nearly 90 percent of those households that do not pay federal income tax."

[---]

"“Relatively few” households making more than $100,000 don’t pay income taxes, but there are some, according to the center. These households benefit from other deductions and reduced tax rates on capital gains and dividends, according to the Tax Policy Center.

While in 2011 the center found 46 percent paid no income taxes, the center notes that many of these people did pay federal payroll taxes as well as local sales and property taxes."

But don't let facts get in the way of a good old fashioned leftard hatefest.

Hmm. First Time I've Seen That Admitted...

...underwater volcanoes, that is. According to Ian Plimer, 80% of earth's volcanoes are under the oceans, along the continental ridges, quietly spewing lava and various greenhouse gasses into the water. Something that past IPPC reports have chosen to ignore. Perhaps folks are starting to pay attention. Folks other than James Hansen, that is, who seems to think that what happens on American soil (droughts) amount to human caused "global" warming, while just to the north we've had one very, very wet year. But I digress.

In the meantime, you don't see many or any environuts fretting about this:

Super volcano could kill millions

Indeed, they'd probably be happy to see millions die.

Oops. I lied. Lefty Huff 'n' Puff Post has covered it. And will you look at this:

"Such an event could make thermonuclear war or global warming seem trivial, spewing untold tons of ash into the atmosphere to block sunlight. The result would be many years of frigid temperatures, wiping out millions of species. A super-volcano that erupted 250 million years ago is now believed to have created the greatest mass extinction the world has ever seen, wiping out up to 95 percent of all plant and animal species. Some renegade scientists believe it was a volcano, not an asteroid, that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago."

And it stinks, too.

Telling It Like It Is...

...is easy, apparently, when it's a "white supremacist", but not so easy if it's an Islamist.

Yet More Inconvenience

Persistent near-tropical warmth on the Antarctic continent during the early Eocene epoch

"The warmest global climates of the past 65 million years occurred during the early Eocene epoch (about 55 to 48 million years ago), when the Equator-to-pole temperature gradients were much smaller than today and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were in excess of one thousand parts per million by volume. Recently the early Eocene has received considerable interest because it may provide insight into the response of Earth’s climate and biosphere to the high atmospheric carbon dioxide levels that are expected in the near future as a consequence of unabated anthropogenic carbon emissions."

"unabated anthropogenic carbon emissions"

They did have to slip that last bit in though, didn't they? Gotta get bigger balls, folks. You're half way there. Keep going.

Same topic. Another story.

"The study in Nature suggests Antarctic winter temperatures exceeded 10C, while summers may have reached 25C.

Better knowledge of past "greenhouse" conditions will enhance guesses about the effects of increasing CO2 today."

[---]

"The early Eocene was a period of atmospheric CO2 concentrations higher than the current 390 parts per million (ppm )- reaching at least 600ppm and possibly far higher.

Global temperatures were on the order of 5C higher, and there was no sharp divide in temperature between the poles and the equator."

Inneresting, no?

Also on the same topic, I've been rereading portions of Ian Plimer's book, Heaven and Earth: Global Warming. The Missing Science. There are times in the earth's history when CO2 concentrations were much, much higher than that but no catastrophic runaway global warming occurred.

Just When You Thought...

...it couldn't get any more absurd, out comes this:

Here's the "offensive" video. In my ever so humble opinion, I think it's a great video with an even greater message:

The Great Climbdown...

...continues:

Global warming skeptics as knowledgeable about science as climate change believers, study says

Ya' think??

"Are global warming skeptics anti-science? Or just ignorant about science?

Maybe neither. A study published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change finds that people who are not that worried about the effects of global warming tend to have a slightly higher level of scientific knowledge than those who are worried..."

[---]

""As respondents’ science literacy scores increased, their concern with climate change decreased," the paper, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, notes."

[---]

"Kahan said that he thought another finding of the study was more important: That people’s cultural views – how much they value things like individualism and equality -- affect their views on global warming much more than actual knowledge about science. Regardless of how much they know about science, individualists were relatively unconcerned about global warming, whereas those who value equality were very concerned."

Hence, the term "watermelon".

More.

""The aim of the study was to test two hypotheses," study member Dan Kahan said. "The first attributes political controversy over climate change to the public's limited ability to comprehend science, and the second, to opposing sets of cultural values.

"The findings supported the second hypothesis and not the first,"...That's the result of "cultural cognition," the researchers said, the unconscious tendency of people to fit evidence of risk to positions that predominate in groups to which they belong."

Case closed, IMHO.

Now I'm going to watch more videos from the Heartland Institute's climate change conference in Chicago.

He, he, he, he, he, he, he, he!

Amnesty International denounces Canada, and everyone else too

"The latest report, issued Wednesday, makes clear that the world has let Amnesty down. Again. The world — yes, the whole thing, all seven billion of us — is a constant disappointment to the people at Amnesty International, who just can’t figure out why we can’t measure up to a few simple rules.

The United Nations is denounced as essentially useless because it hasn’t managed to halt the bloodshed in Syria. Canada is condemned because we didn’t arrest George W. Bush when we had the chance. It has no time for the United States, because it keeps using drones to kill terrorists, without asking permission. The raid that finally ended the life of Osama bin Laden was illegal. Israel is, as always, a favourite target, accused of continuing its brutal treatment of Palestinians, and imposing a “blockade” of Gaza and its 1.6 million residents. Mexico makes the list for failing to protect human rights in its war against drugs. Even Switzerland gets a cuffing for its treatment of asylum-seekers, especially a pair of Nigerians who were treated badly when they landed in the country."

Well, they got one right. The UN is useless.

What a Delicious Headline!

Contrary to PM Stephen Harper's claim, Conservative MPs used American telemarketer

Two swipes in one!! CPC bashing and America bashing. And how does this fit the "Harper is a control freak" narrative that so many lefties repeat ad nauseam.  Oh, I know. Harper's lying - obviously.

Eyes Rolling

And this is only the silly part of it.

Remember way back in the stone age, when I was in my late teens and early twenties, the argument that won the day and led to the elimination of the death penalty was that someone who had been wrongfully convicted might be killed by the state. Fair enough. But not only has DNA evidence poked at least some holes in that argument, but the leftards advocating on behalf of convicted criminals have carried their tear-jerker arguments, and modified them to modernize them, into the 21st century. Thus we get absurdities like the one dealt with in the clip above.

I have to wonder why these types would argue against the death penalty with the "what if we make a mistake" line of reasoning, but the "what if we make a mistake" line of reasoning is nowhere in sight today when it comes to issues like the one dealt with in the above clip or when it comes to early release of dangerous offenders from prison.

It's time for an honest discussion of the whole modern leftist/liberal approach to corrections and what it has and hasn't accomplished, including the unforeseen consequences, which the leftards do not want to acknowledge or even be exposed to. Instead, they keep repeating, like some worn out, sluggish mantra, that conservatives simply want to "punish" criminals.  Just goes to show how out of touch they are.

Don't You Wish Journalists...

...understood science?

You and 6,999,999,999 other people

"If our numbers are beginning to challenge the ecological carrying capacity of the globe, it is only through our own success. Whether we can save ourselves from extinction will depend largely on what got us here in the first place: human ingenuity."

Yes. Yes. Yes. It's entirely possible homo sapiens have reached the max. We may have to deal with the consequences, but we are hardly the first or only species to reach the precipice of the carrying capacity of the eco-niche that sustains us. That does not mean we will become extinct. It only means we may experience a die-off that returns the planet to a more balanced place. That is how species and carrying capacity operate. A species that meets and then exceeds the carrying capacity of it's niche will begin to experience stress and, as a consequence, enough will die that the balance will be restored. It's not the end of the species. Just the end of the stress created by over population. Sheesh, you people. I guess if global warming hysteria hasn't worked you have to dig up some other pseudo-scientific scam in order to keep your jobs. I have a better idea. In order to "save" the planet, or even the species, why don't you volunteer to go first?

Forgive Us Our Daily Laugh, Yanks...

...but this is funny:

The fog of war, 200 years later

My favourite line:

"In Baltimore last Monday, I attended the one-hour première of a two-hour documentary - entitled, provocatively, The War of 1812 - that will be broadcast next week on public television stations in both of our conjugal countries. Polished, pretty, politically correct, and paid for by agencies and trusts and individuals on both sides of the Napolitano Line, the film steers straight down the middle of a foggy, foggy road."

What a pity that political correctness has to have it's say. Why not just tell the story the way it was? History has winners and losers and I, for one, get a might tired of reading "Rah! Rah! Uggah! Uggah! Uggah-gah!" comments from Canadians claiming that "we" burned down the White House and we could do it again, if we wanted, so you better be careful. How pathetic is that! We have to go back 200 years to find something to boast about, it's gotta be anti-American and it isn't really true. But the article is funny, so be sure to read it.

PS: Two more articles about the war of 1812-1814 and its commemoration.

Good Grief!!

The Canadian MSM is all over this one like flies on sh!t, even the conservative leaning National Post!

To their credit, the Montreal Gazette actually delves into an angle other than the "compromise our privacy" bit. From the Gazette: New Rules Planned for Border Cops
...although our resident leftards won't like this:

"The U.S. and Canada have been co-ordinating investigations and sharing intelligence about potential criminal and terror threats at the border for several years through two dozen Integrated Border Enforcement Teams."

No. The MSM would much rather promote the notion that any cooperation with the U.S.A. is tantamount to a compromise of our sovereignty.

(This has been a flaw in leftwing thinking here in Canuckistan for decades. They seem to believe that sovereignty can only be asserted if we disagree with the U.S.A., which to me, seems to suggest a surrender of our ability to form our own policies, which from time to time may actually be in accord with those of the Americans. According to our leftards, we MUST, and I mean MUST, be at odds with the U.S., otherwise we are no longer sovereign. What balderdash!! That doesn't sound like independence/sovereignty to me. If we must be on opposite sides in every issue, then we ARE completely dependent on the U.S position. No brainer, but then these are leftards. We have to be understanding.)

Anyway, it looks like we've been cooperating with the U.S.. Oh, the horrors!!!!!

A report issued by some "think" (used lightly) tank called the Rideau Institute, which I had never heard about before, was the impetus for this massive display of MSM group think about the privacy issue. The Canadian blog, Unambiguously Ambidextrous (UA) delves into it a bit and has something to say about the Rideau Institute in a few posts.

Note that Mark at UA refers to the Rideau Institute as "actually a pacifist advocacy group, home of a horde of usual suspects" and in another post as "militantly anti-military." Stands to reason they would also be "militantly" anti-American. Those types always are.

Anywho, I did a little searching myself and found the following, from that bastion of truth, Wikipedia:

"The Rideau Institute was founded in January 2007. It is a left leaning, registered non-profit organization based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The Institute's primary activities are independent research, advocacy and consulting. It aids decision makers, opinion leaders and the public through research, analysis and commentary on public policy."

Note, from the Wikipedia article, the names of the people on the Rideau Institute's Board of Directors and senior advisors. It reads like a Who's Who of the Canadian hard left: Mel Watkins, Maude Barlow, Murray Dobbin, Mel Hurtig, etc., etc.. The only saving grace is that most of these people are aging old hippies with one foot already in the grave. It doesn't take much digging to form a picture of this "Institute". They're basically a bunch of old commies who, for expediency, subscribe to the "peace at any cost" school of international affairs, so are entitled to exaggerate and lie in order achieve their aims. That so much of the MSM swallowed this report, says all you need to know about the Rideau Institute and our MSM.

And BTW, Wikipedia also states:

"Their work has been used by a diverse range of organizations such as the Canadian Auto Workers (a militant union), USC Canada, The Council of Canadians (Maude Barlow's connections), CUPE (another militant union, this one screwing the taxpayer), CEP, and public interest, citizen and labour organizations."

Bloggers rule!!!

Oh. I forgot. For what it's worth, the Rideau Institute gets it's funding from the Tides Foundation. Opposing the Keystone Pipeline and oil sands in general is one of their current projects.

Lord help me. Sometimes it's so hard, sooooooo hard to believe in democracy and basic freedoms for some people. I know. I know. I'm bad.

The Flop and Fail...

...teams up with Gerry Kaplan to illustrate why the left is losing so badly. "The left", of course, includes our MSM.

"But what happens when pundits can’t even pretend to have a clue about what’s going on? It’s been a hallmark of Stephen Harper’s reign that we keep meeting this kind of embarrassing problem, threatening the very existence of the commentariat as a class."

[---]

"Take another example. Stephen Harper has just declared that the greatest security threat to Canada is something he called “Islamicism.” I’ve seen no sensible dissection of this remarkable comment because no one can make sense of it. It goes without saying that vigilance against any potential terrorist attack is vital. Has some new peril now been discovered that no one else knows about? Are Canadians in imminent danger? Might we not be fretful about a nice homegrown Christian version of Norway’s notorious Anders Breivik as well as extremist Muslims? Why does our leader choose to feed into the bigotry of those who are determined to smear all Muslims as terrorists?

[---]

"As for more of the impenetrable Mr. Harper, take his bold march into Canada’s colonial past by putting the “royal” back in the name of two of our armed forces and the Queen’s picture on the walls of our embassies. Talk about an inscrutable manufactured crisis and fixing something when it ain’t broke.

Don’t tell me this was playing to the Conservative base, the handy-dandy answer when we pundits have nothing sensible to say. I gather all of 6,000 people roused themselves to sign an online petition to insert “royal” into the forces’ names; even the Blue Jays attract larger numbers. Not a single person currently serving in our forces – all of whom we praise to the skies – has ever served with “royal” in their names, which seems not to have undermined morale very much. So what brilliant strategic purpose can this conceivably be about?

As for hanging the dear old Queen’s picture in our embassies abroad – will she be astride a moose?– the best line came from NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar: “We don’t have a minister of foreign affairs, we have a minister of interior decorating.” Or, you could say, a royal pain in the butt."

Okay. Some of that is just plain funny, but there's plenty of baldfaced bigotry (against Christianity, for example. Quelle surprise!!) and a goodly share of loony-toon nutbarrism there, too.  This entire paragraph, for example:

"In terms of what really menaces Canadians, is “Islamicism” really scarier than global warming? What is it about these conservatives that make them care so little about their kids’ future? What about water scarcity, a looming crisis? Or the fragility of the global economic system? Youth unemployment? What about the bottomless need everywhere in Canada for new or repaired or upgraded infrastructure? Who’s going to protect us from exploding road rage on our gridlocked roads? What about glaring, growing inequality and our declining quality of life?"

Poor Dippers. Just when they make some substantial gains, along comes this old ideologue to throw up such a shining example of why they're still the same old, same old. About the only thing good about his rant I can say is at least he didn't take a swipe at Americans or Dubya. I suppose that's because The One is trying so hard to implement Dipper ideology south of the border so they are currently in his good books.

Hehehehehehehe!

Global warming hysteria has had its counterparts. I remember most of these, which I guess is one of the reasons I remain skeptical about the "man-made" angle:

Past Alarmism and the Future of Manmade Global Warming

I can hardly wait to watch the greenie babies scurrying about trying to bury their religion and pretend they never believed it in the first place. I'm so evil!

Cognitive Dissonance

Here's a story that begs a few questions:

Ancient settlement may have been discovered on B.C. coast

"Oral traditions of the Heiltsuk people tell of the ancient village of Luxvbalis, abandoned after a small pox epidemic in the late 1800s and lost because so few were left to tell the tale.

The village may just have been discovered on a site on Calvert Island, in Hakai Luxvbalis Conservancy, located off British Columbia's central coast and its history could date back to as much as 10,000 years.

"People lost information about the exact location after they were decimated during the epidemics in the 1800s."

What else was lost during epidemics? And what's so special about 10,000 years? That's well within the usual estimates of the arrival of humans in North America.

We're always treated to tall tales about how traditional knowledge and tribal histories have been passed down for eons, "proving" that "the creator" "put us here" and blah, blah, blah, while at the same time there's smallpox epidemics introduced by Europeans via blankets to exaggerate, whine and complain about - genocide, biological warfare, etc., etc., etc., blah, blah, blah.

But you don't often hear - nah - you never hear that smallpox epidemics or other diseases might have wiped out oral histories "because so few were left to tell the tale". That'll never do. Contradictory narratives, although very abundant, must remain unnoticed.

Ever wonder why seemingly every square inch of this country is a sacred burial ground? But only sometimes.

And another thing. Using 33 years as the definition of a "generation", a thousand years is about thirty, maybe 35 generations. Each generation, one would suppose, has new stories and knowledge of contemporary events to pass on to up and coming generations.

How can knowledge be passed along from generation to generation for 10,000 years? It would be hard enough to keep things going for 10,000 years if only the first generation's stories were passed down. Three hundred generations worth of oral history would take a long,long time to commit to memory, let alone pass on to the younguns, never mind adding the current generation's knowledge to the storehouse of tribal lore.

And then there are those who reject the 10,000 year theory and believe, instead, that the American continents were peopled perhaps 60,000 years ago, not to mention the fundamentalist's notion that the Aboriginal peoples of the Americas were "created" here.

I don't buy it. The only way this Indian Industry meme hangs together is via the mechanism of intimidation and political correctness. Cognitive dissonance be damned.

As Per John Gormley This Morning...

...here's the YouTube Video debunking the "Rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer" meme that the left holds central in their tired old liturgy.

Thank you, Portugal,...

...you have done us a favour. General Lewis MacKenzie pens a brilliant rebuke of the United Nations Security Council.

"Permit me to preface my following comments with a few words to bear in mind while I vent: Somalia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Kosovo, Darfur, Sierra Leone, North Korea, Iraq, Iran -- you get the picture."

[---]

"They decided to call themselves the Permanent Five (Perm 5), agreed they would not fight each other in the future, gave themselves a veto over matters dealing with international peace and security that might draw them into a conflict -- and in the fine print, also over issues of procedure within the Security Council. In other words, they would decide who would share the seats in that hallowed chamber, for how long (two years seemed like a good solution before the upstart rotating members got too much influence) and how votes would be conducted, while they sat back with the ability to shut down any council decision with their almighty single veto.

Did I just hear an echo, "Darfur" and a veto by China with its oil investments and operations in Sudan?

When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, symbolizing the end of the Cold War, the Perm 5 were sound asleep in spite of warnings from commanders of UN peacekeeping missions in the field that the paradigm had changed and touchy-feely, lightly armed peacekeeping missions merely perpetuated various conflicts' status quo.

When one of their field commanders suggested that it was pointless calling the UN after 5 p.m. New York time as there was no one there to take the call at the decision-making level (unintentionally smearing the many UN staff working around the clock), the UN knee-jerk reaction was to establish a 24-7 "situation room" with absolutely no decision-making capability."

[---]

"Try as I might, no one at their headquarters in Manhattan could tell me how many Security Council meetings were called outside the cocktail hour at the UN during the past 65 years. In the absence of empirical evidence, I confidently assume I have enough fingers to count them.

In the end, we owe Portugal a favour for wrestling that final inglorious seat from our hesitant hands. Fortunately, port trumps maple syrup."

Wait a minute. Did he just say peacekeeping missions are useless? Don't tell that to our latte sipping "war is not the answer" - "Canada's proper role in the world is peacekeeping" crowd. They may have a emotional breakdown. God forbid, they may even spew their lattes and cocktails all over each other.

Previous. Previouser.

You know. In the real world, in well run organizations, it's customary to sit down once in a while and assess whether or not things are working the way they were intended to work and make adjustments, if necessary. I really think Canuckistanis need to do that now. Lester Pearson had what seemed like a good idea at the time, but it hasn't really worked out that well, has it.  Perhaps it's human nature. But isn't it time we quit congratulating ourselves for inventing the idea of United Nations Peacekeeping Missions? The Pearson family can keep the medal.  After all, no one can anticipate what will happen in the future, and at least it was awarded for something actually accomplished, not like that other one.

Great Talk By Melanie Phillips

This was delivered earlier this year.