Friday Freakout

The rare and ravenous melon shark.

Do you need a herb mill (among other crazy kitchen gadgets) or do you really just want it?


A dog cliff-diving in Malta:




Classical music on Bugs Bunny cartoons. Who said cartoons teach one nothing?

Friday Post

For the last day of July....


Oh.

So that's why Justin Trudeau is flailing in the polls. It's because of Stephen Harper.

(Sidebar: well, it usually is.)

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau says Prime Minister Stephen Harper has "changed the rules" to give himself an advantage in the coming election.

Harper is expected to call an election Sunday for Oct. 19 — setting off the longest Canadian election campaign in modern times. The Conservatives' Fair Elections Act provides for higher spending limits in longer campaigns, and Harper's party has more cash on hand than the opposition parties combined.

Trudeau told CBC Radio's The House that Harper has "changed the rules so that he's able to spend more money than we've ever had in an election."

So Stephen Harper's changing the date and his seemingly endless war chest (forget about what the trustifarian is worth) is the very thing that is giving him and not Justin Trudeau the edge.

It has nothing to do with the fact that Justin Trudeau is rude to people he doesn't like, has taken money from schools and charities, has praised the dictatorship of China that represses both its citizens and North Koreans, that he thinks marijuana and little else is enough of a platform on which to run, that he would bar MPs who had opposite views to his, that he believed budgets balance themselves and winter coats are sufficient aid for victimised Yazidis and Iraqi Christians, that he would withdraw military support in the fight against ISIS and restore relations with Iran.

Right.



While part of the world mourns for a lion they had not heard of until recently, native Zimbabweans wonder why no one in the West gives a damn when they are attacked by lions:

As social media exploded with outrage this week at the killing of Cecil the lion, the untimely passing of the celebrated predator at the hands of an American dentist went largely unnoticed in the animal's native Zimbabwe.

"What lion?" acting information minister Prisca Mupfumira asked in response to a request for comment about Cecil, who was at that moment topping global news bulletins and generating reams of abuse for his killer on websites in the United States and Europe. ....

"Why are the Americans more concerned than us?" said Joseph Mabuwa, a 33-year-old father-of-two cleaning his car in the centre of the capital. "We never hear them speak out when villagers are killed by lions and elephants in Hwange."

(Sidebar: if I were king of the foreeeeesssttt! Sorry.)

It's not like somebody killed this lion.

A California court and the National Abortion Federation have both issued a restraining order and filed an injunction against the release of a video (allegedly) showing Stem Express buying intact aborted babies and from releasing any more damning videos that clearly show employees talk about dismembering and selling baby parts for profit.

No one is allowed to talk about these things nor watch them nor read the transcripts.

Certainly don't educate one's self on some rather salient points about human organ trafficking's new kid on the block:

Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood was featured in Tuesday’s video release showing the dissection of a recently killed baby boy. In the video, Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood Vice President and Medical Director Savita Ginde appeared to negotiate the sale of baby parts.

On Wednesday, Alliance Defending Freedom filed a complaint with Colorado against a Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood abortionist and another employee. The two employees, according to ADF, failed to comply with Colorado law when they failed to report the sexual abuse of a 13-year-old girl, performing an abortion on her without telling her parents, and returning her to the custody of the sexual predator who brought her for an abortion. He continued to sexually abuse her.

Nope. Nothing to see here.

Carry on.

But Wait! There's More!

There often is....


The Liberals have once again accused Stephen Harper of not being co-operative, this time, by not helping them with an unworkable pension plan:

Ontario's Liberals waded into the looming federal election Thursday, accusing Prime Minister Stephen Harper of abandoning workers in the province by refusing to co-operate on a new provincial pension plan.

Ottawa has warned the province it will not make any legislative changes to treat the proposed Ontario Retirement Pension Plan like the Canada Pension Plan, and would provide no federal help to collect contributions or administer the scheme.

"This is a cynical, partisan stunt, executed on the eve of a federal election campaign," said Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa. "He's slapping the face of Ontarians by taking the actions that he's doing today, and that's uncalled for."

Two-thirds of Ontario workers do not have a workplace pension, and Harper knows that CPP payments averaging $6,900 a year will not provide adequate retirement income, added Sousa. However, Harper will get a pension of $191,000 a year when he leaves office, he said.

Let's put this in some sort of perspective.

The Liberal government under Premiers Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne has cost the province 300,000 manufacturing jobs over the past fifteen years. Ontario has received a downgraded credit rating from Standard and Poors. Even after promising bigger salaries, Wynne said flat-out after winning the election that there would be no new pay raises. She didn't feel that way giving out a seven million dollar bonus package for executives organising the Pan Am Games.  Former Premier Dalton McGuinty a $300,000 severance payment after his resignation and Kathleen Wynne will likely be getting something similar.

Who is getting screwed again?



Even though many Canadians desperately need life-saving cancer drugs, the government of Canada has seen fit to approve the abortion drug RU-486 even though it has caused fourteen deaths in the US.



Also: Planned Parenthood was caught haggling for baby parts... again:

Workers in a lab are seen sorting through body parts on a dish: a heart, stomach, kidney, and legs.

And then a medical assistant suddenly announces: "It's another boy!"

This comes after a court in California issued a restraining order against a video depicting Stem Express employees purchasing body parts. One can see at the 34 second mark, the 1:10 mark and the 10:16 mark exactly what is going on.


A Canadian abortion group has also asked women to donate their genetically separate "blobs of flesh" with functioning limbs and lucrative internal organs to "science".

Screw these people.



A former ISIS fighter talks about why he left:

A former Islamic State militant recently spoke with NBC news about his experience fighting with the group in Syria — and why he surrendered after just three days on the frontlines. 

The man, a 24-year-old single father and college dropout who traveled from New York back to his native Turkey, told NBC what has become a familiar story. Socially isolated and lacking meaning in his life, he was seduced by the jihadis' promise of a salary, a house, and a wife.

"My life was hard and nobody liked me," the man, who insisted on anonymity, said while crying. "I didn't have many friends. I was on the internet a lot and playing games."

This is a common profile among those recruited by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, who are often young men (and women) seeking purpose and identity. They are drawn to ISIS' promise of community, along with the glory of potential martyrdom. ISIS' inclusive rhetoric, combined with its social-media prowess, has allowed the group to recruit more foreigners to its ranks than any other modern jihadist group.

Firsthand accounts of the militants' brutality from those who have fought with ISIS, such as the one given by the Turkish-American recruit, are still relatively rare, even though an estimated 20,000 foreign fighters have joined the group.

"They told us, 'When you capture someone, you will behead them,'" he said. "But as for me, I have never even beheaded a chicken … It is not easy … I can't do that."

He said he was also instructed to throw homosexuals off of tall buildings and kill female adulterers. He said he decided to leave ISIS after an airstrike killed six of his fellow fighters in the Syrian border town of Tal Abyad.

"I got scared because in my whole life I hadn't seen anything like this," he told NBC. "And since I was scared, I threw my pistol away and my legs couldn't hold me."

I would like to talk about why I don't care and why I hope he spends whatever remains of his sad, little life in some terrible place.

The post-modern West has done a terrific job of removing any moral centre it should have. Suddenly, morality becomes a matter of what is right at the moment and no absolute principle or being gives value and meaning to one's life and actions. One finds one's self in a world where feelings replace moral codes and laws and where manufactured crusades take precedence over real problems that require fortitude, both ethical and physical, to overcome.

Take this guy.

He first elicits sympathy for his terrible decision by saying that his life had taken a horrible turn. The writer of the article doesn't even dispute that as a convenient reason. Fully grown men were simply unwitting victims of life and an ideology no one will acknowledge is part of the problem in the first place. THAT is why he went overseas to join fellow Islamists in running native populations out of their homes, crucifying Christians, raping women and children, destroying artefacts and burning alive fighter pilots.

Excuse me if I find this less than convincing.

This chump isn't a victim of circumstance. He was a willing participant in evil. If he were truly repentant, he wouldn't find excuses for his actions but accept fault and, as is pointed out, that his only way out is death.

Well, he who dies by the sword, as they say....



The Japanese have proven that the Death Star will be quite operational a powerful laser can be fired:

Researchers at Osaka University in Japan claim to have fired the world’s most powerful laser, prompting comparisons to the planet-destroying Death Star laser in Star Wars.

While the powerful laser beam only lasted for a trillionth of a second, it’s power was measured as 2 petawatts or 2 quadrillion watts.

To put that into context, Popular Science explains that in 2013, a drone was shot down from 2km away using a laser with just 50kilowatts (50,000 watts) of power. Until now, the most powerful laser was a 1-petawatt device at the University of Austin in Texas.

The device that created the ‘Death Star’-like beam - the Laser for Fast Ignition Experiments (LFEX) - is just over 90m long and takes up an entire room, making it unlikely that we’ll see it mounted on a vehicle or other mobile structure any time soon.

(Sidebar: d'oh.) 

I so want this to be a reality.

Mid-Week Post

For the middle of a sultry week...



How embarrassing... for Maclean's:

The Rebel now outranks Macleans.ca -- after less than six months (and no government subsidies)

Artist's rendition of The Rebel staff's well-earned feeling of pride.

Some current choice pieces from The Rebel: if Donald Sutherland wants to vote in the upcoming election, he can try living in Canada, "boring and stupid" Planned Parenthood videos aren't as shocking as what happens to chickens, the cost of Islam to Canada and much, much more!



Justin Trudeau was "missing in action" from the get-go. With many a toss of his curls and not enough sound and timely public policy, not to mention his gaffes, both oral and political, it's no wonder that the public has grown tired of him. Believing that one deserves to be leader because one's dad was and having done nothing of any substance to convince the electorate that one has capability of leading is simply not enough in the grown-up world where carbon taxes are onerous burdens for low-income families and withdrawing military support in the fight against ISIS is a moral and political failure:

Justin Trudeau, the man who was supposed to lead Canada's Liberals out of the political wilderness, has instead sunk to third place just months from an election, with some in his party complaining he is missing in action.

Born to a sitting prime minister and raised at the foot of power, he presents himself as a kinder, more approachable alternative to Prime Minister Stephen Harper after nine years of rule by the right-leaning Conservatives and three straight Liberal defeats.

But more than two years into his leadership of the once-powerful centrist Liberals, the 43-year-old father of three has struggled to define himself and been labeled by opponents as unready for office despite his prized political pedigree.

Some critics complain Trudeau, son of the late Pierre Trudeau, appears unwilling to go on the road and repeat his message enough times for it to sink in before the Oct. 19 vote.

Former Liberal legislator Dennis Mills, who worked for Trudeau's father - prime minister for 15 years ending in 1984 - took aim at Trudeau's team, saying his handlers needed to be more aggressive.

"All these photo ops are nice, but I think we haven't really seen the inner strength and the passion of the man, and that's because he hasn't been in a situation where that's been allowed to come out," Mills said.

(Sidebar: the word of one who has supped the Kool-Aid.) 

First Nation bands must file financial statements for the 2014-15 tax year or lose funding:

First Nations bands that have not filed their financial statements for 2014-15 by Wednesday at midnight will risk having federal funding for non-essential services cut beginning Sept. 1, warns Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt.

Under a new law which came into effect one year ago, First Nations have to submit to the Canadian government their audited financial statements for the past fiscal year, including the salaries and expenses of their chiefs and councillors.

While 98 per cent of bands complied with the First Nations Financial Transparency Act last year, CBC News reported Monday that the federal government has taken eight bands to court in a bid to force them to comply. Four other bands are said to be co-operating with the government to meet the requirements.

(Sidebar: since when were tribes a nation? Never mind.)

There are six hundred and thirty-four First Nations reserves in Canada. It would much better and easier for everyone to simply make these reserves municipalities with every citizen electing not a corrupt band chief but a mayor who can be ousted if he or she does not perform. 

Scrap the Indian Act, is my point. This northern ghetto run by oligarchies nonsense has long run its course.

Oh, what a surprise:

Russia on Wednesday vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that would set up an international criminal court to prosecute those responsible for shooting down a Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine a year ago.

 

Unless he fled into a pool of ravenous tiger sharks, the alleged departure of "Jihadi John" from the child-raping organisation known as ISIS might mean he is fleeing to and may get refuge from a willing Western nation, very much like the one he left so that he could murder at will:

British terrorist “Jihadi John” has reportedly left the Islamic State (aka ISIS) group, fearing for his life after being identified six months earlier as a Kuwaiti-born Londoner from a well-to-do family.

Jihadi John left because the terrorist organization might drop him "like a stone or worse if they feel he is no longer of any use to them," according to a source for the British news outlet, the Daily Express.

The Daily Express report has not been confirmed by government sources or other news outlets.

Born Mohammed Emwazi, he initially gained international notoriety both personally, and for the terrorist organization, after a video was released by Islamic State in August 2014, showing him beheading American journalist James Foley.

"We have never been prouder of our son Jim," Diane Foley wrote on her son’s Facebook page who was killed after two years in captivity. "He gave his life trying to expose the world to the suffering of the Syrian people."

Mr. Emwazi is now wanted for murder by the United States and Britain for killings journalists and aid workers Foley, Stephen Sotloff, David Haines, Alan Henning, and Peter Kassig, among others. The last video that the Kuwaiti-born 26-year-old was featured in depicted the beheading of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto over six months ago. The Daily Express speculates that Emwazi may be working with "a less well-known jihadist group somewhere in Syria, to try to keep a low profile."

Good:

Israeli bulldozers began demolishing a contested housing complex in a West Bank settlement on Wednesday as the prime minister's office announced the "immediate construction" of some 300 new units at another location in the same settlement and advanced plans for about 500 new units in east Jerusalem.

Caught yet again haggling over baby parts, Planned Parenthood warns everyone not to focus on its immoral and illegal activities:

Planned Parenthood's newly-hired crisis communications firm has a message for the media: Don't report on the fetal parts videos.

On Monday, D.C.-based crisis communications firm SKDKnickerbocker sent a memo to media sources, warning them to not air a third video showing the possibly illegal sales of fetal parts.

Yes, popular press, do what you are best at: prostituting yourself to utter scum.

These people are truly the limit. There is no depth to which they will not sink.

It's time to audit Cecile Richards.



Oh, look! Selfish people are playing tug-of-war with a child:

Two dads who had hoped to bring a baby daughter home to Spain from Thailand after she was born there via surrogate six months ago have instead been stranded in Bangkok with her ever since, as the birth mom has changed her mind. Now the fates of the American biological father, Gordon “Bud” Lake, his Spanish husband, Manuel Santos, the surrogate mom, Patidta Kusolsang, and baby Carmen are in the hands of a Thai court, which will hold a hearing on the custody matter on Thursday.

The dads, who live in Valencia, believe Kusolsang changed her mind because she found out that they are gay.

“For the last six months, we have been stuck in Thailand, faced with the possibility of losing our jobs and our house back in the U.S. because we cannot leave. If we leave, we risk the greatest loss of all — our beautiful baby daughter, Carmen,” they write on a crowdfunding page for their legal expenses (which has brought in nearly $30,000 so far), noting on Facebook that they have already wiped out their savings on housing, school for their 2-year-old son (who is with them in Thailand), visa renewals, and food. “All this because our surrogate doesn’t want Carmen to be raised by gay parents, and the law that should give me full parental powers excludes me from obtaining them because I am gay.”

If you want to pretend to be a family, don't act shocked when an incubator et al might find that problematic.



And now, animals that want to be nature photographers. Enjoy.

 

Monday Post

Quickly now...


Eve Adams, a Tory turned Liberal, lost the Liberal nomination for the Eglinton-Lawrence riding:

Recruiting Eve Adams looked like an inexplicable plan for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in February, when the party held a marginal lead in the polls. By the time Sunday’s nomination meeting was over, it seemed like self-harm.

The Liberals of Eglinton-Lawrence rebuffed Ms. Adams’s bid to run for the party there, and at least symbolically, they rebuked Mr. Trudeau. This comes at a time when the Liberals, down in the polls, already seem to be sliding, and in a way that raises questions about Mr. Trudeau’s judgment.

 
How embarrassing for Justin Trudeau who must be baffled as to why people refused his hand-picked wonder. Anyone whose arrogance (and the Liberal Party is crammed to the rafters with such people) is the only thing that guides one's decision-making deserves such failure.



Obama's narcissism and sociopathy were on display in Ethiopia where he ignored (or just plain did not know) the political situation in that country and whined that democracy was just unfair to him:

I don't recall any other foreign leaders moaning about squabbles back home particularly when they could be a force for good. But, then again, most world leaders have some modicum of self-awareness and gravity about them.

Also:

At a press conference with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Obama said that as a half-black American, he knew how painful it was to be treated differently and that Kenyans should stop causing pain for Kenyan homosexuals by treating them as if they were somehow, you know, different. Obama’s apparent goal is to see fit that everyone—no matter his, her, or its sexual orientation—experiences an equal level of pain.

In the most diplomatic manner imaginable, Kenyatta told Obama to go get fucked by a tree stump. He said his countrymen had more pressing concerns than gay rights, which he called a “non-issue.” He also implied that for Obama to meddle in Kenyan culture would be a fool’s errand: “It’s very difficult for us to impose on people that which they themselves do not accept.” ...

But it seems like the Africans, God bless ‘em, are tired of being lectured by white Western progressives who seek not to truly help them, but only to ensnare them in their own neurotic web of guilt-laden psychodrama. Your average African peasant living on a diet of five peanuts and two dried lentils a week simply doesn’t have time for such trifles. When you’re frantically searching for a sip of water so you don’t dry up into human jerky and then get eaten by fellow villagers, gay rights suddenly don’t seem so urgent.

What else can Russia be doing?

Russia could be preparing for a space war, following the launch of three mysterious satellites within 18 months, according to U.S. military analysts.

The three spacecraft - which the Kremlin say are communication satellites - could be prototype weapons, say U.S military observers.

As is standard, Russia notified the United Nations of the launch of three of its Rodnik communication satellites last year, but also added a fourth, unexpected craft to the list.

(Sidebar: it's not like the UN is ever going to stop Russia or anything.) 

And now, facts about Great Danes:

Great Danes were once thought to ward away ghosts and evil spirits, which was why Scooby was the perfect companion for those meddling kids. While that may not have been on the cartoon creators' minds while they were developing characters, there was a lot of debate about Scooby’s breed during the show’s conception.

RRinteresting.

Saturday Night Special

Time to chill...


Swimming with dogs:




Irish citizens can now criticise Henry Tudor's marriage to Anne Boleyn: 

Almost 500 years after the fact, citizens of Ireland are finally allowed to freely criticize the marriage between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

In 1533, citizens were probably plenty angry about the union. After all, Henry changed the entire religion of England in order to annul his 18-year marriage to Catherine of Aragon (and after Pope Clement VII excommunicated him). Henry wasn't particularly interested in hearing anyone's negative feelings about his new special someone—so he made sure no one expressed them.

With a new piece of legislation called the Statute Law Revision Bill, Ireland recently repealed 5,782 laws that are no longer necessary (or relevant). The statute served to overturn 800 years worth of laws that, according to Simon Harris, the Irish Minister of State for Public Expenditure and Reform, serve "no purposes whatsoever other than to cloud and confuse those trying to read the statute book."

In addition to finally being able to trash talk Anne Boleyn, the Irish no longer have to spend the first Wednesday of the month fasting (1665) and are now allowed to openly eat both oatmeal and potatoes, even if said eaters aren't of "lower orders" (1817).

It's about damn time.


Not-so-popular children's books:

(source)

Saturday Post

For this sultry week-end...


Ontario is Canada's California:

When credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s recently downgraded Ontario’s credit ranking, it assured higher interest payments down the road.

Typical of the Wynne government, it publicly downplayed the bad news and continued to forge ahead with its spending spree.

According to Sousa’s spokesperson, the downgrade will have “no material impact” on the government’s big borrowing and big spending agenda.

Of course not. Should we expect any different?

The Wynne government now carries $307 billion in debt, and it plans on spending $130 billion more on infrastructure pet projects over the next decade.

As a recent Bloomberg Business report stated, Ontario has now accumulated twice as much debt as California.

It’s the world’s most indebted sub-sovereign borrower.

And it has no plans to stop borrowing anytime soon.

DUDE!

I'm informed that your Commission (via your proxy) considers the word "crazy" an insult. ...

You swine. You vulgar little maggot. You worthless bag of filth. As they say in Texas, you couldn't pour water out of a boot with instructions printed on the heel. You are a canker, an open wound. I would rather kiss the Law Society of Alberta than be seen with you.

You're a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, and a weasel. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon. ...

It is hard to believe how incredibly stupid you are. Stupid as a stone that the other stones make fun of. So stupid that you have traveled far beyond stupid as we know it and into a new dimension of stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid cubed. Trans-stupid stupid. Stupid collapsed to a singularity where even the stupons have collapsed into stuponium. Stupid so dense that no intelligence can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot midday sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one minute than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. It cannot be possible that anything in our universe can really be this stupid. This is a primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. A pure extract of stupid with absolute stupid purity. Stupid beyond the laws of nature. 

There's even a petition.



Wow. This is as ugly as Trudeau's little stunt:

The federal NDP is encouraging parents who don’t need the newly enhanced universal child care benefit to donate the money to the party.

Hillary Clinton is set to testify before a House Committee on Benghazi:

Hillary Rodham Clinton will testify Oct. 22 before the House committee investigating the deaths of four Americans in the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, her presidential campaign said Saturday.

The committee did not immediately confirm the date for the former secretary of state’s appearance.

Campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said the Democratic candidate’s testimony will be public. Clinton’s lawyers and the Republican-led committee have been negotiating over the terms under which she might appeal before the committee.

Terms, my @$$. She can tell the truth or run her presidential campaign behind bars.


Also: no one in Kenya cares about the white Obama's imperialist opinions:

Who cares what some white communist Islamist-sympathiser like Obama thinks, anyway? The world does not revolve around cakes for gay weddings but people are awfully worried about those roving bands of well-armed lone wolves who rape children and throw homosexuals off of roofs.

Obama knows this and does not care. His malice is not ill-informed.

This guy was treated differently by ISIS.

 And:

IRS Used Donor Lists to Target Conservatives for Audits. 

 “These documents that we had to force out of the IRS prove that the agency used donor lists to audit supporters of organizations engaged in First Amendment-protected lawful political speech. And the snarky comments about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the obsession with Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPD show that the IRS was targeting critics of the Obama administration.”

(Merci)



Ted Cruz is clearly the right choice for president:

In a 19-minute speech on the Senate floor today, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) accused his fellow Republican and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) of repeating a “simple lie” about a deal for reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, and for ignoring amendments on issues that Americans truly care about, such as the defunding of Planned Parenthood.

“There are a host of amendments that the American people are focused on, things like defunding Planned Parenthood, after the gruesome video,” which came out this week and last week, said Sen. Cruz.

But “the Majority Leader doesn’t want to vote on that,” said Cruz. “That’s actually something the American people are focused on.”

It's called listening to the electorate, not "killing the messenger".




THANK YOU!

Pope Francis on Sunday denounced what he calls the “great powers” of the world for failing to act when there was intelligence indicating Jews, Christians, homosexuals and others were being transported to death camps in Europe during the Second World War.

He also decried the deaths of Christians in concentration camps in Russia under the Stalin dictatorship, which followed the war.

The pope’s harsh assessments came in impromptu remarks during his visit to Turin, northern Italy, when he told young people he understands how they find it hard to trust the world.

“The great powers had photographs of the railway routes that the trains took to the concentration camps, like Auschwitz, to kill the Jews, and also the Christians, and also the Roma, also the homosexuals,” Francis said, citing the death camp in Poland. “Tell me, why didn’t they bomb” those railroad routes?

Referring to concentration camps that came “a little later” in Russia, Francis wondered aloud: “How many Christians suffered, were killed” there?

Lamenting the cynicism of world players in the 1930s and 1940s, Francis said: “the great powers divided up Europe like a cake.”

He also cited what he called the “great tragedy of Armenia” in the last century. “So many died. I don’t know the figure, more than a million, certainly. But where were the great powers then? They were looking the other way,” the pope said.

And this is why you have fat children:

For all the parents who tell their kids to log off their devices and get outside – a new program may just keep them online a little longer.

North Carolina Virtual Public School (NCVPS), an online school funded by the North Carolina General Assembly, is set to launch an online physical education class this coming school year.  
How will it work?  

“Teachers will provide video demonstration of a physical activity or sport, then students will practice those skills and build their own video portfolios to document their progress and display mastery,” a press release posted by the N.C. Department of Instruction explains.

The online gym class will provide those students enrolled in the virtual school with a well-rounded education, says Karen Creech, an instructional director.

Yeah, I'm sure those kids will get right on that.

Thursday Post

The story so far...



The NDP and the Liberals are reportedly forming a coalition:

New Democrats say they'd two-step with the federal Liberals if it meant ousting Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives, but their prospective dance partner isn't hearing the music.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair said Thursday that his party has always seen the defeat of the Conservatives as a priority.

"We know that they've done a lot of harm, and we want to start repairing the damage that (Harper's) done," Mulcair said from Amherstburg, Ont., where he stopped as part of an eight-day tour.

"We've always worked with others in the past, but every time I've raised this prospect with Justin Trudeau, he's slammed the door on it."

The Liberal leader did that again on Thursday when asked in Winnipeg about the possibility of a formal coalition with the New Democrats.

"Although of course we are open to working with all parties in the House to pass good legislation and to ensure that Canadians' interests are served, there will be no formal coalition with the NDP," Trudeau said.

(Sidebar: it should be noted that Justin Trudeau says a lot of things and then does something else.)

It is what one calls "hedging one's bets". The Liberals might play it cool and pretend that their political differences are far too great to form a coalition with the NDP (some poor attempt at a scare tactic for both the Tories and the voters) but really their policies are not vastly different and desperation makes strange bed-fellows. As the election draws nearer, the likelihood of a coalition will be greater. Any attempt to unseat Harper is better than none at all.



But human rights commissions are crazy:



Instead of calling the crazy human rights commissions and their kangaroo court form of justice crazy, use the adjectives "insane", "morally corrupt", "fascist", "paranoid", "thin-skinned" and "pompous". These words may expose the human rights commission to ridicule but there is nothing sane or useful about it, anyway.

Also: the Fur makes its debut at The Rebel:

To make a long story short Chris Alexander was invited to speak at the Shia Eid event.

Some of the Shia were happy to see the invitation extended as Chris Alexander has greased the entry of certain Khomeinists into Canada for some bizarre reason.

Alexander was no doubt happy to accept because this is an election year and what harm could a little vote whoring do among crazed Khomeinists?

Boy was he wrong.

Read the whole thing.



Remember when Neville Chamberlain Obama said there would be peace with Iran in our time?

President Obama won’t allow Congress to review two key aspects of the Iranian Nuclear deal, Republican lawmakers learned from international partners last week. 

 

Under the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the International Atomic Energy Agency would negotiate separately with Iran about the inspection of a facility long-suspected of being used to research long-range ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. 

 

“The Obama administration has failed to make public separate side deals that have been struck for the ‘inspection’ of one of the most important nuclear sites—the Parchin military complex,” said Representative Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) in a statement Tuesday. “Not only does this violate the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, it is asking Congress to agree to a deal that it cannot review.” 

 

 The IAEA has been trying to gain access to the Parchin site since 2005, but Iran has refused, even as it apparently demolished various parts of the complex. “The hardliners do not want to grant any concessions unless Iran is suitably rewarded,” International Institute for Strategic Studies director Mark Fitzpatrick told the BBC in 2014, after reports emerged of explosions at the base.

 

The terms of the current agreement wouldn’t allow Congress to review any concessions the IAEA makes to get into the site. “Even members of Congress who are sympathetic to this deal cannot and must not accept a deal we aren’t even aware of,” said Pompeo.

 

(Sidebar: so goes Iran, so goes North Korea should the War-Monger-in-Chief ever get around to it which he probably won't because Koreans aren't that important of a voters' block.)

I'm sure those details can't be important.



Thank God people are worried about wedding cakes:

In our society, being gay means death. When Isis kills gays, most people are happy because they think we're sick.

It's like "Norma Rae" but more North Korean:

Fittingly, our story begins with a Chinese textile company that made prison uniforms. We don’t ordinarily think of Chinese prison-garment workers as overpaid, but then, some North Korean officials paid them a visit. The officials knew of a derelict factory in the extreme northeast of the workers’ paradise, where women would work 12 hours a day for 30 kilograms of rice a month. …

However, just one month after start of operations a major problem arose. The payment of white rice was not made as promised. Most of the angry female workers refused to come to work.

The white rice for the “monthly wage payments” was to be brought in by the Chinese company, then handed over to the workers via the county officials. That was the agreement. However, the officials first withheld about half of the rice as “army rice” before paying the workers. That’s what made the workers so angry.

The officers, in a panic, visited the homes of the workers to encourage them to come to work.

“The female workers sent the officers packing, saying, ‘How can you expect us to come to work when you will not pay us properly? We will starve!’ In North Korea today, if promises are not kept, any one will leave the workplace at the factory in the same way” …

If labor organizations proliferated throughout North Korea, they could eventually organize nationwide work stoppages and strikes. Here is an incident where a clandestine labor organization formed locally and spontaneously. It isn’t hard to believe that with a little support, more North Koreans at other factories and mines would organize, too.

Let's just hope they opt for transparency right from the start unlike some certain unions in Canada.

(Kamsahamnida)



And now, the Tennessee Duck March (completely unrelated to "The Tennessee Waltz"):

In the 1930s, Frank Schutt, General Manager of the Peabody Hotel, thought it would be funny to have ducks in the hotel’s gigantic Italian marble fountain. So he brought in three small ducks from his personal flock to see how people reacted. The ducks were a hit, so they were soon replaced with five stately Mallards from a nearby farm.  

The ducks lived on the roof in a modest roost, but getting the ducks to and from the fountain was not an easy process. That is until 1940, when a bellman, Edward Pembroke, a former circus trainer, offered to teach the ducks to walk to the fountain, thus becoming the first Peabody Duckmaster, a post he held until his retirement in 1991. Even after all these years, Pembroke’s routine has remained unchanged to this day. 

The Tennessee Dip in the Pond

Mid-Week Post

Stuck in the middle...



Is the love affair with the Shiny Pony over and done with?

The Liberals are smarting at the unfairness of it all – Justin Trudeau has just hit a 12-month low in a Nanos Research poll that asks voters who they would pick as their preferred prime minister.

Tom Mulcair, the New Democratic Party leader, has, not coincidentally, hit a 12-month high.

The blame has been attached squarely to the Conservative heavy rotation attack ads that have targeted Trudeau as “just not ready” to be prime minister.

“One leader is attacked with a multi-million dollar ad campaign. The other isn’t. It’s not much more complicated,” said one senior Liberal.

But that is too glib an explanation. While it’s true that Trudeau’s personal numbers have fallen since the ads appeared at the end of May – 30.7 per cent preferred him as prime minister three months ago, compared with 23.3 per cent  this week – his year-high number was 35.8 per cent.

In other words, his reputation was bruised long before the Conservative campaign was launched. ...

Yet the person who put most doubt in the minds of the voting public was Trudeau himself. If the Conservatives and the NDP contributed to his fall from grace, many of the sins were his own.

While Mulcair was clear, Trudeau was vague — supporting the troops, but not the mission in Iraq; backing the Conservative anti-terror legislation, but opposing many of its measures.

His suggestion that if an election had not been looming, he would have voted against Bill C51 made him appear as cynical as his opponents – as did the decision to accept former Conservative MP, Eve Adams, into the Liberal caucus.

Flippant comments about “whipping out CF-18s,” admiration for China and budgets balancing themselves added to the sense that he may be in over his head – a habit one of his own MPs referred to as “bozo eruptions.”

Any ad against Justin Trudeau could be produced easily. Simply record any number of stupid things he has said and put it out there.

I think that about the time the October election rolls around, people will get scared and vote for the more competent of the choices for prime minister.

That will not be Justin Trudeau.



There really are two tiers of legality in Canada:

Stained by organized crime and demonized by multinational cigarette makers, aboriginal reserves in Ontario and Quebec known for their cheap smokes are finalizing rules to raise prices and drive the criminal elements out of the industry.

(Sidebar: yeah, that must be it. Oh, wait...)



Ontario, which should easily get power from its own hydroelectric and nuclear power plants, is in talks with Newfoundland to get energy from it:

Ontario is the latest customer to line up to purchase Newfoundland and Labrador’s growing supply of hydroelectricity in a move that could one day lead to a “national grid.”

The two provincial energy ministers will announce Monday they’re launching a study of the potential for Ontario to buy power from the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric plant and the pending Gull Island development at Lower Churchill Falls, the National Post has learned. But power won’t start flowing west from Newfoundland for years to come as both projects and associated transmission lines are still years away from coming online.

This is the government Liberal voters wanted.

Also:

(Gracias, El Barto.)



A judge has ordered a new psychiatric assessment of convicted terrorist Chiheb Esseghaier.

Just as with Chattanooga shooter, Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez (who apparently wanted to be an Islamic martyr), all Islamist terrorism (as lone wolf as it always seems to be) is the result of mental illness.

Or poverty.

Or global warming.

But not because of a seventh century war-monger or the book he wrote or because of deeply ingrained cultural beliefs that have been exercised in bloody fashion time and time again.

Moral culpability cannot ever enter the equation lest society at large embraces clear concepts of right and wrong and working values and dispenses with the utterly ludicrous delusions about Islamism.



Racism is alright when other people do it:

Public-housing officials have relocated a Caucasian family after they went public with allegations of racially charged bullying by their neighbours.

Internal documents suggest the stone-throwing and harassment by children running rampant had escalated at the Shaganappi Village complex after the family aired their complaints.

Blair France moved into the Calgary Housing Company complex with her husband and two children last November.

In April, she claimed her children were subject to racial taunts and punches from children who come from East African immigrant families, who form a significant presence among the complex’s roughly 900 residents.

When France had rocks thrown at her house in May, she wrote to the mayor and local media, and hosted an anti-bullying barbecue. The event made news nationwide. Their story was picked up by a British tabloid and was even circulated by the white supremacist website Stormfront.

While the barbecue went peacefully, documents obtained under a freedom-of-information request show that the problems quickly worsened. ...

France, who did not respond to Herald interview requests, claimed CHC contacted the alleged bullies she had named and told them that “if they don’t comply to the rules they will be kicked out.”

She said things worsened two days later, when neighbouring kids threatened to kill her children. “They are so scared, they don’t want to go to school or even outside,” wrote France. “We just need to move.”

Did the US scratch Putin's back for support on Iran?

It’s true that Ukraine is off the front pages of global news media, and that’s not good for a country that’s dependent on Western aid and sympathy and, at the same time, coveted by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a satellite state or at least a buffer against further expansion of NATO. Some Ukrainian and anti-Putin Russian commentators saw Nuland’s Kiev visit and her attempt to persuade the legislators as a sign that the U.S. is selling out Ukraine to Putin in exchange for his support for last week’s nuclear deal with Iran.

I would say yes.


And now, a three-fer:

If this husky-owner was away for ten minutes, as opposed to six weeks, would the dog still react the same way?




South Korea is super-cool:

(source)

This is so much like my dreams, it's scary: