On the 18th of February 2010, Master Corporal John H. F. Babcock, the last surviving Canadian veteran of the First World War, passed away at his home in Spokane, Washington.  He was 109 years old.

With the passing of Mr. Babcock, there are now only 3 remaining WWI veterans in the world, two British and one American.  In November 2006, Parliament voted unanimously to accord a state funeral for him as the last Canadian veteran of the war, but Babcock declined.

As a nation, we honour his service and mourn his passing.  The passing of Mr. Babcock marks the end of an era.

His family mourns the passing of a great man. Canada mourns the passing of the generation that asserted our independence on the world stage and established our international reputation as an unwavering champion of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

-Prime Minister Stephen Harper

May he rest in peace.

Where to begin with this one?

The sordid tale of Col. Russell Williams is starting to read like one of the more poorly written episodes of Law & Order, or maybe NCIS, take your pick. As bad as what he’s accused of is, the slime that some of our media outlets have been excreting over the whole affair might even be worse.

Let me get something straight to start off with; and I’m speaking here as someone who’s actually worn the uniform and is in no damned mood for any excuses from any quarter. (more…)

It is perhaps some congenital defect in us, or perhaps just a byproduct of our Western affluence — having lived all our lives in a land where true hardship is virtually unheard of — that we forget the important things. Every year, at about the same time, we obsess over idiocies ranging from stupid judge tricks to immaculate lizard conceptions. 🙄 How all this tomfoolery came about in the first place is anyone’s guess; and it really doesn’t matter anyway.  What does matter is the real “reason for the season” and so, this being Christmas Eve and all, here it is:

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town.

And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.

While they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock. The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were struck with great fear.

The angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

When the angels went away from them to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”

So they went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds. And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them. When eight days were completed for his circumcision, he was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

Merry Christmas, everyone; and God bless.

I can’t believe it.  After all this time, it’s actually finally happened.  You have no idea how much I hate like hell to say this, but I really do have no choice.

The gun grabbers were right!

You have no idea how disgusted I am with myself right now.

Every time some jurisdiction down in the US loosened its gun control laws, organizations like the Brady Campaign fought those reforms tooth and nail.  And I ridiculed them.

They warned us over and over and over again that ONLY SOLDIERS AND COPS CAN BE TRUSTED WITH GUNS and putting guns in the hands of the average citizen would lead to mayhem — violence in the streets, shootings over the most insignificant perceived slight, gunfights over fender benders.

Yes, they warned us.  They did everything they could.  And we …  I … didn’t listen.  Now it’s happened.  Many of you have doubtless heard of the historic “Heller decision” of the US Supreme Court that struck down the District of Columbia’s wise and well-thought-out gun ban that had stood for more than 30 years, making sure DC stayed as safe as it was.  I remember it quite well.  I, fool that I was, rejoiced at it. (more…)

Well now, who in the whole wide world woulda ever thunk this?  What, me?  Naw…

It seems that a pair of lab-coated high foreheads at the U of T recently did what all bean counters do best — namely, spending a poopload of time and cash to come to a conclusion that’s already obvious to those of us who don’t have our skulls rammed up our politically correct butts — and now the High Priesthood of Kyotology is going to have to get themselves all worked up into a into yet another royal snitlather… again.

So just what did they do, you ask?  Did they (shudder) deny the Great Truth of the Great Global Warming Slideshow of the Goracle?  Uh, no, not quite.  What they did do was to take a bunch of students and see how they acted after they were given a choice between buying some green goodness, like biodegradable laundry soap or organic yogurt (isn’t that one a little redundant?), and buying regular stuff like what normal people use.

The results are likely to put a little egg on the faces of the holier-than-thou crowd; it seems that the enviro-bedwetters are a bit of a weaselly bunch.

In a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, University of Toronto researchers Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong studied how students behaved after being given the option of purchasing environmentally friendly products, like organic yogourt or biodegradable laundry detergent, or conventional items.

They found students who chose green products were less likely to act altruistically afterwards than those who were simply exposed to green products.

The study, said Mazar, an assistant professor of marketing with the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, builds on research into the idea of “moral regulation” – that people either consciously or unconsciously balance bad deeds with good ones.

“What has been shown so far is that when we engage in actions that give us some kind of moral, warm glow – let’s call it that – that afterwards we are more likely to transgress,” Mazar said.

Wow.  So… giving yourself a warm fuzzy means that you get to go out and misbehave afterwards?  Damn, I’ve got some naughty catching up to do; I get warm fuzzies all the time (no really, I do; I’m actually not this cranky all the time).

Amongst other things, the study noticed that the one group — ahem, let’s be nice and call them “environmentally friendly shoppers,” shall we? </sarcasm> — were more likely to keep money for themselves, more likely to lie for their own gain and more likely to just help themselves to money that just plain wasn’t theirs (a nice way of saying “stealing”).

Of course Mazar was quick to lay on the caveats about how this “doesn’t mean that you should not buy environmental products,” shouldn’t be seen as a character judgment of environuts, etc, etc.  Hey, come on; she works at the leftbot U of T, for crying out loud.  She knows where her funding comes from.

What I don’t get is why this would surprise… well, anybody.  Anybody with a working pair of ears and eyeballs can plainly see that greenies, like all closet or not Marxists, are generous to a fault… with other people’s money.  The Goracle yowls from his pulpit that we should shiver in the dark as much as we can stand, and then some, while he hunkers in a mansion with the electric bill of a whole damned village.  Suzuki wants you to put toxic light bulbs in your house so you can buy more beer (give some credit, it’s a better marketing idea than Al’s) but seems to need not one, but two houses; one of ’em a sprawling $2 million monster on a swanky island off the west coast.

Please try and name me just one screeching envirokook out there, who runs around telling us what bastards we are for raping momma planet, who isn’t getting filthy rich in the process.  Go ahead, knock yourselves out; the comments are open.

And who the hell was that Englishman who said, “the odd thing about the socialists, they all live in the biggest house they can afford?”  That one’s been bugging me all day…

…Always a soldier.