I’m a happy conservative/Conservative today. Yup, I am indeed. Sure, it’s a kind of naughty, Schadenfreude sort of happy but I’ll take it anyway.

It seems that our man in charge in Ottawa, Steve, has finally had-it-up-to-wherever with the lyin’-ass HypoGrits slinging bullshit in their little drive-by smears. The kind that they try so hard to trump up every time they get collectively emasculated in the Commons (or lately, in their little Liberal-dominated, Senate sandbox, as well) by the Tories.

And guess what, boys & girls? This shit’s gettin’ reeeeaaall old.

I’m sure you all know the pattern that I’m talking about. It goes something like this:

1. The Tories put forth a bill that, while good for Canadians, isn’t in line with the failed Grit Trudeaupian ideology.
2. Dion threatens to bring down the government over the bill.
3. Steve calls their bluff by whipping out his medicine ball-sized nuts and using them to pound Steffy into the ground like a tent peg.
4. Steve’s Little Bitch® and his gang do as they’re told and let the legislation pass.
5. Joe and Jane Canuck start to notice that the Liebrals have nothing to offer anyone: no ideas, no policies, no principles, no leadership, nothing.
6. Desperate to change the channel, the Librano$ make up a scandal and hope like hell that if they can just throw enough bullshit, some of it will stick. To someone. Somewhere. Anywhere. Just not them.
7. Nothing becomes of the “scandal.”
8. Rinse, repeat.

It’s turned into a pattern of events so predictable that Helen Keller could see it coming. It’s also a pattern of events that’s about to show the Grits just exactly where it is that ol’ Steve’s Bullshit-o-meterâ„¢ redlines.

The latest round of this little liberal circle jerk is being labelled “Cadscam.” To make a long story short, the Liebrals are trying to accuse Harper of bribing the late Chuck Cadman and saying that his widow backs them up (she doesn’t). In other words, the Grits are so damned desperate for some Adscam® payback, that they’re willing to drag a dead man through the mud.

Steve has had enough of their bullshit. Time to put up or shut up:

“The prime minister is not only suing the Liberal leader, he’s suing the deputy leader, Michael Ignatieff; Ralph Goodale, who is the House leader; and the Liberal Party of Canada,” Fife said.

“Mr. Harper’s notice of libel says they’ve accused him of knowing about Conservative bribery in the Cadman affair,” he said.

• Read the notice of libel here (.pdf)

Harper said the allegations, made outside the House of Commons and on the Liberal party’s website, are false and misleading. He is asking for an immediate retraction, Fife said.

The notice asks for two allegedly defamatory articles to be removed from the liberal.ca website and provides wording for an apology to be read out by Dion in the House of Commons. The notice requests the apology be given in English and French.

If the Liberals don’t provide an apology, the Conservatives want the Liberals to preserve all records and email traffic, Fife said.

Translation: No more free punches. Read more here, here, here and here. Steffy, as usual, is pretending to come out swinging:

OTTAWA — Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion will not apologize to Prime Minister Stephen Harper over the Chuck Cadman affair despite the threat of a libel lawsuit, the Liberal Party says.

See the pattern described above. 🙄 Seriously, is there anybody in this country that doesn’t think that Dion’s going to do exactly what he always does: roll over, sit, and do as he’s told?

Go back home to your nice, safe, little university, Steffy. This is the real world, and politics is a contact sport.

Oh, wait… that’s already been done.

To the surprise of absolutely no one who finds themselves in possession of two brain cells to rub together, Toronto Mayor David Miller has once again hopped up on the “blame the inanimate object” bandwagon and is bawling into every microphone he can find for a Canada-wide ban on handguns. Because, as everyone knows, criminal scumbags don’t shoot people, guns just jump up and fire themselves. Yup, one second they’ll just be sitting there and the next, they’re bustin’ caps all over the place. Happens all the time, right?

But Miller just can’t seem to get it through that spongy skull of his that we don’t have a gun control problem in this country; we have an asshole control problem. (more…)

…and learn some self-discipline while you’re at it.

For those of you that managed to snooze through it (I know I almost did, so don’t feel bad), the uberbullshit machine over at the New York Times recently puked up a load of crap that suggests, in not so subtle terms, that American veterans have a murderous bent to them:

Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles

[…]

Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: “Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.” Pierre, S.D.: “Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress.” Colorado Springs: “Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring.” Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment – along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems – appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.

Gimme a God damned break. Pure and utter bullshit but hey, the Leftbots that NYT never were ones to let the truth get in the way of a good cheap shot, were they?

I’m not the only one that got his/her back up over this vile slur. The right-wing blogoshpere and media (that would be Fox News) has, quite rightly (no pun intended, really), gone somewhat apeshit. No criticism of that here. The responses have ranged from eloquent to apoplectic, so I’m going to try to limit myself to citing the better angels of our collective nature. Without doubt, the best one I’ve found so far is from Winds Of Change; a big ol’ tip o’ the toque for some damned find number crunching on this one, lads…

The only reference I could find for the number of troops who have served in combat areas was at GlobalSecurity.com, citing a Salon article:

Three and a half years have passed since U.S. bombs started falling in Afghanistan, and ever since then, the U.S. military has been engaged in combat overseas. What most Americans are probably unaware of, however, is just how many American soldiers have been deployed. Well over 1 million U.S. troops have fought in the wars since Sept. 11, 2001, according to Pentagon data released to Salon. As of Jan. 31, 2005, the exact figure was 1,048,884, approximately one-third the number of troops ever stationed in or around Vietnam during 15 years of that conflict.

From the October 1, 2001 start of the Afghanistan war, that’s about 26,000 troops/month. To date (Jan 2008) that would give about 1.99 million.

That means that the NY Times 121 murders represent about a 7.08/100,000 rate.

Now the numbers on deployed troops are probably high – fewer troops from 2001 – 2003; I’d love a better number if someone has it.

But for initial purposes, let’s call the rate 10/100,000, about 40% higher than the calculated one.

Now, how does that compare with the population as a whole?

Turning to the DoJ statistics, we see that the US offender rate for homicide in the 18 – 24 yo range is 26.5/100,000.For 25 – 34, it’s 13.5/100,000.

The moral of the story? Simple:

If you’ve got a kid under the age of 25 and want to reduce the chance of him becoming a murderer by a whopping 62 to 73%… get his ass in the army.

’nuff said

“Dennis,” people have been asking me a lot lately, “what the hell’s up with you, man? There’s been an election campaign going on all summer in Ontario and, aside from a couple of posts about how lousy an idea MMP is, we haven’t heard a damn thing from you. You’re not packing it in, are ya?”

No, I’m not packing it in. It’s just that getting laid off back at the beginning of summer, job-hunting and then getting settled in to the new job have taken up one hell of a lot of my time lately. Anybody out there that’s ever had to switch jobs knows exactly what I’m talking about. And as far as the provincial election goes, well, I think I can sum it up pretty well…

Faith based schools. Faith based schools. Faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools faith based schools.

Just about sums it up, doesn’t it? Way back at the beginning of the race, John “Guess What Party I’m With” Tory said that if he got elected, faith-based schools in Ontario would be able to get some funding, therby bringing them into the public fold and holding them to the same academic standards as the rest of the schools in the province. He made the announcement and then moved on to other things. Dolt McGuilty, however, seized on it like a tarrier with a rat and has maniacally banged away on that same drum over and over, drowning out all other discourse in the campaign. The stupidity of the whole transparent ruse, along with the baffling herd-of-sheep response of Ontariens to it, got to such an extreme that even Howard Hampton J. Pig blew a gasket at the media for having gone so gleefully along with the whole sham. And that’s probably what pissed me off the most…

An irate Howard Hampton swept through Southwestern Ontario yesterday, dragging a campaign’s worth of baggage.

That burden — his party falling in the polls, the faith-based school funding issue dominating debate — blew open in Hamilton, as the NDP leader strafed his Tory rival and the media, accusing journalists of hijacking the campaign and ignoring real issues.

[…]Hampton’s frustration boiled over into a blistering attack on Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory, whom he called a “disaster” whose mistakes have given the ruling Liberals a free ride. “Mr. Tory’s campaign has been chaos,” Hampton said, noting the faith-based school funding vow has hijacked the campaign debate.

… because, as all of you know, there’s just about nothing in the world that I hate more than being forced to agree with a socialist. And, as Lorrie Goldstein saw when he talked to Hampton, Hampton might be getting the same nauseaous feeling, even going so far as to say something sounding vaguely … conservative…

Asked what he’d say to voters poised to give Premier Dalton McGuinty a second majority government, while ignoring his record of fibs and broken promises in favour of the minor issue of stopping public funding for non-Catholic religious schools, Hampton deadpanned: “What do I say? I say, well, then people get the government they deserve (laughter) that’s what I say.”

Hampton, meeting with the Sun’s editorial board, knows, as we do, that if McGuinty wins big Oct. 10, it won’t be long before voters who abandoned the Tories and NDP to back the Liberals will be asking themselves what they’ve done.

No shit, Sherlock. For the record: I’m against public funding for faith-based schools, but not for any of the reasons that McSquinty and the Liebrals barf up. He who pays the piper calls the tune and I don’t think it’s a good idea to let a rabidly secular government ministry be in the position of holding a financial gun to the head of a school that might be teaching something that goes against whatever the trendy Leftbotâ„¢ dogma du jour might be. Keep government the hell out of it; it’s better for the schools. That’s my take.

But, to listen to McGuilty, you’d think that white kids would be going to all the good schools and black kids would be lucky to end up in a one-room schoolhouse if Tory’s plan went ahead. You don’t think he’s hammering away on the word “segregation” by accident, do you? And the media, from top to bottom, have been all too happy to help him out.

But it’s the smart thing for McGuilty to do, isn’t it? The sad fact is that Ontario is likely the most intolerant province in Canada (yes, even worse than Quebeckers or those nasty Albertans), especially when it comes to religion. This is because Ontario has become infested with the disease of the Leftbotâ„¢ mindset and religion is the ultimate enemy of the modern neoliberal ideology…

The neolib socialist philosophy (there really isn’t much “neo” about it) requires, above all else, that the masses give their first and foremost loyalty over to the authority of the secular state (of course, you and I know how well that has worked out in the past, but they don’t, for some reason…). Religion gives people a higher authority than the state, therfore it has to go. They won’t come out and say this out loud, but that’s still the meat of it. This is the mindset that has infected Ontario; especially urban Ontario.

John Tory should have known this. He made a rank-amateur mistake and now he’s given McGuilty four more years in Queens Park and the people of Ontario four more years of weak leadership.

This week, I’ll still be voting Conservative, but I’m afraid J.T. already sold the farm.

I’ve seen a lot of odd stuff in my life but this not only takes the cake, it quite frankly creeps the hell out of me. Never thought I’d see the army called out for something like this; not in this country, at least. The Freeps and the TO Red Star seem to be the only ones that have picked this up so far but look to hear more of it as word gets around.

It seems that a couple of kids were with their mom walking the family pooch on Friday along a creek that crosses Inadale Drive between Strathroy and Mt. Brydges (not sure about the name of it yet but the locals seem to just call it “crayfish creek”) and they stumbled on… two antitank mines!

That’s right. Two God damned landmines — like the one in the photo on the right, taken at the scene — were found in the creek right by a culvert that a buttload of people drive over every day.

We’ll start off with what the Freeps had to say about it today:

The potential for devastation was evident yesterday as a military team detonated the mines from a safe distance.

The force of the blast ripped bark and limbs from a tree and sprayed water so high it could be seen by observers a kilometre away.

“I could feel the percussive force,” Overdulve said, “It was 100 times louder than any fireworks you ever heard.”

Seven centimetres thick and 25 centimetres in diameter, the mines appear to be the kind used to disable tanks.

“We can’t definitively prove that, but that is the direction we are leaning,” Overdulve said.

After the detonation, the explosives experts found debris “consistent with timers,” he said.

The first mine was found Friday afternoon by nearby resident Lynn Denning, who walked to the creek with her two teenage daughters so that their yellow lab, Jesse, could enjoy the cold water.

“It’s upsetting,” she said.

While Inadale is a two-lane country road, many residents cross the culvert to commute to London, Denning said.

“There’s quite a lot of traffic during the week,” said Denning, who commutes to work at London Health Sciences Centre.

The family called Strathroy-Caradoc police, who sought help from the OPP, who called in the explosive ordinance disposal team from CFB Base Borden.

The explosives team left its base 100 kilometres north of Toronto at 6:20 a.m. yesterday.

“We responded quickly — we take this matter quite seriously,” said Capt. Cheryl Swarbrick, a base spokesperson.

Their presence was soon felt and heard on a normally quiet, tree-lined road.

“I’ve seen hand grenades and ammunition, but I never encountered anything like this,” Overdulve said.

Until a year ago, Overdulve lived near the creek, taking his three kids there to fish so often, they called it “crayfish creek.”

“This area is typically occupied by children, who come here to play,” he said.

The Red Star, of course, took their usual “nothing to see here, folks, move along” stance. You know; the same one they take every time something happens that has the potential to suggest that those on the Right side of the political spectrum just might be right about the idea of national security…

“It would be very premature to say how they might have got there,” Overdulve said. Around 1 p.m. after inspection, the military detonated what they describe as possible anti-tank devices – a type of land mine capable of damaging or destroying tanks or other armoured vehicles.

Investigators are unsure whether the suspected land mines were modern or from a bygone military era. “It’s possible that the ordnance is quite old,” Overdulve said. All the debris was collected and sent for analysis, with results expected within the next two weeks.

Bygone military era, my lilly-white ass. Dawdling around and leaving antitank mines all over southwestern Ontario has never been a part of the Canadian Armed Forces’ training and exercises regimen. 🙄

Meanwhile, over at Canada Free Press, Judi McLeod seems to be the only one asking the right questions, out loud:

The big question about two live landmines found in a countryside culvert running under Inadale Drive between Strathroy and Mt. Brydges, Ontario yesterday is who put them there?

Appearing to be attached to timers, the landmines were likely of the type used to blow up tanks, according to Strathroy-Caradoc police.

[…]

The Strathroy and Mt. Bridges communities are 20 kilometres west of London, Ont. and 30 kilometres from the former Military Camp Ipperwash (also Camp Ipperwash, a former Canadian Armed Forces training facility, now held by Stoney Point First Nation natives.

The only other military base in the area was CFB Clinton, about 40 kilometres away [actually, Judi, it’s more like 100 kliks away -Dennis], shut down some 36 years ago, and CFB London, about 20 kilometres away and downsized some 15 years ago

Let’s face it, boys and girls, the friggin’ Mine Fairy didn’t leave those things there. And there are two things that suggest to me that they haven’t been there for very damned long:

1. They were submerged in water, but not for so long that they couldn’t still go off. And as one Korean War vet told me once, in the winter time the pressure from expanding ground frost (or in this case, solid ice) will often set mines off.
2. The size of them. Earlier AV/AT mines were damned big things. They had to be, simply because the kind of compact, high-efficiency explosives that we can find today hadn’t been developed yet. Most accounts put these things found in the creek as being discs about 20cm across and about 6cm thick. That’s small for an AV/AT device.

No matter how hard I try, I can’t get that little voice in the back of my head to shut the hell up. You know the voice I’m talking about; you might have one yourself. The one that keeps saying, “They said we were a target. Even before we sent troops to Afghanistan, they came right out and said we were on their hit list. And everybody knows that they always try to do a dry run first…”

Is that nagging little voice wrong? Am I just being paranoid? I sure as hell hope so.

Can somebody — hell, anybody; I don’t care who — please explain to me this Canuckleheaded obsession that we seem to have with embracing double standards? Seriously, folks; we’re starting to make ourselves look like we’ve got our heads so far up our butts, we chew our food twice. I know I’ve already given my snarky little 2¢ worth on this and I really, honestly did think that this would just fade into the woodwork like the social slight of hand that it is.

But, nooooooooooooo, that would make too much sense, wouldn’t it? This thing just won’t seem to stay dead. Like Marley’s ghost, it shambles around, gibbering like a TO homeless industry advocate in a private chinwag with mayor culpa David Miller. Granted, I would expect such shrill belly-button gawking from Quebec media, but the rest of the country can’t seem to quit picking at it, either. Even the union bobbleheads have hopped up on their hind legs to bark away about it.

In case you’re one of the three people that haven’t figured out what I’m bellyaching about yet, I’m talking about the case of Carol Rioux. That’s right: the French guy in Alberta that lost his job because of crappy English on his part. That guy. What I don’t get is, why is this news?? I mean, think about it now. Think about it. With headlines like “Second look at French flap,” “Francophones up in arms,” and “Quebecer fired for bad English,” you’d think there was actually something to this. I’ve got a better headline for you. How about…

Not Bilingual, Canadian Loses Job

We could have a really cool follow-up story, too:

Man Takes Dump, Wipes Ass

What do these have in common? It’s simple: both happen every day in this country, every where. That’s why neither one is news.

Gee, could it maybe have something to do with the fact that, this time, it’s happening to a French guy?? 😯 Well, we can’t have that now, can we? After all, official bilingualism is only supposed to screw the Anglos over; right?

Licia Corbella nailed it in today’s Edmonton Sun, hypocrisy and all. Could you imagine the reverse (an Anglo losing work because his French sucks) making news in Quebec? Mais non, bien sur!

As far as I’m concerned, until I can get a job in la belle province with only the French I’ve got; Rioux, the unions, the handwringers, and all the other moonbats in general can clamp their flappin’ yaps ’round my purple-headed yogurt flinger, make like a shop vac, and chug-a-lug a few pints of Shut The F*ck Up®.

I’m an Anglo Assholeâ„¢ and I approve this message.