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Monday, March 31, 2014

Anyone who's failing at being a slut just isn't trying hard enough


However, Kathy Shaidle, of Five Feet of Fury fame, has a new Kindle book out called Confessions of a Failed Slut.
As the only female columnist at controversial, conservative Taki's Magazine, Kathy Shaidle soon found herself covering an unlikely beat: sexuality. 

"Unlikely" because as the married, 50-year-old Shaidle explains, "my 'number' (as the kids call it these days) is so low that in certain Australian provinces I would still be considered a virgin." 

Confessions of a Failed Slut blends personal reflections – "How the Love Boat Ruined My Life" – with contrarian takes on porn (online and off), dating (ditto), "slut shaming," sex toys, "robot hookers of the near future," dinosaur erotica, the multiplication of genders and orientations, and what she calls "the epidemic of beta male faggotry" plaguing the land. 

An author and blogging pioneer, Kathy Shaidle has been called "a night terror" (Wonkette), "one of the great virtuoso polemicists of our day" (Mark Steyn), "strenuously witless" (James Walcott), "a purveyor of some of the most offensive racial stereotypes I have ever read" (the Canadian Jewish Congress), "a Zionist shill for the New World Order" (InfoWars) and "not a particularly nice person" (Alex Koppelman, Salon.com).

She describes her book as "short and cheap, just like me." You can get your copy HERE

'Britain's jails turning into breeding ground for terrorists'

A source at Cambridgeshire jail Whitemoor told the Sunday People: 'Whitemoor is now effectively run by Muslims, many of whom are Jihadis.'

A 2012 probe into the jail branded it a 'Taliban recruiting ground' and said inmates were offered protection if they converted to the religion.


Sunday, March 30, 2014

Critics cry foul as Conservatives table another bloated budget bill

OTTAWA - The latest Conservative omnibus bill weighs in at 359 pages and alters everything from the food and rail safety regimes to the Judges Act, the National Defence Act and the handling of temporary foreign workers.
In all, almost 40 different pieces of legislation are being altered by the single bill tabled Friday.
The government says it is designed to enact measures in last month's federal budget, and has christened the effort the "Harper Government Creating Jobs & Growth While Returning to Balanced Budgets With Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1."

Iranians Denounce Their Leaders While Praising Israel

Yes, you read it right.
Iranians have reacted to the killing of an Iranian soldier by Pakistani terrorists, by criticizing Tehran, while praising Israel’s efforts to secure the release of Gilad Shalit.
More HERE

As I sit here with my morning coffee...


...In his new book, Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts and Hooks Us, Murray Carpenter cuts to the chase: Did you know that a tablespoon of pure caffeine would kill you?
In its purest form, caffeine would be indistinguishable from cocaine – and, interestingly, is often cut with street drugs for an added kick, he writes. U.S. Navy Seals use high doses of caffeine to battle sleep deprivation.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

This"ll really show Putin that we're serious about the Ukraine - NATO appoints anti-war protester as next secretary general



Nato has appointed Jens Stoltenberg, the former Norwegian prime minister leader who once opposed the transatlantic alliance, to lead it when Anders Fogh Rasmussen, its current secretary general, steps down later this year.
In his youth Mr Stoltenberg, now 55, objected both to Nato and the European Community, two organisations that he eventually came to support, and as a long-haired teenager he threw stones at the US embassy in 1973 after Washington's bombardment of Haiphong in North Vietnam.

Condoleezza Rice blames Obama for ‘vacuum’ that’s led to Putin

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in a closed-door address to a group of Republicans this week, issued a spirited defense of a broader role for the U.S. in the world, saying President Obama’s leadership has left a vacuum that’s been filled by “dictators like Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Vladimir Putin in Russia.”

More at The Washington Times 

Friday, March 28, 2014

Pitting ethnic groups against each other, Justin Trudeau tells Iranian-Canadians that Harper's pro-Israel stance is a vote-gaining ploy

Jonathan Halevi's blog, Alternative Anges, provides a transcript of an interview it conducted with Justin Trudeau. Perhaps Mr. Trudeau thought the interview would go no wider than that community, because in it, the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada said that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's policies on Israel are essentially a vote-gaining ploy.

According to Halevi's translation, Trudeau said, "his [Harper’s] stance in matters regarding Israel or the United Nations is highly focused on what will affect his position in the ballots."

Stephen Harper has made his reasons for his support for Israel clear and explicit, saying they were based on common values and respect for liberal democracy. If it were a purely political move, it would most likely be a counterproductive one, since there are more than three times as many Muslims in Canada, a community among whom support for Israel tends to be quite low, as there are Jews.

The trope of the Prime Minister's support for Israel being a cynical election strategy is popular among antisemites and conspiracy theorists, as is the trope that "Jews and Zionists control the government."

This is not the first controversy involving Justin Trudeau and his questionable judgement regarding middle east policy. Mr. Trudeau appointed his brother Alexandre to be his senior political adviser. However Alexandre Trudeau has partnered with Iran's state-controlled, Holocaust-denying, English-language service, PRESS TV, to produce a documentary that was effectively propaganda for Iran, whitewashing their nuclear arms development program.

For that matter, it's not the first time Justin Trudeau has tried to appeal to one group at the expense of another for political gain. He landed himself in a great deal of controversy following a French-language interview he gave in Quebec in which he blamed Canada's problems on Albertans controlling the political agenda.

There is no evidence to suggest that Justin Trudeau himself is antisemitic. But it does seem that in his political cynicism, pandering to those who are, and playing different segments of Canada's population against each other has become part of the Liberal Party leader's election playbook.





h/t Marvin W.

Michael Coren tells the truth to the NDP's 9-11 "truthers"




More HERE

National Post editor Jonathan Kay recites the beat poetry of Sarah Thomson


No, seriously,  he does! Check it out!

And as a special bonus, National Post columnists read haiku tributes to the transit-infrastructure-themed poetry of Toronto mayoral candidate Sarah Thomson.


Both federal NDP Deputy Leaders promote depraved 9-11 conspiracy theories and antisemitism

The synchronization of 9-11 conspiracy lunacy and antisemitism has reached the highest levels of the New Democratic Party of Canada.

NDP Deputy Leader Megan Leslie recently promoted a 9-11 conspiracy event on her website.
Tory MP James Bezan called the posting on Leslie's website "shameful."

"Parliamentarians, especially senior members of the Official Opposition, should not be promoting these ideas," Bezan said in a statement. "Canadians should be able to expect reasoned positions on major issues, not statements that trivialize the deaths of Canadians and others or that make unfounded attacks on our allies.

"The 9/11 'truth' tour that MP Leslie is promoting on her website is shameful, and deeply disrespectful to the victims of 9/11." 
This complements the other NDP Deputy Leader, Libby Davies, who actually introduced a petition in Parliament that also promoted insane 9-11 conspiracy theories about US government involvement in the terror attacks on New York and Washington.

There is a heavy strain of antisemitism in the 9-11 "truth" movement, which consists in large measure of bizarre and psychologically damaged individuals. 

The Canadian government has made it clear it views the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel to be an expression of Jew-hate. Prime Minister Harper has described it and the slander of Israel as an "apartheid" country as "nothing short of sickening" and "the face of the new antisemitism."   Yet both NDP Deputy Leaders Davies and Leslie have been outspoken in such anti-Israel positions. Davies has expressed personal support for such antisemitic boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, and Leslie has previously promoted an antisemitic "Israel Apartheid Week" event.

NDP leader Tom Mulcair is known to be supportive of Israel and democracy in the middle east. However, by appointing fanatics with bizarre, extremist views as his most senior deputies, it is an indication of the incompetence with which the federal NDP government would govern Canada if ever given the opportunity.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Thomas Mulcair forced to face committee over NDP ‘outreach’ offices

OTTAWA — NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair will face an unexpected grilling from MPs after being ordered to testify before a parliamentary committee about his party’s ‘‘outreach” offices around the country, which are partially funded through the House of Commons budget...
...When Mr. Mulcair sits down before the committee, in a rare appearance by a party leader, he will answer accusations that his party has misused parliamentary funds for partisan purposes, either through the satellite offices or through taxpayer-funded mailouts the NDP has sent around the country.
The NDP has outreach offices in Montreal and Quebec City as well as Saskatchewan, where the NDP has not a single current MP.
“There’s a distinction and it has to be made on [work you do on] behalf of the constituents you represent … and electioneering,” said Conservative MP Blake Richards, who first proposed calling Mr. Mulcair to testify. “They don’t seem to care or understand that there’s a difference.”

Anti-Israel resolution at University of Windsor declared invalid after investigation determines Student Association violated rules

A controversial referendum at the University of Windsor was not carried out correctly according to an investigation by the school’s lawyer.

In an email sent out to students, UWindsor president Dr. Alan Wildeman released the findings of the investigation that looked at the process used by the University of Windsor Student Alliance regarding a BDS referendum.

An email from University of Windsor President Alan Wilderman stated:

To students,
I am writing to report on the findings from the investigation of the processes used by the UWSA regarding the BDS referendum. These findings have been communicated to me by Raj Anand, who conducted the investigation. The detailed findings of the investigator have been shared in confidence with the executive and council of the UWSA, but I wish to make the general findings of the investigation known to all students.
There were five major types of allegations made, and all have been substantiated by the investigation. The investigation into a number of lesser additional allegations will be provided to me at a later date.
The conclusions of the investigation are the following:
1. The petition to hold the BDS referendum that was submitted to the UWSA council had at most 404 valid signatures (not the required 500), and as such the BDS referendum was not properly brought to the council.
2. Changes have been made to the structure of the UWSA executive group in ways that are in violation of the bylaws and the constitution of the UWSA, and those changes resulted in participation in UWSA meetings and votes by individuals who were not entitled to participate in those meetings and votes.
3. Over the past year the UWSA Executive and council have contained members who do not meet the criteria of membership set out in the UWSA constitution.
4. The motion to hold a BDS referendum occurred without legitimate quorum and involved votes cast by non-members.
5. The BDS referendum was unclear and ambiguous, and contained several questions rather than one question as required, and therefore was not consistent with Bylaw 85.
It is the University’s conclusion that the BDS referendum failed to adhere to the bylaws, processes and constitution of the UWSA. At the same time, the University is committed to working with students to help them achieve effective student governance. I will be in further communication about possible next steps in that regard.
Sincerely,
Alan Wildeman
President and Vice-Chancellor
 
h/t Marvin W.

Ontario Liberals in damage control over Gas Plants cover-up

Ironically, I just got back from a press conference featuring Ontario Cabinet Minister John Milloy, in which he responded to some questions I asked about his receiving the recommendations of the panel proposing Ontario's "Open Government|" policy (more on that tomorrow).

Let's see how open the Ontario Liberal government is about this (I'm betting, not very):

TORONTO ─ Premier Kathleen Wynne's minority government was thrown into serious damage control mode Thursday after reports that OPP investigators suspect computers in the premier's office were illegally ordered wiped.

Government house leader John Milloy said police officers are continuing their probe and no one should jump to any conclusions based on allegations.

"I will certainly agree that these allegations, if true, are very serious but we don't know if they're true," Milloy said. "We're going to allow the police to do their work and the judicial process, if it comes to that, to do its work."

Olivia Chow's awful debate performance makes it clear she's the candidate of Toronto's civic unions and not the taxpayers

In the days leading up to Olivia Chow declaring her candidacy for mayor, I'd had a few conversations in which I warned some of her supporters, "...you know, I bet 99% of the people who think Olivia Chow would be such a great candidate have never met her or heard her speak in public."

Now Chow also shows that when it comes to running a civic economy, she's completely in over her head. 

I'd say I hate to say "I told ya so," but I don't hate to say it at all...




The funniest part of this was that Chow's scripted "We're not on the gold course, I don't need to take any lessons from you" she threw at John Tory, which was supposed to be her big zinger, was delivered at such an inappropriate moment, it backfired on her and she was booed.

UPDATE: As will come as a surprise to no one, The Toronto Star has already gone into meltdown mode.  I'm willing to place bets right now that before the end of October, The Star tries to push for all candidates except Tory to drop from the race to try to prevent a Ford re-election.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Rob Ford wins the 1st big mayoral debate of the 2014 campaign

When even the Rob Ford-hating Jonathan Goldsbie of the Rob Ford-despising NOW Magazine concedes that Ford is leading the pack, you know something has gone wrong with the establishment's game plan.

From the anti-Ford CBC: 
Chow pointed to the experience that both she and Soknacki had from their prior stints on council.
"David Soknacki and I actually are the two persons on this panel that have been on a budget committee that did the hard, line-by-line work," Chow said.
From the near-dumbstruck Globe and Mail:
Did Rob Ford just win the first debate of the 2014 Toronto mayoral election?
Pundits this morning are rubbing their eyes and looking at clips that show the mayor keeping it short, simple, loud and to the point in an at-times roiling screamfest of a debate.
Ford's opposition consists of the earnest but uncharismatic John Tory, Olivia Chow, who is a terrible public speaker and an unaccomplished,  notorious waster of public funds, David Socknacki who has neither charisma nor credibility as a leader and that inconsistent Karen what's-her-name. Ford's mantra of "who do you trust to watch your dollars?" could well see him return to the mayor's chair in the October election.

But let's give the last word to Jimmy Kimmel:


Why Canada’s taxpayers must stop supporting ‘privileged’ unions

...present-day unions serve as just another special interest group seeking more and more for themselves at the expense of everyone else. This is especially true in Canada, where unions enjoy a uniquely privileged position.

Most Canadians are not aware that all other developed countries have moved to reduce union entitlements. Although the U.S. is always used as an example, unions in Europe and other developed countries have nowhere near the privileges enjoyed by their Canadian counterparts. For example, only in Canada can unions force dues to be paid by law in the workplace, and spend that money however they like. All other countries either permit employees to freely choose whether they want to pay dues, or at a minimum require unions to prove that the forced portion of the dues is spent only for collective bargaining purposes.
Canadian unions have spent vast amounts of their forced dues on such inspiring causes as the “Occupy” movement’s various protests and occupations, flotillas to Gaza, partisan interference in elections and other things most union members do not support...

Wonder why math scores are plummeting in Ontario? Here's why

 
While pressure on the government in Alberta has finally resulted in a commitment to restoration of the methods of teaching math that had been successful until the wonky "Discovery Math" was introduced, Ontario continues its march backwards in education.

The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), which has tremendous influence on the curriculum development in Ontario, had a forum yesterday stacked with proponents of "Social Justice" Math and Science. 

Held under the auspices of OISE's Centre for Science, Mathematics and Technology Education it's goal to discuss "what K-12 teachers need to know in order to teach mathematics and science well."

To arrive at that, the panel of "experts" would deal with the following:
Types of knowledge identified in the literature include conceptual understanding of the subject, pedagogical content knowledge, beliefs about the nature of work in science and mathematics, attitudes toward these subjects, equity and social issues, and actual teaching practices with students. However, the literature is incomplete with respect to which of these is relatively more or relatively less important.
It used to be that science and math involved understanding the basis of  calculations, formulas, and equations. But in Ontario, OISE is promoting science and math that teach "equity and social issues," that while they have no bearing on the actual subjects supposed to be taught, they do convey the type of thinking that OISE's educators want to condition children to follow.

And if these children are provided with a deficient education in the process, it seems Ontario's Ministry of Education couldn't care less.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Mother of child who identified as transgender at age 3 wants government ID rules changes

Transgendered people frequently have a tough time in life and I have sympathy for them and think they deserve support. I'm one of those people who absolutely believe that sex-reassignment surgery should be covered by public health insurance. I mean really, just because it's free is not going to be incentive for anyone to have this permanent, life-altering surgery unless they feel is essential to their being.
But having said that, transgenderism isn't something that a young child can determine. It is not something that can be truly understood prior to puberty, when major hormonal, physical and physiological changes occur. There may be parental and environmental influences that are leading them to be confused, and in those cases where children are given hormones to alter their gender, I think it's nothing short of child abuse.
And then there is this from the CBC:
The mother of a transgender child wants the Saskatchewan government to remove any record of a person's sex on birth certificates.
Fran Forsberg has filed a complaint to Saskatchewan's Human Rights Commission on behalf of her six-year-old child, Renn, after the province's Vital Statistics Agency refused to change Renn's sex designation from "Male" to "Female" on the youngster's birth records.

Klingon Beer coming to Canada and the US



The Indiana-based Tin Man Brewing Company, makers of the very strong (9% alc by volume) and cool-looking Overlord IPA beer, have produced and will be distributing a Star Trek Klingon themed beer soon called Warnog.

I have nothing to add, except that I'm now waiting for a distillery to start producing Saurian brandy.


Russia suspended from G-8 and threatened with more sanctions over Ukraine crisis

The world’s top industrial powers threatened further sanctions to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from taking over other parts of Ukraine and suspended Russia from participating in the Group of Eight.
Meeting for the first time since last week’s annexation of Crimea by Russia, Group of Seven leaders said last night they won’t attend a planned G-8 meeting which was to have been held in Sochi, site of the Winter Olympics, and will instead hold their own summit in June in Brussels.

Olivia Chow's friends, the professional protesters

Watch this till the end and you'll see some of the riot at Queen's Park, where firebombs were thrown at Ontario's Legislature. Olivia Chow tried to intervene on the side of the rioters and was subsequently forced to resign from Toronto's Police Services Board.

Now imagine what it would be like if Olivia Chow becomes Toronto's mayor, as she hopes to be.

Monday, March 24, 2014

Terry Glavin: Venezuela and the Canadian Left

...Strongman-president Nicolas Maduro’s efforts to shut everybody up have extended to censoring Twitter, kicking CNN out of the country and putting local journalists in prison.

Not that this sort of jackbootery is an especially new turn for Venezuela’s Havana-backed ruling class. From the outset, Bolivarianism has been nothing more than a gumbo of Stalinist thuggery, personality-cult inanity, national chauvinism and crude, populist lumpen-baiting.

Taking its name from the great colonial-era Latin American liberator Simon Bolivar, the dogma was concocted by Hugo Chavez, the lieutenant-colonel who burst onto the scene at the head of a failed military coup in 1992 that left at least 178 dead. Chavez went on to become Venezuela’s famously unhinged caudillo, the friend and confidante of Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the fetish object of such celebrity riff-raff as supermodel Naomi Campbell, crackpot movie director Oliver Stone and Hollywood B-Listers Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn.

In Canada, El Commandante’s fan base carries on, goose-steeping in and out of the mouldering crypts of Israel Apartheid Week, Hands Off Iran and Canada-Cuba friendship clubs, moaning obediently into megaphones about CIA plots, Yanqui imperialism and whatever other cribbings they can manage to remember from that column the Toronto Star’s Linda McQuaig wrote after Chavez died last year, the one where Chavez shows up as “a feisty mix of Robin Hood, Che Guevara and Michael Bublé.”

Lies from Olivia Chow's hatchetman Warren Kinsella to deflect from SubsidyGate

In the already heated Toronto mayoral race, candidate Olivia Chow's political hatchet man is the unimpressive political hack Warren Kinsella, who is known to his detractors as "The Lying Jackal."  I can see how he came by that epithet, since in a posting on his blog last night, Kinsella managed to tell two lies about me in the headline alone.

That comes as little surprise, considering Chow commenced her campaign with falsehoods about her use of housing subsidized by public funds, and then has had her toadies like Kinsella try to malign anyone who dared to challenge her version and expose the actual facts.

The headline Kinsella wrote was, "Ford/Tory enthusiast Richard Klagsbrun links Olivia’s facial paralysis to mental illness."  

I'll deal with how that sentence unveils Kinsella as a serial liar soon, but first, let's take a look at why he wrote it.

Yesterday on my blog, I quoted from and linked to an article by Lorrie Goldstein in The Toronto Sun in which he details the verifiable facts surrounding the use of a subsidized co-op unit by Olivia Chow and her late husband Jack Layton. Those facts, which are supported by transcripts in the official record of the Ontario Legislature, substantially contradict Chow's account. 

Olivia Chow's team, including her flack Kinsella, become understandably upset when those facts are exposed.  I've written before that I don't think SubsidyGate is a big issue in of itself, except for the fact that Chow commenced her mayoral bid by dissembling about it. 

Chow has been trying to posture herself as a "role model" in contrast to Toronto's incumbent mayor, Rob Ford. While Ford's personal foibles have become legendary, one thing he has never been credibly accused of is enriching himself by sticking his hand in the public purse.  As the attempt to create the "role model" meme is central to Chow's early campaign strategy, her acolytes have known to become histrionic at exposure of information showing that Chow would make both a poor role model and a deficient municipal leader.

So when it happens, out come the knives from her campaign flunkies.

Fair enough. I can handle it. And the best way of handling lies is with the truth.

So, back to what I wrote that served as the catalyst for Kinsella's online frothing-at-the-mouth and how he lied about me.

Following the excerpt from Lorrie Goldstein's column, I added a brief paragraph consisting of three small sentences, which was the only original content by me in the post and was:
"I've been saying Olivia Chow is lying when denying having lived in a subsidized co-op. But maybe not. Maybe it has to do with a loss of mental acuity since afflicted with serious health issues?"
Which led to Kinsell writing the headline, "Ford/Tory enthusiast Richard Klagsbrun links Olivia’s facial paralysis to mental illness."

OK, let's take that apart bit-by-bit.

"Tory enthusiast."  Now to be fair to Warren, he pairs that with Ford, and perhaps Kinsella just lacks the mental acuity to differentiate between a Ford supporter and a Tory one. Maybe he conflates them as part of a vast right-wing conspiracy to defeat his client, Olivia Chow. Or maybe Kinsella is just full of crap.

I delivered a speech at a conference last year immediately after one given by John Tory and met him briefly then. I've heard Tory speak on various occasions and he impresses me as an honest, decent, intelligent man. But I have never endorsed his mayoral bid, and have publicly questioned his commitment to following through on necessary fiscal reform in Toronto if he were to become mayor, as well as his ability to win an election. If Rob Ford were to drop out of the mayoral race, I would seriously consider switching my support to John Tory, but I hardly think that could reasonably be described as being a "Tory enthusiast."

But that's just the little lie in Kinsella's headline. Let's move on to his big lie.

Clearly there was sarcasm in the final sentence I wrote, but let's take at face value. Kinsella wrote that I linked Chow's "facial paralysis to mental illness."

No, I did not.

On the face of it, I suggested that serious health issues she had may have affected her mental acuity. Mental acuity, or sharpness, is rarely considered of itself to be what is categorized as mental illness, but I'll leave that aside. No point splitting hairs just to try to call out Kinsella for squeezing in an impressive three lies into one sentence.  But as anyone who can read and comprehend English can see, nowhere in what I wrote did I mention anything about Chow's facial paralysis, nor have I prior to this post you're now reading.

What I did do was use a hyperlink to a Globe and Mail article in which Chow's facial paralysis was prominently discussed, but my linking to it was for its detailing Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, the disease which caused that effect.

It may be too fine a point for someone of Kinsella's intellectual limitations to grasp, but I was actually pointing to the disease and not the symptom, which is something he, not I, explicitly referenced.  I have friends with Bell's Palsy, which causes similar symptoms to Ramsay Hunt Syndrome and I have never made fun of people for suffering from the ensuing facial paralysis.

But let's look at the issue itself. Ramsay Hunt Syndrome is caused by the herpes zoster virus and can result in pain and hearing loss as well other side-effects. Those conditions can lead to mental stress which would result in a diminishing of mental acuity, which is somewhat different than what most people would describe as a "mental illness." But the paralysis is not the cause of that, and at no point did I say or imply anything of the sort.

But since Kinsella has decided to introduce the aspect of mental illness himself, there are actually a number of medical reports that do indeed link Ramsay Hunt Syndrome to diminished cognitive ability and mental illness.

And all this isn't to say I'm not prepared to make fun of Olivia Chow for other things. I'm of the view that anyone who prances around in a skimpy bikini-like outfit with butterfly wings to do political stumping invites a certain amount of mockery.

However, it's a very serious matter that Olivia Chow wants to be mayor of Toronto and has a great deal of support from media and the city's political elites, as well as from civic union bosses. A number of political observers in Toronto have also privately noted that in recent years, Chow doesn't seem to be as sharp as she once was. In a campaign where every aspect of the the incumbent's life is being crawled over with a microscope, is it somehow mean to question whether the person considered the front runner is mentally up to the enormous responsibility she is asking Toronto's voters to bestow on her?

I don't think so, but even if it is, I'm not going to apologize for asking it. Chow may very likely restore union control to city hall and undo the successful privatization of garbage collection currently servicing half the city. She has close affiliations with reprehensible and sometimes violent activist groups and has, when it suits her, made common cause with hatemongers such as Zafar Bangash, a very vocal local supporter of Iran's misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic dictatorship.

If Chow were to be elected, Torontonians have a right to be concerned that the doors of the mayor's office would be thrown open to such miscreants. Until now, Chow has only offered poorly delivered vague platitudes. Her supposedly "tough" media interview so far was conducted by her own acolyte, Warren Kinsella.

That would be the same Warren Kinsella who only a couple of weeks ago on his blog, strongly implied that Rob Ford was responsible for a murder. As a lawyer and an officer of the court, the irresponsibility of Kinsella doing so is obvious.

If Olivia Chow is up to the task of being Toronto's mayor, she should have nothing to fear from tough questions and challenges. But instead we see how her campaign panics when faced with those questions and will do its utmost to deflect from them.

Continuing his idiotic little blog post, Kinsella refers to me as a "POS" which I assume means something less flattering than "Person Of Superbness," and concludes by ranting, "Best way to scatter cockroaches is to shine a light on them. So let’s do that. "

I'm game for that.

I'll stand by what I've said in the bright light of day. But last time I checked, it was Kinsella who had to scurry, cockroach-like, away from his racist blog comments directed at the Chinese-Canadian community,  and his misogynistic suggestion that MPP Lisa MacLeod should be "baking cookies" instead of practicing politics.

As far as I'm concerned, for those who recognize the shallowness of Olivia Chow and the disaster her fiscal policies would be for Toronto, her utilization of someone like Kinsella, a self-described "Prince of Darkness," serves as a helpful reminder of her unsuitability for leadership.



Sunday, March 23, 2014

The Truth About Olivia Chow Taking Advantage of a Housing Subsidy

Olivia Chow with Khomeinist hatemonger Zafar Bangash

...Tom Clement, head of the Co-operative Housing Association of Ontario, told [Toronto Star reporter] Kerr he knew of no other family with their income living in the province’s 500-plus co-ops.

In terms of how rents in the Hazelburn Co-op compared to the surrounding community, a prominent Globe and Mail journalist told the Star he was paying $690 a month for a two-bedroom apartment in an area where the going rate was $1,100.

Based on the premise families should pay no more than 30% of their income on rent,  Kerr observed, a family of five or six with an annual income of $40,000 to $50,000 would have been able to carry the $800-a-month apartment, Chow and Layton were occupying.

Layton was troubled by all this. He told Kerr he had struggled with his conscience about staying in the apartment.

For that reason, 17-19 months after moving into the three-bedroom apartment with Chow, he had, either as of January or March, 1990 (media accounts at the time vary), begun paying a $325-a-month “voluntary surcharge” — the only tenant to do so — to offset their portion of the mortgage subsidy from the federally-funded Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp...

I've been saying Olivia Chow is lying when denying having lived in a subsidized co-op. But maybe not. Maybe it has to do with a loss of mental acuity since afflicted with serious health issues?

UPDATE: Olivia Chow's flack Warren Kinsella happened on this post and became so incensed, he decided to write some lies about me. 

And now it's time for some UltraMan


Mark Steyn on On The Waterfront screenwriter Budd Schulberg


...A few years back, I was at Paramount taking part in some panel discussion, and at one point the subject of "artistic persecution" arose. "When," I scoffed, "was the last time anyone in Hollywood was persecuted?" "The 1950s," snapped the otherwise delightful Lynda Obst, the producer of Sleepless In Seattle, who was sitting next to me. I forbore to suggest to Lynda that the Hollywood blacklist was not what most societies would recognize as "persecution"—or, indeed, that the guys doing the persecuting were not the government but the studio suits at Warner Brothers, Universal, et al. No matter. Executives can be forgiven: it's strictly business, right? For the Sean Penn/George Clooney generation, what Schulberg and his director Elia Kazan did was an affront to their sense of their own artistic heroism. As The Boston Globe's Thomas Oliphant put it a half-century later, Kazan was "a pathetically prototypical rat-fink of the anti-Communist hysteria."

In an ideal world—or if you were making the umpteenth movie on the subject—it would be helpful if the blacklist's "victims" had been a little more accomplished. By contrast, Schulberg, as a writer, and Kazan, as a director, are too talented to be written off as mere snitches and toadies to state power. For one thing, their experience as "rat-finks" produced a true cinematic masterpiece, and a better film than anything on their detractors' resumés, post- or pre-blacklist. Schulberg's script for On The Waterfront (1954) reads like transcripts from the Congressional hearings:

"I just want to ask you some questions about some people you may know..."



h/t Five Feet

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Canadian Somali Congress head describes the Toronto District School Board as racist and insulting

This discussion/debate between Ahmed Hussen, the National President of the Canadian Somali Congress, the CBC's heavily biased Anna Maria Tremonti, and not-particularly-bright Toronto District School Board Trustee and identity-politics-in-the-classroom proponent Maria Rodrigues reveals much about how the TDSB is utterly failing its students.

As Mr. Hussen notes, the TDSB's actions are not only insulting to the Somali-Canadian community, they're racist: