Syncrodox Sez

Ironic Headline of the Year..?

2011-12-31T18:26:00.003-07:00

A late challenger...

Happy New Year...

Weather Gone Wild...

2011-12-29T17:10:00.002-07:00

As 2011 winds down we are inundated with the obligatory top ten lists and persons or stories of the year. More often than not these fluff pieces tell us more about the mindset of those proposing them then offering any meaningful perspective on the year that was. Time magazine declared "the protester" as person of the year in a poorly disguised attempt to keep the Occupy Wall Street debacle front and center as the U.S. enters an election year. The in the tank MSM so desperately want a grass roots movement of their own with which to support President Obama. Don't believe me. I suggest you compare the coverage of the Tea Party movement in 2010 to that of OWS in 2011.

In Canada, the MSM barely recognized the Conservative majority as the leading story. This despite the fact that a majority was realized for the first time without significant representation from Quebec. That coupled with the addition of thirty seats in Parliament spread between Alberta, B.C. and Ontario has dramatically changed the political landscape in Canada. But hey...How about those NDP?

And then there's Elizabeth May. Thin (on logic) Lizzie has declared the story of the year to be...Weather Gone Wild. Now when I first read the headline I must admit an image of a drunken Mother Nature pulling up her Che Guevara t-shirt to flash her sagging endowments came to mind. Not a pretty mental picture. Somebody needs to help Ms. May on her lede's and her logic.

Case in point:

But I think, for me, the biggest story is the one that never gets told. 2011 was another year of record breaking extreme weather events, most of which are likely the result of human-induced climate change. Of course, the single most devastating event, the Japanese tsunami and the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, were unrelated to climate change.

For years the climate alarmists have told us that weather is not climate, apparently 2011 marked the year that they became synonymous. I will however credit Ms. May for refuting the linkage between the Japanese tsunami and climate change that some of the moonbats claimed.

This moment of lucidity is fleeting as Elizabeth reverts to form with specious claims and out and out bullshit. I'll leave it to you readers to spot the howlers in the following:

For Canada, extreme weather events made 2011 the second most expensive year for the insurance industry. The prairie floods put more land underwater than ever in our history. And the flooding lasted from October 2010 until late July 2011. More devastating floods hit Quebec.

The wild fires brought on by extremely dry conditions destroyed one third of Slave Lake. Much of Canada was blanketed in record-breaking heat for much of the summer. Arctic sea ice hit a near record summer low.

There is more, but my biggest story of the year is the on-going refusal to connect the dots and describe climate change events for what they are. Not "Mother Nature" on a rampage; not some "wacky and wild curve ball."

Climate change events, fitting the pattern of increased extreme events one would expect due to, what is in human experience, the all-time high greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.

So for political story -- Canada filing legal notice of withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol. For biggest story of 2011, the ongoing, accelerating losses due to the climate crisis and the fact of, unlike a suicide bomber in a troubled region where media are keen to find who "claims responsibility," the amazing level of denial. These disasters are no longer "natural"--their causes are known and our government is charting a course to make them worse, year by year.

My advice for Ms. May in 2012...Keep your shirt on.

Tradgedy in T.O.

2011-12-12T21:37:00.004-07:00

December 12th 2011 A Day Which Will Live in Infemy.

It really all started two days before when Christy Blatchford fired a shot over the prow of T.O. metrosexuals...

The poignant bit...

And the novelty of being the toughest guy in the room – and by this I mean me – is getting really old.

As you can imagine the commentors were aghast, but this was only a precursor of the carnage to come.

No sooner then the latte had settled and a visit to the spa had calmed down our twitchier T.O. friends, the first torpedo hit.

Jason Kenney had declared himself head fashion Nazi!

The first strike here...

It's a "public declaration that you are joining the Canadian family and it must be taken freely and openly," he said, calling it "frankly, bizarre" that women were allowed to wear face veils while they swear their citizenship oaths.

Kenney said he doesn't accept that it's a religious obligation to wear the veil, explaining that when Muslim women perform the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca required by their faith, they are required not to cover their faces.

"It's a cultural tradition, which I think reflects a certain view about women that we don't accept in Canada. We want women to be full and equal members of Canadian society and certainly when they're taking the citizenship oath, that's the right place to start,"

Who is Jason Kenney to tell anyone what's fashionable...I mean really...

Of course it got worse...in a devastating second wave Peter Kent flew in from Durban with the environmental a-bomb...NoKoyoto...the world suddenly changed...no longer would mankind wonder about it's demise...it's next Tuesday.

One would think that life had treated T.O. bad enough on this day...that would be wrong. The gay penguins went straight.

Sadly, it's true...

It appears a female has come between one of Canada’s celebrity couples.

Toronto Zoo officials say same-sex penguins Buddy and Pedro have been officially separated and Buddy has mated with a female.

Pedro has yet to get lucky, but officials say it’s not for a lack of trying.

December 12th 2011...A Day That Will Live in Infemy...

The NDP Hear the Sirens...Pat Martin does the Math...

2011-11-25T22:47:00.004-07:00

I came across this interesting piece about lobbyists in the Grope and Flail...

“The word lobbyist has taken on a bit of a pejorative character to it, so for that I may get the odd joke from my social democratic friends, but it’s all in good humour,” said Mr. MacLachlan, 30, who worked for successive Ottawa Centre NDP MPs Ed Broadbent and Paul Dewar.

“Advocacy is a very important part of democracy … and my friends understand that I’m contributing to that process,” he said.

It seems NDP heavyweights like Pat Martin are applauding this new lobbying reality...

NDP MP Pat Martin, the sharp-tongued MP who criticized Ottawa’s lobbying culture, said the interest from lobbying firms shows the NDP is now in “the big leagues.”

“They’re going to have to update their rolodex because there’s some new kids in town,” he said. “Lots of them.”

That didn't take long...

The Keystone XL takes a hard right...last seen headed for the coast...

2011-11-13T19:14:00.003-07:00

From Breitbart:

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Sunday that he was looking at exporting more oil to China after the United States delayed a decision on a controversial pipeline.

President Barack Obama's administration last week put off a decision on Keystone XL project after a major protest campaign by environmentalists, who say the pipeline would be prone to accidents and worsen climate change.

The conservative Canadian leader, taking part in a summit in Hawaii hosted by Obama said the pipeline decision had produced "extremely negative reactions" and that he discussed oil exports with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Hmmmmmmm........

Charter Rights and Campus Credibility...Incongruent or What?

2011-11-11T19:57:00.005-07:00

On this day 11/11/11 those of us who respect our heritage paused. Others presumably held meetings to consolodate their appelate strategy.

The University of Calgary has seen fit to fight a judicial battle based on the premise that St.Peeairs Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not apply on university campus...in other words university campus' are above the law.

From the Calgary Herald:

"The University of Calgary must have autonomy in disciplining students for non-academic conduct and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms should not apply, its lawyer argued before the Alberta Court of Appeal on Wednesday."

Also from the Herald an opinion piece from Licia Corbella that further elucidates.

A snippet:

“The department head hired her spouse, who wasn’t qualified to teach that course and then she’s on the disciplinary committee? I mean it’s hard to believe this can happen. Look at this waste of money,” he said, referring to the high-priced lawyers arguing on behalf of the U of C, the University of Alberta and the Associations of Universities and Colleges of Alberta.

Read it all.

Obama 2012...The Campaign Song...

2011-09-18T14:36:00.002-06:00

The 2012 Presidential Election unofficially got underway last week with President Obama making campaign style stops to tout his jobs bill, including this stop at Raleigh, North Carolina.

It occured to me that what the Obama campaign really needs is a theme song that sums up the Prez and what he's all about.

One song and one band came immediately to mind...Cheap Trick and their classic rock anthem "I Want You to Want Me".

Those lyrics would be perfect if "work" was substituted with "golf".

The whole cheap trick thing is, however, entirely appropriate.

syncro

Robert Fife...Projecting His Inner Eeyore?

2011-04-02T10:23:00.003-06:00

CTV's Robert Fife has been dutifully trudging back and forth across The Hundred Acre Wood in search of election stories, sadly, all is not well.

During the Friday edition of Power Play Mr. Fife described PMSH as "grumpy" with a "dark cloud" hanging over the campaign. Host Don Martin then asked, "What's the Eeyore complex all about"? During Roberts response he made mention of Mrs. Harper seeming to be happier serving beer to the reporters on the campaign plane.

This inspired me to search YouTube for behind the scenes campaign footage. I found the following examples, courtesy of one R. Fife.

Whatsamatter Bobby...teatotler? And then there's this:

In conclusion, I offer this quote from the original Eeyore:

"People who don't think probably don't have brains;
rather, they have grey fluff that's blown into "their heads by mistake."

CTV; Liberal Fortress Toronto Safe...UofT Experts Assure...

2011-03-27T19:07:00.003-06:00

I came across this piece on the CTV News website today. An excerpt:

One of Conservative Leader Stephen Harper's first stops on the campaign trail is a speech Sunday at the Pearson Convention Centre in Brampton, in what will be the first of many attempts to woo GTA voters.

But experts say Toronto's Liberal-leaning voters aren't likely to switch allegiance to the Tories in large numbers before the May 2 election.

Stephen Clarkson, a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto, says even if Tories campaign hard in the GTA, they likely won't break the Liberal stronghold in many ridings.

Interesting observation but I wonder what Professor Clarkson bases it on. Further down he offers this:

Clarkson said the Conservatives likely won't make a big breakthrough in Toronto also because the NDP is likely to put in a strong campaign. He also pointed out that the Liberals can send out Ignatieff on the campaign without worrying about making silly mistakes like previous leaders.

"He speaks well, he has experience in campaigning and he's learned from his mistakes," said Clarkson.

Now this leads me to wonder if Professor Clarkson happened to catch Michael Ignatieff"s non-denial denial vis a vis coalition government. The one in which MI emphatically declares his devotion to democratic principles ..."from the bottom of my feet to the top of my toes..."

From my perspective what Count Ingatieff offered on day one of this campaign was both a mistake and poorly spoken. Then again I'm no polysci expert.

Of course CTV went a step further and consulted another political expert for this piece, one Nelson Wiseman, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto.

Professor Wiseman offered the following analysis:

Some ridings are vulnerable to a Conservative takeover on election day, says Nelson Wiseman, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. He says some of these include Eglinton-Lawrence, York Centre, Brampton-Springdale, Mississauga-Brampton South.

Wiseman said that Liberals will campaign hard to hang on to the ridings they have.

"I think they'll also target some of the ridings they lost in the last few elections like Trinity-Spadina," which was lost in 2006 to NDP member Olivia Chow.

And this somewhat out of place observation:

Wiseman said that part of the Conservative's strategy has been, particularly in north-western ridings, to heavily target new Canadians.

"Chinese-Canadians, Filipinos, South-Asian Canadians have been a target," he said, citing the example of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, who made frequent appearances at events involving Asian-Canadian communities.

"Earlier this month, he was at a Filipino-sponsored affair where they put a cape on him and called him the ‘King of Multiculturalism,'" said Wiseman.

He says that at most, the GTA ridings may switch by maybe six or seven seats. "It's too early to tell, but according to the polls, Conservatives do have an early lead."

The piece concludes with the following:

A recent poll conducted by Nanos Research for CTV and the Globe and Mail shows the Conservatives at 43 per cent support in Ontario, up from 39 per cent last month. The Liberals are at 30.9 per cent, down from 32.8.

"The only thing that strikes me that could work for the Conservatives is this ‘coalition is undemocratic' shtick. It might convince voters to elect more Conservatives." Clarkson said.

So to recap, two UofT polysci Profs offer a "nothing to see here" analysis regarding CPC prospects in the GTA despite polling trends in the Conservatives favor.

This caused me to pause and wonder about the credentials of the two professors CTV consulted for this story. A quick google search produced the following on Professor Clarkson:

Stephen Clarkson, CM, FRSC (born 1937) is one of Canada’s preeminent political scientists and a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto.

His current work focuses primarily on two areas: the evolution of North America as a continental state, reinstitutionalized by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and two decades of neo-conservatism; and the impact of globalization and trade liberalization on the Canadian state. His recent publications on these themes include Uncle Sam and Us: Globalization, Neoconservatism and the Canadian State, published in 2002; and Global Governance and the Semi-peripheral State: The WTO and NAFTA as Canada's External Constitution in Governing under Stress: Middle Powers and the Challenge of Globalization".

Clarkson has taught and written on Canadian foreign policy and federal party politics. Following an unsuccessful campaign as Liberal candidate for the mayoralty of Toronto in 1969, Clarkson was active in the Liberal Party for six years. After Pierre Trudeau’s retirement from active politics in 1984, Clarkson spent a decade co-authoring the epic, Trudeau and Our Times, with his wife Christina McCall, which won the Governor General's Award for non-fiction.

His knowledge and experience in Canadian politics led to the commissioning of a history of federal election campaigns in Canada from 1974 onward. These essays were the basis of his 2005 book, The Big Red Machine: How the Liberal Party Dominates Canadian Politics.

The good Professor was also once married to somebody named Adrien Clarkson, a name which sounds vaguely familiar for some reason, but I digress.

I also found some interesting mention of the work Professor Wiseman is noted for here:

Nelson Wiseman’s Social Democracy in Manitoba: A History of the CCF/NDP fills a gap present in earlier histories of Manitoba...

...Nelson Wiseman is the first to chart the rise of the NDP as a political force in Manitoba and to provide a detailed account of the activities of the political left over the last ninety years...

...Wiseman began to research and write this book on the NDP as a strongly partisan insider. In the 1960s, he served as president of the University of Manitoba NDP Club and sat on the party’s provincial executive committee. He was active in the left-wing Waffle and quit the NDP in 1972 when the party refused to move closer to the Waffle position. Wiseman’s Waffle perspective is evident in this book, especially in his probing, thoughtful, and often critical account and analysis of the Schreyer years...

...Wiseman, the ex-Waffle member, is very critical of Ed Schreyer’s leadership and the NDP in power. He observes that “little in the NDP government’s performance diverged from what non-NDP government’s did” (p. 139) and that in office the NDP was just like any other government. He charges that little notice was taken of party policy and instead the “cabinet and caucus” (p. 132) were responsible for making policy. Wiseman chides the Schreyer government for failing to promote greater worker control in crown corporations, for failing to bring about major redistribution in income and for failing “to move towards public ownership of natural resource industries and urban land.” (p. 139).

Good to see that CTV found non-partisan experts.

On the Matter of Contempt

2011-03-25T13:33:00.002-06:00

It seems the current Canadian government has been found in contempt, not just ordinary contempt but unprecedented contempt.

Many have also noted an unprecedented vitriolic atmosphere in the political air.

Few, if any, mention the unprecedented fact that we are are in our 7th consecutive year of minority government.

My sense of contempt is reserved for those who lack perspective.

Susan Delacourt...Obtuse or Self Satarizing?

2011-03-18T19:37:00.004-06:00

Susan's latest effort at the TorStar has me posing the above question. It seems Sue snidely dismisses CPC communications that question Michael Ignatieff's claim of being the child of common immigrants.

She then publishes an entirely convincing case which points out the very privileged position the Ignatieff clan has always maintained regardless of where they resided.

An excerpt:

While the Ignatieffs have made the most of their coming to Canada in their respective fields, they have never ceased to enjoy great privilege, as a function of the financial and educational resources and social status they brought with them, and which are theirs to this day. The Ignatieff immigrant experience is one of significant wealth, first-rate educations and privilege. Very few Canadian families can claim this “immigrant experience.”

Hence my question.

OTOH the whole thing could also have been a poorly constructed vehicle to associate Canadian conservatives with those nasty American birthers. More from Sue...

Somewhere in here, they may well be claiming that he was born in Kenya.

Tradgedy Narrowly Averted

2011-02-25T11:42:00.005-07:00

QR 77 Radio in Calgary is reporting that a dangerous sex offender that the RCMP warned the public about on October 10,2010 is now sought in the kidnapping of a ten year old girl from a Calgary shopping mall last night. From the QR77 website:

Kelly Turner
2/25/2011

Calgary police say several arrest warrants have been issued for a man who has a history of violence and sexual offenses against females between the ages of 10 and 42. The warrant is in connection with the kidnapping of a 10-year-old girl from Deerfoot Mall. It happened Thursday when she became separated from her dad around 6:30 pm. She was approached by a man who said he was a police officer and accused her of shoplifting. The offender picked up the victim and carried her to his vehicle. A short time later, he drove to a nearby Mcdonald's in Airdrie, and the girl managed to call 911. Canada wide warrants have now been issued for 43 year old John Francis Dionne of Linden, Alberta. He is charged with kidnapping, child abduction, assault, robbery and impersonating a police officer.

Here is the October 10, 2010 article from the Calgary Sun that warned the public about John Francis Dionne. An excerpt here:

RCMP Sgt. Patrick Webb said it’s rare for police to issue such warnings when an offender is released but given his past that includes a conviction for sexual assault, felt the need to warn people.

“These are not done lightly and only when there is a risk to re-offend,” he said.

“If we believe there’s the potential for re-offending and we’re worried about the victimization of people, we feel they should be advised.”

Dionne, 43, was charged after his accuser, a drug-addicted former prostitute, said she was picked up in Calgary’s East Village on Oct. 28, 2008 and was driven outside the city where he forced himself on her for 10 hours.

During the trial, however, the victim recanted and said she lied about being raped.

Mounties said Dionne has a history of violence and sexual offences against females between the ages of 10 and 42 and has recently been diagnosed as HIV positive.

Dionne is white, 5-foot-11, 170 lb. with blue eyes and brown hair and drives a 1992 blue Dodge Caravan with Alberta licence plate NAE 434.

Webb said police won’t be able to keep tabs on him at all times and are making the public aware because of the potential risk.

You will notice that a description of this monsters van along with the licence plate number is included in the article.

What is not included in the text of the QR77 piece is some very disturbing details of how this went down last night. This man was pulled over by RCMP while he had the kidnapped child with him in the front seat. In fact he was issued with a moving violation ticket and sent on his way!!

This raises serious questions about either the competence of the officer involved or the effectiveness of the computer system used to track and flag sex offenders.

To be fair, the child was not yet reported missing when the traffic stop was made and apparently the child was too terrified to say anything to the police officer when he issued the moving violation.

On the other hand, it appears this POS was using the same van the public was warned about last October.

Thank God this innocent little girl is back safe with her family and not a tragic statistic, despite our law enforcement system.

Something more substantial needs to be done about these sick bastards.

When the Nuance Hits the Fan

2011-02-18T17:27:00.003-07:00

One of the hallmarks of the left is a self professed capacity for nuance. Us lesser beings are judged to possess inferior discernment betwixt reality and bullshit...right and wrong...because we lack nuance.

The narrative downplays common sense and glorifies complexity. The thing is that the left , through the nuance doctrine, seeks to complicate easy solutions and exacerbate small problems.

This will go through the fan.

Syncro

Jane Taber; Did Conservative Attack Ads Contribute to Egyptian Unrest...Yes! Yes! Yes?

2011-01-31T11:48:00.003-07:00

I will be the first to admit that my periodic attempts at blogging in no way qualifies as journalism.

That said, one would think that self professed professional journalists would have a rudimentary understanding of paragraph structure.

Case in point:

Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff face off against each other in the Commons Monday for the first time since the Conservatives pulled their nasty attack ads against the Liberals offline and as the situation in Egypt worsens.

The Opposition Leader and his MPs will focus their Question Period efforts on the “Conservatives’ bad spending choices and the billions being spent on corporate tax breaks,” according to a senior Ignatieff official.

Is it just me or is the first paragraph poorly constructed? I suppose it isn't if one believes nasty Canadian attack ads and Egyptian unrest are somehow linked. To Jane's credit she does get back to the Egyptian issue a few paragraphs down.

In addition, the Liberals will demand the government be more clear in its language about the state of play in Egypt. They want the Prime Minister to state that “there needs to be a peaceful transition to free and fair elections,” the Ignatieff official said.

NDP Leader Jack Layton will lead off on the issue as well. “Obviously we’ll also be looking for a stronger Canadian response to the situation in Egypt,” an NDP official said.

I sure hope Harper doesn't say something nasty whilst being clear and stronger.

Syncro

Locked in The Trunk of a Car

2011-01-28T22:54:00.002-07:00

It's not just a Tragically Hip tune....it's a way of life...

Apparently, Said Jaziri, picked up on Gord Downie's riff:

U.S. border guards got a surprise when they searched a Mexican BMW and found a hardline Muslim cleric - banned from France and Canada - curled up in the boot.

Said Jaziri, who called for the death of a Danish cartoonist that drew pictures of the prophet Mohammed, was being smuggled into California when he was arrested, along with his driver Kenneth Robert Lawler.

The 43-year-old was deported from Canada to his homeland Tunisia in 2007 after it emerged he had lied on his refugee application about having served jail time in France.

Of course there's more:

His fire and brimstone sermons and rabble-rousing antics catapulted him into the public eye during his short tenure as imam at a Montreal mosque.

He branded homosexuality a disease and led protests over cartoonist Kurt Westergaard's illustrations poked fun at Islam and were published in a Danish newspaper in 2006.

He also caused anger when he campaigned for a bigger mosque to accommodate Montreal's burgeoning Muslim population.

Anyways.....A little Tragically Hip...

Morning broke out the backside of a truck-stop
End of a line a real, rainbow-likening luck stop,
Where you could say I became chronologically "fucked up"
Put ten bucks in just to get the tank topped off
Then I found a place it's dark and it's rotted

It's a cool, sweet kinda place where the copters won't spot it
And I destroyed the map, I even thought I forgot it, however,

Everyday I'm dumping the body
It'd be better for us if you don't understand
Even better for me if you don't understand (Yuh)

Syncro

Sukuki Slyly Slithers Sideways

2010-12-12T10:41:00.009-07:00

David Suzuki, noticeably absent from the Cancun climate confab, has surfaced today with this Torstar piece. He opens thusly:

In a recent article on CBC’s website, political commentator Scott Reid wrote that I don’t “give a damn” about the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico.

Reid, who was former prime minister Paul Martin’s communications director, is correct that I was “fed up and had little time for Cancun, assuming the political will to respond to the pressing threat of climate change at this forum was all but nil.”

So Dr. Suzuki is "fed up" and has "little time" for climate conferences when he recognizes the political winds are not blowing his way. But isn't Global Warming/Climate Change/Global Climate Disruption the most important issue of our time?

But there’s nothing that concerns me more than the threat of climate change and the necessity of world leaders to deal with the crisis. I’ve just seen the futility of trying to get our current government to act in any meaningful way at the UN talks, and I agree with David Suzuki Foundation staff that our efforts are better placed elsewhere.

So it is the most important issue of our time but you and the staff at your foundation have chosen to concentrate your efforts elsewhere? Define elsewhere. Of course Dr. Suzuki never clearly defines "elsewhere" but what he does say gives a clue.

In Canada, though, we can accomplish more by working with municipal and provincial governments, and with thousands of concerned citizens, than trying to get the federal government to act on global warming. Our work around clean-energy solutions and other ways to resolve climate issues — and help steer Canada toward the emerging clean-energy economy — is more in line with initiatives such as Ontario’s plan to phase out coal power and create incentives to attract clean-energy technologies, B.C.’s implementation of a carbon tax that increases over time, and the City of Vancouver’s bold Greenest City initiative.

Of course, that’s not enough to confront a global problem like climate change, but if leadership is lacking at the top, we must build from the ground up.

I do give a damn about the UN climate talks. I only wish our government did.

Never mind, Carry on.

Syncro

The Mathematically and Morally Challenged Montreal Gazette

2010-11-18T09:47:00.017-07:00

With Quebec Premier Jean Charest weathering a storm of controversy surrounding allegations of corruption ranging from judicial appointments to construction contracts it isn't surprising that an online petition calling for his resignation is gaining strength.

Other unsurprising news includes this editorial response from the Montreal Gazette.

An online petition demanding the resignation of Jean Charest is an amusing novelty. And so it is spreading, and the number of signatures is growing, with the same "viral" speed shown by various previous amusing Internet novelties: cute kittens, funny ads, "Hail Mary" pass videos, droll examples of the Photoshopper's art, and Quebec's own "Star Wars Kid." The petition is about as meaningful as all that nonsense, too. "

Quebecers should be careful what they wish for. The political landscape, from left to centre (there is no electoral right in Quebec) is not exactly studded with prominent potential successors jostling for a chance to solve our problems. Better the devil you know ... "

We wonder, too, how many of those who are signing the petition bothered to vote in the last election.

So the MG position is that this petition is silly, meaningless, there is no other leadership alternative and it's probably signed by yahoos who don't bother to vote.

Really? This led me to wonder how many naive folks have signed the petition but that information is nowhere to be found in the body of the Gazette piece. What I did find was It seems it has garnered over 174,000 + signatures since Monday.

Now let's compare that to the coverage by The Montreal Gazette regarding another recent online petition, specifically, Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament.

Frustration with and anger at Stephen Harper’s decision to prorogue Parliament spilled from the Internet onto the streets Saturday, as tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered at rallies across Canada.
..........

The decision to prorogue Parliament, the second in just over a year, sparked a backlash, especially online, where a Facebook group opposing the move grew to include more than 211,000 members.

..........

It was White’s Facebook group, Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament, that got the protest ball rolling and has attracted more than 211,000 members since Harper announced his decision on the second-last day of the year.

The tone of the two pieces are definitely different but putting that aside let's just do the math. The most recent piece by the Gazette failed to mention any numbers regarding the Charest petition while the total of the CAPP petition was noted twice in the same article.

The Charest petition has garnered nearly 175,ooo signatures in four days from a presumed population of 7.5 million Quebec citizens. In contrast the CAPP petition accumulated 211,000 signatures in a little over three weeks from a presumed pool of 36 million Canadians.

That said, would anybody care to speculate on which petition is more significant?

Syncro

Dalton McGuinty...Our Very Own Earl Hickey

2010-11-17T09:48:00.002-07:00

This from the Torstar:

Whatever storms Dalton McGuinty had to weather inside the Legislature on Tuesday, there was another one waiting when he left work: high winds caused part of a construction wall at Queen’s Park to collapse on top of the premier’s car.

The storm that damaged McGuinty’s hybrid lashed the city Tuesday night with wind gusts of at least 50 kilometres an hour.

Karma can sure be a busy bitch.

The cause of the recent fire which ravaged a warehouse being used by Neil Young has been identified as one of the singer/songwriter's classic cars, authorities have announced.

The offending vehicle, a 1959 Lincoln Continental, had been converted into a hybrid by Young in an effort to promote fuel efficiency.

In a statement (via BBC News), Young has admitted the fire was down to human error. He said, "The wall charging system was not completely tested and had never been left unattended. A mistake was made -- it was not the fault of the car."

Syncro

IPCC to be Warned about "Embarrassing Errors" by...Former IPCC Chair.

2010-08-29T15:48:00.005-06:00

From The U.K. Telegraph:

A review of the practices of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been conducted in response to intense criticism of the body, whose reports are used by governments to inform policy decisions on global warming.

The findings of the review are due to be handed to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon tomorrow.

So far so good. Tell me more.

The IPCC has been under scrutiny after it admitted making an error in its 2007 report, that stated Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035 – a statement that was wrong by over 300 years.

Ok...I can see a three hundred year error once in a while, everything else was good right?

The panel has also been criticised over the sources of information it used to compile the report after a number of statements were found to be based on information taken from reports by environmental lobby groups, magazine articles and student dissertations.

Really? But the science was settled. Surely the peer review process weeded out suspect sources?

Professor Robert Watson, the chief scientific adviser to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and a former chair of the UN's IPCC, told the InterAcademy Council's review committee that more needed to be done to prevent errors appearing in the panel's reports.

He described the way the IPCC handled the mistakes as "totally and utterly atrocious" and suggested that the panel should consider hiring additional staff to check through the sources of information, or references, to ensure the accuracy of statements made in future reports.

In the evidence he gave to the committee, Professor Watson said: "No error is acceptable, but there is such a thing as human error.

"Is there a better way of checking all the references before they go out? Maybe there is a role for the secretariat, that effectively, by hiring additional staff – maybe even graduate students and post docs (doctoral) – they can follow through the whole reference chain.

"A normal peer review will not have time to do this, so how can we double and triple check the reference chain of any particular statement."

So we need an extra-normal peer review process? By more of the same institutionalized and vested gang? I wonder where one could find some good environmentally oriented post docs...

Professor Mike Hulme, a professor of climate change at the University of East Anglia, is due to deliver a keynote lecture to the Royal Geographical Society Annual conference this week in which he will call for a dramatic changes to the way the IPCC operates.

Speaking ahead of his lecture, he said: "The IPCC has not sufficiently adapted to the changing science and politics of climate change, nor to the changing expected and demanded role of science and expertise in society.

"The IPCC's approach of seeking consensus obscures and constricts both scientific and wider social debates about both knowledge-driven and value-driven uncertainties that surround climate change politics."

University of East Anglia eh? And what exactly does that last paragraph mean?

Syncro

John Ibbitson: Conservatives exploiting divisions, Columnists not so much??

2010-08-28T14:46:00.005-06:00

John Ibbitson of the Globe and Mail accuses the Prime Minister of exploiting a urban/rural divide in the ongoing gun registry debate. This in and of itself isn't really news, The Liberals created the divide when they exploited the Ecole Polytechnique massacre by creating the long gun registry to garner fearful urbanite's votes.

What I find interesting is Mr. Ibbitson's choice of words and demographic observations regarding this division. The following caught my eye:

Mr. Bagnell, who has opposed the long-gun registry every time he was allowed to vote his conscience, faces an impossible choice. If he breaks with his party, he will humiliate his leader, who will punish him accordingly.

If he respects the whip, the Conservatives will launch an electoral jihad against him in Yukon, where forcing gun owners to register their shotguns and rifles is seen as tantamount to creating a police state.

A jihad? Really? Do you mean an electoral struggle? A holy war? Do the conservatives consider the Liberals dar al harb? Or is jihad just part of the sexy journo lexicon these days?

Of course it gets better/worse.

The gun registry reflects a seemingly unbridgeable divide between rural and urban English Canada. (Support for the registry is higher in Quebec, where all 48 Bloc Québécois MPs support it.) Most urban Canadians can’t understand why hunters and farmers can’t make the effort to register a potentially dangerous weapon. Rural voters, the vast majority of whom are white, don’t understand why people in cities want further restrictions on their way of life and a culture that is under threat as Canada becomes ever more urban and multicultural.

The Conservatives happily exploit that divide, in the North and elsewhere. The Liberals and NDP can only suffer.

So this issue is racial and cultural as well as urban/rural? What no feminist angle?

Syncro

Syncro: Journalists are useless without brains

2010-08-10T17:32:00.006-06:00

Linda Mc Quaig of TorStar fame states that Canadian F-35's are useless without war. In a pique of unusual unintentional sanity Ms. McQuaig makes the case for the purchase of the F-35.

Joint strike power is essential in maintaining the current geo-political balance. ...as in no major WAR.

Syncro

Professor Iffy on National Unity, Pumpkins and Salt.

2010-08-02T11:06:00.003-06:00

As the Professor Iffy Under the Bus Tour rolls across the nation, regular Mike took the opportunity to announce his National Food Policy initiative. Breathtaking in scope, noble in intent, interventionist by nature and as hollow as a jack-o-lantern.

So. If I understand Mike correctly there is a national unity rift along rural and urban lines. The solution to this crisis is more farmers markets and more Canadian food on Canadian plates, but not too much salt. Of course this will require government leadership.

If past performance is any indication of future actions then I would expect a regular Mike led LPC government to address the above mentioned national unity crisis through some sort of urban/rural educational outreach program. Advertising Sponsorship of selected events that foster national unity ought to do the trick.

As far as the salt issue goes...simple silly...a National Salt Shaker Registry.

Syncro

Iggy Gets Jiggy on Queen Street

2010-07-29T18:26:00.006-06:00

I have nothing to add.

Syncro

The Rocking Horse Leader

2010-07-28T22:59:00.002-06:00

As Michael Ignatieff sacrifices his elite panache on the alter of populism the first thing that comes to my mind is The Rocking Horse Winner by D.H. Lawrence.

A quote:

And even as he lay dead, his mother heard her brother's voice saying to her, "My God, Hester, you're eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he's best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking-horse to find a winner."

Syncro

At Least it Wasn't Camp AdscamChaChing

2010-07-18T15:19:00.003-06:00

The Liberal Express continues it's cross Canada oddity and thanks to the kind folks in the LPC we have some excellent video.

So is it just me or did anybody else find that to be a tad creepy? Besides the wierdness I wonder at the effectiveness of schlepping for votes at a summer camp for kids unless one is campaigning for the 2020 election. Maybe Iffy is planning on supporting PMSH's budgets until then.

I was also disappointed Iffy wasn't wearing a buckskin jacket but he has been out of the country for a while so he probably isn't up to speed on Primeministerial canoeing protocol.

And finally, were I Iffy, I wouldn't want to get back on the bus either.

Syncro

I Smell Therefore I am.

2010-07-10T19:11:00.003-06:00

It's Stampede time here in Calgary so the morning air is replent with the scent of frying bacon, blueberry pancakes and maple syrup. Of course this also means that politicians in cowboy gear are flipping flapjacks and talking smack. Case in point:

Federal Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff says he knows he has lots of work to do to convince Canadians that he is ready to run the country. Decked out in cowboy gear in the heart of Tory country, Ignatieff told supporters at a Stampede breakfast he plans to tour every province and territory to convince voters that it’s time for a change in Ottawa. “We have to earn the confidence of Canadians — door by door, handshake by handshake, baby by baby,” he said. “Starting today we’re going to get on a bus and go to every province and territory between July and September, if it doesn’t kill me first. “We’re going to stop at every legion hall, every barbecue, every Tim Hortons and shake every hand in the house.” The Liberal leader said his party is the only one that owns the centre of Canada’s political spectrum, noting Canadians can “smell the whiff of sulfur coming off” of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who he said, is on the extreme right.

Wow! Amongst all the pleasing aroma's I associate with Stampede, sulfur is not one of them. So what is Iffy getting at? Is he suggesting Stephen Harper has gastrointestinal difficulties? Too much Old Spice? Chronic halitosis?

The funny thing is we were driving to work up the Deerfoot this morning about the same time Iffy was giving this speech and the only thing I got a whiff of was desperation and pancakes.

Syncro

5.0 Quake Hits Ottawa-Montreal-Toronto Triangle. Global Warming and Gulf of Mexico Blowout Cited as Likely Causes

2010-06-23T16:27:00.005-06:00

An unprecedented 5.0 earthquake has struck central Canada and the north eastern U.S. This is a rare occurance and recognizing such I immediately tried to contact world renowned experts Al Gore and David Suzuki for some insights into the cause of this terrible tragedy.

Unfortunately Al was not available as he is apparently busy banging Lori David and Dave's number is unlisted.

Left with no credible sources Syncrodox Sez can only surmise the following:

Ghia is not happy. Ghia is getting a little old...one could even say she is reaching middle age. Hot and cold flashes, unpredictable temperament and an inconsistent flow.

Tremors are to be expected. Even in the central cerebral cortex.....or Trawna.

Syncro

Maher Arar was a bargian compared to the Khadr clan.

2010-06-15T15:00:00.003-06:00

From the Grope and Flail:

Understatement personified.

Feel free to come to your own conclusions.

Syncro

The Future of the MSM Responds to the Threat of Fox News North

2010-06-14T21:53:00.005-06:00

Syncrodox Sez has obtained exclusive video of the graduating class of The Ryerson Skool of Jurnalism circa 2010 reacting to the recent announcement that jurnalism may no longer be the exclusive domain of the left.

*Warning*

Disturbing images rife with stupidity and more stupidity follow. Act accordingly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC4NmYEGrHg

Syncro

Iggy Learns to Ifferate.

2010-06-12T20:58:00.001-06:00

Well that was embarrassing. I post infrequently and briefly. Dropping the text of the story does however totally defeat the purpose. So anywayys...

Michael Ignatieff has finally taken a non-stand.

"I'm not saying what I will or will not do," he said.

I heard that.

Syncro

The Kinsella Doctrine

2010-06-09T16:47:00.003-06:00

The party of no policy is sidetracked yet again by internal warfare over the subtly of their non-policy.

This is the Kinesella Doctrine and it permeates much of the Liberal Party of Canada. Stand for nothing while championing the the cause de jour. Emote. Often. When power slips away.....grasp.

Import ex-pat intellectuals to assuage the right leaning faction of your party. Sip Wine.

When the whole nuclear ball of shit explodes.....do the PowerCorp slide and look to the Rae of Light.

Syncro

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day....My Million Mo Contribution.

2010-05-19T20:40:00.003-06:00

Syncro

The Broad Strata Fraud Gang

2010-05-05T09:16:00.003-06:00

CBC News is reporting on a massive mortgage fraud involving hundreds of properties and tens of millions of dollars. While mortgage fraud is nothing new the fact that proceeds of this criminal activity appears to be leaving Canada for some interesting destinations is.

During its investigation, bank investigators seized records that showed millions of dollars from the alleged scheme have been transferred to such countries as Lebanon, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan.

It makes one wonder what the pilfered funds were ultimately used for by this broad strata of Canadian fraudsters.

Syncro

A Compromise Candidate for GG

2010-05-03T07:57:00.008-06:00

It seems that Michael Ignatieff has focused his considerable thinking skills on the office of Governor General. (has it been raining in Ottawa?) Iffy concludes that the status quo is the best approach and advocates for the extension of current GG Michaelle Jean's term. In doing so he appears to be attempting to paint PMSH into a politically correct corner.

Iffy's comments, offered up in a "just saying" fashion are clearly constructed to focus attention on Ms. Jean's politically correct demographic credentials.

In explaining his stance, Ignatieff said Canadians were "deeply moved" by Jean's swift response to the massive earthquake in her homeland of Haiti, that killed more than 200,000 people.

He also said Jean "has been a powerful advocate of Aboriginal and Arctic people," and her own personal story has been an inspiration to young Canadians.

"As a francophone woman who overcame great obstacles to get where she is today, and as the first black Canadian appointed as Governor General, I can't imagine a better role model for young Canadians, particularly young girls," he said.

A black, francophone, immigrant, woman who is married to an avowed Quebec separatist is going to be hard to top and given Iffy's focus on demographics all but eliminates any old, white, male, conservative, senior statesmen, like say Preston Manning.

So be it!

With Preston out of the running I got to thinking who might be suitable for the office. In doing so I looked back to see if there were any common traits shared by our most recent GG's.
Adrienne Clarkson came to mind. Woman, immigrant, ex-CBC personality, visible minority, annoying husband (does anybody miss John Ralston Saul?)

When compared with Michaelle Jean a trend begins to emerge. Woman, immigrant, ex-CBC personality, visible minority, annoying husband (has anybody outside of Quebec seen Jean-Daniel Lafonde's films?)

With this critera in mind I believe I've found the perfect compromise candidate for GG.

Sitara Hewitt

Now you may not recognize Sitara sans burka, which she dons for her role as Dr. Rayyan Hamoudi in the PC CBC series Little Mosque on the Prairie. Granted Ms. Hewitt was born in Elora, Ontario but she is the daughter of Welsh and Pakistani immigrants, speaks Hindi and Urdu, skydives, surfs, trained as a pro wrestler in the WWE and is married to Jessie Pavelka (has anybody seen any of his films?)

Sitara's religious beliefs are none of my business but she does play a Muslim on TV so that's worth something.

While Sitara does not exactly fit the mold, at 28 she is relatively young but she more than makes up for it in hawt! As far as being an inspiration for teenage girls, who knows but my teenage sons found her inspiring in her role as co-host of the game show You Bet Your Ass.

Please Prime Minister Harper, do the right thing and appoint Sitara Hewitt as our next Governor General.

Syncro

Justin Trudeau Weighs in on Political Principles

2010-03-02T14:01:00.004-07:00

With the Olympics now a memory Canada returns to our other national sport, politics. With the battle now rejoined it appears that the Liberal Party of Canada is pulling out the big guns to fire the opening salvos. It began with Iffy's op-ed piece in the Grope and Flail....the one he wrote during the gold medal game and is now followed by this stellar bit from the crown prince of the LPC. Justin Trudeau.

Justin awkwardly opens here:

Even though it makes my job as a member of the Official Opposition a little easier, I am genuinely disappointed that this Conservative government didn’t hold true to the principles that brought it to power.

And I’m not even talking about their abject failure to be fiscally responsible or their enthusiasm for patronage and pork. I’m referring to the basic premise of the old Reform Party, the call for a government that is open, accountable, and respectful of democratic values and the rights of its citizens.

Who would have thought that the brilliance that sprang from the loins of the great Pierre Elliot Trudeau would one day bemoan the passing of Preston Manning's Reform Party. Of course it gets better. Justin further elucidates:

Instead, over the past four years, Stephen Harper has carefully nurtured and encouraged a level of cynicism about politics and politicians heretofore unseen in Canada. Instead of championing the conservative principle of less government, he made people believe less in government.

Ummm....Justin....simple folk like myself don't believe in government intervention, so it follows that less is best. PM Harper did not create this belief in me, your dad did. Meanwhile JT further hacks his way through this piece:

He started by selling us policies that were simple and catchy, but had little real impact (think GST cuts instead of income-tax cuts, or $100 child-care cheques instead of actual child-care spaces). Add to that his propensity to launch vicious personal attacks on anyone – politician or citizen – with the temerity to disagree with them, and his tried and true Bush-era tactic of loudly repeating semi-truths and falsehoods often enough for them to take hold, and it’s no wonder that a weary populace has been turning away from the goings-on in Ottawa.

He becomes a scary them, followed by the obligatory Bush/Harper bash and closes with a wondering, wailing, warble about the tragedy of it all. Justin does manage to finish with a flourish though:

The fact that Stephen Harper didn't anticipate the strength of the prorogation outrage is proof that he overestimated the effectiveness of his campaign of induced cynicism. And, yet again, underestimated Canadians' faith in our democracy. Because for all the undeniable short-term partisan advantages of wedge issues, attack ads, and the politics of division, Canadians resist because we know that we deserve better.

We are a people of differences, in languages, religions, backgrounds, histories, cultures, and colours, but we are a people bound together by values that run deeper. We are open, compassionate, and generous. We seek justice, liberty, and opportunities for all. But above everything, we respect each other, and demand that respect in return.

And that’s why Stephen Harper’s strategies of secrecy, small-mindedness, and cynicism will ultimately fail, because simply put: Canadians will never trust a government that does not trust Canadians.

Listen up kid. My political cynicism began with your father. When you speak of wedge politics you seem to forget that dear dead dad perfected the game. When you speak of respect you fail to recognize that real respect is earned not demanded and when you speak of trust you obviously overlook the brown envelopes crammed with our money that found their way into LPC coffers.

Finally a couple of quotes from a well known, even revered, Canadian politician of yore:

“If I found in my own ranks that a certain number of guys wanted to cut my throat, I'd make sure that I cut their throats first.”

and

“Power only tires those who don't exercise it.”

Three guesses who's quoted.

Syncro

Team Canada As Sydney Crosby's Muse?

2010-02-23T18:55:00.004-07:00

So I'm watching tonight's Canada/Germany hockey game and Rick Nash busts in, splitting the defense and attacking the net, drawing a penalty SHOT.

With Canada leading 4-0 coach Babcock surmises that at this critical juncture what we really need is to let the media designated star pull a little razzle dazzle.

So he appoints Sid the Kid to take the shot.....which he of course misses.

Nice.

Syncro

Heather Mallick Mounts the Pissy Podium

2010-02-15T09:58:00.004-07:00

Perpetual whiner Heather Mallick is once again embarrassed to be Canadian. In a rambling ode to manic depression Heather hits all the lefty talking points.

Watch and learn, Brits. In 2012 you'll be like us: curled up like a shrimp on the couch, screaming as your prime minister – whoever he may be at that point – embarrasses you in public at the opening of the Olympic games.

Whenever Stephen Harper's big boxy grey-lidded head appeared on screen, with its wet smile (note on his hand: Try to grin like normal human), I would rant at anyone within hearing, ie, no one. "He's Bush with a mean streak, he's a Slytherin, we only gave him a minority government in a prolonged fit of pique." (Then I'd say it in French, out of bilingual idealism.)

Nice job Heather, a Gollum reference, a George Bush reference, a Sarah Palin reference, a Harry Potter reference a Natural Governing Party reference and a official bilingualism reference. But tell us how you really feel.

In Canada, we normally we have a House of Commons where our MPs vent on our behalf, but since Harper prorogued parliament (governing is so much more efficient without it, as one of his ministers put it) with the permission of the governor-general, we have nowhere else to go but the sofa.

Prorougation induced depression and poor editing...Good grief. Naturally it gets weirder.

For Canadians, the opening ceremonies in Vancouver on Friday were like watching your dad get drunk at a party. You love the guy, but my God, he isn't going to dance. In front of everyone. Look, he's taking off his jacket. As I live and die, what is he wearing? Awww, I love him. And so on.

The event gave the impression that Canadians spent their time posing on pointy mountains, paddling navy blue lakes and staring at evergreens (anti-deciduous to an extent that verged on the racist, I say), surrounded by snow snow snow, more snow than air. And we honour the wisdom of our aboriginal peoples, whose land we, well, stole but they have forgiven us and dance at our Olympic ceremonies.

In reality, most of us are frighteningly inert, the water on the reserves where our poverty-stricken native Canadians live is undrinkable, British Columbia trees are being killed en masse by the mountain pine beetle unleashed by climate change, and the snow is brown and crusty on the curbs of the cities near the US border where most of us live.

Yikes! Daddy issues, batshit crazy racism reference, colonialism, tokenism, aboriginal poverty, global warming and anti-Americanism. Heather is in fine form, peaking at just the right time. She goes on to critique the opening ceremonies and then returns to her favorite topic...her depression.

It's her updated depressing rendition of her classic Both Sides Now ("I really don't know clouds/love/life at all") which I always call I Hate Myself and Want to Die. You'll remember the song from Love Actually when Emma Thompson had just learned that Alan Rickman had been unfaithful. She spent the song in the marital bedroom dazedly straightening out a quilt.

I spent it sobbing. Thanks, Olympic organisers!

Classic Mallick. A true gold medal performance.

Syncro

Rick Mercer Contemplates Felatio

2010-01-29T18:33:00.003-07:00

Having somehow missed out on the latest senate appointments, television personality Rick Mercer tweeted out to his peeps with a call for suggestions on whom one can blow for a senate seat.

Two things came to mind:

Rhetorical...right?

and

You haven't been blowing the wrong guys ...have you?

Syncro

Warren Kinsella and Transferable Skills

2010-01-28T17:59:00.002-07:00

As a former employment councilor I am a proponent of skills transferability. That is to say, transferring the skills one learns in a particular job to another, often divergent position.

A lowly paperboy who learns the value of accounting and the rewards associated with consistency can use fiscal prudence and personal perseverance all his life. The greenest roughneck can learn the importance of organization and the pride of professionalism, skills that are in demand always.

That is why I was pleased to see this missive from Warren Kinsella.

Warren wittingly wonders about the impact of urinal advertising by the Government of Canada. The pithy part involves "tools".

Not only does this display a keen sense of bathroom diligence it marks a synthesis of skills.

Warren appears to have combined bathroom monitor with restaurant critic to define his own niche.

Bathroom Advertising Critic.

Now if that isn't skills transfer nothing is.

Syncro

Live Blogging State of the Union Address or Speech 347

2010-01-27T19:12:00.004-07:00

I decided to try my hand at live blogging tonight partly inspired by this drinking game courtesy of The Huffington Post

The regular script is my objective interpretation of POTUS , the italisized script my own voice.

7:14 Barry's on !!

7:15 Things were really shitty when I took over, I'm here now and the worst has passed

7:16 First mention of change....first shot of the night!

7:17 So far the TOTUS is performing brilliantly.

7:19 Biden can't seem to get with the clapping program....another shot

7:21 Bad Bankers...standing O

7:22 Barry channels Ronald Reagan. Tax cuts

7:24 Wha?...Tax cuts led to 2 million jobs...firemen, teachers, cops....there is so much wrong with this that I'm gonna take three shots

7:27 30 billion for jobs Yay!!!!

7:28 Tax cuts for small business, big business, funny business etc...

7:30 First mention of green jobs...another shot!

7:32 Were #1...Were #1...

7:35 I'm serious now...banks bad....but banks are good...something something..cancer...clean energy....another shot....climategate...CLIMATEGATE....nuclear energy...NUCLEAR ENERGY....offshore oil drilling...WTF OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING.....

7:38 I must be drunk already

7:40 Maybe not...free trade that sounds like protectionism...that's better.

7:42 Race for the Top or No Child Left Behind......same thing.....another shot

7:43 Free University....crack the keg!!!!!!

7:45 Second mortgage and Healthcare reform....no sweat....refinance silly!!

7:48 Michelle is tackling fat kids...thanks Honey

7:49 We'll reduce the deficit by 1 trillion over twenty years.....time to drink again

7:50 Healthcare reform alone will not reduce the deficit...drinking time again

7:51 George Bush you asshole...unpaid wars......

7:52 Spending freeze....and don't make me call Vito!

7:55 Arcane shit...time to drink

7:57 George Bush you colossal asshole

8:00 We are the first WhiteHouse that twitters!

8:01 No more foreign money for election campaigns....just to bankroll government operations

8:03 Play politics nice please....pretty please

8:05 I screwed up the super majority so you Republicans are on the hook now too.

8:06 911...defence and hope...three shots

8:07 Troop surge Afstan plus the Arabs love us!

8:08 I won the war in Iraq in only a year....drinks all around!!

8:10 Michelle and Joe are on the military family file....god help them

8:11 North Korea and Iran....consequences......oooohhhhh!!

8:12 muslims..climate change...haiti....afstan girls...freedom...just take a shot when you want

8:15 Gay marines...equal pay...oops lost the feed..grab a drink

8:19 Cynicism, dissapointment....Change You can Believe In....don't blame it on me..it's you dummies that don't get how smart I am

8:21 Haiti twice and USA...USA....Crack another bottle

Syncro

Anti-Prorogation's Professional Protesters

2010-01-20T19:13:00.003-07:00

The CBC breathlessly reported on 35 anti-prorogation protesters that greeted Prime Minister Harper in Toronto yesterday. While the small number of protesters was notable what was even more interesting is the identity of key organizers. An excerpt:

Canada's convalescing economy may have topped Prime Minister Stephen Harper's agenda Wednesday, but anti-prorogation anger ended up crashing his Toronto road show.

About 35 protesters, ranging from students to seniors, picketed Harper's afternoon visit to the C.D. Howe Institute, chanting "Stop the prorogation, listen to the nation!"

It's just a taste of what's to come on Saturday, when thousands are expected to gather at rallies across Canada to protest the shutdown of Parliament, said Walied Khogali, who helped organize the demonstration.

"We just want to send a clear message that we are watching and we do care, and our MPs are accountable to us, not to any specific political party or to any elite," said the 25-year-old university student. "We want them back to work."

Wednesday's protest, which included antiwar demonstrators and those opposing Canadian terror suspect Omar Khadr's detention at Guantanamo Bay, was confined to the sidewalk opposite the institute's office until police shut down the busy downtown street.

Make note of the "Why are we Paying You?" protest sign, it becomes relevant later.

I thought I recognized Mr. Khogali's name and sure enough he has quite a google footprint. My favorite find is this image recording the Canadian Students Federation Day of Action.

The photo caption reads:

Walied Khogali, former president of the University of Toronto at Mississauga Students' Union, shouts profanities at Greg McBride, 4th year cognitive science and political science student at the University of Toronto, who carried a sign saying "Don't ask others to pay for your schooling.

It seems professional protester Walied Khogali was offended by the notion that he should have to pay for his own education. Which leads me to wonder what the canadian taxpayer is subsidizing his education for?

Of course this is only one of Mr. Khogali's many accomplishments. It seems he has published opinions on CRTC liscencing of Al-Jezera English in various lefty publications including this gem.

Walied is also a minor celebrity at the CBC, giving an on air interview on the eve of Obama's inaugeration. It seems Walied even made time to campaign for the big O in West Virginia.

And finally, for those of you who do facebook, I encourage you to check out Mr. Khogali's postings entittled: Stop Jason Kenny from using our taxes to discriminate.

It's good to know the Anti-prorougation forces are non-partisan and grassroots.

Syncro

Ex MSM Producer Nails It

2010-01-04T02:10:00.004-07:00

As my profile indicates I'm no fan of the MSM. That said, I kinda like this fella's way of thinking.

At the end of the year it’s traditional to look back at what occurred during the past twelve months and pick out the highs and lows. Most years there are a few examples of each. 2009, however, has proved to be one of the most dismal years for news and current affairs in Canada ever. I can’t think of a worse period in my lifetime.

O.K. ...we don't have to be that morose...do we?

Everybody has already noted the disaster that is the new National at CBC: thin gruel masquerading as news, the worst reporting staff in CBC Television history, the inability to fill sixty minutes with relevant stories, and this doesn’t even refer to the ludicrous and totally unmotivated standing around to read the news and do interviews.

I hear you brother.

News has been, and still is, one of the best ways to build an audience for your entire schedule. Hello, Dick, is the CBC still the CBC without Little Mosque on the Prairie and Being Erica? Is the CBC still the CBC without The National and The Fifth Estate?

What about Hockey Night in Canada?...er..um..scratch that last thought...

Over at CTV and Global the news is not much better. The bulwarks of “Capitalist Broadcasting” are coming to the government cap-in-hand begging for money in the form of cable and satellite fees.

This is Canada.

CTV and Global news do a much better job of appealing to Canadians than CBC News does. For proof of this I only have to point out that both get over a million viewers regularly while CBC has trouble reaching half-a-million. Both are better produced and slicker than CBC’s effort but there is little room for celebration.

Whaa..no party?

In the U.S. we have witnessed the disintegration of the CNN audience with the odious Fox News being the main recipient of new viewers.

So your saying the viewers went to Fox News based on smell?

Sensationalism is winning and stories like Copenhagen are losing. Worse still the all news folks are challenging each other to see who can distort or get the facts more wrong.

Holy fuck batman....did you just say Copenhagen lost out to sensationalism? More wrong????

That's it then.

Keep in mind that this person claims to have been a tv producer.

Syncro

The Groundswell Senses a Paul Wells

2010-01-03T21:43:00.008-07:00

There is a disturbance in the force.

Putting aside Wells pompous characterization of my blog, I'd like to highlight what amounts to a contradiction in LOGIC, which ultimately says more about the messenger and HIS MEDIUM than any review of my lowly opinion:

(read the comments)

This shit writes itself.

Update: It seems Paul Wells has responded to liblogger Far and Wide with a deft kick to the rhetorical nuts. For an encore he slags Dipper Accidental Deliberations.

I love cat fights.

Upperdate: Somebody claiming to be inkless has posted this on the Macleans thread:

A note on prominence, for the small number of readers who may be curious.
Wordpress blog stats tell me that on Sunday the Maclean's website sent 1,600 readers to the Far and Wide blog, which sent 27 readers to the Maclean's website in return.

I was surprised that my use of the term "not terribly prominent" would seem more important than the argument I was trying to endorse by linking to it, to the author of the very blog in question. But I nonetheless apologize for using the term. I do not like it when I choose words that become an obstacle to my intended meaning. What I was trying to do was make that blog more prominent because I thought its author had made an important point well. I'm sorry I didn't make that clear.

Syncro

Choosing words can be a real bitch, especially for the unwordy.

Paul Wells Senses a Groundswell

2010-01-03T17:10:00.003-07:00

This from Paul Wells at Macleans:

…ominous rumbling. Note that one post on a not-terribly-prominent blog draws nearly a dozen comments of support within six hours on a holiday Sunday.

Now, however, the author will face some heat from fellow Grits for “airing our dirty laundry in public,” i.e. “interrupting everyone’s nap.”

(read the comments on the second link)

Syncro

Elly May Weighs in on Prorogation

2010-01-01T09:09:00.004-07:00

This from the Toronto Star.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May is urging Canadians to "kick and scream" in protest against Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to shut down Parliament for the next two months.

Rumor has it that if Prime Minister Harper refuses to reconvene Parliament according to Elly's timetable she is fully prepared to escalate her protest to it's logical conclusion.

Tactics are said to include: stomping her feet, holding her breathe until she passes out, laying down in the aisle at Wal-Mart while doing all of the above, thrashing her room, refusing to eat her peas, screaming "I HATE YOU" repeatedly and finally, dating a greasy biker.

Enjoy your date Elly.

Syncro

p.s. Happy New Year!

Can Obama Save the World?...A CBC/BBC Documentary

2009-12-14T14:38:00.005-07:00

I was surfing around today and came across this on Mothercorps website. This from the article:

America is locked in a battle between an army of climate campaigners and an army that opposes them. Can Obama Save the Planet? sets the stage for President Obama's much anticipated appearance at the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen by questioning how his dream of leading the world in the battle against climate change resonates with Americans.

This got me to thinking....didn't Obama already save the world? I sniffed around a bit on the net and sure enough I found the exact date that Barry saved mankind. It was June 3rd 2008 when the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee released the text of this speech.

The relevant bit:

Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.

In light of this knowledge I think I'm gonna take a pass on tonights documentary for the same reason I have never watched James Cameron's Titanic. The boat sinks.

Maybe that's a bad analogy.....

Syncro

Mole sought in release of e-mails designed to sabotage summit (Calgary Herald, 13 Dec 2009, Page A3)

2009-12-13T18:25:00.002-07:00

I heard about this article this morning while reading a comment thread at Small Dead Animals. Unfortunately the commenter couldn't provide a link, so I went searching. As it turns out I had to sign up for a 21 day trial to get access to the piece but here it is.

For those of you who may not recognize the significance of this piece please let me explain. Lance Levsen (mentioned in the article) is a regular contributor at SDA. Lance produced an in-depth analysis into the CRU email hacking/whistle blower controversy a number of days ago which appeared on SDA.

A major theme in the climate alarmists denunciation of the CRU email leaks has been the illegality of the purported hacking. Lance's work goes a long way to refuting this claim and in fact suggests that a disaffected insider may well have released the data.

This is a significant point as motive has become a lynchpin in the AGW debate.

In a larger sense Lance's work is important in that the debate over AGW and the policies surrounding it has been driven by the internet, the bloggers. I'm working on a piece that takes a wider view of this and will post later.

BTW...be sure to read the comments...you'll either laugh or cry.

Syncro

Mole sought in release of e-mails designed to sabotage summit
ROBERT MENDICK
Calgary Herald
13 Dec 2009

Police are hunting a possible mole placed inside the University of East Anglia who may have leaked thousands of e-mails to sabotage the Copenhagen climate change summit. A source close to the university’s Climatic Research Unit has disclosed that...read more...

Elizabeth May Sets her Slacks on Fire on Question Period

2009-12-13T11:28:00.005-07:00

Green Party leader, former Sierra Club director and all around whack job Elizabeth May was at her moonbatty best this morning on Question Period. While she didn't really set her pants on fire she might as well have. (if you can't stomach the whole thing run the clip from 5:45 on)

Weighing in from Copenhagen Ms. May described yesterdays demonstrations as a ..."support march"........"a positive and joyful event....." and further declared that, "the mood was very celebratory". May also claimed that Danish police had estimated the size of the demonstration/celebration at 100,000 people.

Well that all sounds ducky except I had read this piece from the BBC prior to viewing the Question Period clip.

Climate change groups have criticised Danish police for using heavy-handed tactics after they detained 968 people at a rally near the Copenhagen summit.

Mel Evans from Climate Justice Action told the BBC protesters were held for hours in freezing conditions without medical attention, water or toilets.

Well that doesn't sound positive or joyful. What about the celebrations?

The protest was mainly peaceful, but some protesters threw bricks and smashed windows in the city centre, while others set off fireworks.

Large numbers of mainly young people were later detained. TV pictures showed the police putting the demonstrators in seated lines on the street with their hands tied behind their backs. They were later removed on buses.

Ms Evans said the actions of the police were appalling.

"People were very scared and they were held for about four hours on the ground. They weren't able to have any medical attention, any water, and weren't allowed to have any toilet facilities," she told BBC Five Live.

"People were there in freezing conditions urinating on themselves and being held in lines like, essentially like animals."

Not really my kind of celebration but I guess in a crowd of 100,000 a thousand bad apples could happen. Danish police did say it was 100,000 people....right Liz?

Police said about 30,000 people took part in Saturday's demonstration in the Danish capital, although organisers put the number at 100,000.

So Jane and Liz initially downplay the number of arrests citing 40-50 when the actual number was around a thousand. Liz then typifies the event as a 100,000 strong love in, when it appears to have been anything but, in both size and spirit.

Is it any wonder that I'm a tad cynical when Lizzie dodges a legitimate question on the financial costs of a Copenhagen treaty by referring to a potential 9 meter seal level rises in Canada.

Liz yer full of shit.

Syncro

On Infrequent Blogging

2009-12-12T09:21:00.005-07:00

Hi All. As you may have noticed blogging around here has been practically non-existent. Let me explain.

As you may or may not know I operate an exterior finishing contracting business with two of my sons an adopted nephew (by him) and an adopted newf (by me). They range in age from 17-26 and nearly every one of them can be an insufferable pain in the ass.

That said, I;m proud of them all and here's why.

The recession coupled with a mid season hail storm dictated that the bulk of the contracts we undertook this year required extensive travel. We spent the first half of 09 living out of suitcases in shitty motels to keep the expenses down. In June we managed to acquire a fifth wheel trailer that met our needs and by the start of November the difference in living expenses had paid for the trailer.

Along the way we adjusted our truck, trailer and equipment configurations numerous times to meet the logistical challenges of contracting on the road. This included five different trucks and three different trailers in various combinations. Of course these transitions required installation or removal of hitches, wiring, insurance and plates, equipment racks, truck caps, scaffolding, hand tools and fasteners.....etc.

The upside is we came home with a modernized, adaptable and efficient operation.

On the personal side we have or are dealing with two deaths, one cancer diagnosis and two major surgeries within our immediate extended families. In short it has been one really long year.

It's been two weeks now since we made it home and I for one have welcomed the Gore effect weather as it has provided a legitimate excuse for not leaving the house. That being the case I've had the opportunity to sleep, read and catch up on the blogosphere .

Which brings me to the point of this entry. While blogging frequency may be important to some it is not the be all and end all of all. Some of us live a conservative lifestyle and some of us look to make a living pontificating about same. Yet others do both.

The trick is spotting the differences.

Syncro

Is CTV Playing a Shell Game with the News?

2009-10-11T18:52:00.007-06:00

I noticed something odd that got me thinking about shell games and political agendas.

I had some time today to indulge in a little political web surfing and discovered that there are different tracks and different narratives within the CTV website.

Let me explain.

I connected to the CTV website to watch the Oct. 11 edition of Question Period as follows:

CTV main page

News

Question Period

Watch Now (on the QP icon)

The above screenshot is the end product, pay special attention to the QP icon on the left and the accompanying text.

Watch Now

Watch the latest episode of Question Period

Now click the link and you get this.

Interesting in as much as this is footage from LAST JULY!

Now....for something different....try this route.

CTV Main page

News

Politics

Watch Now (on the QP Icon)

Did you notice the differences?

Pay attention to the script beside the QP icon.

Policy and Polls: Political fortunes shift on Parliament Hill

Which links to this

Please note that both video links are dated October 11, 2009.

So, back to the shell game and more importantly......Can you find the pea?

Syncro

When YoYo Ma Plays Along......

2009-10-04T00:08:00.009-06:00

In a bit of political theatre the likes we havn't seen since Bill Clinton saxed off on Letterman, Stephen Harper tore down the house in Ottawa in ways that were both surprising and expected.

Labeled a policy wonk and a closed man with a hidden agenda Stephen Harper is proving his critics wrong.

In one deft, self deprecating, brilliant move, he has closed the humanity gap and cornered both Jack and Iffy.

That's the man I want running the show.

Syncro

On Neanderthals, Cannibalism, Nannies and Hope and Change

2009-05-17T10:52:00.003-06:00

Hi all. I've been working on the road again and as such have missed a lot of the fun in the blogs lately. That being the case I thought I might put together a convoluted compendium of recent developments.

I should probably preface this bit by stating as a self identified knuckle dragging, mouth breathing, conservative supporting, Neanderthal I found this most disturbing.

One of science's most puzzling mysteries - the disappearance of the Neanderthals - may have been solved. Modern humans ate them, says a leading fossil expert.

The controversial suggestion follows publication of a study in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences about a Neanderthal jawbone apparently butchered by modern humans. Now the leader of the research team says he believes the flesh had been eaten by humans, while its teeth may have been used to make a necklace.

It seems my ancestors may have been eaten by a more progressive hominid.....Which got me thinking about the kinds of social cannibalism that my Liberal hominid cousins partake in like this:

OTTAWA -- She is young, single and fond of stiletto heels and figure-hugging pencil skirts - not what you'd expect to see on someone who sits in the House of Commons.

At 35, Ruby Dhalla has represented Brampton-Springdale, a riding just west of Toronto, for the Liberals since 2004, and has been intelligent, articulate and aggressive in her questioning of the government.

But political Ottawa is cliquey and still very much an old boys' club, so like single and attractive MPs who have gone before her - from Belinda Stronach to, in her day, Sheila Copps - Ms. Dhalla (or Dr. Dhalla, as the chiropractor prefers to be called) has been a target of gossip and derision.

Now, of course, she is the target of something much more serious - allegations that she underpaid, overworked and mistreated women she had hired to care for her 62-year-old mother, Tavinder. This week, the women, immigrants from the Philippines, gave an emotional account of that treatment before a Commons committee, as did Ms. Dhalla.

She has put a brave face on her predicament, saying that support from her caucus leadership has been important. But party leader Michael Ignatieff has accepted her resignation as youth and multiculturalism critic, pending the outcome of the inquiry, and Ms. Dhalla - the first Sikh woman elected to the Commons - doesn't know if she will get the job back.

Extremely ambitious, she flirted with running for the leadership when Stéphane Dion resigned after the election last fall. But now there are whispers about her hazy future and suggestions that support from inside Mr. Ignatieff's office has not been as strong as it could be.

Insiders say some of her caucus colleagues don't like the fact that she has portrayed herself as a victim in the controversy, and even friends who are drawn to her warmth and chutzpah say she can suck the oxygen out of a room. It didn't help that, at the Liberal convention held in Vancouver two weeks ago, she was spotted looking like something out of a Bollywood movie as she was whisked away from her hotel in a white stretch limo.

The cannibalism of Jane, The MSM, Ruby, The LPC as a whole and of course the leader Hannibal Lectern is really something to behold. It all makes this Neanderthal nervous as hell and more than a little leery of fangy Liberals.

Which brings me to this:

OTTAWA — The Ignatieff Liberals are upping the ante, sniffing around for a campaign plane, making employment insurance the hot issue and sending letters encouraging Liberals and “decent Canadians everywhere” to get to work to fight the Harperites.

“We are headed into a fight,” new party president Alf Apps wrote to supporters yesterday. “As summer approaches, we need to be ready.”

He wants “decent Canadians” to talk to their friends on “blogs” and “over coffee” about “real hope” and “positive change.” He also referred to the Tory negative ads, saying “Stephen Harper has already begun his attack with some nasty and petty shots at our leader.”

The image of Liberals dropping their oven mitts and snuffling around for a "hot issue" over coffee and summer bar-b-ques, preparing to fight for "real hope and positive change" all sounds like a recipe this Neanderthal wants no part of.

I guess it could be worse...I could be a Neanderthal nanny.

Syncro

Simply Astonished and Confused...

2009-04-13T18:26:00.006-06:00

S0....I'm watching CTV's Powerplay today and the show closes with "Craig"s Take", a Mercer style rant wherein Craig Oliver weighs in with pithy comment on all things politic.

Today's topic was the heinous treatment of one B. Mulrooney by the current incarnation of the only viable right wing party in this country. I was enthralled!

Craig waxes poetic on the retrospective virtues of said former Prime Minister BM and goes so far as to invoke the ghosts of both John A. and John Diefenbaker. Craig concludes that this generation of conservatives have shamefully abandonded a great leader in Muldoon. The irony is breathtaking.....really.

But the best is yet to come. Craig claims that Harper has moved to distance himself from Muldoon by claiming that Brian doesn't have a membership in the CPC. Muldoon claims that he's a Conservative forever.

Touching.

But here's the kicker.....Craig Oliver credits the "Pundits and the Illuminati" for getting to the bottom of this.

Illuminati?

Hmmmmm................

Craig wouldn't let slip that"professional journo's" play insider baseball? Would he?

Further to that.....Did you happen to notice the absence of audio on the Harper clip? Technical difficulties no doubt.

It almost makes one think that some sort of conspiracy was at hand.

Syncro

The Death of the Detroit Three in Canada

2009-03-12T20:42:00.003-06:00

I think something needs to be pointed out regarding the bailout of the auto sector in Canada.

As I understand it General Motors Canada and the CAW reached an agreement over the weekend that has since been ratified by the union members. The major points of the deal are as follows:

The contract freezes wages until 2012 and suspends cost-of-living adjustments for both wages and pensions. It also reduces paid time off by 40 hours a year, scraps an annual $1,700 bonus and cuts company contributions to union-sponsored programs by a third.

Under the agreement, active workers and retired members under 65 will also contribute $30 a month to their health and other non-wage benefits, while retired members over 65 will contribute $15.

Analysts have variously described the deal as "trivial" and a "wet noodle," and many say it fails to address GM Canada's pension issues.

GM has warned the cost of its pension plan will balloon as the ratio of active to retired workers is expected to grow to five to one by next year once its previously announced plant closures are completed.

However Lewenza challenged the union's critics to provide credible economic evidence that even deeper labour concessions would make any meaningful difference to the future of the auto industry.

So let me critique the finer points...A wage and pension freeze...One week less holidays...no bonus from a dying company...dying members pony up 15-30 bucks a month towards pension costs....Wow!

That should do it! But wait...Chrysler begs to differ:

Mr. LaSorda said Chrysler's Canadian labour costs are $75 (Canadian) an hour per worker – including wages and benefits for both active workers and retirees – and need to be cut by $20 an hour to be competitive with American and foreign car makers in the United States.

He said a cost-cutting agreement that the CAW struck with General Motors of Canada Ltd. – which GM's workers approved last night with 87 per cent in favour – is not sufficient for Chrysler.

The CAW typically negotiates a deal with one of the Detroit-based companies, and then reaches similar agreements with the others, a process known as pattern bargaining.

“The current agreement with GM is unacceptable to us, and we have to break the pattern.” Mr. LaSorda said.

There seems to be a notable dissonance betwixt GM, Chrysler and the CAW
I wondered about this and the obvious answer is that this is a set up.

Pattern bargaining is apparently dead and I suggest the easy peasy GM-CAW deal is a precursor to the Detroit three ceasing operations in Canada.

I hope it turns out differently, but I doubt it.

Syncro

My New BFF

2009-02-15T01:42:00.003-07:00

Hi all. The forces and demands of life have dictated that I had no time for frivolous blogging bullshit. That said...I have time now.

I would like to take this time to introduce my BFF, whom I only met in cyberspace this very night.The instant I read The Highwayman I was enthralled.

With righteous quotes like this:

Are these assholes batshit crazy, or what? And, yet, we have every conservative and religious element in North America just panting after these scum! Wake the fuck up, people! You're just trash to these elitists!

They invade our country, and then try and tell us how we should think and talk and act...

I don't fucking think so!

And intellectual discourse like this:

i'd be inclined to agree, the way the world's going! However, I know that this is only a temporary state, while the Lord completes His intercessory duties in the heavenly sanctuary... a rite typified by the ancient high priest of Old Testament times.

Anyway, how in the bloody hell could one ever contemplate enjoying like in THIS world? When you have brain-dead servants of Satan running things? Pseudo-Christian people that think that violence is the only way to solve things are running society into the ground, and they seem to forget (conveniently) that the religion of the man they PRETEND to serve does not condone violence!

Just a small example of what racist bigotry and gross hate-mongering exists in the world, can be found here. These sites are becoming more and more proliferate as time goes on, under the leadership of warmongering presidents and prime ministers. The reason being that most people are too fucking lazy to examine the issues with any kind of diligence, and prefer to let the elitists tell them what is right and wrong. A nation of back-slidden slaves and self-serving twits are the progeny of hard-working, tough imigrants that formed and shaped this land.

Sure... go ahead and live your life to it's fullest... and trample over everyone and anyone that gets in the way of your grasping, self-satisfying quest for satiation. Mow down minorities and anyone else that dares to think differently than yourself, because YOURS is the only TRUE way!

Start up a blog, and preach your hate-mongering to the lower class of society that ever seeks to find some excuse to practice their belligerent ways, and to do what comes naturally for them and the lower species.

Rest assured, though, that I and my ilk will ALWAYS be there to greet you.

Now I know I've been off the satire circuit for a bit but with pro's like this out there......My future don't look so good.

Syncro

Bye Bye Canadian Pride....

2008-12-01T20:00:00.002-07:00

With all due respect to Don Mclean... In light of the recent devoplement regarding the Canadian parliament I thought a Canadian version of American pie was in order.

This is it:

A long long time ago
I can still remeber
How the pollies used to make me smile...
and if I knew I had a chance
to make those sleazy weasels dance
and maybe they'd be silent for awhile

and global warming made me shiver
with every paper I deliver
bad news on the dorstep
I couldnt take one more step
I can't rember if I cried
when I read about the apartiad
but something grabed me deep inside
"The Day the Union Died".

Bye bye Canadian Pride
Got the lefties pull'in shifties cause the money run dry
The good ol boys were behind the lie
Singin' this will be the day of Progri
This will be the day of Progri...

Did you write the book of pro?
And do you have faith in hippie love
Did Barak Obama tell you so?
Now did you believe The Daily Show
Can Gilles Duceppe run the show?
And can you screw me real slow

Well I know you're a whore for power things
cause I heard you yapping in the wings
Ya both kicked out you're clues
Man I dig the loser cues
I was a lonely right wing out of luck
But I knew I was really fuckked
The day the union died.
I STARTED SINGING

( chorus)

Syncro

Obamalot and other Fantasies

2008-11-08T17:39:00.003-07:00

Pollsters and headline writers piss me off. The former have become a force for shaping opinion rather than measuring it and the latter are totally devoid of any sense of irony. Case in point this piece of crap from Angus Reid, Environics and the Vancouver Sun.

Canada swooned over president-elect Obama

Nation was intellectually, emotionally engaged in Tuesday's U.S. election, pollster says

I call bullshit. If the nation was intellectually engaged in the US election some questions would have been raised about "Hope" as a policy statement.

I hope to marry a rich supermodel who will bring me beers and BLT's on demand while I watch NASCAR races but I don't think it's gonna happen. You see, the emotional or aspirational part of myself wishes this would happen but the intellectual bits clue me into the fact that the above scenario is highly unlikely.

Having accepted reality in my personal life, I seek the same in the greater world. Then I run across piffle like this:

"Canadians were not only intellectually engaged by the U.S. election but also emotionally engaged," Michael Adams, president of the polling and social research firm Environics, said.

And most of us, according to polls, got the ending we wanted Tuesday night: victory for the cerebral and cool Obama whose centrist, socially-liberal policies are closer to the attitudes that define Canada's political culture.

"Here we are a multicultural country with cities like Vancouver and Toronto which will soon have a majority of minorities -- and so Obama kind of looks like the direction in which we are going," Adams said.

"But the major thing is that he's not George W. Bush."

Bush derangement syndrome aside, did Environics not poll in the Canadian election three weeks ago? Are they not aware that the natural governing party were wiped out in all but the decayed centers of our largest cities and Newfoundland. Danny Millions did his best on the rock and was aided and abbetted by the fact that most of the Newfs worth their weight in salt are out west working. As far as the cores of our crapulent cities go...it appears the leftards have created ethnic, cultural and moral ghetto's with the sole purpose of hanging on to power. Guess what, it isn't working. Canada, if anything, moved slightly to the right in this last election despite the best efforts of the MSM to portray Harper as a Bush lackey. As a matter of fact the Conservative Party of Canada made inroads in the very ethnic communities that the Liberals have cultivated. Instead of hearing the story of incremental conservatism we get this garbage:

And this year we swooned over Obama despite warnings from conservative Canadian pundits about his protectionist tendencies.

Simon Fraser University historian Michael Fellman said that he doesn't expect that the Obama administration will reopen free trade with Canada.

And, in any event, Canada's interest in American politics goes far beyond the minutiae of bilateral trade provisions, he said.

The minutia of bilateral trade provisions? Are you fucking kidding me? Almost 80% of Canada's GDP is Dependant on trade with the U.S. and this qualifies as minutia. Oh yea...the hope and change meme is really the important bit isn't it?

Obama's win has given Canadians -- as much as Americans -- a reason to be optimistic about the future, he said.

"Circumstances have given meaning to what he means by change," Fellman said.

"The economic crisis has made everybody realize that there has to be more regulation, that wildfire capitalism is dreadful. The argument that government is the problem is as dead as a doornail."

Pollster Marzolini said that Canadians have also felt closer to the Democrats than the Republicans because of the party's social conservatism.

"Religion doesn't play the same role here that it does south of the border," Marzolini said. He recalled how fears that Stockwell Day believed in creationism undermined his appeal as leader of the Canadian Alliance during the 2000 election.

What? No mention of the Clinton administration's role in the sub-prime meltdown? The pressure applied to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to front loans to people who in all likelihood could not make the payments? Granted the masters of the universe (see The Vanity of the Bonfires) packaged these mortgages into financial 'instruments" for the sole purpose of padding their wallets and pulled it off by promising fat returns to greedy baby boomer investors. The end result was a whole shitload of imaginary money disappearing. Go figure.

More interesting is pollster Marzolini, If I remember correctly this is the man who recently polled for the LPC and failed to get Stephane Dionne off the Green Shaft platform. Good for Canada and bad for Steffy. But I digress, Marziolini postulates that religion is not a factor north of the 49th and then cites Warren Kinsella's hatchet job on Stockwell Day as an example? In case you don't remember, WK went on Canada AM with a Barney the Purple Dinasour to mock Day's religious beliefs, a faith Stockwell apparently shares with the Big O. Go figure once again.

So what did Barry really accomplish? Back to the pollsters:

He managed to take a platform that would suit Canadians, as well as Americans, and give it a lot of excitement and hope and optimism.

Bullshit, that's what Barry accomplished, pure unadulterated bullshit. Excitement , hope and optimism.......no discernible policy, no actual goals...just a cagey appeal to sentiment and emotion.

The pollsters are now trying to shape the post election opinion and the headline writers pretend intellect was part of the process.

Good grief.

Syncro

Tip of The Hat to Warren Kinsella:

For proving my point I doff my Dale Earndheart Jr. #88 cap in respect.

Heather Mallick..... Self Satirist Extrodonairre

2008-11-03T14:55:00.004-07:00

I'm sure many of you've seen the Billy Crystal/Robert De Nero movie Analyse This. You know the one where Crystal plays the unwilling shrink to De Nero's psychopathic mob boss. In the movie De Nero is brilliant as he satirizes every mob character he ever played, he hams it up as an insecure killer who becomes reliant on Crystal to deal with his anxieties and maintain his grip on his underworld empire. In the cinematic world De Nero's performance was a tour de force of self satire. I loved it.

I think I may have found the journalistic equivalent of De Nero's self satire in a recent piece by our very own Heather Mallick.

You may recall that Heather gained international notoriety for a hate filled screed directed at Sarah Palin, her family and republicans in general entitled A Mighty Wind Blows Through Republican Convention. Right wing bloggers reacted with disdain and soon the MSM in the US were on her case. Fox News took up the cause with the corresponding backlash causing the CBC to eventually issue an apology and Heather to decry the viscousness of the reaction to her musings. Rumor has it Heather was called on the carpet and told to reform her ways. Hence the new, self satirical Heather Mallick.

To illustrate how far Heather has come on her artistic journey to the confidence required for self satire I thought a little compare and contrast might be in order. Heather's most recent piece is entitled "Obamaland vs. McCainworld: The Decision".

For the purposes of clarity I'll refer to Heather's journalistic bit as "A Wind Blows" and her satire bit as "Obamaland".

In no particular order here are some of the funnier bits: Oh!!!!...Try to read Heather's italicized nuggets with an affected English accent.....it's much more authentic that way.

A Wind Blows:

Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by this decade's woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently alarmed expression.

Obamaland:

Primed as I am to find marriage intrinsically funny, I still didn't find the charade of the McCain marriage amusing at all. Cindy McCain was a pretty, happy young woman when she made the decision to marry a starchy rage-filled man making up for lost time; she seems to have had a subsequent hellish life that money has done nothing to improve.

She was a thin, peeled white nerve placed precariously behind her stubby husband. I don't know what helped her survive the campaign but I hope her doctors were compassionate with prescriptions.

A Wind Blows:

Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look of the teen mum, the "pramface." Husband Todd looks like a roughneck; Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting. What normal father would want Levi "I'm a fuckin' redneck" Johnson prodding his daughter?

Obamaland:

The campaign was marked by the presence of the young.

College students were mad for Obama. And even babies liked him; they respond to calmness and quiet assurance in adults and they sat placidly in his arms.

It was good to see a candidate who has young children. For that's when an adult is most impatient for improvement in the world, when it's a fixer-upper he might eventually be able to show off to his kids.

A Wind Blows:

I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right.

Obamaland:

The word that stayed in my mind as the campaign dragged on through the collapse of the world's economic structure was "hobo." We're all going to be hobos.

I would imagine myself packing up my bindle and setting out on the road in overalls and a pair of Roots boots. Train whistles, boxcars, hot soup, sleeping under a bridge, misery, fear, scrawny children with bite marks on their faces. A heartless Annie Leibovitz would be our Dorothea Lange.

It didn't matter how secure or insecure we really were during the fall of '08; we watched McCain and Obama fight it out and figured we'd all be Tom Joads pretty soon.

If McCain wins, sooner than that, I bet, and there'll be riots too.

A Wind Blows:

Palin has it all, along with being vicious and profoundly dishonest.

Obamaland:

But I'm glad it's over. It has been a degrading, unedifying spectacle. Besides, voting day means Obama won't again be speaking to tens of thousands of people in Minneapolis or Denver . He'll be home, safer from the one bullet that has so often served to bring an already violent nation to its knees.

It has taken Americans decades to drag themselves back up to a standing position since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. died and there are no words for how heartbreaking it would be if the bullet were used again.

This is how beaten down we have become, that we're grateful when a politician physically survives the campaign. And I'll be grateful not to have to watch John McCain make a fool of himself anymore.

That's classic satirical shit there Heather......I'm impressed and in awe.

Syncro

Why do They Let Idiots on Airplanes?

2008-10-31T13:04:00.004-06:00

So, I'm sitting at the puter surfin the net and listening to my favorite talk/news station when word comes that Canada's premier leftard activist has just made a high level pass over northern Alberta.

Following the flightpath of pioneering leftards like Stephane Dionne and David Suzuki we now have Maude Barlow taking wing in an effort to shut down the oilsands. Unlike Steph and Dave, Maude is taking a different tact. The instrument of destruction is no longer Co2, that's so yesterday......It's the water people!

With skepticism about Anthropic Global Warming increasing amongst the unwashed masses the left is feathering the prop.

Maude Barlow, the recently appointed United Nations Czar of water is slapping her beaver tail to warn the rest of us beavers about the coming doom. Now water is Maude's area of expertise and having toned down her American hating schtick with the rise of the big O, she is properly positioned to chastise big oil.

What all these high flying leftards have never done is set foot on the Muskeg. Think slough with twice the mosquitos and half the charm. That's the bush side of it but Maude's real beef here is the water. Fair enough.

Having spent a good portion of my younger days either in or on the Athabasca, Clearwater and Horse I will point out to Maude that the oil leaks into the rivers naturally. Pitch the Cree in the area call it. Great stuff for patching canoes as explorer Peter Pond discovered in the 1780's.

A viscous tar like substance that literally oozes out of the steep banks along the aforementioned rivers, oilsands or tarsands is literally the lifeblood of the region and in fact a huge contributor to the financial life of this nation.

Maude would shut down all development of this NATURAL resource because some oil might get into the river. If she had bothered to get near the water, rather than jetting over the area, she might have discovered that the oil is, was and will always be a part of the 'natural" environment.

Details like that are hard to see from on high.

I hate pretentious idiots.

Syncro

P.S. Maude if you happen to catch this I recommend you rethink The Lord Of The Rings reference because you're looking and sounding more and more like Gollum each day.

I Was Wrong...My Depth of Shame is Only Surpassed by My Newfound Enthusiasm!!

2008-10-21T18:35:00.003-06:00

I was wrong...horribly wrong!... In prematurely writing Stephane Dionne's political obit I missed the obvious. Although it is true he has relinquished the leadership of the LPC, I did not account for the groundswell of grassroots support this wily politician had in reserve.

In the era of digital democracy nothing is certain and the case for Stephane illustrates the power of the people. An evolving on-line petition aimed at convincing Stephane Dionne to stay on as leader of the LPC is at this very moment gaining momentum.

Canadians from all walks of life are swamping the site to show their support for the little intellectual who would. Directly from the site I've taken the liberty of lifting some of the more poignant pleas.

From Family

555.

Celine Dion

He's my brother!

From the Gay Community

549.

Niel and Bob

You can come over to the gay rights party, it's just a party and BYOB.

From Stoners

538.

The Marijuana Party

Our only hope to have marijuana legal is gone

Meat Eaters

533.

J.C. Reid QC

Stephane Dion is one BIG THANKSGIVING TURKEY & Conservatives are still giving thanks. ARGH!

The young

337.

Larry

.....Can I please have some more Kool Aid please?

Rural Canadians

405.

Celmo Muckridge

Why that speech Mr. Dijon gave on the picture box near made me cry. I swear that is a smrt man and he don't deserve no shuckin and trashin like he done got. Yesiree that man is smrt.

Mothers

598.

Mother Cherniak

Stephane gives my boy a reason to live

Fathers

480.

P.E. Trudeau

A true Liberal intellectueal and he should tap into his Dionmania side.

The Compassionate

310.

Scott Janke

Can't we just let him start over again?

Not so much

307.

D. Legace

Stephane should stay but not as leader. We can find him a spot in the mail room

It's clear to this citizen reporter that a political groundswell is afoot. At the time of this filing nearly one thousand Canadians had weighed in support of Dear leader Dionne.

More as this develops:

Syncro

UPPDATE:

I've just checked the "Stephane is a Leader" site and just as I suspected the tsunami of support for Steph is swelling. As the poll surges towards the millennium mark many more concerned Canadians are speaking out.

More Moms

878.

Dion's Mom

Stephane..did you clean your room like I asked you to?

Co-Workers

848.

John McCallum (again)

Stephane, I drink to your success! Burp!

There have been instances of cyber-vandalism on the site including:

Grumpy old men

790.

David Suzuki

You did it all wrong, you idiot. we need someone else

Grumpier old men

668.

jackass

stop encouraging him...

All in all the fate of a defeated/interim/retired leader is in the balance and an
anxious nation waits.
Syncro

I Come not to Praise Stephane but to Bury Him.

2008-10-19T11:40:00.003-06:00

The backpack toting little intellectual who epitomized the ivory tower arrogance of the LPC is all but politically buried. The funeral will be held tomorrow, in lieu of flowers the Librano family asks that donations be made in his name to The Liebral Party of Canada.

Stephane was a shining example of Liberal political expediency. He first gained national recognition for adopting and championing The Clarity Act on Quebec Separation. In true Liberal form he failed to recognize the true authors of the act, Preston Manning and Stephen Harper.

Stephane was also Environment Minister under Jean Cretien and participated in negotiations around the Koyoto Accord on Greenhouse Gas Emissions. As Environment Minister he spouted many platitudes and did nothing to meet the contract his government signed.

Stephane surprised many when he won the leadership of the LPC in 2006 with a symbolic array of green scarfs and vows to slay the Co2 dragon. This led to his Green Shift Carbon Tax for social welfare programs approach to potential governance. Given the apparent global cooling and increasing global economic uncertainty, Green Shift was seen as taxation without justification. Done deal.

Stephane was pre-deceased by Jason Cherniak, Garth Turner and any semblance of principle within the LPC.

Stephane is politically survived by a bankrupt party, his professorial pals Bob and Iggy, Jane Taber, Craig Oliver, Jim Travers and TorStar (for now), Justin Trudeau, Warren Kinsella and a myriad of socialist Canadians who are entitled to their entitlements.

He will be sadly missed by both large and small C conservatives alike.

Viewing tomorrow @ 2:00 pm EST, internment in academia to follow.

Syncro

The Day After

2008-10-15T16:14:00.004-06:00

Out of respect for Stephane Dionne and all he has done to advance the conservative cause in Canada I have temporarily changed the name of my blog to Stay Stephane Stay.

I'll speak from the heart for a moment and say this: Not since Preston Manning has one man done so much to expose the inadequacies of liberalism. From intellectual superiority through moral and practical turbidity...from the depths of entitlement through the breadth of arrogance...You, Stephane have it all in spades. For these and other qualities I will go on record as advocating for your lifetime appointment as leader of The Liberal Party of Canada. There is no better man for the job. Hang on Steffy....hang on!

That said....I must address my predictions. Sadly some of them were inaccurate. Point by point:

1. So far no word from Warren Kinsella vis a vis his tactical brilliance. It seems he's preoccupied with commentary on the final presidential debate and the untimely passing of Franki Venom. As one of the founders of Canadian punk legend Shit From Hell one can understand how a middle aged punker might be too devastated to toot his own horn.

Result: Indeterminate

2. Jack didn't claim victory but my kitchen table is happy.

Result: 1/2 point

3. I gassed this one. Heddy Fry did in fact retain Vancouver Center and all the junkies quit doing heroin.

Result 0 points

4. I pretty much nailed this one. Garth lost and announced he will be printing a book as well as heading south to give advice to American realtor's. Garth really knows how to pick a nag..doesn't he?

Results 1 point

5. Lizzie lost. The other stuff was just my romantic sense of karma.

Result 3/4 point

6. Nailed this one too the tee.

Result 1 point

7. Of all my predictions this one grieves me the most. I will miss Frodo. The market for unintended satire has crashed with no savior on the horizon. These are dark days indeed. You should really read it all....the part about the Chinese made me weep. Nuff said.

Result 1 1/4 point

8. Stephane came through and earned the tittle of the greatest political strategist the Conservative party never had. His issy fit was short and as passive aggressive as on would expect.

Result 1 point

9. Nailed this one also . Incremental change. Decisive action when you have to.

Result 1 point

10. This one remains to be seen.

Result 0 points

Six and a half out of ten ain't that bad....but there are still balls in the air.

Syncro

p.s. Stay...Stephane ....Sttaaayyyyyy!!!

Update: Someone by the handle of Warren K left a charming although somewhat off topic comment. Thanks for dropping by Mr. K and good luck with your reading lessons.

Election Day Predictions

2008-10-14T14:54:00.002-06:00

Today being the big day I decided to regale you all with some poignant predictions. In no particular order:

1. Regardless of the overall outcome, Warren Kinsella will claim he knew better....many within the LPC will swoon with awe and admiration.

2. Wacko Jacko will claim victory....kitchen tables and main streets around the country will feel appreciated.

3. Hedy Fry will be out moonbatted in Vancouver-Center...The MSM will proclaim this as a breakthrough for the Greens (as opposed to the Red-Greens). None will acknowledge the moonbattery of voting patterns in Vancouver-Center. The influx of heroin addicts to St. Pauls will continue unabated.

4. Garth Turner will lose his seat in Halton. After painful minutes of self introspection he will announce the opening of his MeMeMe Museum. It will honor the memory of digital democracy as well as marketing bi-polar investment advice. Buy Nortel!!!

5. Elizabeth May will lose to Peter Mckay. In a fit of pique Liz will renounce her Canadian citizenship and vow to become an American community organizer in the ACORN/Barry Obama tradition. A disenfranchised, unemployed, recycling technition (bottle collector)will find her overbite enchanting. The seeds of a second Camelot will be sewn.

6. Bob Rae and Michael Ignatief will win their seats although not the one they really desire. Knife sales in Canada will peak October 15/08.

7. Frodo Cherniak will be forever scared from his experience on Mt. Doom. As with his namesake he will quietly fade into oblivion. Those of us on the interweb with a taste for unintended satire will mourn.

8. Stephane Dionne will uncharacteristically collapse into a blathering puddle of recrimination and self pity. Nobody will be surprised.

9. Stephen Harper will accept a strengthened minority mandate and continue with incremental changes. Pragmatism will prevail.

10. The frothing left will despair until we start this process over again in 22 months.

Syncro

disclaimer: The opinions, attitudes and predictions of the author are in no way, shape or form reflective of Syncrodox Sez.

Syncrodox Sez reserves the right to denounce any or all of the above to cover my ass. Thanks Frodo!

Stephane Dionne's Top Ten Excuses

2008-10-11T09:07:00.003-06:00

Stephane Dionne's Top Ten Reasons Why He Couldn't Answer the Question

1. My dog Koyoto...he ate my hanswer.

2. Bob and Higgy de treaten to give me da wedgie hif I say hanything!

3. Hit has never hoccured to me dat I might be Prime Minister.

4. In university I hask de questions!

5. I ave a hard time to ear the music of the hinglesh language....Could you sing da question?

6. Dis question of da heconomy is biased.......what about herconomy?

7. I ave a disability....I ham ard of hunderstanding.

8. Do you tink it's izzy to make sense?

9. Dat's not FAIR!!!!! BUSHARPER....BUSHARPER....BUSHARPER!!!!!

10. I may be dense but Mr. Arper is FAT.....

Cherniak, Turner and Kinsella A Metaphor in the Making?

2008-10-06T21:57:00.005-06:00

During an election that has seen the "coming of age" of the blogosphere we still manage to have our juvenile delinquents, Some by geek, some by cheap and yet others by design.

Design first. He of the war room...the kicker of asses...presides not over the battle field but snipes at the knaves...Cheap....snipes randomly and clings to the Esther of Shaye...and he of the geek...the geek lives in oblivion to fight another day!

Syncro

News From The North Updated, Crosslinked, Userfriendly and Generally Asinine

2008-07-05T21:47:00.003-06:00

Hi All!

Hot on the heels of my recent foray into the American blogosphere I have managed to come up with another bit of crapulence. I have been inspired to write this drivel by my mysterious friend Peace Moonbeam of The Peace Moonbeam Chronicles. Peace takes unfocused idiots like myself and Scooter Van Neuter under her wing and turns them into martyrs! I have heard through the grapevine that Scooter will soon relaunch his award winning site (Scooters Report) as soon as the Librium"shock therapy" is complete. Watch for it.

Anyways, As commissioned by the boss.

I must warn you that this is a cautionary tale about geeks bearing gifts.

Nuff said:

The News From the North

The boys and I have been excited all week in anticipation of the great leaders visit to Calgary. Of course I'm speaking of Stephane Dion, the leader of the official opposition and the head of the Liberal Party of Canada. Stephane has staked his political fortunes and the very survival of this nation (should he assume power in the coming election) on his brilliant "Green Shift" taxation program. The central theme of this program is that "carbon emitting" provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan will be heavily taxed for our crimes against Ghia in an effort to fund more social programs for poor Jamacan immigrant youth in Toronto. You people would refer to them as gangbangers but we Canadians have refined the terms.

For those of you unfamiliar with Canadian geography, Calgary is located in the southwest portion of Alberta. If you look at a map of Canada we are second from the left, the one with the slightly mischievous grin and the kiss curl. In American terms we are Texas without the pistols and Arizona without the ungodly heat plus we have one tenth of the illegal immigrants in the aforementioned states.

As such we are considered by the rest of Canada (ROC) to be the James Dean of confederation. Rebels without a clue if you will. Hillbillies who found oil beneath our feet just as easily as Uncle Jed when he fired that fateful shot into the swamp. Sadly, unlike you folk , very few of us have cement ponds and a nice granny. But I digress once again.

Calgary's claim to fame is the Calgary Stampede, ten days of balls to the walls boozing with a rodeo and chuckwagon races thrown in as an excuse. It began yesterday and we love it! One of the traditions of Stampede is pancake breakfasts where the eggs are cold, the bacon slimly and the pancakes doughy, all for free and served by minor celebrities (the channel 7 weather hottie) or our political idols.

The boys and I patiently waited in line to be served by Stephane. Lil Syncro got bored and lit up a joint (that brought up memories of his first Stampede when he was four, I nearly wept) and Syn and Dox started fighting over who was going to give our present to Stephane. Things very nearly got out of hand but I reminded the boys that if they didn't behave I would do the whole hundred lot of purple mike stashed at home myself. That dummied them up.

We eventually made it to the front of the line and Dox got so excited he made a big scene about getting our present out of his Kokanee (awesome beer) cooler backpack that the aroused the attention of Stephane's security
people.

In an instant we were peppered sprayed, beaten and tasered for good measure. When they discovered that we had only brought this great man a gross of plastic knives and forks for with which to eat his hotdawgs like he did last year, they parked the taser and the pepper spray in lieu of an old fashioned beating.

Syncro

p.s. I wrote this from my blackberry in the back of a paddy wagon...Wha...f@7ck you....over my dead.....No .....No not the tas......

That...ouch is ..ouch ...all!

The News From the North

2008-07-02T13:40:00.002-06:00

As noted on the previous post I've had the opportunity to blog elsewhere.

The Peace Moonbeam Chronicles

The Peace Moonbean Chronicles and Scooters Report are both political satire sites in the United States with a long history and pedigree.

Recently I was offered the chance to kite a trial story TPMC and of course jumped at the offer. The following story below is as it appears linked.

Any and all feedback will be considered.

By our Canadian contributor, Syncrodox

June 30, 2008

First I would like to thank the incomparable Peace Moonbeam for the opportunity to share my observations from the semi-frozen north with her millions of progressive readers as well as the occasional regressive commenters (you know who you are).

That said, I feel a need to address a few of the historical indiscretions Canada has perpetrated on the United States. In the spirit of trans-national harmony, I would like to apologize for the War of 1812 and the whole “burning down the White House” episode (our bad) although the new one seems to be holding up well, despite the present occupant, but that's your problem. Regarding a more recent indiscretion, I apologize profusely for Celine Dion and what she did to Las Vegas! To think that what hard working Italian immigrants built in the harsh desert was nearly torn asunder by one anemic chanteuse from Quebec fills me with shame. She's back in Canada now and as soon as we can locate an ice flow she will be dealt with accordingly.

Which brings me to the topic of the day at The News from the North newsroom: Climate change. Not since the last time the climate changed has the change in climate been more pronounced and dangerous. As you may know we Canadians are experts on changing climate, often experiencing drastic and life-threatening changes in the climate as many as four times a year. As a result we have adapted ingenious strategies to cope with the greatest threat to mankind and Canadians in particular since the gonorrhea outbreak of 86. (Did I mention I'm Canadian?)

These innovations include toques, parkas, mitts (many connected by strings so you don't lose them), studded tires (they're not as sexy as they sound), sod houses, igloos, central heat, canoes, kayaks, rubber boots, mosquito repellents, cut-offs, beer, wind breakers and really big leaf rakes to name a few. I know some of the regular readers of The Peace Moonbeam Chronicles will be unfamiliar with many of these items but trust me,this is good stuff.

One of the most recent dramatic climate changes we've experienced is something we refer to as spring.This spring was exceptionally bad with the change from toques and mitts to rubber boots occurring virtually overnight. We were first alerted to the danger when the roof of our sod house began to leak prodigious amounts of water and the animals in the barn began raising a ruckus. Sensing the danger I leapt from beneath my sealskin blanky and awoke the kids.

Lil Syncro and his brothers Dox and Syn were unimpressed, but being good Canadians they slouched into action. (At this point I must share that I'm a single parent as Mrs. Dox left me and the kids some years ago to pursue her dream of becoming a bear whisperer. Sadly we haven’t heard from her since, but I digress…

Anyways, me and the boys managed to get the ’82 Ford Aerostar fired up and connected to the portable barn (formerly a 16 foot travel trailer). We headed out cross-country to my neighbor Noah's place. Noah is an odd character and has been mocked in these parts for building a canoe that nobody can portage but given the seriousness of the situation I knew he was the man we needed to see. Unfortunately the headlights on the Aerostar were burnt out and I managed to navigate us into the deepest part of the deluge. We barely escaped with our lives!

As daylight broke the clouds parted and we found ourselves washed ashore near Noah's ridiculously large canoe.The boys all made it but sadly we lost seventeen chickens, two goats, Arnold Ziffel XV, and both our gnus, “What” and “No”. They will be missed, especially No, as No gnus was a good gnus.

Since then I have devoted myself to mitigating climate change to the point that I'm now working for Canada's Barak Obama, Stephane Dion, except Dion is a pasty-white boring intellectual eating-a-hotdawg-with-a-knife-and-fork priss kind of guy, but the left-think is the same.

More about Stephane in coming posts but it just occurred to me, we aren't that different after all, are we?

Syncro

That is all.

PS: Happy Fourth!!

PSS: Any misrepresentations, impersonations or manipulations of persons, real or imagined, in whole or in part, is purely coincidental and not the responsibility of anybody.

That is all.

Posted by Peace Moonbeam on June 30, 2008 | Permalink

Check this Out

2008-07-01T00:32:00.004-06:00

Hi All

I am currently else where.

here actually:

Syncro

A Double Double

2008-02-11T19:43:00.000-07:00

Thank you Warren Kinsella.....the hypocrisy is palatable.....The stench is real....

The golden childof liberalism in Canada....the adopter of inuit children (is that too personal?)and the man behind "a proof is a proof" is playing the victim card.

But then....that's what he knows......

Is that all you have left?

Syncro

Double the hypocrisyy and half the guts.

Lloyd Snauwaert

Three

2008-01-03T01:19:00.000-07:00

Garth Turner has once again pissed me off. Thanks Garth. It's about time I got off my ass. Mr. Turner drops his most recent pile of shit here.

As prolific and prosaic as this scumbag is he still can't hide his ignorance. I offer this as proof:

I learned 147 species a day are going extinct.

Wow Garth! 147 a day! How many days do you figure it will be before it's just us? But it gets worse.

That the seas will rise 20 millimetres in the next 40 years, and probably two millimetres in the next ten.

Wha? I thought it was 20 feet...Al said so.....Stephane concurred. Don't tell me this is a Gimli glider thing. It's all a horrible miscalculation from imperial to metric?

That each mm hike in the sea level floods one flat metre of coastal land. That 100 million people now live within one metre of the sea. And I got to wondering why it is we have political instability in Kenya, Pakistan, Iraq, Haiti, Afghanistan, Indonesia and most other countries which are environmentally stressed.

Garth....that is a impassioned plea for environmental justice.....the only problem here is that Afghanistan is landlocked.

Near as I can figure...you suck at math and geography. That's the best case scenario.

Syncro

Bali Blogging Bullshit

2007-12-14T17:04:00.000-07:00

I have been following the Bali Blog of one Stephane Dion with interest. I mean who wouldn't? The leader of the natural governing party of Canada on the international stage playing to his stated strength. Compelling stuff!

As the Bali conference comes to a close I've decided to share what I learned from the little Professor who could. In no specific order:

1. Being leader of the official opposition in Canada is a great way to fill time and a real hoot!

The job of Opposition Leader is a demanding one – a great time-filler! The tight agenda that comes with the job sometimes leads to comical situations.

2. A sense of humor is relative....you know....kinda like why ten year old boys find fart jokes so fascinating.

Thus the date of December 11, 2007, which marks the 10th anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol, was celebrated here 13 hours before my home time. Standing before the cake that had been prepared to celebrate the occasion, I suddenly felt the pangs of doubt. You see, December 11 is also my wife Janine’s birthday! So had I committed the unforgivable sin of forgetting it or was I 13 hours ahead?

Thankfully, the second hypothesis was the right one and as I cut the Kyoto cake, I promised myself to bring her a gift from Bali and to call her at the end of my day to surprise her at the beginning of HER day.

3. Hypothesis' are nearly as funny as fart jokes.

4. Achieving Achievements is really spiffy.

The achievements that ICLEI’s actions have achieved since its creation in 1990 are impressive.

Chucker Canuck has a nice take on Achieving Achievements. Read it if you haven't already. Other achievements included:

Just spending a full day without having to change clothes is an achievement of sorts.

This brings back memories of my most culinary enthusiastic son as a toddler. A case of more on him than in him.

5. Don't eat the salad.

As everyone knows, a trip to a country as exotic as Indonesia, or Asia in general, necessitates some precautions when it comes time to sit down for a meal.

Here in Bali, the decor is fantastic, and everything in the restaurants looks excellent. I say ‘looks’ because the Health Canada warnings tell us, not just once but twice, to be careful never to eat anything raw, even salads.

With a schedule as full as mine, the opportunities to take the time for a nice, relaxing meal are fairly limited. So what to do when walking into a Japanese restaurant where the sushi and sashimi look so appetizing, or a restaurant where the salads look like works of art?

Some of my friends who work for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have allowed themselves to be tempted. The result? Two days in bed with stomach cramps that make them regret having succumbed to temptation. They call it “Bali Belly”. And when you’re only in Bali for six days...

I suppose that explains the latter half of the previously claimed achievements....at least he didn't shit himself, although one wonders at Stephane's choice of friends.

6. Stephane has hand-eye coordination on the level of the average two year old boy and the star struck adulation of the average thirteen year old girl.

One of the main media attractions of this conference is without a doubt the famous solar taxi that has been ferrying high-profile personalities around the site, including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore, and Bianca Jagger, who is a big fan of this Swiss invention, and about whom I will talk more, later in this blog.

First, I’d like to thank Louis Palmer and Thomas Gottschalk, who did exceptional work in developing a totally clean vehicle powered by solar energy.

Having seen the configuration of this vehicle, I preferred being a passenger rather than driving it, so as to avoid any mishaps.

Good thinking Stephane, now staying away from the levers of power might not be a bad idea either eh?

7. Stephane and the Goracle share a passionate nature.

The result of much planning, this meeting proved to be very friendly and Mr. Gore showed himself to be very generous with his time and advice, despite a schedule that we know to be very full. Our passionate nature was a way for us to connect, and to persevere in the pursuit of our common goals.

One word....Creepy.

8. You can sure pick up the babes in Bali with one of them solar rides.

My meeting with the team of inventors of the famous solar taxi allowed me to get a meeting with Bianca Jagger, who has for many years dedicated herself to the cause of protecting the environment. She is currently President of the World Future Council, based in London.

She had asked to meet me in order to find out more about Canada’s position, which she doesn’t share or understand. I talked with her about the Canadian reality and the issues we are facing. Our role in Opposition is to remain vigilant in the face of a government – a minority government, remember – that doesn’t represent in any way the views of Canadians, particularly when it comes to the environment and climate change.

I was surprised by her vast knowledge of environmental issues, but also by the strength of her determination to effect change.

According to Stephane not all the chicks that banged members of the Stones are stone stupid. I would have been surprised also. And as far as speaking for Canadians......well we all know you ain't Canadian if you ain't Liberal.

A most excellent adventure dude!

Syncro

The Council of Leftard Canadians

2007-11-15T19:17:00.000-07:00

As the year comes to a close and my work schedule becomes increasingly weather dependent I plan on a greater blogging presence. That said, this nugget I ran across from the Halifax Chronicle Herald has prompted me to post .

The tasty bits:

The Council of Canadians, founded by well-known nationalists such as Maude Barlow and Margaret Atwood, wants to stop the military from recruiting at high schools across the country.

A resolution was passed at the group's annual general meeting Oct. 29 after a young member of the Ontario chapter objected to recruitment visits at his high school.

Cliff White, spokesman for the council in the Atlantic region, said the move is partly in response to Canada's current mission.

Well known nationalists? Don't you really mean well known radical, leftist, pacifist, feminist, agitators? Or does espousing all things leftard automatically qualify one as a nationalist? Hell if that were the case Gilles Duceppe qualifies as a nationalist. But that's not the real point.

The money quote is here:

"The fact that we've moved from peacekeeping to war fighting ... the traditional role of the military has changed."

Cliff are you serious? Tradition only goes as far back as what? Trudeau? Pearson? And speaking of Pearson, our involvement in Afstan is under the auspices of the U.N. Do you have any idea what I'm hinting at? Or do you prefer U.N. mandates of the Somalia variety?

Idiot.

Syncro

Harper Snubs the PPG....And in other news.,,

2007-09-27T06:50:00.000-06:00

I will apologize in advance for the profanity...but who gives a fuck? The PPG and PMSH have never had a cordial relationship. That said, I fully expect the wags that think they matter will wax poetic on how this "breaks tradition", "is typical of Harpers controlling regime" and of course "shows his disrespect for the press".

Boo fuckin Hoo. The big guy isn't going to your party and you are the cool kids......Shaaa!!!

Syncro

Dr. Suzuki Et Al On how to Have a Carbon Neutral Propogandafest...Live Earth Not Included

2007-09-27T00:40:00.000-06:00

I was surfing the net today....the good the bad and the ugly.... just because, and I came across this from the David Suzuki Foundation

An environmental friendly primer for you wannabe social activists. Or Enviroganda 101:

Large events such as conferences, sports competitions, concerts, festivals, and conventions can be major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Electricity, heating and air conditioning, ground transportation, air travel, paper and other materials are just some of the ways that large events contribute to climate change. However, many event organizers are recognizing that large events do not have to have a huge climate impact and, in fact, can play a positive role by becoming low-carbon or even carbon neutral.

Tell me more Dr. Dave.

Recent major events that have taken responsibility for their greenhouse gas emissions include: the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), 2006 FIFA World Cup, 2006 Commonwealth Games, the Dave Matthews Band concert tour, the Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival, and the 2005 United Nations Climate Change Conference. The environmental leadership demonstrated by these events is helping to transform the event industry, with green initiatives quickly becoming expected.

Whaa? Live Earth is not mentioned? Do I smell a whiff of prophet envy or is it a crack in the enviromafia?

According to Al, "Live Earth" was the be all and end all of raising climate change awareness. How is it that this stellar effort is not on the Suzuki radar?

Was it the fact Dave didn't get any face time with Leanardo? Was it all about Al? You didn't get your cut?

Or was the whole thing a colossal waste of time and energy?

Do tell.

Syncro

Savy Political Strategy of the Academic Variety

2007-09-19T22:35:00.000-06:00

So it seems the the chips have fallen where they may. Outremount is gone, stormed by the NDP hoard. Off the island the Libs have lost their election deposits. Meanwhile, the little academic that could keeps on chugging away.

Desperate times call for desperate measures and the social scientist at the controls appears to have turned up the same metaphorical box canyon as Steve Fossett.

Two days after the plane wreck in Outremont, Stephane Dion's political instincts have led him up a killer slope. The issues he hopes to take flight with.....the release of Omar Khadr from the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Well that and the brilliant assertion that with leadership numbers polling at a solid 15% what Canadians really want is more Dion. And finally, Harper and the Conservatives are women haters.

Only a cloistered academic who's used to eager freshmen kissing his professorial ass could come to this conclusion.

The fact that in Quebec the decades old mafia style protection racket that the LPoC ran was broken by the Gomery Inquiry is of no consequence. The fact that Dion was a cabinet minister under Chretien and Martin and he failed to mention his principles regarding the detention of Omar Kahdr is to be forgotten. The fact that most Canadians view Stephane as a quirky intellectual with all the charm of a dead mackerel matters not a whit. And of course Steven Harper is a women hater.... for non-denominational deity's sake ....he made his wife take his name!!!

So here is what it is Stephane. Just like Steve Fosset you both have won acclaim in specialized fields. The insular world of the theoretical and the highly prepared feats of derring do that Fossett is famous for share one common theme. They are uncommon.

It is the common that kills. Fossett disappeared flying a two-seater, fabric skinned, high performance, tail dragger on a routine flight in ideal weather. My theory....massive heart attack and the ensuing catastrophic wreck ensured the ELT (emergency locater transmitter) was destroyed. Hence no clue as to where his earthly remains are to be found.

In your case the wreck is going to be easy to spot. Unlike Fossett, you have chosen to fly up a box canyon in a piece of equipment that can't out climb the terrain. The only way out is a hard 180 and you are clearly not inclined to turn back.

A little known fact....98.95% of all fatal aircraft accidents happen at or near the ground. Welcome to the real world.

Syncro

Is Garth Planning on Pulling a Belinda?

2007-09-18T09:30:00.000-06:00

In light of the Liberal disaster that was Outremont there is much speculation about the future leadership of Stephane Dion. In my previous post I noted an interesting question by a self identified lifelong Liberal. How soon could there be another leadership convention?

This morning commentor Blue Liberal left this on the thread:

Blue Liberal said...: Garths leadership is now in full swing. If youd like to know more, call Tony McLaren.

Garths tour out west was not only to bash PM Harper and try to prop up the dying leadership of Dion (making good impressions) but to bolster his leadership chances. The person making the comments about Dion at this town hall was NOT a conincidence, but carefully planned.

He may be a jerk, but hes not stupid.

I tend to agree with Blue and noted earlier that the questions all seemed to be planned. This got me thinking some more about Garth's townhall in Calgary and something odd I noted about the cameraman taping the event.

In my original post I describe how the picture of my cameraman Chris that appears on Garth's blog could only have come from the tape that the pro was shooting. In the same post Garth identifies the cameraman as being from CBC TV.

Then the crowd shouted the guy down. And that was it. The two sat and grumbled for a while. Shot more videotape. But when a CBC television cameraman started mousing around their corner of the room, the ops fled.

Odd I thought. Then I realized that early on in Garth's show he can be heard asking the cameraman (who was just out of the frame of our video) "Your getting this right?" Around the same time the cameraman moves around the room and mounts the stage to shoot from Garth's perspective. Another oddity for a newsman, No?

I figured this might become pertinent later and ask Chris to get a close-up of the camera. Clearly there are no identifying logos that one might expect.

Once again don't take my word for it. Garth Turner Unedited or Your getting this right?

So, was this a newsman shooting news video or a hired gun shooting tape for some future purpose?

Given last nights by election results I wonder.

And finally check out my previous post. The answer Garth gives in defense of Dion could be construed as somewhat "lefthanded".

Go figure.

Syncro

Will Dion Meet His Waterloo in Outremount?

2007-09-16T17:27:00.000-06:00

Hi All!

Much has been said regarding the most recent polls in the Quebec by-elections. Steve Janke of Angry in the Great White North was one of the first to speculate on the possible machinations going on behind the scenes in the LPoC. Some of the most insightful text:

In my last post, I considered the possibility that enemies of Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion from within the party would like to see their own party lose the by-election in the riding of Outremont. A Liberal stronghold, the Liberal candidate is Jocelyn Coulon, an academic cut from the same cloth as Stephane Dion himself, a candidate that was not nominated by the Liberals in the riding but appointed to be their nominee directly by Stephane Dion. A loss would reflect poorly on Stephane Dion on a number of levels -- weakness in Quebec, poor decision-making skills, etc -- and might accelerate his departure as leader of the Liberal Party.

And this:

We don't know whether the allegations are true (Ignatieff supporters like Denis Coderre are adamant that these allegations are groundless) but the fact that Dion's people are going public is very telling.

Think about it.

Stephane Dion and his people see a resounding loss shaping up in Outremont, and not a single win in any three of the Quebec by-elections being held on Monday. The Conservatives, on the other hand, are likely to pick up a seat in Quebec, suggesting that Tory strength in Quebec is not an anomaly that will disappear as memory of the Sponsorship Scandal recedes, but a growing threat based on real shifts in Quebec political thought.

And a real threat to Stephane Dion's future.

The knives are out and in the backrooms operatives are being dispatched to plant the seeds of doubt. I think I may have witnessed one of these Johny Appleseed operatives in action. This clip from Garth Turner's recent Lost Tory Tour's stop in Calgary.

So there are some lifelong Liberals wondering out loud about the time lines of another leadership convention. Hhhhmmmmmm. What was this tour really about?

What struck me most about the whole Garth Turner experience was the obvious scripted nature of the questions posed by lib operatives.

Make your own conclusions.

Syncro

Garth and The Overhead Projector or Everything I Ever Learned About Public Speaking I Copied From Al

2007-09-13T03:45:00.000-06:00

Hi All.

Last night I had the honor of meeting a real life MP. Well ...large on the Me and....well....I don't want to get into the p.

But hey...it was fun. As it turns out there happened to be a hardass biker and self professed purveyor of the unvarnished truth riding into my berg. How could I resist. With this in mind I ventured forth to meet this Garthacle warrior.

Unfortunately the hardass turned out to be a candyass, the seasonable weather in Alberta had nixed the thundering Hogs for Democracy symbolic ride. I must admit I had visions of Garth roaring into the room ala Paul Tuetle Sr. but such was not the case. Instead we got a rather crappy Al Gore knockoff with half the sophistication and twice the hyperbole.

There is no need to take my word for it....a lovely pic of me and my camera man can be found at Garth.ca.

On the other hand the raw video of the whole event will be posted here in sections as youtube allows. I must apologize for the poor content as the biker fella seemed a little off his game.

For those of you who don't have the time for the whole Garth Turner experience I suggest the last two minutes of Part 3 along with Parts 4,5 and 6 for maximum viewing pleasure.

Anyways, part one of A Lost Tory Tours or Garth Turner Unedited.

Sorry about the snickering in the background. My bad. I will be updating this post with the entire video as I get it uploaded. Trust me it does get better/worse based on your political leanings and how well developed your sense of the ridiculous is.

Here we are folks...Garth Turner Unedited Part 2 Enjoy!!

I will be adding some commentary as soon as I solve all my technical issues. I must admit I really suck at the technical aspects of all this but I am learning.

Garth Turner Unedited Part 3 is now available. This is where things get interesting.

Garth reports the outing of the con agent provocateurs (Chris and I) on his site as follows:

As usual, I did a 30-minute opening presentation, then we went open mic for the next hour. It’s seldom I get heckled during my formal shtick, but this is Calgary, home of the ugliest emails that this poor little defenseless blog receives. The fact there were two Con operatives lurking in the corner of the back row, one carefully taping my every move, became immediately obvious.

I started to feel all tingly. Finally, protestors. Be still, my heart.

Jeez Garth....immediately obvious...wha... According to the tape it was some 29 minutes into your schtick when I blew my cover.

I had been given some well reasoned advice to play it cool and attempt to trap Garth with a softball question during the Q&A and intended to do so, unfortunately I reacted to a particularly specious rhetorical question thrown out by Garth.

Once again don't take my word for it....Garth Turner Unedited Part 3

Yep...Garth's spider senses were tingling. Although I must admit it takes a skilled orator to connect the collapse of a bridge in Minnesota, an overpass in Quebec and American military spending in Iraq.

Huh...You ask. Watch the last minute again. BTW, I meant what I said...A hell of a show.

More to come.

Garth Turner Unedited Part 4

In this segment we get to the Q&A portion of the dog and pony show. At this point I would like to clarify a few things.

First, I am a member of no political party although I do blog sporadically under the Blogging Tories banner. I consider myself a small c conservative.

Secondly, all the Liberal Party functionaries were sitting on the right side of the room and the less enthusiastic amongst us on the left. Go figure. This does become pertinent once the softballs start getting tossed.

First up is a member of The Mount Royal College Liberal Association (self identified). Can anybody explain to me what the hell his question was? Anyways, I hope nobody gets hurt as Garth knocks the high hangers out of the park.

Back to our previously scheduled entertainment.

Up next...Part 5..or Garth Vader Falters.

More as it's loaded.

The penultimate edition of our little mockumentary. Garth Turner Unedited Part 5.

Garth describes the action this way:

But the big issue to hang around my poor neck once the comment period arrived? That mailers were sent out to people in Calgary, advertising the meeting, and that this was done from the office budgets of more than a dozen of my colleague MPs. As I explained, the mailings were printed by the House of Commons, stuffed into envelopes and mailed by the House, according to rules all MPs must respect. The point was also made that the prime minister uses this technique more than any other MP, flooding other ridings (like mine of Halton) with pro-government material. Like, yawn.

I left it to another person to bring up the current scandal about Conservatives laundering national election money through local ridings. Then the crowd shouted the guy down. And that was it. The two sat and grumbled for a while. Shot more videotape. But when a CBC television cameraman started mousing around their corner of the room, the ops fled.

Now is it just me or is a theme evolving...."my poor neck"..."but this is Calgary, home of the ugliest emails that this poor little defenseless blog receives"...

But I digress.

Things get a little feisty and according to my understanding of the difference between 10%ers and franked mail...well let's watch Garth explain.

The final segment soon to follow along with a few observations.

Done and done. Garth Turner Unedited Part 6

The stirring finale to A Lost Tory Tours.

Once again to clarify. We did not run from the room. I approached the LPoC functionary who offered to explain the nuances of 10%ers and franked mail to me.

According to Garth this would be the fella that shouted me down. While I admit the right side of the room offered enthusiastic applause in response to the party operative's offer to shut me up, I hardly thought I was shouted down.

Chris continued to film and I took my seat and watched as a few more softballs were tossed. The most interesting was the one from the fella in the red and white jacket. Something about a looming LPoC leadership convention. I wonder who he might support?

Next up was the local riding president to pose her second question of the evening. Two out of eight, obviously a lady with much on her mind. As I listened it occurred to me that the next move was to take the fella from the LPC up on his offer.

I approached him politely (kneeling at the edge of the aisle and getting the attention of his pretty escourt who gave him the heads up) and asked to speak with him in the hall. Being an earnest and lawyerly young fella he agreed. You can see us leaving the room on the right side of the screen.

Outside he agreed to an on camera interview to explain how Liberal Mp's communications budgets were co-ordinated to make the Lost Tory Tour the resounding success it obviously is.

Unfortunately, Chris miscued on the camera and only a few seconds at the end of our discussion are caught on tape. Considering we bought the camera at Best Buy yesterday afternoon, Chris did a fine job.

As we taped (well not taped but I explained that) outside the hall we were joined by three older gentlemen who stood off camera. Two of the three were clearly unimpressed. The third who had a decidedly sunnier disposition asked to take my picture with the young lawyer and can be heard commenting at the end of our tape, something to the effect that I asked good questions.

Regardless, that image of me is the one that appears on Garth's blog, although my lawyer friend appears to have been deleted from our photo-op. Sad really, he was a nice fella.

Garth also makes reference in his blog to the CBC cameraman. Chris gets sufficient shots of him over the duration. Here is the interesting part. The picture of Chris that appears on Garth's blog must be directly from the "CBC" camera. At no time that we were aware of did anyone other than the cameraman approach us to take pics in the meeting hall.

Now this poses a number of other questions. I'll pose those at a later date but I do encourage you to let your imagination run amok.

And finally watch the body language of Garth under questioning and the greazy eyeball he shoots at Chris when I was leaving the room.

Nuff said....Garth turner Unedited Part 6

Some final thoughts.

Chris is a young man from Cape Breton who came to Alberta to work because there in none there. On the way home he commented to me as follows:

"We don't have enough problems back home in Cape Breton that these guys have to come out here to create problems or to fix something that aint broke."

And that Mr.Turner is the real essence of what this was all about. You can wax poetic on your blog all you want, hell you can even piss our money away to promote yourself....these things are apparently all legal.

Just don't expect these two citizens to like it.

I speak for myself and Chris does the same. No conspiracy here sir. Unedited is the way to go!

Syncro

UPDATE

I meant to do this earlier but got distracted with the tech angle of all this. Here is mypersonal invitation to last nights event as it appears on Garth.ca

Garth

Thanks for the clarification. BTW, as I am not a member of any political party, no membership lists will be forthcoming.

I’m also heartened to hear that no “new” money is being spent promoting your tour and assume this is “old” money that was left laying around.

Any chance you might provide a list of the 15 constituency offices who ponied up? It might make for some interesting reading.

And finally. Being neither a member of any political party or a disgruntled income trust investor, how would I go about getting an invitation to your Calgary shindig at MRC?

Is this invitation only? Tickets required?

Thanks in advance.

Syncro

Dear Mr. Syncro; Please accept this invitation to attend the Valgary Town Hall meeting. The pleasure of your company is requested. — Garth

I have been taken to task on Garth's blog by a number of commentors who faithfully defend his honor and have casted aspersions on my motives. Fair enough.

Unfortunately I have been unable to respond due to unforeseen technical gremlins that will not allow me to post to Garth.ca.

If anybody out there is familiar with any of the denizens of Garth's blog I would appreciate if you could direct them this way.

Thanx.

Syncro

Upperdate

I would seem that I've been outed by a regular reader at Garth.ca. This of course would not have been necessary had I been able to post at Garth's site but the aforementioned technical difficulties are still in effect. It seems Digital Democracy has some limitations and challenging Garth on the facts seems to be a big one.

Regardless, my outing :

Steve on 09.13.07 4:24 pm said:

So that was you huh Bob? At least get a leather jacket that has as few pieces as possible. It does look like you decided on the cheapest jacket just made out of scraps.

Nope Steve,

It wasn’t Bob. It was LLoyd, or rather it was Syncrodox as he likes to style himself. He of the tatty black vinyl jacket who is a BT tho protests that he’s really not one of them but a small “c” conservative. Whatever.

He’s put up a series of You Tube videos of Garth’s TH in Calgary. With quite the written commentary to go with it. An awful lot of explanation even before one sees the videos. Mostly to apologize for the quality and of course to get his con-style witty jabs in.

Perceptions are funny things no?

Geo

Sadly, Geo neglected to provide a link to my site. It might have been edifying for other readers of The Turner Report to get access to some Garth Unedited video.

Now it would seem that informed reader Geo and Steve before her (who in an earlier comment states he was at the meeting) take issue with my attire. Although Geo does mention my "con style witty jabs", which I assume are much different than "lib style witty jabs".

Garth offers one here in response to a commentor:

Have you started you French lessons yet? — Garth

By Myron on 09.13.07 10:08 am

May wee mon cher ami Garth. Je parlay francais oosi, ay voo ..?!

You are an embarrassment to this blog, let alone to your country. — Garth

Geo, I'm sorry my wit doesn't meet this high standard.

Now onto my leather jacket. Did you happen to notice the Canadian flag embroidered on the left chest? That jacket was given to me by my Grandfather and was bought through The Royal Canadian Legion. He wore it with pride and I choose to wear it the same way.

If it doesn't meet your fashion approval, so be it. I do also find it interesting that this was your biggest complaint, but then again in some quarters fashion probably does trump fact.

And finally Geo, I stand by my statement that I have never been a member of any political party. As you may or may not know The BT's is a blogroll in the same way Liblogs, Progblogs and Libertyblogs are. Given my self identification as a small c-conservative the Bt's is my obvious blogroll home.

Then again, perceptions are funny, no?

Syncro

Puffins, Apologists and Apartachicks

2007-09-03T01:45:00.000-06:00

Good day All!!

I know that the Puffin bit is passe but it does seem to have legs. By now you all know that Deputy Leader of the LPC Mike (Iggy Puff) Ignatieff recently waxed poetic on the virtues of the Puffin. Now I'll be out front here and admit I've never met a Puffin.

That said, I'm sure Puffins are fine and upstanding citizens of Canada. The fact that Iggy is fascinated by their propensity for hiding their excrement is noteworthy. Not because I say so but rather because this string has continued to play out to the point that some 'heavies" from the MSM are now weighing in.

This from Susan Delacourt of The Toronto Star:

Editors Note: Please click the link and pay attention to the name of the ship that floated all things Liberal. Some of the more/least salient points:

"The puffin is a noble bird," Ignatieff proclaimed.
The next day, as caucus was winding up, reporters were looking for some amusing material for weekend features and asked Ignatieff to expand on his views of the puffin's nobility. Gamely, he obliged and recited some trivia he'd learned from the tour, including the fact that the little bird mated for life and hid its own waste in one place.

"It's a noble bird because it has good family values. They stay together for 30 years. I'm not kidding. They lay one egg and they put their excrement in one place. They hide their excrement. They hide their excrement!

They have good family values. They flap their wings very hard and they work like hell. This seems to me a symbol for what our party should be," he said.

"The puffin is not anybody's hero right off the bat, but you see those little flappy wings and how it works and those good family values and you start to warm to the puffin."
The reporters, including this one, were highly amused – in a light-hearted way. That was the object of Ignatieff's little dissertation on the puffin.

Susan....ummmm....yesterday Iggy Puff learned some trivia...today it becomes a dissertation? That is one bad ass Prof.

Editors Note: Did you click the link? Quick quiz. What was the name of the boat? This will become pertinent later.

Back to Sue:

You wouldn't know it, though, from some of the scandalized reaction to the remarks – what kind of numbskull compares his party to an animal that hides its excrement? How dare he give the Conservatives ammunition to attack the Liberals? (Just as an aside, how would that work, exactly? Are Prime Minister Stephen Harper's attack-addicted gang going to run TV ads in which Dion appears as a puffin? Wouldn't that actually be kind of endearing?)

I don't know Sue. Would he be hiding his excrement in little brown envelopes?

Editors Note: Pop quiz. What was the name of that boat again?

Anyways, more Sue:

Humour seems to have gone out of fashion in politics in Harper's Ottawa. It's difficult to explain why that's happened. Even political comedy isn't as funny or as popular as it once was. Several months back, a columnist in the Ottawa Citizen noted how veteran CBC comedian Rick Mercer isn't as funny as he used to be, because Mercer now cultivates celebrities instead of mocking them.

So...It's Harper's fault that Mercer is no longer funny. There must have been something in that sandwich that Harper made him. Do you think Mercer got reality germs on him or cooties? But I digress.

You know what Sue. I could spend hours deconstructing what you pass off as journalism (did you graduate from Ryerson perchance?) but lets cut to the chase.

The name of the boat that the Liberal brain trust went looking for whales on(out of season I might add) was The Atlantic Puffin.

Think about it Sue. What might have happened if they had chartered the Atlantic Pogge or the Atlantic EEL or the Nasty Bad Business.

Apologizing for the disertations of the Deputy Leader may have been beyond even your "objectivity".

And finally, I give you the ultimate kiss of death vis a vis credibility .

Syncro

* No Puffins were hurt in the making of this blog.

Canadian Cynics and other Principled Folk or Anonymity and Integrity

2007-09-01T01:00:00.000-06:00

Hi All!

It has been almost four months since I've hit the keyboard. Partially due to the seasonal nature of my income and partially due to my lack of passion for the whole blog writing experience. I did manage to take part in a small way on the Great Canadian Debate site and as always have dropped the odd comment with friends and foes alike.

That said, I have been inspired to take to the keyboard again by none other than The Canadian Cynic. As you may or may not have noted, I provide a link to Cc (Canadian Cynic, not to be confused with Chucker Canuck or CC) under the category Leftardtopia. I also include Robert Mc of My Blagh fame and Pal of The Stormy Days of March in the same category.

Philosophically, ideologically and logically speaking these folk are at the opposite end of the spectrum from myself, yet I read their thoughts to try to understand what might motivate their perceptions and comment on rare occasions. As a result I have become aware of the surprisingly logical and impassioned position taken by Cc regarding blogger anonymity.

Those are the last kind words I will speak of the Cynic. Therefore I will begin the deconstruction and lay bare the hyper hypocricy.

Some excerpts:

I hate to interrupt your determined efforts to ignore all of the exciting developments on Canada's political scene over the last week or so, but I have something I'd like to chat about.Apparently, over the last several days, I have, in my own quiet way, infuriated one Mr. Patrick Ross (and, by really creepy association, his good buddy, the ego that walks like a man, Werner Patels), to the point where he has furiously promised to track me down and give me a stern spanking. Well, OK, actually, he's promised to track me down and reveal my identity on his blog to all of those misbegotten cretins who have the necessary lack of taste to read his blog.

Reality check here Cc. In your own quiet way......Wha????? Anybody who has ever dropped in on Cc would hardly call this entity quiet,. Don't take my word for this, check out the body of the Cynics work. Some more of this self preservationist drivel:

Now, I'm well aware that neither of those two misfits is a member of the BTs, but it seemed like the perfect opportunity to at least come to an understanding on an absolutely minimal level of civility that we should be prepared to uphold in the Canadian blogosphere

O.K. Now do I understand this statement correctly? The Canadian Cynic, who's chief claim to fame on the blogosphere is consistent and vitriolic attacks on Blogging Tories is now seeking an alliance with the same to protect his anonymity from a personal attack from other bloggers?

Breathtaking!!! But it gets better.

As I'm sure you know, I choose to blog anonymously. That's my choice and, regardless of what others might think of what I write, I typically expect those people to respect my privacy. Critics of mine are more than welcome to leave dissenting comments at my blog (within reason), and are just as welcome to write scathing denunciations of me on their own blogs, and more power to them. But, regardless of how heated things get, I've always considered one's bloggy anonymity to be sacred and not to be trifled with.

Well, that does sound plausible, considering The Cynic does allow comments. Although he does refer to any and all Bt'ers as the Wankosphere and more personally has called Kate at SDA any number of filthy names. Incidentally on the very thread that he pleas for respect for his anonymity he allows this comment from noted intellectual and Cc fan Ti-Guy regarding another of his enemies Richard Evans.

I've never been interested in the personal lives of bloggers or commenter's. Even Richard Evans of Beddington Crescent, Calgary...
By Ti-Guy, at 5:35 PM

So to summarize: So far Cc has written an open letter to a blogging aggregator whom he hates, to help him maintain his anonymity in the face of attacks from independent bloggers and at the same time allows a devoted reader to out the address of his stated enemy. yep that seems consistent with the logic and integrity that I've observed from the Cynic. Of course there is more, so back to Cc:

Consider your own BT blogroll -- it clearly has a number of anonymous bloggers and, while I've taken exception with a number of them over the lifetime of my blog, it's never occurred to me -- not for a second -- to spend any time tracking them down so I can expose their real identities. My preference is to link to what they write, use my vastly superior intellect and reason to tear it to bloody shreds, and leave it at that. Once your credibility has been taken out to the parking lot and beaten senseless, it really doesn't make any difference whether you sign your name to it or not, don't you agree? So here's my point.

Uhhhhmmmm....Cc....Were this a parking lot you'd be laid out somewheres between the 73 Pinto and the dumpster, but I would love to hear the point......tell me....tell me!!!

While you clearly have no influence over the unprincipled douchebags that are Patrick Ross and Werner Patels, you most certainly have some power over the BT membership. So I'm going to throw out a challenge here: I'm challenging you to take a public and unambiguous stand, and denounce, in the strongest possible language, the practise or encouragement of, directly or indirectly, "outing" anonymous bloggers just because you don't like what they write. And, just to be fair and balanced, I'm making that challenge to every other political blogging collective in Canada.

Let me be clear as to what I'm talking out above. I don't just mean condemning bloggers who are actively trying to out other bloggers. I'm also including bloggers who, while they may not be engaging in that activity themselves, are clearly egging on others to do it, either on their own blogs or by way of comments on others' blogs. In short, anyone who is seen as promoting that activity in any way and in any forum should be considered just as guilty as those doing it.

Once again I have to wrap my brainpan around this. In desperation the Cynic calls out to a man he has personally slagged in the spirit of fairness. Check. The Cynic, who has no compunction about tossing filthy diatribe at bloggers who have the balls to eschew anonymity for integrity now seeks their support. Check. The Cynic who holds himself up as a paragon of free speech now calls for a ban on not only bloggers who threaten others anonymity but those who in any way shape or form support "outing" any pseudonymous entity, regardless of their proven crapulence. Check.

A true leftard triple threat. Gutless, spineless, victim. But there is more:

(Naturally, there should be exceptions, as in the case of any anonymous someone who has gone beyond just being annoying and is into actual harassment. In cases like that, outing is simply being defensive, but that's obviously under exceptional circumstances.)

Wow! I guess the Cynic has never read his own garbage regarding Kate Mc Millan. Then again I've never heard Kate cry about any of this crap. Now that poses a whole different set of questions regarding gonads......but I digress.

And finally, the ultimate pile of piffle:

As I said, this will in no way affect Messrs. Ross or Patels since, as far as I know, they don't belong to any aggregator (not surprising, since I can't imagine any aggregator desperate enough to want them.) But if it can be brought to your attention that any of your BT members are cheering them on, I'm challenging you to drop those members from the BTs. And, as I said, I'm making the same challenge to every aggregator in Canada. It's only fair.

So, Stephen, what say you? You and I both know we're never going to see eye-to eye but, regardless of our differences, we should be able to agree that there are some lines that we're simply not going to cross, and we're prepared to punish those people who do.

There's the challenge. Your thoughts?

UPDATE: As RT points out, Weiner Patels is a member of Liberty Blogs, and he's made it clear he thinks the idea of outing me is a terrific idea. So, Liberty Blogs ... how's your level of principle today?

BY THE WAY, I did email Stephen Taylor directly regarding this issue; I'm not just counting on him eventually reading this blog. So far, nothing.IN FACT, I just received a perfectly respectable and thoughtful e-mail from Mr. Taylor, and we're going to chat further. And I want to publicly thank him for being willing to discuss this.

Fairness eh.....some lines WE won't cross eh.....and WE"RE prepared to punish those who do eh. All of a sudden WE"RE all in this together eh. PRINCIPLES eh.

I've seen a lot of crappy things in my life, violent, heartbreaking, confusing, frustrating, infuriating but this is without a doubt the most PATHETIC.

Syncro

p.s. In the spirit of fairness I will crosspost this at Canadian Cynic and as I always do I will not hide behind the cloak of anonymity.

Update

The Cynic has responded to my post in the fashion I expected. Weak logic coupled with poor writing, followed with a healthy dollop of tunnel vision.

Now I'll freely admit that I've been guilty of the same to various degrees, albeit not all at once.

And finally a clarification. After reading my own post I think the principle I'm espousing may well be misconstrued.

For the record I'm not defending the outing of the Cynic, rather I'm pointing out (based on observable behaviour) that he may be the worst example on the Canadian blogosphere for the defense of anonymity. Oddly enough he continues to make the case for me.

Finally, the utter lack, nay, contempt for integrity displayed by the Cynic is my point. Unless being consistently inconsistent falls into the PC/Leftard definition of integrity.

But that's enough of that.

Syncro

Garth TV Conservative Values and Liberal Realities.

2007-05-06T02:54:00.000-06:00

I was surfing the blogs...left...right and moonbat to see what's up. Bored at the low saturday night traffic I checked out garth.ca. What I found was entertainment of the most unexpected kind.

I'll give you some tips...or key words as you kids call em... Millionare Condos....No subsidies...David Dodge....15 BIL and I can't get my mind around that...Sweden and a whole bunch of other countries..$300 Million to fight women.. From the pockets of the lawyers into the wallets of woymen....Quite frankly.... Quite frankly.....

Well you decide. But I must warn you if you are squemish with the sight of multiple retardation...this is not for you. Others...

Enjoy

Self-Fullfilling Parodies?

2007-04-29T13:10:00.000-06:00

As those of you who frequent my humble blog may have noted, I post sporadically and when I do snottyness is generally the order of the day. That said, I have been thinking of moving towards a full-parody style of writing in the tradition of The Onion or the incomparable Scooters Report. As a self-proclaimed conservative my obvious target would be the left.

Having done some market research into the possibilities available for those who would mock the left, I find the market to be a crowded one. There are of course partisans such as Chucker Canuck who excell at mocking the left among us who pretend to lead, while right leaning non-partisans like Olaf of The Prarie Wranglers mocks the left with a kinder, gentler, machine gun wit. Yet others like Kate Mc Millan of Small Dead Animals cuts to the chase with the succinct precision of an onacololigical surgeon.

While I respect the unique abilities of each of the above, I find the stiffest competition in mocking the left is...well... the left. Case in point...The Toronto Star and their editorial take on Global Warming.

The instant the doors to the crowded elevator closed, an elegantly dressed businesswoman who was squashed into one corner spoke up loudly and excitedly: "Okay, who is ready to quit their job and sign up to help him?"
The "him" was Al Gore.

We were riding up the elevator in a downtown Toronto hotel late last month to meet Gore after he had delivered to a business audience his now-famous presentation on global warming, which formed the basis of the Oscar-winning documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth.

The woman's excitement mirrored the response that follows Gore, known by many of his fans as "The Goracle," wherever he appears in Canada.

The Goracle... a clever compilation of Gore and oracle. What exactly is an Oracle? This from the free online dictionary (because I'm too cheap to buy one)

or·a·cle
play_w("O0104400")
(ôr-kl, r-)
n.
1.
a. A shrine consecrated to the worship and consultation of a prophetic deity, as that of Apollo at Delphi.
b. A person, such as a priestess, through whom a deity is held to respond when consulted.
c. The response given through such a medium, often in the form of an enigmatic statement or allegory.
2.
a. A person considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophetic opinions.
b. An authoritative or wise statement or prediction.
3. A command or revelation from God.
4. In the Bible, the sanctuary of the Temple.

(emphasis mine)

Would that deity be Gaia? Has AGW become a religion? If so how does this fit with the left's repulsion of religion? Hmmmmm.... Anyways...

The elegantly dressed business woman. Class, power and feminity...the proverbial triple threat...yet she is seemingly willing to give it all up to follow the Goracle. Wow!!!! Is the glass ceiling a product of powerfull men and close elevators? Just asking. meanwhile back at the Torstar.

That excitement was present Monday when Gore spoke to 5,000 people packed into a Regina hockey rink, and when he spoke later that day to 1,600 people at a Calgary concert hall at an event sponsored by the local chamber of commerce

At $ 125,000.00 per pop I think it wasn't a bad day for the Goracle, but I digress.Back to the Torstar once again.

That excitement is most noticeable among Canadians who feel deeply about the environment and are eager to take action. A report prepared for the Harper government and obtained by the Star labelled these people, who it said represent about one-fifth of the population, "the Suzuki Nation."

(emphasis mine)

Feel deeply....so this is an emotional process..excitement is equated with truth. The best the lefties can claim is that 20% of the Canadian population buy the the evangelical prophecies of an ORACLE? As far as I'm concerned I thought the term Goracle was a rhetorical bitchslap. I guess not.

More of the self-fullfilling parody:

This week alone, Gore will have given his slide show on climate change eight times. Suzuki is just as active.

O.K. I ain't no theoeretical physicist or econonomist...but 8x$125,000.00 is somewheres around a cool Million. Unless you're a Vanderbilt or a Ford...that ain't a bad week.

Earlier this year, he made 40 appearances as part of a 30-day, cross-Canada bus tour aimed at promoting the fight against global warming.

That would be Suzuki, fourty stops in thirtydays, grueling, except for the "rockstar" bus and the foundation. The humanity!! As an aside, Dr. Dave has managed to collect a few bucks for the Suzuki Foundation.

Together, Gore and Suzuki are influencing a nation, especially young Canadians, like no politician is these days. And together, they have put climate change at the top of the political agenda. Politicians are slowly becoming aware of that, as demonstrated this week by the Harper government's effort to put a positive spin on its much-hyped plan to combat global warming.

Are you folks following me? My train of thought I mean. Read that last paragraph. When yer done... read it again. I had to.

Let me translate.....A mediocre politician and a CBC personality (check this man's real credentials) are influencing a nation. And they decry the spin???

How the fuck can I compete with that?

Syncro

Y2Kyoto....Have We Reached Peak Snake Oil?

2007-02-26T15:17:00.000-07:00

Well I think it's finally happened. Every once in a while all the planets align, critical mass is achieved and a mighty confluence occurs. As far as Kyoto is concerned I think this past week signals the apex of leftard lunacy that is "climate change". But how can this be?

Well, with most issues driven by the leftosphere one need only look towards Hollywood for direction. Yesterday the high priest of climate change, Al Gore, was honored with an Oscar for his rousing performance in An Inconvenient Truth. Never one to shy away from hyperbole, Gore had this to offer.

"It is the overriding world challenge of our time," Gore said. "I really hope the decision by the academy to honor the work by director Davis Guggenheim and these producers will convince people who did not go see it before to see the movie and learn about the climate crisis and become a part of the solution."

For those of you who have yet to view Gore's opus, I encourage you to do so. It's a hoot! Al manages to include a bit on being robbed of the presidency by GWB ( presumably this crisis would have been prevented by a Gore administration), tugs at our heartstrings with an animated image of the impending flooding of ground zero, trumpets the the scientific certainty of global warming cause and effect and links the ferocity of hurricane Katrina to the global warming crisis.

While I could spend hours deconstructing much of this tripe, lets focus on the Katrina claim. This introduction from the Denver Post.

You'll often hear the left lecture about the importance of dissent in a free society.

Why not give it a whirl?

Start by challenging global warming hysteria next time you're at a LoDo cocktail party and see what happens.

Admittedly, I possess virtually no expertise in science. That puts me in exactly the same position as most dogmatic environmentalists who want to craft public policy around global warming fears.

The only inconvenient truth about global warming, contends Colorado State University's Bill Gray, is that a genuine debate has never actually taken place. Hundreds of scientists, many of them prominent in the field, agree.

Gray is perhaps the world's foremost hurricane expert. His Tropical Storm Forecast sets the standard. Yet, his criticism of the global warming "hoax" makes him an outcast.

"They've been brainwashing us for 20 years," Gray says. "Starting with the nuclear winter and now with the global warming. This scare will also run its course. In 15-20 years, we'll look back and see what a hoax this was."

Gray directs me to a 1975 Newsweek article that whipped up a different fear: a coming ice age.

"Climatologists," reads the piece, "are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change. ... The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality."

Thank God they did nothing. Imagine how warm we'd be?

Another highly respected climatologist, Roger Pielke Sr. at the University of Colorado, is also skeptical.

Pielke contends there isn't enough intellectual diversity in the debate. He claims a few vocal individuals are quoted "over and over" again, when in fact there are a variety of opinions.

What? Opposing views within the scientific community? Pray tell. I know this is a hell of a read but there is some interesting narrative buried deep within this report.

The U.S. landfall of major hurricanes Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005 and the four Florida landfalling hurricanes of 2004 (Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne) raised questions about the possible role that global warming played in these two unusually destructive seasons.

The global warming arguments have been given much attention by many media references to recent papers claiming to show such a linkage. Despite the global warming of the sea surface that has taken place over the last 3 decades, the global numbers of hurricanes and their intensity have not shown increases in recent years except for the Atlantic (Klotzbach 2006).

The Atlantic has seen a very large increase in major hurricanes during the 12-year period of 1995-2006 (average 3.9 per year) in comparison to the prior 25-year period of 1970-1994 (average 1.5 per year). This large increase in Atlantic major hurricanes is primarily a result of the multi-decadal increase in the Atlantic Ocean thermohaline circulation (THC) that is not directly related to global temperature increase. Changes in ocean salinity are believed to be the driving mechanism. These multi-decadal changes have also been termed the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO).

There have been similar past periods (1940s-1950s) when the Atlantic was just as active as in recent years. For instance, when we compare Atlantic basin hurricane numbers over the 15-year period (1990-2004) with an earlier 15-year period (1950-1964), we see no difference in hurricane frequency or intensity even though the global surface temperatures were cooler and there was a general global cooling during 1950-1964 as compared with global warming during 1990-2004.

Although global surface temperatures have increased over the last century and over the last 30 years, there is no reliable data available to indicate increased hurricane frequency or intensity in any of the globe’s seven tropical cyclone basins. Meteorologists who study tropical cyclones have no valid physical theory as to why hurricane frequency or intensity would necessarily be altered significantly by small amounts (< ±1oC) of global mean temperature change. In a global warming or global cooling world, the atmosphere’s upper air temperatures will warm or cool in unison with the sea surface temperatures. Vertical lapse-rates will not be significantly altered. We have no plausible physical reasons for believing that Atlantic hurricane frequency or intensity will change significantly if global ocean temperatures continue to rise. For instance, in the quarter-century period from 1945-1969 when the globe was undergoing a weak cooling trend, the Atlantic basin experienced 80 major (Cat 3-4-5) hurricanes and 201 major hurricane days. By contrast, in a similar 25-year period of 1970-1994 when the globe was undergoing a general warming trend, there were only 38 major hurricanes (48% as many) and 63 major hurricane days (31% as many) in the Atlantic basin. Atlantic sea-surface temperatures and hurricane activity do not necessarily follow global mean temperature trends.

The most reliable long-period hurricane records we have are the measurements of US landfalling tropical cyclones since 1900 (Table 8). Although global mean ocean and Atlantic surface temperatures have increased by about 0.4oC between these two 50-year periods (1900-1949 compared with 1956-2005), the frequency of US landfall numbers actually shows a slight downward trend for the later period. If we chose to make a similar comparison between US landfall from the earlier 30-year period of 1900-1929 when global mean surface temperatures were estimated to be about 0.5oC colder than they were during the 30-year period from 1976-2005, we find exactly the same US hurricane landfall numbers (54 to 54) and major hurricane landfall numbers (21 to 21).

We should not read too much into the two hurricane seasons of 2004-2005. The activity of these two years was unusual but well within natural bounds of hurricane variation. In addition, following the two very active seasons of 2004 and 2005, 2006 had slightly below-average activity, and no hurricanes made landfall in the United States. This was only the 11th year since 1945 (67 total years) that the United States had no landfalling hurricanes.

(emphasis mine)

In an act of irony as subtle as a Mack truck Reverend Gore won in the category of best documentary. To steal a line from Steven Colbert, a more appropriate tittle might be An Inconvenient Truthiness. But I digress. I suggest that Al enjoys his Oscar because nothing signals the demise of a cause like an Oscar win.

In 2005 the Oscar buzz centered on A Million Dollar Baby as controversy swirled around the sad case of Terri Chaivo and issues of euthanasia. In 2006 the Oscar hype focused on Brokeback Mountian and Trans America as SSM was touted as the human rights struggle of our times. This year The Academy made a point of lauding their "green initiatives" and of course recognizing Al Gore's hyperbolic power point presentation.

Be afraid Al, be very afraid. When was the last time you heard anything about euthanasia? As far as SSM goes the point is largely moot and if the truth be told the real debate for most folks was a matter of semantics.....marriage vs civil unions. Life goes on.

The self appointed social conscience that is Hollywood centered celebrity has the life cycle and memory of a fruit fly. Meanwhile here in Canada the global warming/climate change rhetoric is championed by our very own fruitfly...Dr. David Suzuki. As the defacto Prophet of the Canadian branch of the Church of Climatology, Dr. Dave demands to be heard. Well we heard you Dave.

Suzuki outdid himself this past week, cranking up the wild eyed rhetoric to a level that would make another famous David blush (that is if he hadn't pushed things a bit too far). David Koresh. If I remember correctly things turned out badly for that particular prophet also.

Suzuki criss crosses the country in a rock star touring bus plastered with his saintly image, preaching to the unconverted. The brave prophet even ventured into the very center of climate evil.....gasp!....Alberta. What he succeeded in doing was exposing his ideological driven ignorance. Well done Dave. A few of his juicier quotes:

"If your premier thinks he's worried about the future -- and he doesn't realize not doing anything about greenhouse gases is going to wreck the economy -- then he doesn't deserve to be a leader," Suzuki said. He was responding to Stelmach's comments Thursday that Alberta's economic growth won't be sacrificed to meet environmental targets of the Kyoto accord.

"Look, you think you need the tarsands to go gung-ho. Albertans have always had the highest standard of living of any province in the country. What the hell do you need all this unlimited expansion, for God's sake? That's crazy," Suzuki told reporters Friday.

"We haven't even begun to apply the brain power to exploit the tarsands the proper way."

There is so much wrong with these ignorant statements I really don't know where to start. Alberta has always had the highest standard of living in Canada? Unlimited expansion? No advancements in oilsands production technology? Stelmach doesn't deserve the mantle of leadership?

Suzuki's powers of omniscience are awesome to behold in the same way a train wreck fascinates. Strangely beautiful in the most destructive way. Besides the glaring historical errors, technical flaws, moral superiority and factual bankruptcy it seems Dave also has some mathematical deficiencies.

Today’s Ottawa Sun has a Q and A session with David Suzuki about his carbon spewing bus tour across Canada and this is one of the questions.

Q: What role should Canada play on the international scene?

A: Canada produces 2% of C02 emissions, but represents just 0.4% of the world’s population.

So we produce four times more pollution per capita than the global average, and because of that, we have an obligation.

Huh? Dr. Suzuki.....I sense a growing credibility gap here.

Meanwhile on the purely political front the freshly minted "green" leader of the LPC, Stephan Dion has orchestrated a piece of strategic legislation that will in retrospect rival the brilliance of Joe Clark's 1978 budget. Specifically Bill C-288, The Koyoto Protocol Implementation Act.

The act demands that the current government produce, within sixty days of passage, a comprehensive plan to meet our Kyoto commitments.

The Liberal MP who authored a bill that could force the government to abide by Canada's Kyoto Protocol commitments calls its passage a huge step forward.
MP Pablo Rodriguez appeared on CTV's Question Period Sunday to discuss Bill C-288.

The bill -- the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act -- passed in the House of Commons this week, and will now go before the Senate. The legislation states that within 60 days of its passage in Senate, the government would have to come up with a plan for meeting the Kyoto targets.

"It means that the government has no choice but to act and meet our Kyoto obligations," Rodriguez told Question Period.

"This is a long process. We started this last March when we saw that the Conservatives were abandoning Kyoto. And it was a huge fight, a huge victory last week, and things are going well now to force the government to meet our Kyoto objectives."

"The Conservatives say that it is impossible but of course they say it is impossible, they don't try," Rodriguez said.

"Parliament said that it is possible, we said it is possible. The Bloc and NDP say it is possible. Other people say it is possible. It will be difficult, require sacrifices and every day we waste it is more and more difficult. So that is why we have to act now."

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said it's time to stop laying blame, and to start taking action.

She echoed recent statements by environmentalist David Suzuki, saying Canada is already legally obligated to abide by Kyoto because it was signed by then-prime minister Jean Chretien.

"The Kyoto targets are already internationally legally binding. What Pablo's bill did was make them domestically legally binding. That is a good thing."

Under Kyoto, Canada agreed to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases to six per cent below 1990 levels from 2008 to 2012. Canada ratified Kyoto in 2002 under the former Liberal government.

The Kyoto targets the Liberal government of Jean Cretin signed us up for are attainable, Stephane tells us so. In fact the Liberals have had a plan for years.

Eddie Goldberg, the ultimate Liberal insider recently outlined the subtle brilliance of this plan.

While it's obvious Canada's previous Liberal government bought a pig in a poke when it signed the Kyoto accord, it's nice to have it confirmed.

By Eddie Goldenberg, former prime minister Jean Chretien's top aide, no less.

Last week, Goldenberg told a London audience the Liberals knew they couldn't implement Kyoto when they signed it in 1998 and ratified in 2002, but that it was necessary to push public opinion towards accepting implementation of the controversial treaty on global warming.

"Nor was the government itself even ready at the time with what had to be done," Goldenberg acknowledged.

"I believe that the signing of the Kyoto accord in the face of vigorous opposition served to galvanize public opinion to bring it to where it is today in Canada. In the long run, that will be far more important than whether we can meet all the short-term deadlines in the accord."

Goldenberg argued Chretien succeeded in moving public opinion to the point where, today, Ottawa can take tough action to lower greenhouse gas emissions. Those measures, he warned, will result in "big costs in dollars for business, the consumer and for the taxpayer."

To be sure, leading public opinion is something we expect politicians to do.

But the problem for the Liberals is that they did nothing to implement Kyoto after signing it, with the result that they were 35% behind their own emission target when they lost power.

Combine Goldenberg's comments with Liberal leader Stephane Dion's remarks to the National Post last summer that a Liberal government with him as PM would not be able to meet its Kyoto targets -- or, as Dion put it: "In 2008, I will be part of Kyoto, but I will say to the world I don't think I will make it" -- and it shreds what's left of Liberal credibility on this issue.

Dion's later explanation was that he meant the Liberals couldn't implement Kyoto if they aren't returned to power before 2008.

In other words, if an election is held this year and they win, they could still do it. Right. And pigs can fly.

That is one hell of a green corner you've painted yourself into Stephane! Yep...green alright...greenhorn.

For all the reasons above I think we have hit Peak Snake Oil. In the coming months expect the facts to begin to emerge from the cloud of Smug that these leftards have been spewing.

Is the environment important? Of course!

Can we do without the religious fervor and rhetorical bullshit? Absolutely!

Let the real debate begin.

Syncro

How the Mighty have Fallen

2007-01-05T04:06:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time (before global warming) the insightfull, intrepid and incestuous(politically speaking) ruled the land. Back then the leader smote the serfs as he saw fit. This was no problem as he had clever minions who "shaded" the "facts". All of them were fond of nature and some were specifically fond of dasies. Sadly, not one amongst this cabal was capable of an original thought. Lo they rained (sp. intended) over the land...but all empires fall.

The monarch grew aged and his principle (or is that principal?) general...he the keeper of the purse..... became restless. As always it did not end well. The kingdom was fractured and the "wise' chose their sides. He of the purse became King. He swung it like he owned it....to ill effect.

Into the kingdom came a warrior from the west with a ragtag band of men and woymen (3). It must be stated here that the Westerns were never fond of womyn.... unless they could pull the plough (3).

After much hyperbole....including theoretical warriors in the streets....the western hoarde prevailed. A calm came over the land. He of Shawinnigan was vanquished (except for his pending international acclaim.)..he of the purse was invisible or opaque at best.

Many changes were visited upon the land...yet an uneasy cloud hung ominously in the east. What of the Wizard of Kool...he of the gospel of punk. For this was the true power behind the empire.

Being unjustly ripped from the halls of power the Wizard of Kool or WK (as I will refer to him for the sake of expediency) became wrathfull.

Lo upon the land he proclaimed something like this:

Bloggers will continue to believe they are supplanting the mainstream media, when - in fact - the data will show that the growth and influence of blogs is waning

It came to pass that WK made another approximate proclumation. It was omnipotent, omnivorous and.....well here it is:

What say you oohh wise one:

Whenever death and violence take place in proximity to digital video recorders, these days, the results inevitably seep onto the Internet. It is unstoppable.

Simultaneously, the mainstream media can always be counted upon to write predictable stories about how they agonize about whether to broadcast or publish the disturbing images. But none of that really matters anymore: Whatever editors decide, the disturbing images inevitably make their way onto millions of computer and television screens — the 2002 decapitation of Daniel Pearl; the World Trade Center jumpers of September 11; police beatings; countless plane and car crashes. If there is someone getting hurt, somewhere, there is always someone ready to capture the hurt on a cell phone camera.

We are hypocrites about this sort of thing. If you were to ask friends or neighbours or acquaintances if they had scoured the World Wide Web for, say, the three-minute video of Pearl being murdered by Islamic terrorists, the chances are excellent that all of them would quickly say no. But some, perhaps most, would probably be lying. The Zapruder film — grimly documenting president John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, more than 43 years ago — was similarly denounced, but then sought out by the masses

If you are like me, and you watched all of the hanging of Saddam Hussein — uneasy, but also unable to tear one’s eyes away — we share the same narrow moral ground. On the one hand, we are aware that violence does, usually, beget violence. But, on the other hand, we are not unhappy to see a notorious murderer finally receiving crude justice. And grateful that a record exists, however blurry, to prove to us that he did not escape his long overdue descent into Hell.

How the mighty have fallen. Spake no more...go quietly into the night...or at the very least shut yer shameless yap.

Syncro

Stephan Steps Up

2007-01-05T00:38:00.000-07:00

Now this may get confusing. I bear the responsibility. I have a hell of a time differentiating between Steven and Stephan. I know...I know...it's my own fault for dissing the Nuns and dropping out of French classes the first chance I got. So for the sake of clarity I'll call Steven Harper... Steve...(well me and his good friend Chimpy Mc Hitler) and I'll call the other Steph (not to be confused with Staph......because that's a really bad infection and I'm hoping Steph will not spread like Staph).

Anyways....Steph is really on the bit, it seems Steve has been cooking up some plan to send the womyn back to the shed. I know this because he told me so ( Steph not Steve).

I told you this was gonna get confusing.

Despite adding another women to the cabinet...Steph is outraged.....It seems Steve (not to be confused with Steph) has not done enough to protect womyns rights. It would seem that $5 mil. is the make or break point between emancipation/equality and barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen..... Who would have thought?

Soooo...I gotta go.....BRENDA GET ME ANOTHER BEER.....did i say that with my internut voice?

Syncro

Belinda and Judy.....Liberal Defenders of the Sisterhood.

2006-11-27T13:19:00.000-07:00

By now many of you are familiar with this article from the venerable G&M. Some of the most interesting text:

The federal Liberal women's caucus is accusing the Conservative government of trying to keep females “barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen,” saying the government is pursuing an ideological agenda that ignores women's needs and cuts funding to those who need help the most.

The Liberal women released a set of party policies Monday aimed at what they say are the most pressing social and economic issues facing Canadian women, particularly working women and their families, caregivers and seniors.

Improving the social and economic equality of women is the driving force behind the first volume of what the Liberals are calling their “Pink Book.”

The document is the product of cross-country working sessions with women and women's groups held last July, and is slated to be part of the party's election platform.

The recommendations are also aimed at countering what Belinda Stronach, chair of the Liberal women's caucus, described as the Conservative government's “attack” on women's progress.

The recommendations include commitments to reinstate the Liberal child-care and early-learning plan the Tories scrapped after the last election; to reverse budget cuts to social programs and Status of Women; to develop a national caregiver agenda; to provide more benefits to the self-employed, and to secure equal pay for work of equal value.

Judy Sgro said it's not so much the dollars as the message the Tory cuts send.

“I think Harper and his Conservative government, based on their policies, would clearly prefer women would stay barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen and move us backwards 40 years,” she said.

Now I must applaud Belinda and Judy on the brilliant imagery utilized in naming their report the "Pink Book". The intelligence required to associate empowered women with all things pink is positively breathtaking! Given Judy's propensity to empower women through the fast tracking of immigration "stripper permits" I'm sure the published "Pink Book" will be bound in hot pink spandex with handy velcro fasteners.

Some insights into Judy's plan to empower women through the exotic arts:

Sgro has consistently come under attack in the House of Commons over her office's decision to extend a residence permit to a Romanian stripper, and Ottawa's controversial program to allow foreign strippers to get special work visas.

"I deny any allegation," of wrongdoing, Sgro told the House Friday during question period.

Alina Balaican received the ministerial permit three days before the June 28 federal election, which returned the Liberals to power with a minority government.

Sgro said Balaican was allowed to stay under "humanitarian grounds." She said Balaican was "an individual married to a Canadian citizen, working in an industry that she no longer wanted to work in."

When asked about how the case was handled, Sgro said she'd do it "again today."

As for the fact that Balaican worked on Sgro's re-election campaign, Sgro told Canada AM had no knowledge of that.

"I wasn't even aware of the fact that she had worked on the campaign," she explained.

"I had vertigo -- very bad -- for most of the summer. For the last two weeks of the campaign I was not in the campaign office."

The matter has been referred to the ethics commissioner, Bernard Shapiro.

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper accused the federal Liberals of "breathtaking hypocrisy" for allowing the import of strippers, while complaining about sexual exploitation.

Sgro also has come under fire over a meeting in a Toronto strip club at which her chief advisor, Ihor Wons, discussed visa requests with the owner. That owner donated $5,500 to Liberal coffers.

"My staff went and met with the owners of one of these strip clubs," Sgro told Canada AM. "He paid a courtesy call at the request of a friend, met with him, told him that they couldn't do anything for them," she said.

"That was the end of the issue."

As it turns out it wasn't the end of the issue and poor Judy was forced to resign. On a happier note Judy was later exonerated by then ethics commissioner Bernard ( I never met a Lib I couldn't clear) Shapiro.

As an aside Judy, I've found that when one spends extended amounts of time subjected to strobe lights and disco balls it's best to wear shades to avoid those nasty bouts of vertigo.

On the other hand Belinda takes a much different approach to supporting her sisters in arms.

A few pertinent clips to set the stage:

In some dish'n'dirt quarters, the alleged romantic alliance of Tie Domi and Belinda Stronach has been tacitly framed as Beauty and the Beast: Except she's no flaming beauty and he's no Neanderthal beast.

The accused Other Woman, she is a compelling combination of blond ambition, moneyed privilege, political inconstancy and suspect judgment, with a very public trail of intimate relationships gone bad behind her.

But the least-known protagonist in this alleged three-way tango of love and betrayal and anguish is The Wife, Leanne Domi.

A Mrs. of 13 years standing who has, already once before, forgiven her husband for what she says was a previous infidelity, on the promise that he would never again hurt her like this.
"If it wasn't for my husband's affair with Belinda, we wouldn't be getting a divorce," Leanne told the Star in an interview last night.

"We were happily married. If not for Belinda, I think we still would be happily married. But he's no longer my husband and he will never be my husband again."

It would be sexist to portray Stronach as some kind of man-eater who's now got her French-manicured talons into Domi, small-town boy made spectacularly good. By this point in the evolution of the sexes, surely women are just as entitled to their appetites and assignations as men. But the optics are lousy when a family goes bust because of it, and even more so for an elected politician who depends on the fealty of voters, one who — the irony is withering — is chair of the Liberal women's caucus.

Stronach appears singularly lacking in sisterly sympathies whilst also something of a balls-crusher, at least on the evidence of discarded, sad-eyed Peter MacKay — oh, we felt his pain! — dumped simultaneous with the Member from Newmarket-Aurora crossing the floor from Conservatives to Liberals, on the eve of an election no less. Her allegiances, like her love, are fickle.

This from the second Belinda link:

A decade before Belinda Stronach met Tie Domi, she had an affair with another ex-Maple Leaf, Jerome Dupont, his ex-wife says.

"It's obviously a pattern for her, but I don't think it should be used against her and her ability as a politician," says Caroline Dupont, who has two children, aged 15 and 17, with the former Leaf.

So to summarize......the Chair of the LPC Women's caucus seems to have a demonstrated appetite for other women's husbands. Her co-chair seems to have no problem with executive staff members seemingly brokering "stripper work visas" with strip club owners.

Hmmmmmmm. Methinks these hardworking Lady Liberal MPs seem to have something other than female constituents on their minds with the strategic release of the "Pink Book".

What could that be? Ahhh yes....they are in fact Liberal MPs.....sooo the answer could only be POWER for the sake of POWER!!!!

Check this out:

Judy Sgro has endured the gentle arm-twisting from her caucus colleagues, even rebuffed the offers of prominent positions within the leadership camps.

And now as one of the few MPs who haven't endorsed a Liberal leadership candidate, she's a rarity going into this week's convention in Montreal, which runs from Tuesday to Saturday.

I think everybody I know on the different camps has called," Sgro said.
And it's not just Sgro's vote the various leadership organizers hope to grab but also the dozen of undeclared delegates from her York West riding.

"I wanted to take my time and look at the various people, some of them I did not know very well. I just didn't feel there was a need for a rush," said Sgro, a former immigration minister.

So Judy and the delegates she controls are uncommitted! I wonder who Belinda has declared support for? Let's see!

Most other Liberal MPs have already declared their support for one of the leadership candidates. And among MPs from Greater Toronto, Michael Ignatieff is the big winner, getting endorsements from a dozen politicians, including former cabinet ministers John McCallum and Jim Peterson.

Gerard Kennedy, who quit as Ontario's education minister for his leadership run, has the backing of seven MPs, including Dan McTeague and Navdeep Bains.

Bob Rae has the support of four MPs and Stéphane Dion can count on three Toronto-area MPs. But former cabinet ministers Joe Volpe and Ken Dryden didn't have much luck wooing the their caucus colleagues — Volpe has just two endorsements; Ken Dryden has none.
(As the party's interim leader, Toronto Centre MP Bill Graham has pledged to remain neutral in the contest.)

Just four local MPs remain on the fence, including Belinda Stronach and Sgro, who thinks that, after the ups and downs of the leadership campaign, some of her colleagues may regret making endorsements so early.

So there it is soul sisters!!!! Belinda and Judy are two of the only four undeclared Liberal MP's from the GTA. I suggest the timing of the release of this so-called "Pink Book" is really about oldschool, backroom, ball busting, old boys politics.

It would seem that Judy and Belinda have set themselves up as kingmakers at the upcoming LPC Leadership Convention.

That might explain the overblown rhetoric. To butcher a line from an old joke .....

"That's no lady that's my MP"

Syncro

The Donkey at The Dais

2006-11-12T12:09:00.000-07:00

We've all heard the phrase "the elephant in the room," used to indicate some uncomfortable, unspoken truth that "polite" people refuse to acknowledge. Now I'll be the first to admit that an overwhelming sense of decorum is not one of my strengths and as a novice writer I've been known to butcher a phrase or two.

That given I'm going to combine these two facts to typify the LPC announcement of Howard Dean as the keynote speaker at the upcoming LPC Leadership Convention as, "The Donkey at The Dais". For obvious reasons I think this works on numerous levels. I'm sure you're all familiar with this beauty by now.

EEEEEhaaawww! EEEEhaaawww! I can hardly wait to see this jackass at the dais!

But that's not all there is to this story. Some of you may recall the furor raised in the MSM and by some noted politicos last May when PMSH had the unmitigated gall to meet with noted Republican pollster Frank Luntz prior to Mr. Luntz being a keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the Civitas Society.

I should note that the Civitas Society is in no way officially connected to the CPC or the Canadian Government. Regardless, the outcry was loud and the apparent implications for Canadian politics were dire. Some pertinent clips here:

Liberal MP Mark Holland said the Conservatives are attempting to follow in the footsteps of the Republicans.

"There is an attempt to repeat what the Republicans did in the States to us up here in the north and there is a very close alignment of Republican ideology with what the Conservatives have."

Horrors!!! Independent members of a Canadian political party emulating an American political party's strategy. Mark sees the obvious danger in a close alignment in ideology. I wonder if this could be alternately described as a natural affinity? Anyways....according to Mark....this was positively apocalyptic.

Mark Holland summed up his indignation with this question:

"Why is the prime minister taking direction from Republican pollsters?" Liberal MP Mark Holland asked during question period Monday.

I wonder if Mark has read this LPC press release? Some highlights:

The Liberal Party of Canada today is pleased to announce that the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Governor Howard Dean, will give the keynote address at the Party's upcoming Leadership and Biennial Convention.

We are proud to have Gov. Dean address our Party. Aside from our obvious affinity with the Democratic Party, Liberals are excited to hear the Chairman's views on a modern democracy and the role of the Democratic Party in the new U.S. political environment. And the timing couldn't be better, said Steven MacKinnon, General Secretary of the Convention.

Well Steven, the timing may be good but the optics....not so much. If I understand Liberal logic (I know, I know, an obvious oxymoron but please bear with me) correctly a Republican pollster speaking to a small c-conservative group is a travesty but the Chairman of The Democratic National Committee giving the keynote address at the LPC Leadership Convention is a matter of "pride". Hmmmmmmm....interesting.

I wonder if any of the leadership contenders have anything to say about Governor Dean rallying the troops? It seems Ken Dryden has heard a rumor about this very issue. I guess poor Kens blackberry is broken. Regardless......The rumor is true Ken. I'm sorry to hear you don't approve but I'll try to put it in terms you can understand. Sometimes the team just doesn't play that well in front of you.

I guess the only other question I have is what will be the message delivered by that savy campaigner Howard Dean? If the concept of karma prevails it might be something like... "Do as I say not as I do." or maybe "The power of Hyperbole can NEVER be Overstated". It seems to me that either of those messages would be appropriate for a LPC crowd.

Anyways....I'll be signing off.....I've got to go to the grocery store AND the bottle depot AND the CAR WASH and the AND THE POST OFFICE AND THE LOONEY STORE.....EEEEHHAAAWWWW!!!!!

Syncro

CBC...CTV...Global and a Guelph Mercury

2006-11-09T21:29:00.000-07:00

I was surfing around tonight and found this interesting piece by ChuckerCanuck on the latest visit of one Bill Clinton to Canada. It seems Bill is in country for a couple of fundraisers. What I found interesting were Bill's purported comments on Canadian Forces involvement in Afghanistan as reported by something called a Guelph Mercury. Some pertinent excerpts:

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton urged Canada to keep its soldiers fighting in Afghanistan in a talk in Kitchener yesterday.

Pulling out of the country now could allow the repressive Taliban regime to take control again, he warned.

The Taliban would again offer protection to the terrorists who attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001 and who are now in hiding, he said.

"That would have direct implications for your security," Clinton said.

Holy shit! That sounds absolutely hawkish! Direct implications for our security? Bill Clinton taking a position that supports Prime Minister Stephen Harper and those nasy Conservatives? What the hell is this world coming to? With trepadation I read on:

"If we lose in Afghanistan and the Taliban come back, it will not only be a nightmare for the Afghan people," Clinton said, "but it will create greater options of movement for the Al-Qaeda leadership, and increase the likelihood that they will be able to mount and conduct more global terrorist operations."

Clinton drew distinctions between the NATO-led war in Afghanistan and the American-led war in Iraq.

The U.S. made a "serious mistake" by invading Iraq when it was already fighting in Afghanistan, and by underestimating the challenges in each place, he said.

"Because Canada has been part of our NATO alliance in Afghanistan, you are paying the price of that," Clinton said.

Clinton said the resignation yesterday of U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld likely signals a change in U.S. policy on the Iraq war.

"It is a signal that there will be a different direction," he said.

What?? Withdrawal from Afstan would mean an increase in global terrorism? Afstan is a NATO led as opposed to being an American (read Bush) led war? Potential changes in U.S. foriegn policy? How can this be? I'm so confused Uncle Willy!

I could barely believe what I was reading! Having never heard of a "Guelph Mercury" I immediately became suspicious. I mean really....I've heard of Mercury (huge car...something like a LTD) but what the hell is a Guelph? I decided to check this obvious fraud out. Being a proud citizen of this great country I immediately thought of "Canada's Most Trusted News Source"....The CBC.

Just as I suspected. Not a word about the previous President of the United States commenting on what a Democrat controlled Congress might mean for American foriegn policy and the implications this may have on Canadian forces in Afghanistan. Ahhh Haaa!!! This is obviously some kind of hoax that these "Guelphs" are trying to pull on us! I decided to double check the "facts" on the CTV website.

Once again no mention of Bill Clinton supporting Canadian military involvement in Afghanistan. There were however links to a story on that redneck prick Klein attacking Belinda, a really interesting piece on K-Fed, something about those hicks in Alberta cutting down more trees, a bit about our noble opposition trying to convince those nasty Conservatives to save the environment and a brilliant piece on how driving your car is screwing with the environment. I got so interested in these hard hitting bits of journalism that I ended up opening the "Canada" page. to get more. Lo and behold, second from the bottom, I found mention of Bill Clinton along with Belinda Stronach (where have I heard them mentioned together before? anyways I digress). I was going to bust these "Guelphs" once and for all!!

I eagerly clicked on the link and just as I suspected no mention of Afghanistan!! What I did find in the text was much more in line with what one would expect from ex-president Clinton and all the famous, beautifull and important people who flock to the great man! This was more like it:

Belinda Stronach and Rick Mercer pleaded for support Thursday for a program that would provide insecticide-treated nets to protect African children from malaria.

The Canadian MP and well-known Canadian comedian joined luminaries such as former U.S. president Bill Clinton and actor Mia Farrow Thursday in calling for help to end poverty at an international conference on global poverty in Montreal.

The former president, who stopped to sign an autograph on his way into the convention centre, received an ovation more fitting a rock star than a politician, CTV's Rob Lurie reported from the convention centre floor.

Clinton put his charisma to work at the Montreal Millennium Promise Conference, firing up enthusiasm for the elimination of poverty

Yeah!!! Like a rock star!!! I was so excited I could feel the charisma oozing through my high speed connection. I just had to read on:

The war in Iraq cost US$300 billion, Clinton told more than 3,000 attendees of the conference. But the U.S. has failed to provide a promised US$30 billion in promised foreign aid that could help provide protect Africa's water, increase that continents grain production and educate African children, he said.

"We're here today to save lives. It's that's simple," Stronach said.

Stronach and Mercer were at the conference to promote a "Spread the Net" program for purchasing and distributing bed nets in Africa to help protect children from mosquitoes.

Yes!! You preach it sister. It was also comforting to hear the anti-war message from Mr. Clinton that I've come to expect. But I couldn't wait to read more:

The program, which aims to get individuals to buy 500,000 bed nets for distribution in Liberia and Rwanda, is the brainchild of Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, a famed economist and author of The End of Poverty.

Sachs also criticized the U.S. war in Iraq and urged Canadians not to let the Stephen Harper's Conservative government abandon the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

Now that's journalism! I just knew that the war in Iraq and Harpers position on Koyoto had something to do with mosquitos in Africa. Those neo-con bastards! In the end the former president had the final word:

Investing in the fight against poverty now will cost much less than paying for the consequences of not acting later, Clinton noted.

"One in four of all the worlds deaths this year, including huge numbers -- millions of them children -- will come from aids, TB, malaria and infections related to dirty water," Clinton said.

"All of the things we can do are much cheaper than deaing with the aftermath of calamity,'' he said. "And they are also parenthetically are much cheaper than going to war.''

Thank you Mr. President! I just knew you were anti-war! I sat there basking in the cyber induced glow that only the truth can inspire and pondered what my next step might be in exposing the slander that these obviously right wing "Guelphs" were attempting to perpetuate.

I decided to cover all the bases and pop by Global National's site to make sure the bastards hadn't infiltrated there. Thankfully all was well. Three stories on the vicious attack on Belinda, one on a vicious attack on Daniel Igali in Nigeria (something about stealing laptops,cash, cell phones and mosquito nets) three about a naked GWB getting his balls handed to him by someone named Nancy Pelosi and two about those mosquito loving, gas guzzling Conservatives. I sat back and breathed a sigh of relief.

Now to the crux of the matter at hand. I don't know who the hell you "Guelphs" are (probably some code word for conservative) but you can all fuck right off back to Alberta (I presume that's where you evil bastards are from) and take them gas guzzling land yachts with you!

Syncro

This Old Man

2006-11-09T16:30:00.000-07:00

Hi All!

I havn't been posting for some time as you may have noticed. The truth be told, I've been depressed as hell with the overall state of affairs of our nation. By this I mean Canada and not one of the myriad of "nations" that exist in the mind of some intellectual who would be king.

I've watched sullenly as our political discourse has descended into hysterical hyperbole about bitches while the mousetached (spelling intentional) wonder proposes to negotiate with the Mullahs. Meanwhile Rae and Brison wave their asses in our collective faces ( an omen of things to come?).

In other charming news the leftard followers of the mousetache are flogging peace poppies during Remembrance Week, clearly riding on the backs of our veterans, ostensibly for the purpose of funding schools for girls in Afstan which clearly would not exist if the policies of the mousetache were enacted. Hypocritical dipshits!

And then I came across this from CTV. I had a laugh and slowly some perspective began to return. Ralph appears to have had the last word on doggie-gate as he often did on many things. I know it's a old tired joke, but somehow Ralph has always been able to knock the wind out of the pompous airbags that inhabit our political landscape. As I read the above article I couldn't get this childhood dittie out of my head. I guess it was the bone thing. Anyways a humble tribute to a remarkable man.

This Old Man

This old man ..he played one......he put the run on bums and scum...with a knick knack paddy whack...get yer ass back home.....city hall was Ralph's to roam.

This old man ...he played two...a couple coolies at the St. Loo...with a knick knack paddy whack....a couple,three or four....Ralphie always found the door.

This old man he played three....environment...hell hug a tree...with a knick knack paddy whack...Ralph was in the weeds...laying in wait for Don Getty.

This old man he played four...dinosaur farts from years before...with a knick knack paddy whack..ice age theory....science was never this funny.

This old man he played five...get a job to stay alive..with a knick knack paddywhack... here's a couple tens.....get off yer ass and act like men.

This old man he played six....the MSM painted us as hicks...with a knick knack paddywhack....no deficits and prosperity.....but then it's just geology.

This old man he played seven...do mad cows go to heaven?...with a knick knack paddywhack.... shoot shovel and shut up....or load it on the rendering truck.

This old man he played eight...Hey Peter who's your date?...with a knick knack paddywhack give that dog a bone......potatoe patch went running home.

This old man he played nine.....well of course he is Ralph Klein...with a knick knack paddy wack...it was quite a run....and fer sure it was god damn fun!

This old man he played ten... he's left the battle to other men....with a knick knack paddywhack...We shall miss the King.....His commonness meant everything!

Thanks Ralph.

Syncro

Calgary- Support The Troops Rally- Redux

2006-09-30T19:38:00.000-06:00

I made it to the rally. Those of you who know Calgary will recognize the C-train as the very best access to the city center. I climbed on at Canyon Meadows Station resplendent in my Made in Canada T and a Flames Ballcap. Round about Heritage Station this huge feller boards with a furled CanFlag. We make eye contact and a few nods are exchanged.

I disembark at Olympic Plaza and follow a Vet off the train and onto the platform. Ahead of us is an obviously disheveled native man who reeks of amonia. I increased my pace to get up wind of this pathetic soul. As I passed him, he turned and looked at me with eyes that said, "I quit." I moved on into the plaza infront of city hall as a quiet crowd assembled.

I thought I would observe.

What I saw has both broke my heart and gave me a glimmer of hope.

The turn out on what could only be described as a gorgeous Calgary fall afternoon was dismall.

By my estimation (I counted them) there were about 350 people in attendance...Pols included. The ones that did attend include Jason Kenny, Ted Mortinson, Wayne Cao, Rob Anders, and a few others from the blue-stripe that don't impress me much.

Noticeably adsent, were any Pols of the red or orange (yellow?) stripe. The big three were there too, Global, CTV, CBC. I have to admit, I felt really bad for the girrlll reporter from the CBC. The obvious, gratuitious bitch-slaps were taken at Mother Corp, and Taliban Jack. Some young gal sang an original song entitled, "Canadian Soldier."

I nearly cried... The Pols spoke out, Kenny and Mortinson being the best of the stripe.

The crowd (such as it was) consisted of mostly white, old/young, Canadians. I saw alot of guys with PPCLI T's. Obviously alot of the kids in the crowd were offspring of serving men. Then there were the Vets, about 15-20 of them.

Then we got to hear from an Afghani refuge named, Abduul, (no shit,) who spoke passionately about the reality of Taliban rule. He got the biggest cheer.

I stepped back from the rally to get a larger sense of what was really going on. What I saw does not bode well.

The bum on the park-bench, not the pissy one (this feller had moved on beyond that,) seemed annoyed at this intrusion into his space. He spooled up his backpack after trying to rub the crabs out of his arm-hair.

I jumped back on the train, and so did the feller with the flag. His stop was before mine.............we both avoided eye contact....but as he got off, it was unavoidable. We both shook our heads, and a little part of me died...

Then I got it, the juxtaposition. We live in a country that takes freedom, prosperity, and entitlement for granted. It's no fucking wonder, given the pricks running the show.

There is something desperately wrong with a country, a city, a province, a jurisdiction that can elicit the support of half a million people for a celebration of minority sexuality. The same country cannot find in it's soul to support the children that fight for Us.

I think we're fucked...

Syncro

Calgary-Support The Troops Rally

2006-09-29T16:27:00.000-06:00

Following on the heels of the Red Friday Rally in Toronto, organizers in Calgary are holding a similar event tomorrow Saturday, September 30th at 12 noon.

The Rally will be held in front of City Hall. I'll be attending and hope to see a large turn out. I will post some pics sometime tomorrow night. Remember to wear some red (it appears red is not my color as I own nothing red but I will make a purchase and a special exception in this case).

The organizers are holding the rally on a Saturday in hopes that we get a larger turnout than a business day. I have some contract work to complete tomorrow but I think sacrificing a couple of hours to honor our troops is the least I can do. I hope many of you out there feel the same.

Anyways......I hope to be a small blogger in a very large crowd.

Cheers

Syncro

Sex.. Thugs and The Same Old Same Old

2006-09-26T23:22:00.000-06:00

Given all the nonsense surrounding the Liberal leadership race one can be excused for feeling a little disoriented. Time for a recap of the current absurdities and a look at what might really be going on.

Being a red blooded Canadian boy I just have to deal with the sex thing first.

Buhlinda, the former Minister of Complex Files, finds herself in the middle of a nasty divorce. The latest dirt is dished here and here. What I find especially interesting is this excerpt from the TorStar piece.

But sources close to the couple — by which I mean the alleged couple, Tie and Belinda — told the Star that the purported pair feel broadsided by the incendiary contents of Mrs. Domi's divorce application, with Tie particularly frantic about how such open hostility will affect their kids.

Tie and Buhlinda feel broadsided! These two assholes deserve each other. But it does get better/worse. Buhlinda is.........wait for it ..........a VICTIM.

"I'm not going to comment on it at this point in time, whether it's true or false," Stronach told CTV's Mike Duffy Live. "I'm not going to comment on my personal life at this moment."
She said it was a matter between the courts and the Domi family.

"It's right now a matter that is before the courts between two individuals and they need to sort it out so I'm not going to make any comments at this time," said Stronach.

But Stronach did comment when asked if a man in her position would receive the same level of media scrutiny.

"I'd like to say in a country like Canada that there isn't but I do believe there is a double standard," she said. "It's very unfortunate for other women in this country that want to seek political office and make a contribution."

Buhlinda........just a thought here.......but if you want to make a contribution to all things right, good, fuzzy and warm....quit fucking some other woman's husband.

Soooo....that's enough sex......onto the thugs.

Of course when one mentions the LPC and thugs in the same breath one or two names come to mind. Let's start with the obvious...Sideshow Joe Volpe and Alfonso Gagliano. Unfortunately it doesn't stop there. I would like to add the esteemed prof. from Harvard to the list.

Despite being vaunted as the architect of the new catechism of Libraldom by non other than that tired old fart in the goofy cap...Peter C. Newman, the same games are being played.

The money clip here:

Allegations of membership irregularities spread Monday from long-shot contender Joe Volpe to presumed front-runner Michael Ignatieff.

A complaint was filed with the party’s Ontario wing over 60 members allegedly signed up improperly by Ignatieff’s camp in two Toronto-area ridings, including one man in Ignatieff’s constituency who is dead.

Way to go Iggy.....they thought you were a pussy.....then again getting tenure can be a nasty bit of business eh? It would seem that the pundits may have miscalculated your political guile. Welcome to the majors.

Then there's sideshow Joe. What can you say about Joe that he hasn't parodied himself? I will therefore limit my critique to four words......Rich kids.... Dead delegates. I could link ya but redundancy has it's limits.

On to more headier matters. Hot Cross Heddy. I can only imagine the psychological trauma dear Heddy was subjected to when the spectre of Libralism showed it's ugly face. Given Heddy's hypersensitivity to men in sheets is it any wonder she decided to withdraw? Shame on you boys. Where Heddy parked her "support" (such as it is ) tells the real story.

Heddy is backing Bob Rae.

Which leads me to the same old same old.

Being a tradesman who lives by the seasons I appreciate my down time. The advent of the fall season is a precurser of the days to come. A time to read. On the top of my list are these two tomes. Found here and here.

Having given both a superficial look I think I've detected a few commom themes. This quote from old news Alfonso:

Embattled Liberal leadership candidate Joe Volpe is the victim of anti-Italian sentiment, says former public works minister Alfonso Gagliano, who blames the same ethnic prejudice for his own fall from grace.

Change a few words and it sounds like the same sad story Buhlinda is claiming. All victimization aside this is not the real importance of Alfo's rant. It becomes apparant here:

He stands by Jean Chretien as "a great leader" and acknowledges that he might have avoided the entire arduous affair if he had accepted two earlier offers from the former prime minister to become Canada's ambassador in Rome before accepting the one for Denmark under pressure when the scandal was breaking in the news.

Then there is this from an old school Liberal insider:

A new book from one of Jean Chretien's top lieutenants paints an unflattering portrait of Paul Martin, describing him as a political boil that should have been lanced years earlier.

The 400-page book by Eddie Goldenberg hits store shelves in the midst of Liberal efforts to defuse partisan bickering and choose a new leader -- an exercise many Grits are hoping will bridge the gap between the rivalling Martin-Chretien camps.

In polotics timing is everything, something Jean Cretin understood all too well. The timing of these two book releases smells of putine. I'm thinking JC still has a hand in the game. The asshole couldn't speak either of our official languages but you have to admit he was a master of the backroom deal/knife toss.

So what else does slimey insider Eddie have to say? Who would have guessed:

Goldenberg is supporting longtime friend Bob Rae in the current leadership contest, although he also has kind words in his book for another contender, Stephane Dion, Chretien's onetime unity minister.

Surprise.... Surprise....Eddie likes the Bobster. Then to close the deal Fast Eddie accuses Martin (and therefore subliminally ex-Martinites) of the greatest crime in Libraldom. Failing to pay homage to P. E. T. himself.

This gem:

Goldenberg also reveals that Martin had no objection to a plan from Chretien to budget $125 million for a foundation for postgraduate scholarships commemorating former prime minister Pierre Trudeau after his death.

But "he made it clear to me that he was not prepared to be part of any government announcement in commemoration of Pierre Elliott Trudeau," writes Goldenberg, adding that Martin refused to be photographed with Trudeau's two sons, Alexandre and Justin.

Blasphemy!!! Now if that doesn't get the spittle flying from the slack lips of every good Lib nothing will.

Anyways.....As near as I can figure the the old school Libs are lining up behind Bob Rae. One more tidbit from Paul Wells' recent extensive piece.

Rae may have come pretty close to running Ontario into the ground in the 1990s, but he has emerged as the standard-bearer for Liberals who believe managerial competence is the party's most important asset. He comes by this aura honestly enough: his brother, John Rae, ran Jean Chrétien's campaigns. It explains why Rae has attracted a lot of talent, if not much youth. "The call from John Rae is an important call, to which most Liberals would tend to listen closely," one Liberal told me.

There were audible gasps when Jean Pelletier, the former Quebec City mayor who served as Jean Chrétien's chief of staff for six years, showed up to listen to the proceedings at the Capitole. Fewer Liberals were surprised when Pelletier, who maintains he has no dog in this race, sat with a group of Rae supporters. They're who a guy like Jean Pelletier knows.

Audible gasps. I wonder if Iggy heard them??? While I may have welcomed you to the majors....these guys are throwing spitters. Good luck Iggy!!!

Same old same old. PowerCorp...Demarais....and Chairman Mo. Welcome to the NEW LPC. Thanks for coming out.

Syncro

Sideshow Joe Volpe VS. Diamond Iggy Quimby

2006-09-25T21:31:00.000-06:00

Dateline Springfield:

In what could only be described as a "school-yard brawl", a fight broke out between frontrunner Diamond Iggy Quimby, and Sideshow Joe Volpe. In a battle for the hearts, minds, and pocketbooks of the best and brightest at Springfield Elementary.

As Bart, Lisa and Milhouse ( he donated $5400) looked on the battle raged.

Meanwhile, Principle MacKinnon observed.

It was rather ugly, when Sideshow Joe's "consultants" came in to calm the situation. Eventually they left in a stretched Lincoln Navigator.

After coming to his senses, Iggy Quimby signed up both Snowball I and Snowball II.

I think it was a draw.

Anyways, what do ya think these pricks will do tomorrow?

Syncro & The Tubster

P.S.... watch out for the Lincoln Navigator.

Dead Men Tell No Tales

2006-09-24T09:34:00.000-06:00

I came across an interesting press release at the LPC website.

September 23, 2006

MONTREAL - The Liberal Party of Canada (Quebec) reaffirms that Mr. Alfonso Gagliano is not registered on the list of members in good standing of the party. Indeed, Mr. Gagliano has tried to register online on the national Website of the party and may have received an automated message acknowledging the receipt of his request. The latter, however, still had to be approved by the provincial wing of the party. As such, the Liberal Party of Canada (Quebec) confirms that Mr. Gagliano's request has been refused.

In stark contrast we find this piece regarding LPC membership and party loyalty.

Some pertinent excerpts:

MPs supporting Liberal leadership candidate Joe Volpe say they won't desert him, despite allegations his campaign improperly paid for party memberships in Quebec.

"I believe in Joe and I think Joe is very capable to run the party as well as the country," Oak Ridges-Markham MP Lui Temelkovski said yesterday.

He threw his weight behind Volpe (Eglinton-Lawrence), along with Montreal MP Massimo Pacetti (Saint-Leonard-Saint Michel), and Ontario's Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay-Superior North) and Wajid Khan (Mississauga-Streetsville).

"He's a hard-working man and will continue to work with the party," Temelkovski added.

The Toronto Star reported yesterday dozens of people in Montreal-area ridings including at least two dead people had been improperly signed up as federal Liberal party
members.

So whats up here? Amid a growing controversy over party memberships the LPC takes the time to issue a press release saying Alfonso Gagliano is persona non grata. I mean really, after all those years of tough slogging for the party, packing all those heavy brown envelopes...this is the thanks he gets!!!!

But Why???

OH.....I just came across this. It seems Alfonso has taken up writing. Some of the juicier tidbits:

In the book, Gagliano maintains as he has throughout his tribulations that he did no wrong as minister of public works, under whose auspices the tainted sponsorship program was run, and that he is the innocent victim of a smear campaign by elements of the media and his political enemies, foremost among them Paul Martin.

In a passage entitled "the pathetic spectacle of Paul Martin," Gagliano charges that Martin used the sponsorship affair to discredit Chretien and his loyalists, and suggests that he pumped up the scandal to distract from controversy over $70 million in federal subsidies that his family firm was accorded while he was finance minister.

Alfonso concludes with this observation:

Gagliano, who came to Canada from Sicily when he was 16 years old, takes pride in his achievements and praises Canada for making them possible. But he also maintains that ethnic prejudice played prominently in his fall from grace.

"I believe that if my name had been Lapierre, Arcand or Cournoyer, I would not have been accused, condemned and executed in the public arena without having been heard out. My greatest misfortune in political torment was to be what I am, with my name, my accent, my features and my personality."

While I can feel Alfonso's pain, a quick inspection of the ethnicity of the deceased Liberal members in question would seem to indicate otherwise.

No Alfonso.......If I understand this correctly the good ship Liberal prefers dead members to live ones with word processors.

Arrrrrr Matey!!!

Syncro

Jan Continues to Speculate----The CBC Continues to Obfuscate

2006-09-23T17:52:00.000-06:00

The controversy surround Jan Wong's Sept. 16th piece in the Globe and mail continues to swirl. Today it culminated in what amounts to an apology from G&M editor in chief Edward Greenspon.

CTV has the run down here. Some of the more pertinent excerpts follow here:

In his Letter to the Editor column published in the Globe on Saturday, Edward Greenspon wrote, "We regret that we allowed these words to get into a reported article,'' in which Wong raised the possibility that the shootings were linked to Quebecers' alleged prejudice against immigrants and a sense of alienation in non-francophone communities.

"While we feel the reaction to the article has been disproportionate -- including personal attacks on Jan and her family -- in hindsight, the paragraphs were clearly opinion and not reporting and should have been removed from that story,'' Greenspon wrote.

"To the extent they may have been used, they should have been put into a separate piece clearly marked opinion. That particular passage of the story did not constitute a statement of fact, but rather a thesis -- and thus did not belong in the article.''

Quite a remarkable statement by the editor in chief of a national daily.....Essentially that editorial speculation has no place in a hard news piece. As near as I can tell the paragraphs causing all the controversy are as follows:

"What many outsiders don't realize is how alienating the decades-long linguistic struggle has been in the once-cosmopolitan city,'' she wrote.

"It hasn't just taken a toll on long-time anglophones, it's affected immigrants, too. To be sure, the shootings in all three cases were carried out by mentally disturbed individuals. But what is also true is that in all three cases, the perpetrator was not pure laine, the argot for a `pure' francophone.''

"Elsewhere, to talk of racial `purity' is repugnant. Not in Quebec.''

Jan finds herself in hot water for speculating on the motivation of homicidal maniacs, going so far as to speculate the "root cause" of such behavior is linguistic and cultural alienation. Fair enough. I would have to agree with Edward Greenspon that this hardly constitutes hard reporting.

The CTV article concludes with the following statements:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper wrote a letter to the Globe on Wednesday, calling Wong's argument prejudiced, absurd, irresponsible and without foundation.

The House of Commons also condemned the piece and, in a motion supported by all political parties, demanded an apology from the newspaper.

In a letter published in last Saturday's edition of the Globe, Quebec Premier Jean Charest called Wong's suggestion a "disgrace.''

So to summarize; The Prime Minister, The House of Commons (supported by all parties) and the Premier of Quebec all objected to Ms. Wong's psychic speculation.

Just for fun lets go have a look at how the CBC reported the same story.

Comments in a recent article by a Globe and Mail writer who suggested Quebec's francophone culture may have contributed to the Dawson College shootings should have been removed, the newspaper's editor-in-chief said Saturday.

In his Letter from the Editor column in the Globe's Saturday edition, Edward Greenspon wrote: "We regret that we allowed these words to get into a reported article."

Wong's comments drew a swift and furious response from Quebecers of all stripes, Greenspon noted.

So far so good. Sticking to the facts is a good thing. But watch what happens next.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Quebec Premier Jean Charest wrote letters to the paper condemning Wong's remarks, but Wong said the two rebuked her article just to get votes in the province.

"I feel that it's opportunistic," Wong told CBC News. "In Stephen Harper's case, judging from his letter, I don't think he actually read the article. I think that they want votes in Quebec and they see this as a cheap and easy way to get it. Dump on a journalist."

Wong said Harper just wants to "patch things up with Charest" over their differences on scrapping the gun registry.

"I felt it was really crass, however, he also has the right to his opinion," she said.

"I just feel that the office of the prime minister should not be used in this way to dump on a reporter. I think he should do other things with his office."

Ohhh... Jan..Jan...Jan....your omniscience is showing again. Having pissed off most of the citizens of Quebec, the Prime Minister, The House of Commons, The Premier and your Editor in Chief this is what you offer as a mea culpa........more unfounded speculation and hints at victimization????

But that's not all Jan had to say.......noooo......Watch this:

She said she's surprised by the reaction to her feature. Wong, who is of Asian descent and a third-generation Quebecer, said many of the attacks against her have been racist.

"And in a way, I think it might prove what I was trying to get at. I mean, I'm a Quebecer," Wong said.

"Of course when this happens, I'm not. I'm actually one of those people in the middle that I was talking about. So, all a sudden I'm Asian."

So if I read this correctly you were right all along Jan? This is proven by the shabby treatment you have received since interjecting speculative observations into an emotionally charged situation? Jan your logic is astounding in the depth of its arrogance. But hell Jan isn't done yet!!

In one final career crushing act of unimaginable contradiction Jan offers this gem.

Wong refused to discuss the content of her piece.

"I didn't want to talk about what I wrote because what I wrote is out there."

"If people don't want to agree, that's fine. I welcome a debate.

I don't want to talk about it but I welcome debate!! Absolutely brilliant!!! I look forward to your next piece in the Stump Lake Sentinal.

But here's the kicker. As near as I can tell the CBC writer responsible for reporting on the story of a fellow journalist in trouble for speculating rather than reporting, chose to devote half of the text of the article on the further speculations of this same journalist.

Do you think this idiot may have missed the point also?

Christ these pompous assholes get everything they deserve.

Syncro

Lazarus of Bethany Confirmed as Card Carrying LPC Member

2006-09-23T14:39:00.000-06:00

In light of the recent revelations by the Toronto Star regarding Joe Volpe's membership drive practices, I decided to dig a little deeper into this breaking story.

I have unconfirmed reports that Lazarus of Bethany has been designated a card carrying Liberal and appears to have signed his membership papers prior to the crutial cut off date of July 3rd 2006. This would make Lazarus eligible to participate in delegate selection meetings.

Sources also indicate that Volpe campaign spokesman Corey Hobbs and Steven MacKinnon, National Director of the LPC had this to say regarding Lazarus' membership:

Volpe campaign spokesman Corey Hobbs said "all memberships are in full compliance with the Canada Elections Act and with Liberal party guidelines.

"Similarly, Steven MacKinnon, the Liberal party's national director, said he saw "nothing particularly untoward" about the membership.

"On the surface, there's certainly nothing miraculous at all."

The above comments are eerily similar to others reported here regarding a previous misunderstanding regarding the Volpe campaign.

In a somewhat related story, it is expected that in a cost cutting measure Joe Volpe will assume responsibility for catering the upcoming LPC Leadership Convention. Sources indicate that sisters of the aforementioned Lazarus, Mary and Martha (also card carrying Liberals) will be bringing fishes and loaves. It is assumed that Mr. Volpe will do the rest.

Syncro

Entitlement vs. Responsibility.....What Kind of Canadian are You?

2006-09-23T09:58:00.000-06:00

I came across this excellent article this morning by Andrew Coyne. Once again AC displays his talent for cutting through the BS to expose the real issue at hand.

An excerpt to whet your appetite:

Here's a statistic guaranteed to set your teeth on edge: Of the 15,000 Lebanese citizens evacuated from Beirut by Canadian Forces during last month's war -- the largest such operation this country has mounted since the Second World War, at a cost of $85-million -- some 7,000 are reported to have returned home. Home, as in Lebanon.

I guess this only proves the point that home really is where the heart is. But lets look at this from a logical perspective. It seems that nearly half of the part-time hyphenated Canadians that were rescued from war ravaged Lebanon have seen fit to return.

By my math that constitutes an expenditure of some $40 million to ensure these Canadian "citizens" had a safe holiday from the turmoil in their country of choice. I have no doubt that many of these same people were the ones who complained bitterly about the timing of the sea lift and the horrid conditions to which they were subjected. One might even say their "rights" as Canadian citizens were not properly respected.

"Outrageous", you say. When viewed through the filtered lens of entitlement all becomes clear. Back to AC to clarify.

Why were Canadian ships sent thousands of miles across the sea to pluck another country's citizens out of harm's way? Because, as you well know, they are also Canadian citizens. That is, they are dual citizens, beneficiaries of a 1977 change in immigration legislation, and as such, though many have not lived or paid taxes in this country for several years, are entitled to all the protections the Canadian state affords.

Despite the public outrage this aroused at the time, the Harper government wisely decided the middle of a war was not the time to revisit the principle of dual citizenship: They were Canadian citizens, and that was that. But the war being now ended, the government is said to be considering whether to abolish this strangely ambivalent status, to which at least four million foreign-born Canadians, plus an uncounted number of native-born, lay claim.

If so, this would be an event of enormous symbolic importance. Moreover, it would fit this Prime Minister's broader aim, which is nothing less than to recast the meaning of Canadian nationhood -- as a moral project, in which we are collectively and individually engaged, rather than a simple dispenser of services; something that lays claims upon us, as much as it confers entitlements. And the very least claim it can make upon us is that we commit ourselves to it, to the exclusion of all others.

There it is.......The crux of the entire matter. Entitlements with Responsibility. An expectation from your nation that these entitlements come with a price.......your solemn commitment as a citizen to contribute to the moral fiber and health of the nation.

It comes as no surprise that the policy of dual citizenship was the creation of a Trudeau government. A man, I might remind you, who enjoyed the entitlements of Canadian citizenship while avoiding the responsibilities of military service.

This moral sickness has been fostered and epitomized by years of rule by the LPC. Who can forget David Dingwalls..."I'm entitled to my Entitlements"! or Jean Cretins..."So a few million dollars got lost".

But lets look at a more current example of the LPC sense of entitlement totally devoid of responsibility. Yesterday Hamid Karzai addressed the House of Commons on the Canadian military and humanitarian commitment to Afghanistan, a commitment ordered by the previous Liberal government.

This from the Ottawa Sun

A Conservative MP has blasted the "total disrespect" shown by Liberal and NDP MPs who skipped yesterday's historic address in Parliament by Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai.
Deepak Obhrai, the parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay, said it's a disgrace so many MPs played hooky from the House of Commons as Canadian soldiers put their lives on the line in Afghanistan and a critical public debate rages.

At least 40 Grits were no-shows for the speech.

"The Canadian soldiers have spilled their blood for the Afghan people, and Mr. Karzai had come to thank them, but as usual the Liberals showed total disrespect to the Canadian Forces and to the Canadian people by not even having the courtesy to show up," Obhrai said.

Pat Breton, a spokesman for Liberal Leader Bill Graham, estimated only 60 of the 102 Liberal MPs were present in the House due to the leadership campaign.

"We sent out the message that we hoped all members would make their way back to Ottawa, but the reality is that the delegate selection is next weekend, and that was a priority," he said.

There you have it folks. A spokesman for the current LPC leader acknowledges that the rights of LPC MP's to engage in partisan political exercises aimed at regaining power for the sake of power trumps their responsibilities as servants of the Nation.

As in any organization, corporation or indeed nation the tone of the "corporate culture" is established from the top down. The moral bankruptcy that has crippled this nation is not hard to follow to its roots. But where does that leave us now?

Back to AC for the answer:

There is, however, an older tradition, memories of which lie buried deep in this country's collective consciousness, and it is one I believe the current Prime Minister is attempting to tap. You can see it in his invocation of our moral obligations in Afghanistan, in his unflinching challenge to Canadians to live up to our sometimes lofty notion of ourselves, even at the cost of Canadian lives.

Some look at our losses in Afghanistan and complain that we are bearing a "disproportionate" share of the burden. But there was a time when Canadians would have worn such distinctions with pride.

So we stand at a national crossroad, one which challenges our very notion of being Canadian. Are there enough of us left willing to accept the RESPONSIBILITY inherent in our citizenship? Or have we become a nation of whiners and special interest groups intent on getting our ENTITLEMENTS?

Syncro

Silly Season Synopsis

2006-07-27T17:39:00.000-06:00

This time of year is noted as the silly season. A time when no real business is done, a time where Canadians lavish in the luxuries of a hard earned summer. This year something is different on the bar-b-que circuit.

War rages in the middle east, gas prices soar and yet we move on. So what is so different?

The tone.

For the first time in a generation we have a leader who takes his job seriously.

The results:

A definitive position on the ME rather than the mealy mouthed mulch we are used to.
An unprecedented evacuation of Canadian passport holders from a war zone.
An evacuation flight rather than a photo op.
Amends for a long past racist head tax.
Reparation for Hep-C victims of the blood system.
Squaring up with a WWII vet on pension issues.

The silly season is only half over and it seems this government has kept their nose to the grindstone.

When was the last time that Cretin/Martin did anything other than kiss ass in the silly season?

The LPC should be very afraid. BTW grab another dog boys......yer gonna need it.

Syncro

Rhetorical Necessity??

2006-07-27T12:12:00.000-06:00

The recent deaths of four UN peacekeepers including one Canadian in southern Lebanon has elicited a myriad of responses from the chattering class. Predictably the majority opinion in the MSM has been decidedly anti-Israeli, with some going so far as to suggest that this was a deliberate attack on the UNFIL observers for some Machiavellian purposes.

Those who hold this position reek of stupidity rooted in a firm commitment to ignore the facts at all costs. The lefty spin and brainless attempts at revisionist reporting are beginning to wear thin.

Case in point. This assessment of the incident by CP reporter Sue Baily has the basic facts but ventures off on the usual tangent.

OTTAWA (CP) - Maj. Paeta Hess-von Kruedener, or "Maj. H.v.K." as he signed his e-mails, loved his work as a career soldier with a gusto that was his trademark.
Family, friends and former colleagues prayed for the best and braced for the worst as they waited for word on the UN observer's fate in one of the most precarious regions in the Middle East

Well you got that right Sue! The UNFIL observation post in question could be described as precarious. I laud your keen sense of the obvious. Tell me more Sue.

The incident is shaping up to be a major international embarrassment for Israeli leaders, who say the observer station was hit by accident.

But a preliminary UN report released to The Associated Press says the peacekeepers called the Israeli military 10 times in the hours leading up to the fatal strike, asking them to stop nearby bombings.

The debacle did not appear to soften Harper's support for Israel's powerful show of force.

Hmmmm....major embarrassment....unheeded pleas for mercy.......debacle.....and mean old Harper still supports the Israelis powerful show of force. Message received Sue. Not only do you have a keen sense of the obvious but your liberal use of hyperbole is supercalafragalisticexpealadocious. What else ya got Sue?

Hess-von Kruedener described in a July 18 e-mail to CTV the growing chaos surrounding his UN post in Khiam, a dusty village about 10 kilometres from where the Israeli, Lebanese and Syrian borders intersect.

"What I can tell you is this: we have on a daily basis had numerous occasions where our position has come under direct or indirect fire from both artillery and aerial bombing," he wrote.

"The closest artillery has landed within two metres of our position and the closest 1,000-pound (450-kilogram) aerial bomb has landed 100 metres from our patrol base."

"This has not been deliberate targeting, but has rather been due to tactical necessity."

Aha!!! Thank you so much for including some facts in your article Sue!!! I guess even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then. The really interesting thing about these facts is that they are the written words of the now dead CF officer. So how did Sue interpret this missive from Maj. HvK?? Well she didn't, rather she found someone with an opinion that supports her particular take on things.

Harry Bloom, eastern vice-president of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry Association, spent a year in the early 1970s patrolling the exact terrain where Hess-von Kruedener served.

"It's rocky, it's hilly, it's dangerous," Bloom said. "The area has always been dangerous for travellers."

Bloom, now retired at 66, said he wasn't surprised by news that an Israeli bomb had hit the post - and he doesn't believe it was an accident.

"I agree with (UN Secretary General) Kofi Annan's comment that it seemed to be an intentional hit. It would have to be. The outposts are so well-identified with blue and white paint and flags. A pilot cannot mistake that outpost for anything else."
Bloom described repeated "altercations" with Israeli forces when he was stationed there.

"They would fire from behind us, knowing that returned fire would land in our outpost. So to me, it's not a surprise. Not at all."

He also explained why he thought Israel would attack unarmed UN observers.
"The UN is no great friend as far as the Israelis are concerned," Bloom said in an interview from his home in Orleans, Ont., east of Ottawa.

"When the Israelis do anything on that ceasefire line, the UN is there. The Israelis don't necessarily like someone watching them."

Well done Sue!!! You managed to find a military expert who was at this very post some thirty years ago. Furthermore, this expert can attest to the dirty Jeewws propensity for hiding behind UN forces and their desire to keep their manic murdering ways from prying eyes.

But apparently some of the MSM have a very different take on all this. The Ottawa Citizen seems to have done a little more leg work.

The words of a Canadian United Nations observer written just days before he was killed in an Israeli bombing of a UN post in Lebanon are evidence Hezbollah was using the post as a "shield" to fire rockets into Israel, says a former UN commander in Bosnia.

Those words, written in an e-mail dated just nine days ago, offer a possible explanation as to why the post -- which according to UN officials was clearly marked and known to Israeli forces -- was hit by Israel on Tuesday night, said retired Maj.-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie yesterday.

"What I can tell you is this," he wrote in an e-mail to CTV dated July 18. "We have on a daily basis had numerous occasions where our position has come under direct or indirect fire from both (Israeli) artillery and aerial bombing.

"The closest artillery has landed within 2 meters (sic) of our position and the closest 1000 lb aerial bomb has landed 100 meters (sic) from our patrol base. This has not been deliberate targeting, but rather due to tactical necessity."

The same quote from Maj. HvK as the CP piece but with a different analysis from a military expert, Maj.-Gen Lewis MacKenzie. So what do you think Lew??

Those words, particularly the last sentence, are not-so-veiled language indicating Israeli strikes were aimed at Hezbollah targets near the post, said Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie.

"What that means is, in plain English, 'We've got Hezbollah fighters running around in our positions, taking our positions here and then using us for shields and then engaging the (Israeli Defence Forces)," he said.

That would mean Hezbollah was purposely setting up near the UN post, he added. It's a tactic Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie, who was the first UN commander in Sarajevo during the Bosnia civil war, said he's seen in past international missions: Aside from UN posts, fighters would set up near hospitals, mosques and orphanages.

Aside from the discrepancies on the timeline. (Sue typifies the UNFIL pleas to the Israeli Defense Force as being "in the hours leading up to the fatal strike", whereas the e-mail from Maj. HvK was sent 9 days prior to his demise, suggesting Hezbollah had been hiding behind the UN position from the onset.) Regardless of the fact that your military expert is of questionable pedigree. I have one question.

Was that piece of journalistic tripe you wrote a rhetorical necessity?

Syncro

LEBS and DARTS

2006-07-26T23:34:00.000-06:00

So let's do a little compare and contrast.

The previous Government went for the photo op. (flashback........... PMPM is rushed to Markham to empathize with a group of Sri Lankan immigrant kids about the horror of a tsunami. ) It takes 21 days for Canada to insert our DART team into the disaster zone.

We remove about 10,000 Passport Punks from Lebanon within 14 days from the shit hitting the fan.

You do the math.

Syncro