Seeing You in September

Everyday life has stalled the ranting.


But only briefly.


Welcoming you into September....


There should be no reason why McGuinty is catching up to Hudak. Remember- Ontario became a have-not province because of McGuinty:

Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak's gold-bricked path to the Ontario premiership has just gotten bumpier.

Only two months ago, Premier Dalton McGuinty's Liberal Party was poised for a devastating defeat at the hands of Mr. Hudak's Conservatives.

Now, with election day only five weeks away the two leaders are "neck and neck," according to a new poll by Toronto-based polling firm Forum Research.

With Tory support at 35% to the Liberals' 30%, the poll suggests Mr. Hudak would clinch a narrow victory to lead a minority government if Ontarians voted tomorrow.

If a Tea Party in Canada means the Liberals, the NDP and other political wastes of money wake up in a cold sweat each night in fear that they could go the way of Duceppe, then a Tea Party we must have!

Bob Rae must think Canadian voters are as easily scared as seven-year-olds, judging by his attempts to frighten them with the spectre of the Tea Party at every opportunity.

Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty have a "Tea Party type ideology," he told reporters Wednesday, as he wrapped up a three-day caucus retreat in Ottawa. He referred to comments made by former Ontario premier Ernie Eves that allegedly suggested the province's Progressive Conservative leader, Tim Hudak, is running "the Tea Party North." (In fact, Mr. Eves had said a former MPP Norm Sterling had not been treated fairly by members of the party who want "the Tea Party version of Ontario politics," but said the comments were not directed at Mr. Hudak.)

Typical Liberals. The knee-jerk anti-American buttons are always pushed around election time. Why, anyone who thinks government should be shrunk and made accountable for each tax dollar wasted or each job sent overseas must be a lunatic!



There was a funeral for someone who wasn't Jack Layton:

Cardinal Ambrozic, who died Friday at the age of 81, rose from the ranks of Slovenian refugees who fled totalitarianism at the end of the Second World War to attain the upper reaches of the Catholic Church. 

"What happened to him was beyond, beyond what anyone in the Slovenian community could have hoped for," said Vida Jan, who was among several hundred mourners who had to stand outside the packed cathedral. "We were all refugees and poor people. It meant everything to us." 

He was made Archbishop of Toronto in 1990, promoted to Cardinal in 1998 and was part of the conclave in 2005 that chose Pope Benedict XVI. 

He also hosted World Youth Day in 2002, an event that drew more than 750,000 pilgrims to the city to worship with Pope John Paul II. He reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 in 2006. 

Along with bishops from across Canada, as well as Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte of Montreal and Bishop Anton Stres of Slovenia, in attendance were such civic leaders as Mayor Rob Ford of Toronto, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Mayor Hazel McCallion of Mississauga. 

Some of those who knew him said he never wanted to be in the limelight and that he did not court the positions of Archbishop and Cardinal but accepted them out of a sense of duty to the Church. 

"The vision of hope that he lived and proclaimed was expressed more quietly and more profoundly thorough a life of daily fidelity to his mission as disciple, pastor and apostle," Archbishop Thomas Collins said of his predecessor in his homily. Cardinal Ambrozic, he said, looked "for a simple readiness to sacrifice, a simple readiness to give of oneself " in all his priests. 

Many spoke of him as a man who had deep compassion but could appear outwardly cold, someone who found small talk painful. 

"What I learned about him was that the public demeanor was not the man," said Joseph Sinasac, who was publisher and editor of the Catholic Register under Cardinal Ambrozic. 

"He came across as someone rather aloof, stern and doctrinaire, but the man himself was someone much fairer than you would think." 

He drew a lot of similarities between Cardinal Ambrozic and Pope Benedict: Both followed men who had outgoing personalities and loved the limelight -- Cardinal Emmett Carter and Pope John Paul II -- and both were essentially private people who were at heart professors and intellectuals. 

"I think Cardinal Ambrozic found it very challenging to talk in everyday language and to make small talk," said Mr. Sinasac. 

"He never liked to speak about himself, but if you asked him to talk about a book he was reading then he was most comfortable." 

Despite any misgivings about taking on more public roles, Cardinal Ambrozic would have never questioned doing what he was asked to do by the Church, said Mr. Sinasac. 

"He believed in duty and service," he said. 

"He never talked the language of self-fulfilment. He talked about that your role in life is to do what was asked of you."

Related: Father de Souza is so right.



China hates its own citizens:

China is making plans to legalize state-backed "disappearances" in a move lawyers and human rights advocates have described as "terrifying." Amendments to house arrest laws would allow prisoners to be held in secret locations and without their families being informed, according to proposals published on the website of the National People's Congress, the rubber-stamp parliament. Currently, suspects can be put under six months' house arrest, but they are usually held in their homes. Under the new rules, police will be allowed to hold people incognito if they suspect them of terrorism, endangering state security, or if keeping them in their own homes would "interfere with investigations."

Yet, the US is despised for Guantanamo Bay. Think about it.



This is why we should have private police forces and elected judges:

The parallel between Vancouver police and their British counterparts has been drawn by other media commentators, but it bears repeating here.

In early August, riots on a much larger scale took place across Britain. Already, more than 3,100 arrests have been made. One-third of those arrested have already had at least one court appearance. For several days following the riots, courts remained open 24 hours a day to process detainees. Courts even held sessions on Sunday for the first time in British history to deal with the volume of accused. A team of 450 detectives remain on the case and scores of rioters have already been sentenced to jail terms of up to four years, including a pair who police believe touched off the worst of the disturbance by using social media and cellphones to encourage new and expanded disturbances.

The glacial pace in British Columbia may not be entirely the fault of police. Crown prosecutors in B.C. have been known to grasp any reason to reduce the severity of charges or to drop them altogether. That may partly explain why investigators are being so frustratingly painstaking - they don't want to give prosecutors any excuse to ignore the crimes.

Nor are Vancouver police getting the co-operation of the courts in the way that British police did.

Still, the excruciating sluggishness of the VPD cannot be laid entirely (or even mostly) at others' feet. Just as they were slow to respond to the widespread looting and destruction on the night of June 15, they have been similarly slow to deal with the legal aftermath. As the 19th century British prime minister William Gladstone said, "Justice delayed is justice denied." In Vancouver, the inaction of police threatens to deny justice to the city, and especially to the residents and business owners whose property and livelihoods were smashed.

Look- another idiot letter-writer:

The abortion question, discussed by Chris Selley and Barbara Kay, assumes a time frame of conception to birth. But isn't this artificially limiting the debate?

The early Romans did not consider a newborn child to be a person until the 10th day. Any defects that became apparent in that period usually resulted in the child being killed. Why not suggest the same for the pro-choice side, which would save all the bother of pre-natal sex determination.

At the other end of the spectrum, confining the start of life to the moment of conception is clearly artificial. Any unfertilized ovum is a potential life, so whenever a woman menstruates she is throwing it away. Now there's a stick for the pro-life religious crowd: Women should be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen all the time. When we say pro-life, we mean pro-life.

No, a fertilised ovum is a human being in growth and no one said or meant women to be some Handmaid's Tale caricature except pro-abortionists (yes, pro-abortion- own your stance, death-culters) for whom biology is difficult and children represent lives they've wasted.



And now, how well you know your Soviet dictators?