Stuff

Lots to talk about….

Super Tuesday.... in progress....

If automated phone calls did not sway the electorate to vote Tory, why do the Liberals care?

Following media reports in recent days, the issue referred to as "robocalls" has generated much concern and interest among Canadians. Many have contacted Elections Canada, as well as the media, various political parties and/or their representatives and other organizations, to provide information. In addition, the House of Commons recently adopted a unanimous motion calling on all members of Parliament and political parties to assist in the investigation.

But I thought there was a regime change and Iran wanted nuclear power for domestic purposes:

Germany's Die Welt newspaper reported Sunday that Iran held at least one nuclear weapons test in North Korea in 2010.

The paper's report is based on "Western intelligence agencies sources," and says that the test, in fact, refutes US intelligence assessments suggesting there is no "hard evidence" that Iran is building nuclear weapons.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has recently declared that its nuclear negotiations with Iran have failed.

The statement followed Tehran's decision the bar IAEA inspectors from what is believed to be key military sites in the Islamic Republic.

Iran vehemently claims that its nuclear program is meant to serve civil, peaceful purposes only.

The Die Welt noted that evidence of the 2010 nuclear tests in North Korea was published in early February in Nature Magazine.

According to the report, Swedish nuclear physicist Lars-Erik de Geer analyzed data "showing the presence of radioisotopes that betrayed a uranium bomb explosion."

"After a year of work, (de Geer) concluded that North Korea carried out two small nuclear tests in April and May 2010 that caused explosions in the range of 50–200 tons of TNT equivalent.

"The types and ratios of isotopes detected… suggest that North Korea was testing materials and techniques intended to boost the yield of its weapons," the report said.

Related: rather keen insight on a dictatorship anyone who hasn’t been shot trying to escape would think is mad:

Of course on the flip side there are myriad reasons to judge the North as irrational: Is it rational to think it can win a war with the ROK, let alone with the ROK-US alliance? Is it rational to use provocations up to and including either the use or sale of nuclear weapons or capabilities? Is it rational to starve some 23 million people to allow the regime to survive? Was it rational to attack and hijack the Pueblo? Is it rational to attempt multiple assassinations to kill the South Korean leadership (at least twice in Seoul and once in Rangoon) and to use terrorist action against the South and international community? Is it rational to trade in myriad illicit activities to include being one of the world’s largest and most proficient counterfeiters (to include that of US currency but also cigarettes and drugs such as Viagra and methamphetamines)? Is it rational to turn down Chinese help for economic reform (because such reform would likely end the regime)? Of course from our perspective the answer to my rhetorical questions is no but we cannot just view the problem from our perspective or even through the eyes of South Koreans, who are now vastly different than the North Korean regime. From the Kim Family Regime’s perspective, it has acted in a very rational way and, if we look at things carefully, we should see it has acted in a very predictable way over the past 60 years.

I maintain that though North Korea thinks it is rational, it is not. The nation (read: vassal state) is propped up China and uses extortion to survive. While it could be economically dependent, it cannot run a healthy functional economy without trade. Its abuse of its citizens- however brain-washed they may be- is not just unforgivable but hard to maintain after periods of famine, torture, external but secret contact and exodus of desperate citizens.

 

If one is in the proverbial (if not actual) pocket of a government desperately trying to force an unpopular policy on its people, the word “prostitute” fits:

I think Rush did the right thing in apologizing to Fluke.  However, let’s keep in mind that it was Fluke who made her sexual activity a matter of national political debate by insisting that the government pass laws and regulations forcing employers and insurers to provide her free contraception, and apparently as much as she and others demand.  It’s Republicans who believe that contraception should remain a private affair, and that employers and insurers should be free to decide whether to cover contraception for their employees and customers or not.  Democrats used Fluke to demand that those choices be stripped from private enterprises and instead be forced by the executive branch to entirely subsidize contraception.

That is the argument we should be making, as Republicans and conservatives.  If you want your sexual choices to remain private, don’t use the government to force other people to subsidize them.  Then we won’t have to turn the sex lives of Georgetown law school students into topics for political speculation.

Rush Limbaugh should not have apologised. This woman agreed to rent herself out and make outlandish claims just so the American taxpayer can cover her rotten personal choices. She is a lot of things but a folk hero is not one of them.

And all this time, I thought universities were institutions of higher learning. Not if you’re Fluke, apparently.

And now, something so funny that when I read it, I had to lie down.