For Your Reading Pleasure

… a whole bunch of things.

I saw Ernest Borgnine at Fan Expo. He was being wheeled in by an assistant. He waved and greeted everyone most jovially. I thought, "There was a star with genuine class and warmth".

Who benefits from learning either English or French, Canada’s official languages?

While skilled workers obviously need a solid grasp of an official language to work here, that’s not everyone’s role, said Sharry Aiken, associate dean and professor at Queen’s University’s law faculty, who teaches immigration and refugee law. “They’re already living within our society, they’re already participating in Canada in whatever way they are, whether it’s working [or] managing a household and raising children,” she said.

But Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney says an official language is essential for any citizen.

“We decided as Canadians that citizenship has value, it has particular meaning,” Mr. Kenney said. “It means full participation, or the ability at least to fully participate in our political community, which requires the ability at least to fully understand what’s going on in one of our two languages.”

Where Mr. Kenney and his critics disagree is whether it’s fair to deny citizenship because of language ability when individuals have already been allowed to live in the country for years.

“Saying, ‘Well, you’re good enough to live here and pay taxes but not good enough to vote,’ all I think that does is enhance alienation,” Prof. Aiken said, adding it may be easier to become proficient in a language once someone becomes Canadian and is able to fully settle.

She suggests mandatory community service might be a more meaningful method to instill civic values.

Let me emphasize how important English, the language of commerce, is. When I taught ESL, housewives would take morning or night classes so as to assist their children who were also taking ESL classes. Without English, their educational and professional opportunities would dry up like a puddle in the sun. My point is that not understanding or making oneself understood is to be hamstrung and isolated. Why someone would not press immigrants into bettering their language skills is astonishing.

Also, if one cannot get the immigrant to learn English, he certainly won’t take part in community service, whatever that will impart someone who has been told he doesn’t really have to be a part of Canada.

Abolish teachers’ unions today:

The Tories say the deal isn’t a victory for the Liberals, as it contains a “me too” clause. If another union negotiates a better agreement, OECTA would get the same deal.

The spirit of Walter Duranty is alive and well:

One of the leaders of the Media Party is Stephen Wicary. He’s been the online editor of The Globe and Mail for years.

Even though he worked for The Globe and Mail, and was paid by them to promote that newspaper, he could be counted on to promote and recirculate any anti-Conservative or pro-leftist comments published in rival newspapers.

He had a theme: Harper was an undemocratic bully.

Well, now come news that Wicary has quit the Globe. And he’s off to live in Cuba.

It’s like one of those creepy Cold War stories of the odd American who defected to the Soviet Union.

According to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — two liberal groups — Cuba is the most repressive regime in the western hemisphere. Particularly harsh on free speech.

How could Wicary go there, after being such a democracy and free-speech activist in Canada?

He’s not going there to liberate it or to train democracy dissidents, sure.

Wicary’s excuse is that his wife got a promotion to go work there. So — is that OK then? Did a job promotion for his wife trump all of his pro-democracy, pro-freedom talk?

Apparently so, Mr. Levant. Apparently so.

He didn’t go to Israel but he is hosting Egypt’s new Islamist president:

US President Barack Obama has invited Egypt's newly elected Islamist president, Mohamed Mursi, to visit the United States in September, an Egyptian official said on Sunday, reflecting the new ties Washington is cultivating with the region's Islamists.

Related: he tried so hard to drive a stake through the heart of help America:

“I suspect that most people in Cincinnati would acknowledge that I've tried real hard, and we haven't gotten the Republicans to engage on a whole range of issues that, I wish had happened," Obama said in an interview with WLWT-TV in Cincinnati, Ohio. …”

What a pathetic, lying cretin he is.

Whaaaaaaaat?  

 

Kim Jong-Eun gets a new theme song.

Related: the clash of two evil empires- Disney and North Korea.

If anyone tells you to be afraid of Christians or Buddhists, throw this in his or her face:

Raids and reprisal attacks have left 58 people dead in Christian villages near a Nigerian city where authorities have struggled to contain religious violence, officials said Sunday.

Assailants launched "sophisticated attacks" on several villages near Jos early Saturday, said Mustapha Salisu, spokesman for a special taskforce made up of policemen and soldiers deployed in the area to curb years of violence.

"They came in hundreds," Salisu said. "Some had (police) uniforms and some even had bulletproof vests."

He said the special taskforce fought back for hours and lost two policemen in the battle. Salisu initially said that 37 people were killed including 14 civilians and 21 assailants.

However, late Sunday, Nigerian Red Cross official Andronicus Adeyemo said aid workers had counted 56 dead and more than 300 displaced people from the attacks. He did not give a breakdown.

He said the killing of a federal lawmaker and a state lawmaker brought the deaths to 58 after the two officials were ambushed Sunday afternoon on their way to a mass burial for the victims.

There has been quite a precedent set.

Sixteen billion dollars has been donated to Afghanistan where the boy-buggering Taliban cheer over the body of a woman they have just murdered.

Unwillingness to admit fault or assume responsibility- not just a Gen Y problem:

The Arab mind always tries to find someone else to blame for its mistakes. Instead of confronting themselves over the economic collapse, for example, the easiest thing to do is to scapegoat the Jews and Israel. Over the past few decades this blaming of Israel has reached a pathological level.

I think this is rooted in the Muslim idea of blaming Satan for encouraging them to sin. When a Muslim makes the required pilgrimage Hajj, a major component is Ramy al-Jamarat – throwing stones at Satan – because “he” is the one who is responsible for their mistakes. So there is a desire to never admit you are wrong. There is widespread intolerance for all minorities and, at its core, the inability to accept the existence of the other.

The truth is a problem, too.

Read the whole thing. Read how common sense measures are anathema to the professional extremists. Remember that before you flip off somebody holding a pro-life sign:

It would seem to me -- remember, I am just an ignorant Southern layman and not a medical professional -- that there would be inherently more danger in a woman's reproductive health procedure that is not performed by someone who is Board Certified in women's reproductive health.  

Having a doctor with admitting privileges at local hospitals might be an additional safety feature in the event that one of those "safe, legal, and rare" procedures ends with complications.

Well, this is embarrassing:

As a company grade 1302 combat engineer officer with 5 years of active service and two combat deployments, one to Iraq and the other to Afghanistan, I was able to participate in and lead numerous combat operations. In Iraq as the II MEF Director, Lioness Program, I served as a subject matter expert for II MEF, assisting regimental and battalion commanders on ways to integrate female Marines into combat operations. I primarily focused on expanding the mission of the Lioness Program from searching females to engaging local nationals and information gathering, broadening the ways females were being used in a wide variety of combat operations from census patrols to raids. 

In Afghanistan I deployed as a 1302 and led a combat engineer platoon in direct support of Regimental Combat Team 8, specifically operating out of the Upper Sangin Valley. My platoon operated for months at a time, constructing patrol bases (PBs) in support of 3d Battalion, 5th Marines; 1st Battalion, 5th Marines; 2d Reconnaissance Battalion; and 3d Battalion, 4th Marines. This combat experience, in particular, compelled me to raise concern over the direction and overall reasoning behind opening the 03XX field.

Who is driving this agenda? I am not personally hearing female Marines, enlisted or officer, pounding on the doors of Congress claiming that their inability to serve in the infantry violates their right to equality. Shockingly, this isn’t even a congressional agenda. This issue is being pushed by several groups, one of which is a small committee of civilians appointed by the Secretary of Defense called the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Service (DACOWITS). Their mission is to advise the Department of Defense (DoD) on recommendations, as well as matters of policy, pertaining to the well-being of women in the Armed Services from recruiting to employment. Members are selected based on their prior military experience or experience with women’s workforce issues. I certainly applaud and appreciate DACOWITS’ mission; however, as it pertains to the issue of women in the infantry, it’s very surprising to see that none of the committee members are on active duty or have any recent combat or relevant operational experience relating to the issue they are attempting to change. I say this because, at the end of the day, it’s the active duty servicemember who will ultimately deal with the results of their initiatives, not those on the outside looking in. As of now, the Marine Corps hasn’t been directed to integrate, but perhaps the Corps is anticipating the inevitable—DoD pressuring the Corps to comply with DACOWITS’ agenda as the Army has already “rogered up” to full integration. Regardless of what the Army decides to do, it’s critical to emphasize that we are not the Army; our operational speed and tempo, along with our overall mission as the Nation’s amphibious force-in-readiness, are fundamentally different than that of our sister Service. By no means is this distinction intended as disrespectful to our incredible Army. My main point is simply to state that the Marine Corps and the Army are different; even if the Army ultimately does fully integrate all military occupational fields, that doesn’t mean the Corps should follow suit.

So much for girl power, which is really just a slogan on the oversized pink t-shirt of a stupid girl with no sense of self.

(With thanks to one and all)

And now, rest easy as Tigger has finally been caught. Why, Tigger? Why?