For A Monday

Starting the week off…

One would think the Greeks would be grateful: 

Greece has admitted it still faces a tough job in persuading the European Union and IMF to save it from bankruptcy even after parliament approved savage extra budget cuts, provoking a night of looting and burning in central Athens.

A suspicious EU has told leaders of the two parties left in the government of technocrat Prime Minister Lucas Papademos to give written commitments by Wednesday that they will implement the pay, pension and job cuts after elections expected in April.

As parliament debated the austerity package on Sunday night, riot police fought running battles with protesters outside. By daybreak on Monday 93 buildings had been wrecked or seriously damaged in the city centre, some of them historic monuments.

Is Iran behind this? 

Israel accused arch-enemies Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of being behind twin bomb attacks that targeted Israeli embassy staff in India and Georgia on Monday, wounding four people.

Tehran denied involvement in the attacks, which amplified tensions between two countries already at loggerheads over Iran's nuclear program, and accused Israel of carrying out the attacks itself. Hezbollah made no comment.

In the Indian capital New Delhi, a bomb wrecked a car taking an Israeli embassy official to pick up her children from school, police said. The woman needed surgery to remove shrapnel but her life was not in danger.

Her driver and two passers-by suffered lesser injuries.

Israeli officials said an attempt to bomb an embassy car in the Georgian capital Tbilisi failed, and the device was defused.

If so, this could be the sleeping giant attacks it has warned it would carry out.

No, give them nothing because this cycle will never end if you do:

The first of 22 modular homes promised by the federal government to Attawapiskat has arrived to the remote northern Ontario First Nations community, the Aboriginal Affairs minister's office confirmed Sunday.

Related: how do their parents feel about this?

Here's some shocking news: a new report finds major failings with aboriginal education in Canada.

The report by a national panel on First Nations elementary- and secondary-school education called on the federal government to set up an oversight body, The Canadian Press reports.

It also recommended that local organizations similar to school boards be set up.

And it called for more money to be put into the system.

Specific recommendations in the report, entitled Nurturing the Learning Spirit of First Nation Students, include creating a child-centered First Nations Education Act, setting up a national commission on First Nation education to support reform and improvement efforts, setting up regional organizations to provide support and services for First Nations schools and students, ensure adequate funding for the system and establish a system of accounting and reporting.

Is there the drive to learn, grow and succeed? If not, you are doing what one normally does: throwing money at the problem.

Unbelievable: 

Rescuers have pulled a 5-year-old girl alive from the rubble of a house flattened by a massive avalanche that killed both her parents and at least seven of her relatives in a remote mountain village in southern Kosovo.

Col. Shemsi Syla, a spokesman for the Kosovo Security Force, said Sunday officers discovered the girl when they heard her voice and cellphone. Her home was buried under 10 metres (33 feet) of snow.

Rescuers cheered and pumped their fists in the air late Saturday as the girl was pulled out alive. A video aired on Klan Kosova TV showed rescuers covering the girl with blankets, before she was rushed to hospital.

Thank God for that.

What he said:

what can I say. While the US is making plans to colonize space, we imbeciles are breaking statues. We deserve our misery. May God give us more.

Bingo.

What blame-games Islamists play. Everyone is at fault for their socio-political, cultural, mental and emotional retardation but them. What misery they bring on themselves is their own doing and can be undone if they truly wished it. How can anyone think things like this are progressive?

Why Celebrity Apartheid Week matters: Samuel L. Jackson has joined the ranks of the perpetually stupid:

In an interview with Ebony Magazine, actor Samuel L. Jackson spoke candidly about his support of President Obama in 2008, the New York Post reports. “I voted for Barack because he was black,” Jackson revealed. “‘Cuz that’s why other folks vote for other people — because they look like them.”

Right. However, there are no petite blogging politicians. At least none that I can see. Your argument, therefore, Mr. Jackson, is invalid.

Stick to acting.

Why couldn’t Christopher Hitchens be more like his brother?

So, it’s not a matter of children being sexualised but who sexualises them. Right.  As long as we’re disgusted by the abuse of children. Oh wait… these contraceptive-spewing freaks aren’t.

American bishops will not be moved:

Catholic bishops say they remain opposed to President Obama's plan to require insurers to provide free birth control, even if religiously affiliated employers such as Catholic hospitals and universities aren't forced to pay for it.

"The only complete solution to this religious liberty problem is for HHS [the Department of Health and Human Services] to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services," the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a statement.

The statement, issued late Friday, makes clear that the bishops' opposition goes beyond the "religious freedom" dispute that had riled Washington in recent weeks. The government's decision to guarantee women access to contraceptives "remains a grave moral concern," they said.

On Friday morning, Obama called Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, the bishops conference president, to tell him of the revised rule. Initially, Dolan described the move as a "first step in the right direction."

But in the later statement, the bishops conference said it would continue to object because of Obama's decision "to retain HHS's nationwide mandate of insurance coverage of sterilization and contraception."

"We will therefore continue — with no less vigor, no less sense of urgency — our efforts to correct this problem through the other two branches of government," they said.

Related:

I once thought Obama voted against the Born-Alive Act and passionately supported Planned Parenthood to secure the hardcore radical feminist vote.  I was wrong.  Obama's commitment to abortion goes far deeper.  Limbaugh nailed it: "Abortion is the sacrament to the religion of liberalism" -- a religion of which I, Lloyd Marcus, believe that Obama is a zealot.

His name is Andrew Breitbart and he doesn’t need your DAMN pity.

Put a man’s nose to the grindstone and he is likely to go to the rooftop with a gun and protect his property.

Signs your civilisation might be crumbling: “who the f… is Paul McCartney?”

Oh, just THIS guy.

(Muchas gracias)

Some good news:

His heart was put together properly, it just didn't work normally," George's cardiologist, Dr. Anne Dipchand, told The Toronto Star. "He had very significant or severe end-stage heart failure."

He would not survive — or ever leave Sick Kids Hospital — without a new heart.

After six weeks or worrying and waiting, a small, healthy heart became available for a transplant.

Seven days later, George was discharged from the hospital and welcomed home by his parents and big sister, Elle, 3.

Dr. Dipchand believes the boy, who is thriving with his new heart, has a good chance "to live a long life."

George's parents have written a letter of deep gratitude to the anonymous family who donated their dying child's organs to their son.

Let's hope for the best.