Category: Good Stuff

Thanks to the Doggerel Party, I am giggling entirely too much.

TDPC researchers have investigated, and can report that no, they are not related. One is a megalomaniac bent on power, domination, harrassment of those less fortunate and money, while the other simply runs a power utility.

Ok, gotta go now. Need to pee… 😆

Here we go again.

In the frantic scramble to prove once again that socialists just won’t quit until they’re at the top of some heap or other — even if the heap in question is just being plain old bag-of-hammers stoopid — Arsehole Of The Universe Ubersocialist David Miller is still hopping on the Banned Wagon and is now screeching for a ban on handguns and all shooting ranges in TO. 🙄

Yup, that’s right; ol’ Davey never gets tired of scraping the bottom of the barrel of failed ideas. Look for him to ban farting in elevators next. Here’s a few tidbits, with arrangement and commentary by yours truly, of course:

Mayor David Miller announced a plan today that would make all handguns illegal in Toronto, a series of measures that will effectively shut down gun ranges and make it all but impossible to manufacture, assemble or store firearms within city limits.

“I want a safe city,” the mayor told reporters. “The truth is, guns are too easily available and if you talk to some kids in some neighbourhoods they tell you they want a gun to protect themselves.’’ [Well, Dave, maybe if the scumbags that they want protection from were locked up, the idea of carrying a gun might never occur to these kids. Ever think of that??]

Among the recommendations is one calling on council to pass a zoning bylaw to restrict the use of firearms anywhere in the city, including firing ranges and gun clubs.

The report also calls for an end to all recreational shooting on city property, “specifically, shooting ranges at the Don Montgomery Community Recreation Centre (former Mid-Scarborough Community Centre) and Union Station.” [Because everyone knows that shooting ranges are where all the gangbangers hang out.]

“After John O’Keefe’s tragic killing I don’t think there’s any defence for sport shooters any more,” he said. “It’s a hobby that creates danger to others … Guns are stolen routinely from so-called legal owners.” [One legally owned handgun. So, naturally, we’ll blame the other 999,999 legally owned handguns that weren’t used in any crimes. Makes perfect sense, if you’re a socialist.]

“Do we as a society value safety or do we value a hobby that creates danger? And nobody can deny that that hobby directly results in people being shot to death on the streets of Toronto.” [Way to go with the “now that you’ve stopped beating your wife” question, Dave.]

Mr. Whitmore said the mayor is posturing to look as though he is addressing gun violence, but is doing nothing to stop the real source of illegal guns in Toronto.

“This is about the mayor’s need to be seen doing something about gun violence,” he said. “But he’s off on a complete tangent … the vast majority of guns being used by criminals in this city are coming from the United States. They certainly aren’t coming from legitimate, law-abiding gun owners.”

But in the meantime, Mr. Miller said the city must act. “If we want a truly gun-free city we can’t just ask the federal government to ban the ownership of hand guns … We have to do what’s in our power.”

Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, Don Valley East, scoffed at the mayor’s handgun plan. “Big deal,” he said. “The people that are using the guns are not going into stores and purchasing them. It helps marginally but in terms of reducing handguns I’m not sure it will do very much.” [That’s because it won’t do anything.]

In one six-week period in the summer of 2005, burglars reportedly made off with 84 firearms from Toronto area homes, according to a Toronto police survey. It includes 42 pistols stolen from the Coburg area. In October, 2005, a cache of 17 handguns was stolen from a Toronto lawyer’s office. [Is anybody else wondering just how thieves knew where to find those nice, big collections? Did they maybe check one of those ammo sales records that Bob Rae thought were such a great idea?]

Global News also reported that Chris Bentley will suggest all imported guns be marked with the date they arrived in Canada, the name of the person or company who imported them and the place they were made. [Of course, more registry shit. That’s JUST what we need.]

Not everybody’s drinking the Koolaid. But is that really a surprise? I mean, come on, now. Even in a place like Toronto, it’s hard to get everybody to be as stupid as Miller…

Inspector Tony Cooper, of the Ontario Provincial Police, said there has only been one instance of a member of an Ontario shooting club using his handgun in a homicide.

“I hear about a lot of shootings in Toronto, but I haven’t heard of any using target pistols,” said Insp. Cooper, the deputy chief firearms officer with the provincial weapons enforcement centre. “And only one by a member of a shooting club.”

You can bet your ass that I’m not near done with this one. More when I have more time to work with (I’m off to buy some ammo)…

Layton has one.

No, really, I’m being serious here. For once (just this once), I’m saying something nice about Jack Layton and I’m not being a smartass: the man does, in fact, have a brain.

Granted, he doesn’t use it all that often, but he dusted it off and trotted it out the other day.

By now, just about everybody and their duck knows about Dion’s little Carbon Tax Excellent Adventure©. Most of us were likely thinking (like I was) that Jumpin’ Jack!â„¢ would hop on that brain-dead bandwagon like a viagra addict on a $2 hooker, but he didn’t.  Nope, not this time. Ol’ Jack actually came out with something eerily resembling common sense:

Ottawa–A carbon tax would place an unfair burden on low-income Canadians, Jack Layton said yesterday.

“Those advocating a carbon tax suggest that by making the costs for certain things more expensive, people will make different choices,” Layton said.

“But Canada is a cold place and heating your home really isn’t a choice.”

How the hell did that happen??? Granted, he did get right back to the stoopid right quick (putting the screws to industry, blah blah blah; read the article), but he still had himself a good brain moment for a few seconds there.

Congrats, Jack. Go buy yourself a beer.

Ahem.  Ah, gee… I really have nothing whatsoever to add to this…

Who’d have seen this coming? After all the eeks and awks from the surrender monkey crowd that we’ve all had to sit through for years now, things are still progressing such that even the Red Star has been painted into the corner of having to admit that we’re just plain winning the war. And don’t fool yourselves, either. No matter what the latest lingo is, it’s not a “NATO operation,” not a “UN mission,” and it’s sure as hell not “Dubya’s misadventure.” It’s a war. If you don’t believe me, just ask any soldier who’s been there.

It’s a war, and we… are… winning (I’m putting the whole thing here, with my emphasis added, in case it vanishes down some “subscription only” black hole later on):

KABUL – In 2001, when the Taliban was abruptly toppled, there was no armistice.

No surrender was ever signed. No declaration of defeat conceded.

It seemed not to matter that much, then. It matters now.

The Taliban was ostensibly, and in fact, trashed, its command hierarchy skulking off to the frontier regions of northwest Pakistan to lick their wounds. And, with the passage of time, left largely unmolested in their foreign redoubts, to connive, to regroup.

Six years ago, after the capital’s liberation, the routed Taliban held not a single acre of Afghanistan soil.

Today, the roundly accepted estimate – not necessarily accurate but asserted as such by no less than the U.S. director of national intelligence – is that Taliban forces control 10 per cent of the country.

The government led by Western-backed President Hamid Karzai, its authority propped up by NATO and American troops, has purported control over 30 per cent of Afghanistan territory. Warlords, who may or may not align themselves with Kabul – depends on which way the wind is blowing – essentially lay claim to all the rest.

These are rule-of-thumb generalizations, often cited by critics who bemoan Afghanistan’s regression to patchwork fiefdom and lawlessness, the Taliban insurgency resurrected like a phoenix from the ashes of a vanquished, deranged regime.

“Those percentages of what the Taliban hold drive me crazy,” Christopher Alexander counters heatedly. “Because they don’t hold anything, really. There are some places where they hold out, where they’re holed up. And they’re able to do so because there isn’t an active challenge to their presence. None of that means that they’re in control.”

Alexander, a boyish 39, has been on the ground in Afghanistan for 4 years, first as Canada’s ambassador and latterly as deputy special representative of the secretary-general of the United Nations: The No. 2 guy for the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).

Few outsiders know the Byzantine intricacies of this godforsaken nation better.

At a time of international weariness over any practical resolutions for the chaotic dilemma that Afghanistan remains, Alexander is jarringly optimistic. He might be accused of blue-sky dreaminess, but he’s too well-informed to be dismissed as naïve or wilfully blind.

For one thing, he knows the Taliban. Quite a few of its commanders have, if furtively, come to this very office, sat in these comfortable chairs, and broached the subject of an honourable truce, if not necessarily for the entire insurgency, then at least for themselves.

“That doesn’t mean reconciliation is happening. But it does mean the demand for it has grown,” Alexander says.

Such tentative overtures in the past two years – both to UNAMA and the Karzai government – is not being done from a position of strength. If the neo-Taliban were that hardy, none of its members would be seeking reintegration.

“Why are they making these approaches? First and foremost because they’re afraid for their life and limb. The commanders, in particular, feel that the Afghan forces, and ISAF, are zeroing in on them, as the command-and-control of the insurgency, much more successfully. The more they get promoted in the hierarchy, the more likely they are not going to survive.

“Secondly, a lot of these men, even though they’re still fighting, even though they’re still pretty angry with the government, can see that their cause is not leading anywhere.”

For all that the media focuses on ostensible Taliban achievements, they have not, in fact, taken or maintained control of any territory where forces – national and international – have been deployed to push back. Even in Helmand province, the insurgency’s heart, the Taliban are on their back foot with the recent arrival of aggressively on-the-offence U.S. Marines, driving insurgents downwards to the Pakistan border, whence most came.

A keyhole view is often favourable to the Taliban as the shadow-government in this district or that region. They get big splashes with increasing IED attacks and suicide bombings, especially now aimed at Kabul. That ratchets up the terror and discourages foreign investment but has not brought the Taliban any closer to regaining power. That, remember, is their objective – to drive out NATO, usurp or assassinate Karzai, shred the Constitution, dissolve Parliament and reimpose their puritanical dominion.

They are not remotely close to doing so.

If the situation often looks to the world as if Afghanistan is sliding back toward the insurgency’s clutches – it could happen but is hugely unlikely – that’s not a view shared by Taliban realists, who do not believe their own propaganda.

“They know what success looks like,” Alexander reminds.

This is a crucial point often forgotten in fretfulness over Afghanistan.

“Many of them were around the block in ’94, ’95, ’96, when they marched triumphantly to Herat and then to Kabul, when they cruised to victory, in a sense. This is very different. They are challenged from the moment they cross the border, let alone in the environs of Kabul or downtown Kandahar.

“Publicly, the Taliban set all these objectives: In 2006, Kandahar was going to fall. In 2007, Kabul would fall. None of that happened.

“The smarter ones, who are more realistic, see the writing on the wall. And the ideologues, the ones who want to die fighting, are a pretty small minority. They make the videos but they’re not setting foot in Afghanistan because it’s too dangerous for them. They’re back in Peshawar and Quetta.”

What Taliban commanders learned last year – when several key leaders were killed – is that NATO, the Afghan forces, and in particular the National Directorate of Security (the Afghan intelligence agency) has penetrated their communication network, the lifeline of command-and-control, and infiltrated their ranks, just as the Taliban and their sympathizers had successfully co-opted the Ministry of the Interior at a senior level and some vectors of the military.

“Even their high-profile guys can’t trust their own entourages, can’t use a cellphone or any other kind of communication . . . it’s too risky. And they have to communicate.”

From where Alexander sits – a perspective admittedly not shared by many outside the country, and assuredly not by most civilians in the volatile south – the insurgency has plateaued. It’s particularly reckless and a sign of desperation to turn that insurgency on Kabul.

“I’m not saying that this conflict is ending. Nor am I predicting that the going will be easy in Kandahar and Helmand. But within the borders of Afghanistan, the Taliban are losing momentum because they’re being challenged in more places, both politically and militarily.”

Also, crucially, there is just no stomach among the overwhelming majority of Afghans to be plunged back into that dark past.

“People are remarkably un-nostalgic about the Taliban days.”

It’s one of the oldest lessons in the book; one that every small-town boy learns while he’s growing up. Got a problem with a bully? The solution’s simple: start swinging and don’t stop until he cries like a girl. It’s real easy to push others around when they aren’t fighting back, but once you find that you’re going to have to take your lumps every damned time, you start to think twice. And all bullies are essentially cowards at the core.

Everything we set out to do in Afghanistan, we will do. And there’s not a God damned thing the Taliban or anyone else can do about it. The spin just isn’t working anymore. Sucks to be them, eh?

Like I mentioned in my earlier post today, one of the things I like about McCain is his sense of humour and his willingness to take as good as he gives. After all, if you can’t take it, you shouldn’t dish it out, right? That’s what my daddy always told me, anyway.

But McCain’s not all jokes, nosiree. A little more poking around after the last post led me to trip over another clip that shows that McCain’s a man of fairness, too. And he’s more than willing to share his experience and wisdom, even with his opponents!

Now, I ask you: how many politicians can boast that kind of class? Not too damned many; you can bet on that.