One of my absolute all-time favorite movies is American Splendor.
So imagine my surprise when discovered there's not one mention of the film in this blog.
Imagine that. Thousands and thousands of useless posts and drafts and sitecomber revealed not one dedicated to the works of Harvey Pekar. Especially considering there's a little Pekar in me. I shouldn't be too hard on myself. I saw the movie in 2003 - nearly two years before I started this middling festival of pointlessness.
Underground music and comicswere touch and go with me back in the 1980s and didn't come across . Too busy playing sports or something.
Anyway. The movie did its job and leaves a mark as great movies ought to.
And this scene, well, this scene sums up nicely my own annoyance with daily routines:
“Let’s ban private schools,” Gawker cheerily suggests. Writing in
that esteemed journal, John Cook argues that “there’s a simple solution
to the public-schools crisis.” If people make choices that complicate
the Left’s agenda, then ban those choices: “Make Rahm Emanuel and Barack
Obama’s children go to public schools,” Cook writes. “From a purely
strategic and practical standpoint, it would be much easier to resolve
the schools crisis if the futures of America’s wealthiest and most
powerful children were at stake.”
If they could they would. Which is why they tolerate and look to enhance the power of the government over people. For our own good. It's not that difficult to comprehend. Question is will we admit it?
"The Left’s heart is still in East Berlin: If people want to leave
your utopia and have the means to do so, then build a wall. If they
climb over the wall — as millions of low-income parents with children in
private schools (very commonly Catholic schools) do — then build a
higher wall. If they keep climbing – and they will — then there are
always alternatives.
Homeschooling? That’s basically a crime against humanity so far as our
so-called liberal friends are concerned."
The left's hatred for homeschooling is irrational.
Walls!
Williamson is not my favorite writer but he nails it in 'Utopias Jailers.'
Girl makes shrill unsubstantiated 'white male misogynist' claim.Man asks for citation to back her claim up. Girl responds that him asking for this is 'proof' he's misogynistic and is insulted he 'inferred' she's uneducated.
He didn't have to infer. She does that on her own.
I’d like you to name one lie Obama told. If it’s keeping your old healthcare, that one doesn’t count because allowing people to continue bad and worthless healthcare policies that don’t cover hospital stays would be immoral. So go ahead and tell us another “lie.” We are all waiting for that one.
You mean like...
"No lobbyists will serve in my administration." "We will have the most transparent administration in history." "There are no red states or blue states; I'm a moderate who is seeking to united the country." "Accumulating trillions of dollars in debt is immoral and unpatriotic." "Ambassador Stevens was killed because of a crappy YouTube video." "The I.R.S. is not singling out conservatives." "No one making less than $250,000 will have their taxes raised."
And there's much more!
Speaking of shams, interesting to hear Obama still make the claim the
ACA saves money for the government and saves money for people. This
despite the clear evidence of premiums going up for people.
***
Let me remind you what 'smart diplomacy' under Barack Obama looks like:
Saudi Arabia bombs Iranian backed Houtis in Yemen while the U.S. offers air support to Iraq and Iran to fight ISIS in Tikrit while at the same time the Americans are trying to oust Iranian-backed Assad in Syria.
That's some magic trick.
Seems the obvious course of action is to abandon this 'deal' with Iran. It's putting the U.S. and its allies in too many predicaments including alienating its only true and stable ally in the region in Israel.
The only 'battle brewing' is between busy-bodies and do-gooders who are looking to influence the way I eat.
Fat is not bad for you.
Fat free is another one of those shams best ignored.
***
So. It goes like this. I gave CSI: Cyber (yeah, yeah insert David Caruso jokes here. I deserve it) a shot and decided it’s not for me. In fact, the episode pissed me off enough for me to not view it to its conclusion.
There was a scene where the rapper and Dawson’s Creek guy were questioning some company (let’s call them Dark Uber) and responded to the usual overly-witty snarks whenever they heard an answer they didn’t like. ‘Pft. Oh. Privacy? Give me a break! We’re cops!’ and 'So you think it's safe to allowe people to pretend to be taxi drivers?' Along crappy things like that.
After they turned and walked away, Dawson’s Creek guy says to the rapper, ’That’s why I take a Taxi’ - as if cops are informed about free-market enterprises.
I wondered what exactly the writers/producers of the show were trying to convey. It was harmless enough - it’s a show! - but in the context of what’s going on out there, I doubt this wasn’t done on purpose; my Spidey conspiratorial senses tell me they were giving a shout out to traditionalTaxis!
***
Dean of Cornell Joseph Scaffido:
"This guy is either the dumbest Ivy League bigwig ever or politically
correct to a fault — for welcoming offers to bring ISIS and Hamas to
Cornell University. A video sting operation shows Cornell’s assistant dean for students,
Joseph Scaffido, agreeing to everything suggested by an undercover
muckraker posing as a Moroccan student. Scaffido casually endorses inviting an ISIS “freedom fighter’’ to
conduct a “training camp” for students at the upstate Ithaca campus —
bizarrely likening the activity to a sports camp."
Is it OK to bring a humanitarian pro-“Islamic State Iraq and Syria”
group on campus, the undercover for conservative activist James
O’Keefe’s Project Veritas asks. Sure, Scaffido says in the recorded March 16 meeting. Scaffido doesn’t even blink an eye when the undercover asks about
providing material support for terrorists — “care packages, whether it
be food, water, electronics.” How about supporting Hamas? No problem at all, Scaffido said. “The university is not going to look at different groups and say,
‘You’re not allowed to support that group because we don’t believe them’
or something like that. I think it’s just the opposite. I think the
university wants the entire community to understand what’s going on in
all parts of the world,” Scaffido said.
Brav'.
Unless you're Netanhayu, Coulter or some other individual that has differing views from liberal-progressives.
How about this Scaffido. How about you send your daughter (assuming you have one) go over and act as a progressive liason and bring back one of those barbaric animals to Cornell. See how that goes over.
I still remember fondly those great Parma sides in the 1990s when Serie A dominated global soccer like no other league has arguably never done.
A local Montreal businessman (the Saputo family who own the Montreal Impact) already purchased Bologna. A storied soccer club currently playing in Serie B.
Hey. If it goes against liberal orthodoxy it's all good.
***
Best 'free expensive' medical system in the world!
My wife was telling me the story of one of her students has to leave for Turkey in order for his mother to get medical care for her ailment. Not only was she not getting any answers, any appointments she was trying to get averaged 14 months.
She got an appointment the following week...in Turkey.
The doctor who helped her added, 'I was at a medical conference in B.C. recently. Canada is 15 years behind' major nations.'
No kidding. Simple observation will reveal this.
But hey. EQUAL AND FREE AND NOT AMERICAN!
***
No wonder they have such a skewed view of reality.
What perplexes me is why didn't the guy she's with offer to park the car properly like a civil citizen?
Instead the dink gives the impression he's confirming her parking skills are PERFECT! A-okay!
And that want to convince people like me with shit like this?
They're bat shit crazy.
I don't do bat shit crazy.
***
My science. My environment. My solars.
YOUR trees.
"A theme park plans to cut down more than 18,000 trees for the
construction of what it says will be the largest solar farm in New
Jersey.
Six Flags Great Adventure says the facility will
generate 21.9 megawatts, or enough to power about 3,100 homes, and
capable of meeting all of the park's needs."
I truly and thoroughly love watching environmentalists eat their own.
Performance art is not part of their 'the science is settled' narrative.
Slowly this 'climate denier' craze will just fizzle out.
Armitage is talking about climate system change (note: my edit), and for good reason. She's
currently staging a site-specific dance performance at New York's
sprawling American Museum of Natural History, a work that is
not-so-subtly aimed at raising awareness of our planet's shifting
reality. Titled "On the Nature of Things,"
the work was created in collaboration with Stanford University
biologist and MacArthur Genius Paul Ehrlich, perhaps better known to
mainstream audiences as the man who wrote The Population Bomb.
Together, the two icons -- one popularly referred to as a "punk ballerina,"
the other a stringent cultural activist who happens to spend most of
his time in laboratories -- hope to demonstrate that the simple act of
presenting scientific facts has done little to change the way humans
interact with their environment. We need a new method of presenting
climate change as an issue we can't ignore, they attest. And that method
should include art.
Ehrlich an icon? The guy who has been spectacularly wrong about the environment since, like, the fucking 70s?
Lord have mercy.
I love this bit in the video: "Often science is very dry."
Science isn't anything. Science is just, you know, SCIENCE.
But let's make it fun and put a bow on it to entice the masses!
Lord. Have. Mercy.
***
Can Jewish Americans Support Israel?
Jews (and immigrants) who keep voting Democrat reminds me of the friend who keeps hanging out with someone who treats them like shit.
To be fair, this applies to Jews around the world.
***
Comments from Reason free of charge:
"It isn't climate science that is suspect (any more than any field of science, see e.g. diet over the last 50 years), it is the unscientific pronouncements that attach themselves to climate studies - things like: OMFG the world is doomed if we don't turn the economic system and standard of living back 500 years.
Science doesn't deal with certainties, least of all predictions about future events based on unsubstantiated theory. And it is unsubstantiated - as in the last month I have read that Antarctic ice has both thickened and thinned. Now, all of the scientific evidence to date says GMOs are safe but there is no science that says there is no possibility that they could cause harm. That would be because the latter is not actually science."
"Short answer agronomists do science ie test hypotheses via observations and rejecting the ones that are falsified.
Climate science is more akin to Lysenkoism, where the evidence that contradicts a politically favored hypothesis is officially ignored and scientists who don't toe the line face consequences such as loss of funding & smear campaigns. One notable red flag is the penchant of climate scientists to use failed models in their analyses, occasionally preferring to use model outputs in lieu of the direct observations of those same parameters."
"Lysenkoism was built on theories of the heritability of acquired characteristics that Lysenko named "Michurinism".These theories depart from accepted evolutionary theory and Mendelian inheritance. Lysenkoism is used metaphorically to describe the manipulation or
distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined
conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social
or political objectives."
That my friends, in a nutshell, is all you need to know about the mindset of a statist.
'No one chooses to be homeless.' 'Absolutely Canada is a safer country than the United States.'
Let's indulge and delve into these blanket comments - the former courtesy of le gouvernement du Quebec and the latter Montreal talk show radio host Tommy Schnurmacher - for a moment.
The first assertion is incoherent and paternalist babble speak. In fact, one can argue people deciding to be homeless is exactly an example of rational thinking.
I remember watching a documentary (I forget the name) a few years ago that followed a homeless man around the streets of Montreal. Listening to the stories people had to tell made you realize there is no neat explanation why people are homeless. It's impossible really.
I'm willing to bet free choice happens more than we care to admit or think. Asserting as much doesn't make one apathetic. It's just the reality of being a human endowed with free will. It's gross projection to ignore this fact.
Indeed, the main protagonist admitted as much. He chose to roam the streets without a home. It's all he knew or came to know.
I've seen this numerous times in various documentaries. One guy went to live among the homeless for a couple of months. Again, I forget the title and I believe this time the setting was Los Angeles. In this particular film we discover homeless people build communities and are comfortable with their choices. They're not looking for pity. Yet, we want to project our empathy where it's not wanted.
The fact we can't accept it is the very definition of arrogance and paternalism. Man can be one crudely arrogant and stubborn being when in self-righteous mode.
Trying to figure out why is almost pointless because it's a choice. People like all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons and they don't have to explain themselves to anyone.
To react to it incredulously because according to 'normal' people, humans need shelter.
In most cases, we do but not all people.
Last, the fact that the government pimps these sort of empty slogans in order to justify increasing control or in an effort to 'eradicate' a declared social malaise should raise your Spidey skeptical senses.
Note, I'm not saying other circumstances where choice is not an option leads to homelessness. All I'm saying we're severely overlooking choice. In doing so, we always be perplexed at why all our wonderful policies construed on mostly false premises fail.
I've already discussed North American violence many times on this blog. We've discovered together - Because we're a team! - Canada and the EU actually has higher rates of violent assault and rape not involving guns than the United States. And where murders are concerned in the United States, a large number of it is connected to the drug trade and gangs as well as in places where there are strict gun control laws like Chicago.
In any event, comparing crime rates (and health care systems) between countries is something that should be treated with care since every country has its own method of doing so.
In Canada, we take excessive pride whenever we come up with policy formed around safety and security. Yet, for all our gun control, Canada still witnesses, for example, mass shootings.
So is the USA that much more violent than Canada? Not really. Well not as much as we perceive it to be in Canada. It's not Mexico largely because it still has the rule of law and a functional law and order apparatus.
The irony of course is bureaucrats rape the productive to pay their salaries and 'bennies.'
And notice those son of a bitches passing off as inspectors pouring bleach over food.
They eventually managed to shut her down.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. CHILDREN SAVED.
Take a bow you assholes.
If that doesn't want to make you grab them by the ears...
Zina Murray makes an important point often missed or lost: Entrepreneurs observe society and look to find a viable business as well as solve whatever economic malaise grips a place. The value of entrepreneurship is immeasurable on so many levels. Yet, bureaucracies, armed with little black books filled with codes, look to over burden and decimate them with regulations.
It's nuts.
I'm gonna say and keep saying it.
Cities don't die because of free enterprise. They die because of bureaucratic zealotry. Empty storefronts have as much to do with bureaucracies as natural economic realities.
Batgirl teaches Batman a lesson about #EqualPay: “Same job, same employer means equal pay for men and women.” → http://ow.ly/KQ0k7#TBT
Er.
Superheroes don't get paid.
Dumbasses.
Remind me why labor boards are even needed again?
Right. Koch, Bush, Jews, evil greedy capitalism and minimum wage.
***
I wonder if Pelosi or Hilary get paid less than their counterparts. Don't answer. It was meant to be rhetorical.
So. Batgirl is the leitmotif for the left now?
The recent DC Comics 'controversy', I have no problem with this cover:
The people doing the squawking, as usual, probably don't even read comics and understand much of it anyway. But it's always a loud minority of baboons who shriek. If you claim to be a fan you're not complaining as you understand what's a stake. Namely censorship.
Apparently it's just fine when men superheroes are threatened like this. If anything, depicting Batgirl in this way shows exactly that she's part of the club. You want 'equality'? Here you go. Equality of risk. It's not pretty being a superhero. Welcome to the club pal and gal.
Just like in sports where many non-sports fans who couldn't tell the difference between a football and a puck come out and offer their views on the New England Patriots, concussions and other issues that afflict pro sports. And it shows in their comments.
I'm surprised they haven't gone on a Redskins-like crusade to have Batgirl's name changed. After all, girl can be viewed as misogynistic or something these days.
We're nothing but shrill, skirt raising, pearl clutching susses now.
"A California man is demanding police accountability after an officer fatally shot his service dog in the head.
Ian
Anderson of San Diego told The Huffington Post he was sleeping in his
home when officers pounded on his door at 5 a.m. Sunday over a domestic
disturbance call. The 24-year-old man said police had the wrong house."
Incompetent and humane (and sometimes chicken shit and murderous) morons.
Police are dead wrong on this one. They have no defense and no excuse.
I have no idea what has changed in police culture and training but people should demand change.
Back when Obama sent soldiers to rescue Bergdahl there were people who wondered why he would do so for a deserter.
Over a year later it's been confirmed Bergdahl was indeed a deserter.
So. Now we assess the decision and the trade; just like we do in sports.
Can anyone with a straight face now claim this was the right thing to do considering the U.S. released some really bad dudes and soldiers lost their lives bringing his sorry butt back?
If Obama's negotiating skills bring him to such decisions, can he really be trusted to make a deal with Iran?
Think of this for a second. Iran is the leitmotif of Mid-East politics. The Americans had no diplomatic relations with a country whose terrorist tentacles reach all corners of the globe.
Moreover, you can't deal with Iran by ignoring or even chastising Israel - to say nothing of sophomorically meddling in their affairs. Israel voted for Netanyahu and that was a clear signal of where they want things to go and Obama would be wise to consider this reality.
They have every right to have a say in the matter; especially given the Obama administrations dubious foreign policy record.
Obama is embarking on something that makes me wonder if it's above his pay grade so to speak. I have yet to see any shred of evidence he's up to the task to have the United States of America entangled with Iran and Israel.
Worse, he seems willing to antagonize Israel (as he's done with allies like Poland in eastern Europe) to get what he wants.
More on 'Smart diplomacy' in my Daily Round up coming up.
"For those
hoping global warming will bring more opportunities for a summer
barbecue, there may be disappointment ahead - climate change is likely
to make steaks and burgers far less appetising.
In a major report
on the impact of global warming on food, scientists have concluded that
the quality of many meats and vegetables is due to decline at
temperatures increase..."
"A 26-year-old pregnant woman in Colorado, spotting a Craigslist ad for
baby clothes, drove to the home of the woman who placed the ad. When the
pregnant woman arrived on Wednesday, she was beaten and stabbed by the
34-year-old woman who lives there, police said. The attacker then did
something nearly unimaginable: She “removed” the fetus from her victim’s
body, according to police in Longmont, Colo..."
Evil is what it is.
***
So I get this pamphlet in the mail from the elected NDPer in my riding - I still can't believe people who are in business voted NDP because 'change' - calling for a $15 minimum wage. It's almost as if they're deaf to the criticism against it. There is ample evidence and studies showing how minimum wage actually hurts the very people it aims to help - namely youths and low-income workers.
In Seattle and L.A. it's already have negative ramifications for small business. One would think just another failed progressive idea driven more by feelings and ideology than logic and business reality. But one would think wrong. To the progressive the business that fails to adapt to their schemes are actually 'failed businesses' to begin with. To them, it takes a bad businessperson to not be able to adjust to skyrocketing costs imposed on them outside market mechanisms - i.e. political interventionism.
No seriously. This is what they believe. They're so deep into their ignorant bliss they invent shit like that.
Of course businesses will still open despite all the hurdles. That's what people do. We advance. It doesn't mean we're all we can be though and it certainly doesn't mean it's right.
Oh. Still another variant of this demonically irrational thinking is 'it's okay because some other business will step in and take the place of the one that closed.' Don't laugh. A bureaucrat told me exactly this once upon a time.
It never entered that idiot's mind that these are real life people - humans as it were - operating these businesses. People with families. People who employ other people. People who pay all sorts of taxes to cover all sorts of unnecessary luxurious programs to soother our pampered and excessive wishes.
When the store closes these people are still on the hook for whatever loans and debts they may have incurred. You think they have the luxury of having a progressive politician in their corner looking to 'forgive' their debts like student debts?
No.
The unseen impact on the local economy seems to not matter.
The $15 hour wage is so outrageously arbitrary and illogical I don't know where to begin to dissect it. In my business alone, it would probably lead to me closing my doors because it would represent too much of a jump in costs. I can only charge what parents are willing to pay and in Quebec things, as you know, are a tad askew. It's right out of a spooky fairy tale where costs and prices are so skewed by the government.
If wages go up most places pass it on to the consumer. A tiny, small portion of self-righteous assholes will claim to 'willingly' pay more as long as it pays a 'living wage.' Blah, blah.
Personally, I call bull shit on this too. If there's anything we've learned about progressives is they don't generally practice what they preach. They just preach and expect someone else to pay. The rest of us rational economic beings will not pay anything for something. In the case of daycare, it's a little more trickier if not dangerous to the extent we don't have options since there are all sorts of regulations preventing us from doing what's responsible for the business - like reducing staff because of ratios as one simple example.
I was asked to offer my insights to an organization that will present these concerns to politicians.
Bah. Enough of this rant. Bunch of low-grade, know-nothing, smug left-wing interventionist dopes and idiots.
"Oakland minimum-wage hike puts child caregivers in a jam -
San Francisco Chronicle
Child care centers operate on razor-thin margins — thinner,
even, than those of the restaurant industry — and many are lucky to wind
up in the black at the end of the year. A restaurant can raise prices
to meet the new cost of doing business, but child care operations have
limited flexibility. Both the state-funded programs and their private
counterparts are bound by strict state ratio requirements, which mandate
that a certain number of employees be present with the children each
day. “That’s one of the unintended consequences” of Oakland’s Measure
FF, the November ballot measure that raised the city’s minimum wage from
$9 an hour, said Richard Winefield, executive director of the nonprofit
child care referral service Bananas. A lot of (centers) are run on
very narrow margins, and when they increase the hourly rate on their
employees, they need to pass that on in tuition costs, so families need
to fork over more money. Winefield says that in most cases, parents
waiting for a subsidy make a few dollars a week above the cutoff for
state welfare, but are still “very much in need.” Doutherd keeps track
of the many painful testimonials from these parents, some of whom can’t
keep jobs because they have no one to look after their children.
Because they don’t have employment, many are also unable to find
housing, she says. Charlotte Guinn, whose home day care center is
entering its 20th year in downtow."
***
Sometimes I wonder if this is what they want:
The comments are oh so delicious. Filled with the usual derps, apologists and tu quoques about America being poor too or some shit.
Never change Youtube commenters.
"Venezuela
cannot be considered third world since its allied with Russia look up
the definition of what it means to be third world moron."
The son of Czechoslovakian immigrants, Bednarik was one of the last true great two-way players performing as one of the most feared linebackers of his time and an outstanding center.
In all his ferociousness, that's Bednarik standing over a knocked-out Frank Gifford of the New York Giants. Gifford would not play for 18 months due to the concussion suffered in what has been described as the greatest hit in history. I remember first seeing that hit in the 1980s on Sports Illustrated's 'Crunch Course' VHS video. I was subscriber at the time and got it as part of a gift from SI. I still have it somewhere.
The Supreme Court ruled that Loyola has the right to teach Quebec's mandated (and silly) ethics and religion class from a Jesuit perspective.
Duh.
I have no problem with this because parents choose to send their kids to Loyola because it's a private Catholic institution. How bureaucrats think they can break this voluntary action and think it's proper is beyond me.
It really is sickening to have to grovel before the government to exercise our own damn rights.
Good for Loyola.
Freedom of choice and religion prevailed before our paternalist interventionist state.
Pierre-Karl Peladeau opted for a more modern take on Jacques 'Black Jacques Shallaques' Parizeau's 'money and ethnic vote' from 1995. A timeless classic in the realm of PQ insularism; boundless in its parochial tin-pottery; mostly because Jack was probably tipsy when he said it.
Read more here.
There's nothing to clarify. It's how they roll.
As I've noted here in the past, they're just a despicable bunch of badly dressed nationalists.
Of course, it's always the fault of les autres.
***
Onto more enlightening matters.
Evaluating milk and its substitutes (though Malk - which is packed with Vitamin R - was not reviewed) at Science-Based Medicine.
Cohen is a clear case of an individual lucky enough to spew her misleading gibberish packed with lies and one-sided nonsense on a website.
I'm not interested in breaking her inane article because there's too much to dissect but I did find this interesting:
"Do Americans have no idea how ironic it is for them to call their
country “the land of the free” when it doesn’t have any kind of law
against hate speech?"
It's not ironic at all. It's exactly the point and actually reveals America to be superior to all the other so-called civilized nations she so strenuously placed on a pedestal.
The only extremist I see is Cohen and I demand she be removed from...wait. I will not become my enemy!
I'd better stop here before I throw my lap top against the wall and damage my lovely poster of Satan.
***
However, that being said, people like Cohen who happen to have a forum to express their views are being challenged quite vociferously and eloquently (for the most part) by people in the comments threads.
When the civil war for free speech ends and the forces of good emerge
victorious, all the people who stood by either watching or who were on the wrong
side of fence will claim they fought for the good guys. Just like every Frenchman fought in la resistance.
"...At an angry meeting between local small
business owners and city officials, the local organization that had
campaigned for the higher minimum wage was absent. They were probably
some place congratulating themselves on having passed a humane "living
wage" law. The group most affected was also absent — inexperienced and
unskilled young people, who need a job to get some experience, even more
than they need the money.
It is not a breakthrough on the
frontiers of knowledge that minimum wage laws reduce employment
opportunities for the young and the unskilled of any age. It has been
happening around the world, for generation after generation, and in the
most diverse countries. It is not just the young who are affected when minimum wage rates are
set according to the fashionable notions of third parties, with little
or no regard for whether everyone is productive enough to be worth
paying the minimum wage they set."
"...Low-income minorities are often hardest
hit by the unemployment that follows in the wake of minimum wage laws.
The last year when the black unemployment rate was lower than the white
unemployment rate was 1930, the last year before there was a federal
minimum wage law. The following year, the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 was passed, requiring
minimum wages in the construction industry. This was in response to
complaints that construction companies with non-union black construction
workers were able to underbid construction companies with unionized
white workers (whose unions would not admit blacks)..."
But sophisticated and civilized Europe does it!
And.
Results don't matter. It's the (pseudo-compassionate) thought that counts.
But that Canadians flee to the U.S. for medical treatment is not only not new but a matter that points straight to the heart of our failing and dated universal system - which is not free for the millionth time.
Once again from the top until it sinks inside thick skulls. You pay for it through your taxes levied against your income.
Now. For the amount you pay (not that they ever produce you will a bill) do you feel you get bang for your buck?
I'm not gonna rehash the third-rate conditions of our public hospitals.
How's about we create a true free-trade and movement zone with the United States first? You know, that massive juggernaut Canadians with an inferiority complex love to bash and with whom 87% of our economy is tied to.
They call Canada America's Hat or America Jr. The more academic among us prefer the term 'branch plant society.'
I just plain like 'our daddy'.
Quote winner:
"I was in Cuba for a recent holiday. I am a big fan of Castro for
standing up to the US, but the US embargo has kept Cuba in third world
conditions. Though I like Castro, I would not want to live in Cuba in
those conditions.
Cuba does have a nice climate and is admirable for standing up to the US for 56 years, but has paid the price for that.
On the other hand Cuba has more spine than Canada."
Wrong. Chummmmmp.
Never mind that Castro torturing and imprisoning people has NOTHING to do with the U.S. embargo.
Cuba has always had trade relations with Europe and Canada during those 56 years. You know, those other rich capitalist economies.
Communism and Castro are what turned Cuba into a shit hole.
***
Ever notice how the most ardent Canadian nationalists anti-Americans are American draft dodgers?
***
The next great revolution in education will come out of the United States and Canada will copy it.
William F. Buckley: “A Liberal is someone who is determined to reach into your shower and adjust the water temperature for you”
After the ATF abandoned its plan to ban certain ammos Democrats turned their attention to, well, ban ammo.
Remember when liberals laughed at people who said 'what's next banning ammo?'
Most progressives live in urban centers and don't own a gun. They don't hunt or use one for target shooting. So they don't give a shit what their actions do to others. Just like how minimum wage fucks over the young.
THEY. DON'T. CARE.
So to them it's really a 'it doesn't affect me' and 'duh, guns are for bitter clingers' scenario.
Which makes them, of course, full of shit paternalists.
***
Why does Obama think it's a good idea to meddle in the affairs of another country going through an election?
And what did it get him in Israel? A landslide majority in Israel for Netan-YAHOO! That's what.
Naturally, he didn't call Netanyahu to congratulate him because this is how Obama rolls. How he fights for what's "right".
Obama has absolutely no grip on his foreign policy.
Maliciously ruining young lives one at a time with 'zero-tolerance' zealotry:
"At first blush it sounds like an open-and-shut school disciplinary matter in a zero-tolerance age: Some schoolchildren
claim another student bragged about having marijuana. They inform
school administrators. An assistant principal finds a leaf and a lighter
in the boy’s knapsack. The student is suspended for a year. A sheriff’s
deputy files marijuana possession charges in juvenile court."
Last month I was at my daughter's portfolio night at school. She was showing us her work and came upon a story she wrote. By the end of it she wrote, 'To sum up, he's a derp.' At which point my wife looked on with a nervous grin while I stood pretty much with face in palm.
But boy was I proud.
As if that wasn't enough to make a grown man with an immature mindset proud, today she told me we should invent a drink called 'Mountain Derp.'
She also likes to rework ads. For example, she reconfigured Scotia Bank's 'You're richer than you think' into 'you're poorer than you think' and Rothenberg and Rothenberg's 'You deserve more' into 'You deserve less.'
Her nine year-old mind is fast and furious with the quips; quite the eccentric, articulate and creative kid. Needless to say, public school isn't fitting her right.
A universal prescription drug plan could reduce total spending on
medications in Canada by billions and cover everyone at an affordable
price for taxpayers, health policy researchers say.
Canada is the only developed country with universal health insurance
coverage that does not also offer universal prescription drug benefits.
Those developed countries being Europe. And in case you haven't noticed, a continent with muted growth, appalling tax rates and restrictive labour laws, increasingly incapable of paying for their generous welfare states.
Saving billions, by the way, means we'll spend double that in prog-speak.
Of course, once it becomes too expensive like anything else run by the
government the researchers will say, "IT WAS JUST AN ACADEMIC
SUGGESTION! You're the morons who listened to us!"
Universal food is right around the corner because everyone has a right to eat.
"...For evidence of how much President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has
jangled nerves and provoked anxiety across Eastern Europe, look no
farther than the drill held the other day by the Shooters Association.
The paramilitary group, like more than 100 others in Poland, has
experienced a sharp spike in membership since Mr. Putin’s forces began
meddling in neighboring Ukraine last year.
Thirty students took an oath to defend Poland at all costs, joining
nearly 200 other regional members of the association — young men and
women, boys and girls — marching in formation around the perimeter of
the dusty high school courtyard here. They crossed Polish Army Boulevard
and marched into the center of town, sprawling in four long lines along
the edge of St. Joseph’s Square.
Gen. Boguslaw Pacek, an adviser to the Polish defense minister and the
government’s chief liaison with these paramilitary groups, marched with
them. He has been making the rounds in recent months of such gatherings:
student chapters like this one, as well as groups of veterans, even
battle re-enactors."
Perhaps their fears are warranted, what with WWII still fresh in their minds (and who could blame them having been fucked over by Russia, Germany and Austria over the years) and how the Obama administration has treated Poland, but it's an improbable scenario.
Attacking Poland means attacking NATO.
And when you attack NATO it's basically a Bat-Signal sent to the United States.
Not even an incompetent Obama administration would be ignore such an act of aggression.
"The White House is removing a federal regulation that subjects its
Office of Administration to the Freedom of Information Act, making
official a policy under Presidents Bush and Obama to reject requests for
records to that office. "
"...If everything was "peaking" when prices were going up; what does it mean
when they are coming down? This is where explanations based on the
theory of economic "super-cycles" might shed some light. Economists
Nikolai Kondratiev and Joseph Schumpeter noticed that since the late 18th
century the prices of most commodities tended to rise and fall in waves
lasting 40 to 60 years. However, the troughs of each successive price
wave tended to be lower than the last, indicating that the real prices
of commodities were falling over time. In general resources are becoming
ever more abundant, not scarcer...."
If David Suzuki's head explodes in a forest does it make a sound?
"...However, Erten and Ocampo report that metals have been an exception—the
mean of the last cycle was higher than the preceding one. Still, they
note, "The contraction phase of this cycle has not even begun yet, which
can lower the mean of the whole cycle in the upcoming years." It now
appears that commodity prices were just reaching their pinnacles when
Erten and Ocampo were writing up their results back in 2011. Instead of
peak resource production we are most likely now past peak commodity
prices—and heading lower for at least for the next ten to fifteen years."
Ouch. Not good for a commodities/resource based economy like Canada.
***
Back when I was a kid in the 1980s - the video age. Yes kids of today we were the original VIDEO FIENDS. Video killed the radio star and we had a hand in it because we wanted our damn MTV - we'd play all sorts of video games from Atari to Magnavox OdyssetoIntellivisionto Commodore 64 to Coleco Vision to Sega. But the difference back then is we'd play our games as part of our overall daily routines. They were not played with all day long. We'd play an hour or so and go outside to play sports or ride our bikes after we got bored with the games and if we were jammed up in front of the TV too long our parents would throw us out. We were more active; if not more balanced.
There's something really off about them. Lyndon LaRouche, Dale Gribbel, Noam Chomsky, Bobby Fischer and Alex Jones have nothing on these folks.
"Now here's something depressingly predictable: A meme in the Middle
Eastern media that ISIS is the creation of Israeli intelligence. More,
really: that ISIS isn't merely an Israeli project intended to disgrace
the Muslims, but something essentially Jewish, something actually—to
quote one of our exhibits—"Talmudic."
And the derpies sing: We're not censoring freedom! Just the parts we don't like!
Problem with this mindset is that people will simply keep everything in their private thoughts lest they be scolded. It'll reach a point where people will be unsure or scared to speak out.
I don't see (and will never accept) how post-secondary education is a right.
Talk about furthering the process of diluting higher education.
***
Driving back home in a courtesy car I set the radio to TSN 690 and caught a segment with lawyer Eric Macramalla talking about topics du jour.
One of the topics was baseball. Specifically how it relates to Montreal.
Montreal has been demoted to ignobly hosting a couple of exhibition ball games every year now. Apparently, because we show up at these games it's proof baseball is making a come back here.
And when asked about where the Commissioner stood, Macramalla gently and logically explained that it's a long-term process and would not happen over night. Besides, he only has 30 cities/teams who are actually in the league to pay attention to.
But that wasn't good enough for one of the hosts Rick Moffat. No. He demanded the Commissioner 'throw us a bone'. How could he shun us! We're showing up to exhibition games!
God, we're like that smug but needy, insecure girlfriend.
No one owes us jack shit let alone a bone. Whoopee-fucken-doo 90 000 people showed up to a couple of ball games. You need to do that for 81 games and I'm of the opinion Montreal's notorious finicky fickle fans make achieving this difficult.
I have not seen anything in the Montreal sports fan to suggest things we be different this time around. We had our chance to support the Expos when we had the fucking team here and blew it using every excuse in the book. Not even the fact the Expos traded, drafted, developed better than the Habs for most of their existence here was enough. Not to mention part of the beauty of the Expos was the absence of the discriminatory politics (despite what Roger Brulotte believes) that takes place in Quebec with the Habs.
If anything. We should be licking our chops for being lame supporters of teams we claimed to love.
Other than that, good luck to Croman and his efforts to get a club here. Just like I actually supported the team right until the end showing up to games where there were only 4000 people in the stands, I will support them when they come back.
Just spare me the usual 'woe is me' Montreal crap. As you can tell, I'm no fan of people who act like Selig was at fault for losing the Expos or were excuse generators when asked why they wouldn't go to games or feel entitled to MLB to pay attention to us. How parochial!
***
Stephen A. Smith makes jack ass out of papier marche and calls it Stephen A. Smith.
Without anything to back him up, he called Chip Kelly a racist for trading two black players.
Even though he tried to sign a black RB and later did sign one. I guess, in Smith's pea-brain, because he signed Bradford that makes the score 3-2 for whites!
Apparently now you can't trade players without being called a racist.
I do see a racist here and it ain't Kelly.
ESPN is a joke. Sometimes I wish Ron Burgundy's prediction of it failing panned out. That is all.
The murdered victims by Islamo-terrorists nut jobs of Charlie Hebdo!
I so desperately want to make the 'Islamophobe of the year' short list.
And...go fuck yourselves you crazies. Instead of handing out bull shit awards how's about you go rid yourselves of the derelict and deranged murderous fanatics in your ranks.
As you know, just do a site search here and you can see how many posts that dismantle all of the President's tired assertions about guns. Filled with conflation and misleading double-speak and appeals to emotion.
The brightest precious tender snow flakes at University of California-Irvine has really managed to out derp the derps thus proving peak derp cannot be attained.
Ban the flag because hate speech. These are the retarded students the enabling fiends in The White House want to bestow a students Bill of Rights upon.
When the Europeans Community graduated to the European Union further integrating itself with a common currency under the Euro banner it looked as though all was going according to plan.
And for the most part it has.
Depending how you look upon things.
Yay. All of Europe is united!
Nay. European individual sovereignty was given to a technocratic structure governed by uber-bureaucrats.
Trade did improve I guess but growth never really took off. How can the EU guarantee growth to a country like, say, Italy who have an aging population, low birth rates, and restrictive labor policies? All issues that impact growth. Or how can it assure a dysfunctional and corrupt poor country like Greece its GDP will take care of paying for all their unaffordable welfare benefits?
It can't.
And when economies can't give what is promised you have a recipe for disaster.
I could never shake this concern of deep rooted nationalism that always seemed to simmer just below the surface of a smiling EU. I watch a lot of European soccer and you can't tell me some of the crazy things you see there are not symptoms of deeper problems. It happens too often in almost every stadium.
We'd be fools to dismiss it as just a bunch of isolated punks.
You don't see that sort of unrest here in North America. Here, when it does occur, it really is an isolated act.
Mostly because we're at peace with ourselves. Even in Quebec where nationalist shit heads constantly drive a linguistic divide does it ever spill over into violence; except for some truly distasteful incidences where civil servants feel compelled to lecture non-Francophones or demand to be spoken in their country dialect. They can, excuse my brief digression, go fuck a donkey for being nothing more than ignorant hicks who happen to have a couple of laws on their side. Yes, I loathe nationalists that much. They're (and not just in Canada) the source of all that is wrong with a civil society.
Never mind, to get back to the larger North American context, the nonsensical gibberish echoed (mostly on the left) by special interests screaming about injustices who mostly lurk about in places like Salon and other similar publications.
They never had it so good.
Europe is on a very tricky path and I hold little confidence in a place that has so thoroughly rooted out individual liberty from the equation. It is the supreme entity run by technocrats.
Perhaps but while Britain has maintained its democracy, it too has embarked on a bad wagon. A healthy society assured of itself does not have its top police agency ask for cameras be put in people's homes, witness shocking depraved acts seen in Rotherdam or Oxfordshire, consistently take decisions where political correctness trumps liberty.
The continentals may have problems, but I wouldn't be looking down on them if I were a Brit.
Sowell and Friedman team up to spank the statists:
Equality of results will never be achieved through the coercive action of the state. For the state must restrict, impede or even punish one group to prop or advance another. The government can't assure 'equal opportunity' anymore I can.
They're right. Only a structure where freedom is the principle that drives everything can we ever even attempt at equality of results.
