Well now, isn’t this interesting? Here I am, slurpin’ on my Timmy’s and munchin’ on a Boston creme with not a care in the world, ’cause it’s almost payday. Yeah, the weather’s kind of crappy, but I grew up in Huron County and I have to admit, I still like a good snowstorm. Watching snow fall and cover trees in a soft white blanket is just so… just so damned Canadian, you know? I start thinking that I just might get through the day with nothing to piss me off.
Boy, was I an idiot.

I like to bitch about media bias. Hey, I’m conservative; it’s one of the things we do. 😛 A lot of people will tell me that I’m just making it up, persecution complex, paranoia, not enough beer, whatever. 🙄 It would probably be better if that were true. But it’s kind of hard to ignore, especially when I see stuff like I saw in my Freeps this morning. It’s a story about, among other things, how the PMO has changed the formula for calculating flight costs on the CAF‘s fleet of Challenger jets:

Neither the original formula nor the reduced charges came anywhere close to what Harper himself in Opposition had called “$11,000 per hour Challenger jet flights” by the previous Liberal government.

The invoices, obtained by CP under the Access to Information Act, show three Challenger flights by Harper in 2006 for which the military billed the Prime Minister’s Office.

The first flight was Feb. 10, shortly after the minority Conservatives won power. Harper’s return trip to Halifax from Ottawa for the retirement party of Nova Scotia premier John Hamm was deemed a partisan exercise and the Conservative party paid the freight.

The invoice from National Defence, which lists Harper and six staff on board, calculated the trip cost “3.1 flying hours X $2,139.00/hour.”

It also points out an interesting difference between the current government’s attitude of accountability and the Librano$’ Culture Of Entitlement®…

“Following up on our telephone conversation, it is the wish of the Prime Minister’s Office that the Conservative Party of Canada compensates the Crown for the use of the Challenger on July 26,” wrote a PMO official on Aug. 10.

[…]

“There was no previous protocol, as the former Liberal government never reimbursed Canadian taxpayers when they used the Challenger for non-government business,” she said in an e-mail. “Aside from the first instance, Canada’s new government has been consistent in its protocol for reimbursing the cost of an economy return trip ticket.”

I know, I know. You’re sitting there saying to yourself, “Damn, Dennis; what the hell are you bellyachin’ about? That doesn’t sound bad at all. Whiner.”

I do sound kind of thin-skinned today, don’t I? Well, it’s not the story that I have a problem with. After all, it shows pretty clearly that, with the Tories in charge, the flight costs have dropped from $11,000/hr to $2,139/hr (a drop of more than 80 per cent!). Hell, it even shows that the Tories actually pay their way, whereas the Grits just latched onto the public teat and sucked for all they were worth; so it’s not exactly like they’re smearing the PM now, is it?

No, it isn’t. But what’s got a burr under my saddle isn’t the body of the story; it’s how it’s spun. You see, that’s what the MSM does. They tell the truth but always seem to slant it to make liberals look good and conservatives look bad. Take this story for example. What kind of headline would you expect for that? How about something like…

Harper Slashes PMO Jet Costs 80%

Wouldn’t sound too unreasonable, would it? Or, how about this one…

Tories Pay Own Way

That would be okay, too, wouldn’t it? Either headline would be honest, accurate, even a little eye-catching. Ah, but that wouldn’t fit in with the Lefty-loving media’s little agenda now, would it? Hell, no. So, instead of a headline that hints at how the Conservative government has a) cut flight costs and b) actually pays their own way where the Grits just mooched a ride, we get this bullshit…

Taxpayers on hook for PM jet

Yup, that’s it. No bias there, is there?

In the midst of all the sturm und drang over the Grits’ gutless caving in to bloc voting that we saw in the Commons yesterday, there is one thing that seems to have been overlooked that I would like to mention here, if even for a moment.

Yes, we all know that the HypoGrits killed their own anti-terror legislation because Steffy the stiff knows damn well what side his bread is buttered on. But — in the interest of giving credit where it’s due — even in a Dion-led caucus, there was at least one man willing to stand up and do the right thing. That man is the Liberal Member of Parliament for Scarborough Southwest, the Honourable Tom Wappel.

Mister Wappel showed all the most important characteristics of service to his country as he, alone among the entire Liberal caucus, showed the balls enough to stand up and basically tell Dion, “take your bullshit and shove it; I’m here for my country, not for you.”

Only one Liberal – Tom Wappel (Scarborough Southwest) – outright defied Dion, voting with the Conservative government to renew the powers.

Click here to read the Hansard record for Feb 26, 2007, including Tom’s Speech in support of the Statutory Order to maintain the sections of the ATA pertaining to Preventative Arrest and Investigative Hearings for a further three years.

To share your feelings on this matter with the only Liberal who did the right thing that day, you can write to Tom at:

Tom Wappel, M.P.
Room 115, East Block
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6

Or, alternatively, you can email him at wappel.t@parl.gc.ca to be heard a little quicker.

All of us — yes, especially me — are always eager to sound off to anybody that will listen about everything that the Grits do wrong. Let’s see if we can be just as loud and honest when one of them does something right…

Here’s to you, Tom; you may not have won but ya fought the good fight.

“Like rats in a maze.” That’s how Ombudsman Andre Marin described the way that the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board treats the victims of crime. So much for “helping the victims.”

For those of you that don’t know already, the CICB is the body that administers the Ontario’s Victim Justice Fund. The CICB is mandated by law to provide compensation to victims of violent crime and their families. Sounds like a good thing, right? The problem is that only about 1 in 40 victims actually get anything, and those that do still manage to get screwed by the bureaucrats…

London, Ont., parent Aurelio Almeida, whose 5-year-old daughter Naiomi was raped and murdered in 2001, was challenged by the CICB to explain what his injuries were.

[…]

The mother of a woman who was decapitated had to provide a form in which a medical practitioner had drawn the location of the injuries on a diagram of a body.

Marin said the stalling and nitpicking was a deliberate attempt by the agency over the last decade to discourage claimants and stay within its budget as required by the ministry of the attorney general.

The OVJF gets its cash from victim surcharges — the extra money tacked on all provincial offences like speeding tickets and booze fines — that range from $10 to $125 until fine is $1,000 or more, when the victim surcharge becomes a flat 25%. That’s a buttload of money when you add it all up. So what DO they do with that money?

Among some of the bureaucratic asshattery that Marin found were:

• Staff at the board developed a “document fetish” and became so obsessed with having their lengthy application forms filled out perfectly that they rejected one man’s claim because he forgot to dot an i in his name.
• Attorney General Michael Bryant broke the law by directing the board not to issue payments to save money and stay under budget.
• Ontario’s Victim Justice Fund has an $80-million surplus that the government refuses to use to compensate victims of crime.
• A man whose five-year-old daughter was raped and murdered who was treated as though he was trying to scam the board of money to pay for her funeral.
• A mother of a murder victim “berated” for forgetting her file number.
• A blind retiree who had to chose between buying food and burying her murdered daughter.

As much as I appreciate his bringing this mess to the light of day, Marin loses me when he starts saying that “It had no money. It was starved and forced into this situation and so the first thing we need to do is fund it properly.”

Andre, buddy; the God damned thing’s got a surplus of EIGHTY MILLION BUCKS!! It ain’t cash-starved. 🙄 No; the problem here — like with so many other governmental bean-counting behemoths — is that the CICB and OVJF aren’t about helping victims at all. They’re about keeping a bunch of lazy, bloated, unionized bureaucrat parasites in jobs at public expense.

Don’t believe me? Well then, if I’m wrong, you’d expect the Fiberals to be hopping to get the damned mess fixed, wouldn’t you (after all, it is an election year)? Of course you would. But they’re not…

After the report’s release, Conservative leader John Tory called on [Ontario Attorney General Michael] Bryant to resign.

What Bryant should do is toss out the CICB chair and the rest of the board. But Bryant indicated he wants them to help implement the changes. 😯

Talk about the fox and the friggin’ henhouse. But do you know what REALLY pisses me off about all this God damned this bullshit? IT’S BEEN GOING ON FOR OVER A DECADE!! The McSquinty Fiberals knew about it and did nothing. “Chainsaw” Mike’s Tory government knew about and did jack shit. When the Dippers were running the show, Bob Rae was as useless on this issue as he was on any other.

Well, it’s hit the fan now and everybody’s gotten splattered with shit; so can we please knock it off with all the partisan prickdom? This one is EVERYBODY’S FAULT…

So quit the squabbling and FIX THE DAMNED THING!!

HUH!?? This has to be some kind of early April Fool’s joke. Or something. I mean, come on now, even that dingbat Dion can’t possibly be that deluded… Can he?

I guess I should explain myself, eh? Okay, here goes. According to an article in todays NP, stunned Stephane actually thinks that… Aw, hell; just see for yourself:

Federal Liberal leader Stephane Dion brushed off bad press coverage and polls that put his party behind the Conservatives on Monday, saying he was confident of winning a majority in the next election.

Yeah you read that right. What the HELL has this guy been smoking?? Here’s a dude that was everybody’s third pick, from a B-list of candidates, and he thinks he can take down Her Majesty’s Prime Minister of Canada, the Right Honourable Stephen Hardass? Even though polls have the Grits trailing the Tories by anywhere from 6 to 11 points? Apparently so…

“That’s not so bad … and I’m very confident that at the right moment Canadians will support us very strongly and will give us a majority Liberal government.”

Hey, Steffy; let me clue you in a little bit. At the Librano$’ leadership convention, you turned out like that kid picked last before the ballgame. Your own party isn’t particularly impressed with you and Canadians… well, we just plain don’t trust you. You welcomed back Adscamers after PM-da-PM kicked them out for life (one of the few things he did right), you twist in the wind of public opinion on issues like the Afghan War and — whether it’s true or not deosn’t matter — the recent turd typhoon surrounding the ATA vote sure as hell has you looking like somebody else is pulling your strings.

You try taking on Harper right now (and I really, really think you should), and you ain’t gettin no cakewalk back to the other side of the House. What you’re in for is more like…

As most of you already know, the Librano$ have their collective panties in one hell of a bunch lately over the supposedly underhanded comments that the Prime Minister didn’t make in the House on Wednesday. And we’ve seen the Liberal/Left-loving media spin it every which way ever since. We’ve seen everything from “Liberals shout down PM over ‘base’ attack” to “Harper forgot the dignity of his office in quest for blood” and just about every damn thing in between.

Oddly enough, the least slanted-sounding headline that I could find, “Gloves off in terror law fight,” cropped up in the damned TO (Red) Star, of all places. No idea how the hell that happened… 😕

Everybody and their dog knows that the media spins things whatever way the staff leans (which usually means to the Left of the political spectrum) but very few publications ever actually come right out and say it. Well, the National Post did just that today. Not only that, but they also bluntly point out some of the BS we’ve been getting fed lately for what it is: a Left-loving, almost Machiavellian, MSM busting it’s ass to reinforce their beloved Grits. It skillfully paints a picture of deception, misdirection, hypocrisy and most of the other things that spring to mind when you think about the Fiberals and their lapdog media.

So, since I’m not above stealing somebody else’s stuff when they say it better than I would, here is the NP editorial in question, in full (with a little emphasis added here and there by me)…

‘Shame’? Hardly

National Post
Published: Friday, February 23, 2007

Journalists employ a special term when a politician accidentally speaks a forbidden truth out loud: They call it a “Kinsley gaffe,” after the legendary American editorialist Michael Kinsley, who pointed out in 1992 that the word “gaffe” is never really used by native writers of English except to describe such a situation.

The catcalls of “shame” that drowned out the Prime Minister in the House of Commons on Wednesday are the infallible sign of a Kinsley gaffe. Mr. Harper was about to describe an article from the Vancouver Sun pointing out that the father-in-law of an important young Liberal MP and organizer was once a spokesman for Babbar Khalsa, a group officially recognized by the Canadian government as a terrorist organization. This same individual is a potential witness in the Air India investigation, the very same inquiry that will be hobbled if Stephane Dion prevails in his new-found and oddly passionate quest to kill provisions of the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act that permit such investigations.

None of the Liberals leaping to their feet to denounce Mr. Harper have bothered to deny the facts presented in the Sun by Kim Bolan: given Ms. Bolan’s reputation as an investigator and chronicler of Sikh separatist activity, it would be foolhardy to try. It is the context in which the fact was brought up that bothers them. Or so they say.

No one–including us –is accusing the MP in question, Navdeep Bains, of any illegal behaviour. And voters are entitled to make their own individual judgments on whether the PM was engaging in dirty pool by opening the pages of the Sun in the privileged environment of the House of Commons. But they would be advised to ignore the slanted, indignant language that some other media outlets are trying to disguise as impartial reporting.

The PM is being accused of suggesting that the Liberals changed their policy on ant terror legislation to protect Mr. Bains’ father-in-law, Darshan Singh Saini, or, more generally, to cripple an Air India investigation that many in the Sikh community oppose. In fact, it is only by clairvoyance that reporters can claim to know what Mr. Harper would have said in his complete reply. He was shouted down long before he had the chance to make the “suggestion” being freely attributed to him (readers may wonder why the Liberals did not sit quietly and let him continue covering himself with “shame”).

But even if Mr. Harper intended to suggest what he is being accused of suggesting, his only “shame” lies in saying what millions of Canadians are thinking. The Sikh voting bloc that Mr. Bains drew to the Dion camp (via Gerard Kennedy) at the Liberal convention in December is a critical reason why it is Mr. Dion, as opposed to Bob Rae or Michael Ignatieff, who now sits as Leader of the Opposition. Why would it be out of bounds to suggest that Mr. Dion’s sudden and stalwart opposition to key anti-terrorism provisions — even over the objections of many influential members of his own divided caucus — might somehow be traced to those same provisions being potentially used to compel testimony from the supporters of a king making MP?

We recall that, in 2000, the Liberals used the same specious calls of “shame” to attack Reform politicians who questioned the Liberals about their party’s stance on a Tamil terrorist group. Yet it was the Liberals themselves who were disgraced when it turned out Paul Martin and Maria Minna had attended a fundraising event for a group identified by the U.S. State Department as a front for the Tamil Tigers, which — like the Babbar Khalsa outfit for which Mr. Bains’ father-in-law once acted as spokesman — is classified as a terrorist group under Canadian law (over Liberal objections, of course).

Even given the premise of Mr. Bains’ personal unimpeachability — a premise to which the Prime Minister’s press secretary was glad to assent on Wednesday — this may be a trickier question than it appears. The premise that a Member of Parliament’s family and ethno-political connections are irrelevant can easily be carried to the point of absurdity. Apparently in recognition of his delivering the votes of his fellow Sikhs at the Montreal convention, Mr. Dion appointed Mr. Bains to the party’s national election readiness committee last month. If an equally important Conservative had a father-in-law who stood to benefit from a newfound Conservative policy, are we to believe that no reporter or opposition member would dare ask uncomfortable questions? No one can show that Mr. Bains’ family connections to a possible Air India witness have played any part in the sudden Liberal rediscovery of civil liberties, but when did it become inappropriate for a politician to point out a potential conflict of interest among his opponents?

It seems to have happened right around the time the conservative parties reunited and formed a national government. We recall that some of the publications now lashing out at Mr. Harper were happy to wallow in “family legacies” when it came to Stockwell Day’s Western-separatist father or Preston Manning’s ancestral Social Credit connections. Could the apologies owed to these men have gotten misplaced in the mail?

Everybody that comes here knows that I have a) a pretty low opinion of criminal scumbags — especially those that target the elderly or crippled — and b) a high regard for those that stand up to said scumbags. And there are few things that put a bigger smile on my face than hearing about how some sack of crap’s intended “victim” ends up turning on the would-be mugger/rapist/killer/whatever and totally buggering up his day.

So you can just imagine how big a grin I’m wearin’ right now…

Tourist kills mugger with bare hands

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) — An American senior citizen killed an alleged mugger with his bare hands, and his traveling companions aboard a tour bus fended off two other assailants in the Atlantic coast city of Limon, police said. [more]

Angry tourists break mugger’s neck

A group of U.S. tourists, including a former Marine, killed a Costa Rican mugger by breaking his neck after he pulled a gun on them in a Caribbean port, a local police official said on Thursday. [more]

Tourist kills Costa Rican mugger

Three armed muggers got more than they bargained for when they held up a tour bus full of American senior citizens in a coastal town in Costa Rica. One of the tourists – a retired member of the US military – put one of the gunmen in a headlock and killed him. [more]

What more can I say? Some old warhorses, you just don’t want to screw with. Somebody tell me where I can find this guy so I can buy him a beer…