Well, now… I was wondering if (or should I say, when?) this was going to happen. You know that the Loopier Left is starting to get all nervous and freaked out when they start recycling — yet agaaaaiiiinnn — the old “a Conservative government will mean the end of the world!!” canard. 🙄

Yeah, it’s back. But it wasn’t the Grits that dug up this corpse, sowed it together, and ran a few volts through it this time. That was a bit of a surprise.

Going pear-shaped

Danny Williams may be something of a superhero back home in Newfoundland but the rest of us are starting to wonder if his cheese hasn’t slid clean off his cracker…

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — Premier Danny Williams levelled his most blistering attack yet against the prime minister, telling a business audience yesterday a Stephen Harper-led majority government would mark one of the darkest eras in Canadian history.

Williams escalated his public feud with Harper, warning voters the Tories would stoop to any depths to implement their hidden “right-wing, Conservative-Reform party” agenda.

“The only reason we haven’t seen his full plan for Canada implemented is because he had a minority government to keep him in check,” Williams said. [Be afraid! Be veerrryyyy afraid!!! -D] 😯

Ah, yes, the good ol’ Hidden Agenda®, don’tcha just love it? These idiots remind me of a doomsday cult: every time the appointed day for the End Of The World As We Know Itâ„¢ comes and goes, they just move the goalposts. In the last election, we were all warned about how the sky would fall if the Tories formed a government. I know I’ve pointed this out before, but I think some boneheads out there need a refresher. So here, along with a few additions, is my own little list of…

Catastrophes We Were Promised But Didn’t Get

1. Neither Stephen Harper nor any members of his caucus have eaten any babies.
2. Quebec has not separated from Canada.
3. The sun has not burned out.
4. Our health care system has not collapsed.
5. Homosexuals have not been rounded up into camps in the high arctic.
6. Women have not been forced to get pregnant in order to be denied access to abortions.
7. We have not become of 51st state of US of A.
8. We have not sent troops to Iraq, either.
9. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms has not been scrapped.
10. We have not withdrawn from the UN.
11. The sky has not fallen.
12. There have been no reliable reports (other than above) of the dead rising from their graves to feast upon the living.
13. We have not declared war on puppies.
14. Toronto has not been placed under martial law (although that might not be such a bad idea).
15. The polar ice caps have not melted.
16. The National Capital has not been moved to Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump.
17. The economy has not collapsed.
18. We still have no official State Religion; Christian, Satanic or otherwise.
19. Fun has not been outlawed.
20. No one has been executed for anything.
21. Banjo lessons are not a compulsory component of our educational curriculum.
22. No angels have tooted any trumpets, cracked any seals, or done anything else worrysome.
23. Petroleum is not included in the Canada Food Guide
24. Gun ownership is not mandatory (and here I was looking forward to that one)
25. etc, etc, ad nauseum…

Please, guys; on behalf of Canadians everywhere, from Lotusland to the Rock and Point Pelee to the Pole: quit being so STUCKING FOOPID and get some new material, ya friggin’ idjits! Seriously, we mean it. This is getting beyond old.

Clever buggers

Say what you want about Jumpin’ Jack Jerkweed and his Not Democratic Party, but at least one of them over there knows how the ‘net works. Much as I hate giving the Dippers credit for anything, I’m forced to admit that this is some darned good thinking:

OTTAWA — The New Democrats have cut a deal with Google and Yahoo to grab Internet traffic in a marketing ploy that has some online experts impressed.

Type the names Stephen Harper, Stephane Dion or Gilles Duceppe into the major search engines and an ad for NDP Leader Jack Layton pops up on the screen, along with the search results.

Google Adwords; gotta love ’em.

Who’s where? 12:20

Just in case anybody’s wondering where all the bestest blowhards’ll be today…

Stephen Harper

• MONTREAL: Young leaders’ breakfast at 8:45 a.m., 2200 Rue Mansfield
• News conference at 9:30 a.m. Mansfield Room 4, Cours Mont-Royal
• ST. EUSTACHE, Que.: Rally at 12:30 p.m. at Vignoble de la Riviere du Chene, 807 Riviere Nord
• HALIFAX: Evening arrival. No events scheduled.

Stephane Dion

• SAINT JOHN, N.B.: Pancake breakfast and annual general meeting at the Saint John riding association, 8:00 a.m. Media availability to follow at 8:50 a.m., Lilly Lake Pavilion, 55 Lake Dr. S
• Speaks at Saint John Board of Trade luncheon at 12:00 p.m. Media availability to follow at 12:30 p.m., Delta Brunswick Hotel, boardrooms A-B-C, 39 King St.
• THUNDER BAY, Ont.: Greets local candidates and makes brief remarks during a stopover at the Thunder Bay International Airport, 5:50 p.m., Thunder Bay International Airport Maintair Shell FBO, 316 Hector Dougal Way.

Jack Layton

• MONTREAL: Announcement with MP Thomas Mulcair and NDP Quebec team, 9:30 a.m., Victoria Square (corner Viger and Victoria Square Streets)
• Meets party supporters at Westmount-Ville-Marie riding headquarters, 2 p.m., 490 Sherbrooke St. W.

Gilles Duceppe

• HUNTINGDON, Que.: Visit to Maison Russet factory with mayor Stephane Gendron and Beauharnois-Salaberry candidate Claude Debellefeuille, 9:30 a.m. at 142 route 202. Briefing to follow outside at 10:15 a.m.
• VALLEYFIELD, Que.: Benefit spaghetti lunch, 11:30 a.m., 67 rue Academie.
• MONTREAL: Speech in Duceppe’s riding, Laurier-Sainte-Marie at 7:50 p.m., 1220 rue Sainte-Catherine Est.

Elizabeth May

• NEW GLASGOW, N.S.: Canada AM interview taping, 6:45 a.m.
• ANTIGONISH, N.S.: Setting up signs and greeting commuters, 7:30-9:00 a.m.
• Visits staff and patients, St. Martha’s Hospital, 10 a.m.
• Lunch, meets with students, 12 noon-1:30 p.m., St. Francis Xavier University cafeteria
• News conference on education issues, 2 p.m., St. Francis Xavier University campus, location to be announced.
• Campus Green Club event, 7:30-9:00 p.m., St. Francis Xavier University Student Union Building.

Le Leftbot Limbo 12:55

How low can ya go? How low can ya go? Just what the hell is the Catholic version of Islamophobia called, anyway? While I’m not so sure myself, I’m sure that Big Wheel Gilles knows the answer…

Bloc Québécois Gilles Duceppe seeks to portray the Conservatives as a party of narrow-minded views with a rightist religious agenda that should offend many Quebec voters. His evidence for such a patently false depiction? Nicole Charbonneau Barron, the Conservative candidate in the South Shore Montreal riding of St. Bruno-St. Hubert, belongs to Opus Dei, a Roman Catholic lay organization known for its adherence to traditional church doctrine.

Yeah, and before he goes to sleep at night, he always makes sure to check for albinos under his bed. Dickweed.

For those of you who might have read one too many Dan Brown novels, try checking out something a little closer to the source.

The cutlery is out 13:10

Gee whiz, I wonder who’s back it’ll end up buried in? What are the Librano$ up to this election, really? Are they looking to win? Are they looking to clear the way to dump Dion? You tell me…

The Liberal party moved last night to cancel its biennial convention in Vancouver in December, clearing the way for a full leadership vote next year should Stephane Dion fail win the Oct. 14 election. Sources say hotel reservations were ordered released this week as the national executive gathered to finalize the postponement decision.

No wonder Dion walks the way he does. If I had that bunch “watching my back,” I’d keep my butt cheeks clenched shut, too. Et tu, Brute?

… it seems that there are still a few things left that politicians, if they’re smart, should refrain from buggering about with. One such thing seems to be the Lord’s Prayer.

Some of you might already know that, a while back, the Christianophobic McGuintyites got it into their pointy little heads that the time had come to scrap the reading of the Lord’s Prayer at the openings of the Ontario Legislature. So, in the midst of such brainy ejaculations as “It is time to move beyond the daily recitation of the Lord’s Prayer in the Ontario Legislature to a more inclusive approach that reflects 21st century Ontario,” McGuilty and his cohorts did what Fiberals do best: they blew a bunch of my money on some dumbass plan to study the issue to death before going ahead and trying to pull off whatever damned stunt they want to, anyway. One little problem this time: things don’t seem to be going according to plan…

Speaker Steve Peters, who is heading up a committee to examine replacing the Lord’s Prayer with another reading, says thousands are giving their opinion on the divisive debate through the legislature’s website.

The traffic was so great when the committee first set up the online form that it temporarily crashed the website, prompting hundreds of calls to Peters‘ office. [That would be at 416-325-7435 in TO or 519-631-0666 (insert irony here) in St. Thomas, if you’re interested in giving this dick a piece of your mind. -D]

It’s not as if this crap hasn’t been tried before. But hey, if McGuilty thinks he can get away with it, more power to him. Anything that will rub my fellow Ontarians’ noses, good and hard, into the steaming pile of stupidity that was re-electing this asshole, can’t be all bad. How else will they learn?

Reap what you sowed, boneheads…

Dang, but this one took quite a while to come around, didn’t it? Some of you might remember me piping up waaayy back last August about a guy out in Cowtown by the name of Artur Pawlowski, after he got the cuffed-and-stuffed treatment from the Calgary cops for the unpardonable crime of… wait for it… reading the Bible in public.

No, I’m not making that up.

Now, before you go asking and bleating “how do we know he wasn’t accosting people,” bear this in mind:

On August 16, Artur Pawlowski was arrested for sharing the Gospel with tarot card readers at the Fringe Festival in Calgary. Pawlowski told these practisers of “sorcery” that the Bible condemns these practices. Organizers of the festival asked him not to talk to the vendors and he agreed. But when he stayed in the park praying and reading the Bible, the organizers called police. The police arrested Pawlowski for obstruction and he was taken in a police car in handcuffs. He was also charged with trespassing and causing a disturbance. Amazingly, Pawlowski’s brother videotaped the entire sequence of events.

Well, it has come around now and it looks like the video was rather… ahem… uncomplimentary. Both to the cops who busted Pawlowski and to the credibility of those who complained about him in the first place:

It was clear Pawlowski, his friends and family were jubilant criminal charges of obstruction of justice, resisting arrest and refusing to assist a public/peace officer had been wiped off the docket.

But the people who should be most relieved are the police officers who arrested him last Aug. 16 on 17th Ave. S.W. for reading from the Bible aloud near the Fringe Festival.

Had this case gone to trial, the judge would have seen evidence — a video taken by a Pawlowski supporter — that would have thrown the officers’ reputations into total disrepute.

Case toally dismissed. And before anybody even bothers asking, yes I am going to try and get a copy of that video. Stay tuned.

Some crap really does just boggle the hell out of the mind, doesn’t it? Take, for example, the recent colossal kerfuffle over yet another twit who thinks he’s found the tomb of Christ. 🙄

Here we have some dork — and James Cameron too, it turns out — burbling on like he’s some kind of authority when, in fact, he’s nothing more than just another media hack:

A Canadian filmmaker and author claims to have new scientific evidence that could have profound implications for Christianity.

Simcha Jacobovici, from Toronto, is expected to reveal at a news conference in New York on Monday that a tomb he explored under a Jerusalem apartment building once contained the bones of Jesus of Nazareth and his family.

Further, he suggested that the tomb, stored in a warehouse belonging to the Israel Antiquity Authority outside Jerusalem, may contain microscopic remains of the Christian saviour’s DNA.

[…]

The boxes were inscribed with the names: Jesus son of Joseph, Judah son of Jesus, Maria, Mariamne, Joseph and Matthew.

A quick peek around the net reveals that our little Mr. Jackoffski (pictured at right) is an Israeli-born Canadian, and received a B.A. with Honours in Philosophy and Political Science from McGill University. That’s right, two degrees: one in bullshitology political science and the other in bafflegab philosophy.

Philosophy, of course, is a Greek word that means “why do something about it when you can drone on endlessly about it with needlessly big words” that was best described by Ambrose Bierce as “a route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.” Let’s face it, kids; the only thing you can really do with a degree in philosophy is teach philosophy. And I think everybody here already knows what I think about a degree in polisci…

But enough about what he’s got. Let’s see what he hasn’t got. I wonder if he has any degrees in…

Archaeology? Nope.
Anthropology? Nope.
Theology? Nope.
Okay, how about codicology or philology? Nope.
Damn. The guy’s gotta at least have one in history, right?? Nope.

The article could just as easily — and just as accurately — be headlined: “Dude With Camcorder Says Outrageous Shit.” But you just know that the MSM and all the usual loopy Lefty suspects are going to be all over this like maggots on Saddam Hussein. Okay, tell ya what we’re gonna do…

Just for the moment, we’re going to forget that I’m Christian and therefore already know that Christ’s tomb is empty and this dolt is just yapping out of his arse. Let’s just examine his excuse for methodology for a few seconds, shall we?

University of Toronto mathematician Dr. Andrey Feuerverger calculated the odds at one in 600; while Dr. James Tabor, chair of the department of religion at the University of North Carolina, placed the odds at one in 42 million.

“If you took the entire population of Jerusalem at the time and put it in a stadium, and asked everyone named Jesus to stand up, you’d have about 2,700 men,” Tabor said. “Then you’d ask only those with a father named Joseph and a mother named Mary to remain standing. And then those with a brother named Yose and a brother named James. Statistically, you end up with one person.”

So here we are, over two thousand years later, and some twit finds a tomb with the name tags of “Jesus son of Joseph, Judah son of Jesus, Maria, Mariamne, Joseph and Matthew.” All of these were common names at the time. It’s like finding the tomb of “Jim son of John, Rob son of Jim, Linda, Jenny, John and Mike.” It means virtually nothing. The most important thing though, is that this whole theory hinges on one grasping compulsion: if this is, in fact, a tomb containing the remains of Jesus, Mary and Joseph themselves, then the mitochondrial DNA from the “Jesus” remains absolutely must be consistent with mtDNA from the “Mary” remains. There is no way around this whatsoever; NONE.

So, without further ado, allow me to throw in the monkey wrench (from the same article, no less)…

According to Jewish custom, the bones have long since been reburied in unmarked graves in Israel. But tests conducted at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., on DNA obtained from the Jesus and Mary tomb and show that the two individuals were not maternally related.

Not… Maternally… Related… How’s that for lowering the boom? Ah, but what’s a little snag like that when your head’s so far up your ass you chew your food twice? You don’t really think that you let inconvenient little things like a few piddling facts get in your way when you’re a card-carrying kook, now, do you? Hell no; you just decide to pull a Homer Simpson and pull your arms out of the tar with your face. Undaunted by having his little attention-whore balloon popped, he promptly shifted gears and fell back on the same old, tired, predictable, discredited, Gnostic bullshit…

“Perhaps Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married as the DNA results from the Talpiot ossuaries suggest and perhaps their union was kept secret to protect a potential dynasty – a secret hidden through the ages,” narrator Ron White says in the documentary.

“A secret we just may be able to uncover in the holy family tomb.”

Gimme a friggin’ break. Okay… Let’s assume for a minute that “Mary” isn’t genetically related to anybody else in the tomb; marriage would be a reasonable hypothesis to explain her presence. But married to whom? There are four sets of male remains in that tomb, folks, and nary a marriage certificate to be found. It’s an assumption perched on a presupposition built on a conceit. All in all, a pretty rickety affair.

On the bright side though, for a change, the gobsmacking of this idiocy isn’t confined to just folks like me. For example…

“It was an ordinary middle-class Jerusalem burial cave,” Kloner said. “The names on the caskets are the most common names found among Jews at the time.”

Archaeologists also balk at the filmmaker’s claim that the James Ossuary – the center of a famous antiquities fraud in Israel – might have originated from the same cave. In 2005, Israel charged five suspects with forgery in connection with the infamous bone box.

“I don’t think the James Ossuary came from the same cave,” said Dan Bahat, an archaeologist at Bar-Ilan University. “If it were found there, the man who made the forgery would have taken something better. He would have taken Jesus.”

Nice to see scientists being scientists for a change.

A big ol’ tip o’ the chapeau to Sheila Wray Gregoire and the other folks over at PTBC for this one.

We keep hearing over and over ad nauseum about how the “progressives” (code for “loopy liberal Leftoids”) in the world are the paragons of tolerance and all things good, while anyone with the slightest conservative bent is a mean, nasty, intolerant, sexist, bigoted, racist, knuckle-dragging, backward, redneck, bible-thumping, fill-in-the-blank-ophobe who probably tortures and murders kittens in their spare time, just so Dalton McWimpy can go hungry.

Ah, but isn’t it interesting to see just how “tolerant” the guardians of tolerance can be when it comes to anyone who doesn’t gobble down their putrid philosophy hook, line and sinker? And God help you if you disagree with them while committing that ultimate of evils in the “liberal” mind — practicing Christianity. Their little venom spigots will be locked wide open, just for you. Ms Gregoire had one such interesting experience lately after writing a column about her opinions on parenting, wherein she espoused such vile notions as:

A lot of parents have thrown in the towel, many without realizing it, because they’ve forgotten their primary purpose. It is not to be your child’s friend. It is not to make your child like you. It is not to make your child’s life easy. It is to raise your child to behave responsibly, morally, and eventually independently. Often we believe our kids will just develop this by osmosis. Keep them safe and feed them, and they’ll be okay. They may make some mistakes along the way, but everything will turn out fine.

EEk. Terrifying stuff, eh? Curiously enough, I’ve read that whole danged column three times now and I haven’t been able to find a single reference to God, Christ, church or anything else even remotely religious. Check it out for yourself, see if you can find anything, because I sure as heck couldn’t.

Done yet? Did you find anything? Didn’t think so. But guess what? A little paragon of progressiveness by the name of James Callaghan sure as hell found some. Being so much smarter than the rest of us, he was able to see that the whole article is absolutely awash in Christianity.

Hello, I just finished reading your article “to be a parent”. The one thing I loved about the article is that you gave advice on raising other people’s kids, you gave criticism on how other people are raising their children yet you don’t mention how you handle your children. Is it possible that you have no children and feel the need to be self-righteous around other people. Your friend Rick really needs backbone. As you pointed out Rick must be a bad parent to allow his daughter to get to that point, yet you use him as an example of how his words of love are the proper way to go. My son would have a sore jaw if he was to hit me for 4 hours. I’m so tired of seeing advice columns in my local papers from people like you. First of you still believe in god, what right to you have judging others when you believe a fairy tale is gospel, silly christian myths or for kids. I raise my children in an open way, I show them many cultures and worn them to be careful around christians. You people are always pointing out the wrongs everyone is doing, but the amount of murder done in the name of your god is frightening but hey, they didn’t believe the same as you so I guess it’s okay. I let my son where a shirt that says “I get more action then heaven got on 911” as long as it iritates people like you I’ll let him be even more offensive to your kind.

There you have it. Progressive tolerance in action. Some things, I can rant about all the doo-dah day. Other things, though, pretty much speak for themselves. This bozo’s blatant anti-Christian bigotry (not even mentioning his own obviously dubious parenting notions) is one of them.

Oh, before I forget:
Jimmy boy, go back to whatever high school it was that you graduated from. When you get there, find your old English teacher and demand that he or she apologise for sending you, so poorly prepared, out into the world.

As we sit here in our nice comfortable and safe nation, complaining about what some bozo judge did to a Christmas tree, or about Christmas concerts in school getting renamed “winter festivals,” or people saying “happy holidays,” or any of the other gripes and groans that surface at this time of year, perhaps we should take just a minute or two to think about just how good we have it. There are plenty of people in the world who have one hell of a worse time of it than we do.

The Winterpeg Sun’s John Gleeson relates one such story today as he describes the plight of the oldest sect in Christendom, the one million Assyrian Christians currently living in Iraq:

Christians thrown to the lions in Iraq

By JOHN GLEESON

While Canada’s self-appointed guardians of Christmas dig up new evidence of persecution — a tree moved down the hall, a greeting without “merry” dutifully attached — real persecution against Christians is going on daily and is being largely ignored.

Nowhere is the situation as grave as in Iraq.

Since the U.S. invasion in 2003, Iraq’s one million Assyrian Christians — the oldest sect in Christendom — have been the target of a campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing at the hands of Islamic extremists and Kurdish nationalists. Tens of thousands have fled the country for Syria, Jordan or Turkey.

This year has been the worst since the invasion. Church bombings, car bombings, kidnappings and killings have become commonplace.

In August, 13 Assyrian women in Baghdad were kidnapped and murdered. In October, a 14-year-old boy in Albasra was crucified and stabbed in the stomach in mockery of the death of Christ. Another 14-year-old boy in Baquba was decapitated in his workplace by veiled Muslims chanting “Allahu, Akbar! Allahu, Akbar!” Also that month, a priest was kidnapped, tortured and beheaded, supposedly over the Pope’s comments critical of Islam.

Indeed, in the wake of Benedict XVI’s September speech, extremists threatened to kill all Christians in Iraq unless the Pope apologized.

Except for a few Christian relief agencies and the Assyrians’ own news service, the bloodletting has been virtually unreported — lost in the sea of carnage that is today’s Iraq.

Assyrians themselves are calling on the western world to create a “safe zone” for Christians on the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq (the Canadian-based Council of Assyrian Research and Development has posted a petition at www.cardonline.org). The European Parliament passed a resolution to that effect in April, but so far nothing has been done.

Meanwhile, Christmas has understandably gone underground in Iraq.

Due to “the grave security situation in the country,” Iraq’s Chaldean patriarch Emmanuel Delly has “appealed on safety grounds to Christians … to refrain from any public celebrations for Christmas.”

Christians hide in their homes and pray in secret. Priests are afraid to appear in public in their clerical robes, lest they be indiscriminately attacked. Schoolgirls have been warned by Muslim extremists to wear the hijab, and boys to dress in a “sombre manner,” or face the consequences under sharia law.

Truly a sad fate for a Christian community that traces its foundation back to 33 AD and St. Thomas and where most of the people still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus and the Apostles.

It’s ironic, but not really surprising, that the American-led occupation under President George W. Bush would usher in an era of atrocities against Iraq’s Christian minority. They were an easy revenge target for the majority Muslims, who have only been emboldened by the U.S. government’s apparent disregard for the Assyrians’ plight.

With more important geopolitical alliances to forge with the warring Muslim factions and the Kurds, you could say the Americans have thrown the Christians to the lions.

And remember, the same calamity could befall Pakistan’s three million Christians, already a persecuted minority, if things were to get really ugly in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Persecution? We don’t know the half of it.