47 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. From a news story by Don Peat in the Toronto Sun:
    “The (EKOS) poll…found (Toronto mayoral candidate Rob) Ford’s support draws heavily from those born outside Canada. Around 39.6% of Ford supporters were born in Canada and 51.7% outside”, whereas “The majority of Smitherman supporters are born in Canada (38.7%) while 30.1% were born outside.”
    Here’s what Frank Graves says about his own findings:
    “What can you say? Here we have supposed conservatives in Calgary electing a visible minority member (as mayor) and we have visible minorities in Toronto electing a conservative, so all the rulebook seems ready to be thrown out right now.” (emph. mine)
    Apparently, in the Frank Graves/CBC/conventional wisdom “rulebook”, Calgary conservatives who vote for a visible minority candidate are, by virtue of their vote, merely “supposed” conservatives. *Real* conservatives only vote for white people.
    You can look it up – it’s in the Frank Graves Rulebook.

  2. Brendan Behan could have been a great talent if he could have stayed sober for more than a day at a time. When he was arrested for drunk and disorderly in Toronto, his wife said she thought it unfair as artists should be given special considerations, and that, at any rate, Toronto was just too Protestant to appreciate his humour. I don’t agree with her first contention, but the second is certainly true.

  3. Black Mamba’s “Journal of the Blatantly obvious” Tip at the tail end of a previous Reader Tips thread deserves a repost:
    “Hairy animals optimize shaking speed to shed water quickly.”
    No. Way.
    *Wow*.

  4. EBD..right on. Graves couldn’t entertain the possibility that conservatives in Calgary might vote for the person who is right for the job. No…they must have voted for him because he is Muslim, and therefore they are not real conservatives. Twit.
    Let’s say it one more time:
    Liberalism is a mental disorder

  5. This video makes me wonder if the strategy of engaging the Taliban in Afghanistan in talks is a wise decision.
    Warning: The video contains graphic images of violence and bloodshed.

  8. Well, since EBD is blatantly egging me on, I’ll link to Ace of Spades HQ one more time. It’s about Obama, and how he distorts everything. This is peanuts, really, I guess, in the big picture, but I find it chilling; it’s worth a look, and it is short. (Link to Ace, so language warning for the comments.)
    http://minx.cc/?post=307245

  10. Dear EBD,
    I hate baseball.
    I find myself questioning my enjoyment in watching the Atlanta Braves choke in a divisional series. If the Braves would have won and then choke in the pennant – it would mean a Phillies win (and I believe greater enjoyment for me). It would just mean another “playoff appearance”, (which they already have) for the Atlanta Braves.
    I’m not lazy … I googled – Atlanta Braves choke optimum scientific study – and found nothing!!!
    I can’t believe someone hasn’t done a government funded study on this – why are they hiding the results from us?

  11. *
    “ebd says… we have visible minorities in Toronto electing a conservative”
    yeah… just can’t imagine why people living in a virtual war zone are tilting to
    the right, huh…
    — “Nobody talks to us,” Superintendent Ruth White, who commands the
    division, told The Globe, adding there have been six similar shootings
    in the past two weeks.     —
    *

  12. Globe and Mail, Saturday, Oct. 23. Short item (no link): Catholic bishop assails N. Y. Times.
    Archbishop Timothy Dolan objects to an art exhibit and play from AIDS activist group ACT UP that features a poster of the late Cardinal John O’Connor alongside a condom, and a photo with the play review shows a nun in a “suggestive pose”.
    The paper says it covers cultural events, “even if some may disagree with the content of the artwork”.
    So on what date did the N. Y. Times publish the Muhammad cartoons?

  13. Globe and Mail, Saturday, Oct. 23.
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/size-matters-on-labels-health-canada-nutritionists-say/article1770050/
    Health Canada is considering forcing nutritional labels to have equivalent serving sizes listed for the same type of food.
    “That prospect arose as Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq unveiled a new initiative Friday to help shoppers understand the nutrition facts panel on packaged foods and beverages, which states how much fat, sugar, fibre and other nutrients a product contains. The campaign, which will include new messages on food packages, is designed to educate consumers about the ‘per cent daily value’ column on nutrition labels.”
    This is strictly nanny-state stuff, which a Conservative government shouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. People have the freedom and the capability of educating themselves about health matters without any need for wasteful government bureaucracies.
    “But the new program is just the first step in a wider review of nutrition labelling taking place at Health Canada …”
    “Under rules introduced in 2003, the federal government requires food companies to put nutrition facts tables on nearly all prepackaged foods, which must include a suggested serving size, the amount of fat, calories, sodium, protein and nutrients in each serving, as well as the per cent daily value.”
    “But almost as soon as they were introduced, health experts and consumer advocates slammed the nutrition labels for being confusing and even misleading to consumers. And a series of focus groups commissioned earlier this year on behalf of Health Canada confirmed this confusion.”
    “One of the biggest problems with the nutrition-facts panel is that companies choose the serving size used to calculate nutritional information. As a result, various brands of similar food products don’t use uniform measurements, making it hard for consumers to compare nutritional value.”
    “For instance, a serving size of original All-Bran cereal is half a cup, while original Cheerios is one cup.”
    I guess the focus group people were confused because they all went to public school and never learned how to figure out that that 45 mg. of sodium in 100 grams of cereal is higher than 18 mg. of sodium in 50 grams of cereal?
    The mind boggles. MULTIPLY BY TWO, YOU MORONS!
    “… blah blah blah federally appointed Sodium Working Group blah blah blah …”
    How many millions of tax dollars have been sqandered on these worthless nanny-state bureaucracies, dollars that people could have invested in the production of goods and services in order to obtain a higher standard of living? Not to mention purchasing healthier food.
    Has there ever been a study that shows whether these bureaucracies are having the desired effect?
    I just hope that if we get a Harper majority, they’ll do an about-face on this nanny state nonsense.

  14. National Post, Saturday, Oct. 23.
    http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/Ottawa+withdraws+from+clash+interests+over+hate+speech/3715859/story.html
    The federal government has withdrawn from supporting s.13(1) of the “human rights” act for the Lemire appeal. Appeal in a real (not kangaroo) court, that is, with real due process.
    Bravo. Even obvious racists have the right to freedom of speech. Because, the way the left calls everyone they disagree with “racist”, after a while no one will have freedom of speech, not even most leftists.

  16. National Post, Friday, Oct. 22.
    http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/High+court+mull+mandatory+class/3709448/story.html
    “… the Supreme Court of Canada will consider whether students can opt out of the province’s mandatory course on ethics and religious culture.”
    This course is propaganda. Some religious parents objected to its portrayal of all religions as equally true; they have the right to teach their kids that their own faith is the true one. (I’m not religious, and don’t find much truth in any of them, but it’s not my place to impose my views to others, only to try to persuade).
    Also, the course featured an uncritical interview with an extreme leftist (from the new Quebec party that elected one MNA last time), without any balance.
    Let’s hope Reseau Liberte-Quebec forms a party and a government and gets rid of this propaganda course entirely.

  17. Toronto Star, Friday, Oct. 22.
    http://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/immigration/article/879401–immigration-waiting-times-cause-frustration
    Apparently it takes 15 months to sponsor a parent or grandparent from Warsaw, 33 months from Beijing, and nearly four years if they live in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
    So naturally a group is complaining about “unequal treatment”.
    The fact that Poland is a free country these days while Sri Lanka and China both have major political problems apparently hasn’t dawned on some people. Of course there’s more investigation needed for folks from the latter. This ain’t rocket science.

  18. Nv53, I can’t get worked up over that nutritional labeling thing (12:26) because there’s no coercion whatsoever involved, hence no “nanny state.” It’s just information.
    One time I was about to purchase a particular frozen dinner…until I looked at the label. I’m not a health nut in the slightest in terms of what I eat, but I don’t mind being allowed to notice via labeling that a dinky little tray of food contains the equivalent amount of saturated fat as a stick of butter, for example.
    We’re still free to eat whatever we want.

  19. Toronto Star, Friday, Oct. 22. Richard Gwyn.
    http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/879419–gwyn-economic-woes-a-sign-of-decline
    Mass demonstrations in Paris, but empty streets in London.
    “Common to the two events are that both are about the End of Big Government.”
    “… almost overnight, government is being seen as a potential source of national bankruptcy rather than the source of national prosperity.”
    “Less government spending means less economic activity and, as a consequence, less tax revenue and so a larger deficit.”
    Thus Richard Gwyn reveals himself to be an economic illiterate.
    Less government spending means MORE economic activity, because governments squander so many tax dollars or give them to the unproductive, while businesses try, and usually succeed, in investing them in productive enterprises.
    Government has never, ever been a “source of national prosperity”. Government has a monopoly on coercion. It is supposed to step in when people use force or fraud on one another. But coercion does not create or produce the goods and services we require for survival. Human minds do that.
    “It is countries, not banks, that really are too big to fail. Anyway, no bondholder can march in and seize a nation’s assets.”
    No, but they’ll just stop lending, and the country will have to dig itself out of a hole by itself.
    The good news is that the knowledge necessary for production is not lost, it remains in the minds of the businessmen and scientists or in the pages of their books and manuals.
    Remember:
    “The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everybody else” – Bastiat
    “Reality always avenges itself” – Ayn Rand

  20. As a member of “the political right”, I’m not particular fan of Juan Williams, but I’m on his side re NPR and wish him all the best in his new position at FOX.
    Here’s some of what the estimable Andy McCarthy (at National Review) has to say about this fiasco:
    “Williams miscalculated. He figured that because he is a long-standing member of the NPR-certified Society of the Slavishly Right-Thinking, he could safely stroll a few steps off the reservation. Too bad he was wrong, but at least he got the chance to miscalculate. On the political right, we get no chance. In the NPR world Williams helped foster, we’re already condemned. It wouldn’t even occur to us to ask for the can’t-we-talk-about-this-face-to-face meeting that NPR denied to a stunned Williams despite his years of faithful service. Like the NPR news chief told him, there’s nothing we can say that will change their minds.”
    I wonder if Williams will get it.

  21. Globe and Mail, Friday, Oct. 22, Richard Florida.
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/no-longer-one-toronto/article1767718/
    “Toronto’s political divide is the result of a fundamental economic restructuring that has brought enormous boons to some and left others out in the cold. As manufacturing shifts abroad and the technology and knowledge economy burgeons, innovative companies, highly skilled people and the jobs that employ them have formed dense clusters. It is this very process that drives economic development forward, spurring innovation, generating new entrepreneurial firms and creating new opportunities. But it also drives up housing values and splits up and sorts people by work and income.”
    “The logic of capitalism is filled with contradictions. These contradictions create new wealth and, simultaneously, bring new divisions and new social costs. Toronto, like virtually every other major city in North America, stands at a critical inflection point. Its recent economic success has, in effect, split it right down its middle.”
    The notion of a “logic of capitalism” that is “filled with contradictions” comes directly from Hegel, Marx or their followers.
    Capitalism is a politico-economic system that is based on individual rights. It follows the fundamental moral principle of a civilized society, namely that no person has the right to initiate the use of force or fraud on any other person. (note: I’ve added the “or fraud” clause this time; I have often omitted it when I quote the phrase)
    The “economic restructuring” described here is a result not of capitalism but of the mixed economy, an unstable mix of freedom and controls. Economies don’t really “restructure”, but old products and companies disappear while new ones are born, as a result of supply and demand. But the exercise of coercion by government on the economy can distort it severely and cause hardship.
    Richard Florida was touted to write for the Globe beginning three years ago as if he were the Second Coming for municipal affairs. But lately some critics have been wondering, essentially, “where’s the beef?” Personally I’ve found most of his writing for the Globe on the shallow side.

  22. Globe and Mail, Saturday, Oct. 23. “Why Hollywood hates capitalism”.
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/movies/why-hollywood-hates-capitalism/article1769289/
    “Of all the ironies in Tinseltown, none is richer than this: Hollywood is a big business that, on the screen at least, loathes and despises big business.”
    First of all, “big business” and “capitalism” are not the same thing. Generally, some of the former arise and prosper (or not) under the latter.
    “Well, the answer [to the question the column poses] is that Hollywood is really two businesses in one: It’s a profit-obsessed industry but it’s also a dream factory. What the factory manufactures is myths, and, typically, there’s no dissonance between the industry and the product, between (to use today’s parlance) the “core values” of the manufacturer and those inherent in the myths it creates. But the whole issue of capitalism is a huge exception. Capitalism throws a spanner in the factory’s works, for the simple reason that its values are often directly at odds with Hollywood’s dominant myth – the Great American Dream.”
    “Of course, the Dream is all about freedom, mainly the freedom of the rugged individual to climb the ladder of success and, thus, get rich. But capitalism is about free enterprise which emphasizes a different sort of gain, not the growth of the individual but the growth from the individual to the corporation, from small to big, from rugged David to mighty Goliath.”
    Actually, the real reason Hollywood hates capitalism is the same reason anyone else does: the culture, which derives from the philosophical mysticism of Kant and Hegel through Marx and Marcuse and others, opposes it, even though it brings a high standard of living while other political systems bring terror and bloodshed. Nothing other than mysticism can explain why people continue to glorify political systems (i.e., socialism) that engage in mass murder. The intellectual thinks he’s better than the peons who have difficulty understanding abstract thought.
    The “dream” of the socialist is that he can seize everyone’s resources, wave his magic wand and create a perfect Utopia. However, the closest we will ever get to a Utopia is a system that recognizes and respects the fundamental moral principle of civilized society.
    Socialists are entitled to indulge in their fantasies, but not entitled to force them on everyone else.
    Anyone who has the dream of financial independence must realize that everything he consumes must be produced first, and only though production and savings can his dream be realized.
    Nowhere is it written that everyone living in a capitalist society must go into business, or have the mental capacity for business. Scientists, doctors, artists, musicians, writers, etc. are all fine pursuits. But it’s about time the ivory tower philsophers realized that in their fatuous and irrational hatred of capitalism, they are biting the hand that feeds them, and (to mix metaphors) they will go down with the ship if they manage to destroy it.

  23. Sent to jacko laydown, my least favourite parasitic Canadian, and NDP MP:
    A while back, you suggested sitting down with the Taleban, and negotiating with them.
    Here’s a video about the fellow teapartyers, you would have a dialog with.
    http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=218813
    How would you instruct them, on womens issues, never mind basic human dignity?
    And you wish to be taken seriously? Too late, I’m afraid.
    Grab a brain, and stick to earning that nice fat pension.
    Paul

  24. EBD @ 1:04,
    Nutritional labels do provide useful information (for me too), but I object to them being forced by government because that is none of the state’s business. It’s quite reasonable for people to demand them, in which case the companies should respond positively to give consumers what they want.
    The nitpicking that Health Canada is going on about is just another waste of tax dollars that could be better spent, especially if left in the hands of those who earned them. If you give government money, they’ll find ways to spend it and generally try to pretend they’re doing you a favour. Occasionally it may indeed be good for you, but the overall cost of the nanny state is not worth it.

  25. why thenk you EBD…’attention, attention must finally be paid!’
    as for the Irish style i must say the music they had the lower deck irish band playing in that american movie ‘Titanic’ was the best of the metier i’ve encountered..the chieftains meet a sober ashley macisaac i deemed it to mesself for lack of a better more thorough understanding…..and more than that too if only the words would come….
    i wonder who it was….

  26. Forecast: the words “global warming” have a strike-out line in the original at WUWT? How does Al do that?
    “This will clearly be a historical storm and an extreme event: evidence of [>>> please omit these two words:global warming] La Nina.””
    …-
    “Major Winter Storm headed for the US West Coast
    Posted on October 23, 2010 by Anthony Watts
    Snow will come to California’s Sierra Nevada a bit earlier than usual.
    Animate this image >>>
    Ryan Maue adds: “as this storm pulls eastward, it will “bomb” out or explosively deepen over the Great Plains and move into the upper-Midwest. The barometric pressure will fall to 962 mb according to the most recent GFS forecast, making it one of the deepest northern United States continental extratropical cyclones since 1979 for the 30-day period between October 15 and November 14. This will clearly be a historical storm and an extreme event: evidence of global warming La Nina.””
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/23/major-winter-storm-headed-for-the-us-west-coast/#comments

  29. nv53 – very nice posts about the reality of capitalism. I fully agree with the facts that capitalism is focused on the individual, and that less government spending enables a stronger economy.
    An economy is always generated by its population. Government, after all, is nutritionally, which is to say, actually parasitic on that population. Without the money generated by private enterprise, government cannot tax that money away. All that a robust and valid government ought to do with that money is use it to provide common services such as water and waste management, roads and transportation, defense and immigration and a common currency.
    The rest must remain in private ownership and decision-making.That is, government has no right to promote identity-economics or fund special interest industries..such as Bombardier, the CBC, multicultural groups, …
    Private enterprise HAS to be productive or it goes out of business. The Welfare State Government supports the unproductive and thus, lowers the economic robustness of the nation.
    And yes, the socialist ideology, based on the mysticism of Hegel, Marx and the rest of that armchair gang, is indeed naive and utopian. What is interesting is that, in their rejection of reality, they reject differences. In their utopian world, all will be reduced to one mold, one template.
    The fact that such a reduction to one type of energy processing is the final step before the catastrophic dissipation of energy (the backwards motion to the Big Bang)never occurs to these ignorant armchair theorists.
    But a complex system is such, because it is made up of subsystems that are made up of and process… many different amounts of energy. The capitalist system is the only system that enables a middle class – and the middle class is, by definition, diverse and processes different amounts of energy.
    Societies are complex adaptive system, and must function as such – which means – a diversity of energy use and production. But the armchair utopians simply don’t get this fact.

  32. Re: post @ 10:53: If you want to see first-rate examples of the form of irrationality known as “conspiracy theory”, and threats from the mono-cultural left to shun Wired for leaving the reservation, check out the comments to the linked Wired piece.

  33. Fap!….every family has at least one flake….imagine!…”Islam saved my liver from cirhossis’….gosh it’d be fun to have a long wet al fresco luncheon with her on a long hot day under a fig tree…”….”oh i suppose ONE teensy glass of vino blanco can’t hurt”…”rather than going shopping with that vile Christiane Amanpour again’.
    i suppose she was envious of Tony crossing the Tiber….who knows and who gives a shit.

  34. Hope* and Fear* “trump” Goodall.
    Fear: “a white liver’d-lilly-cheeked, bashful palpitating, awkward hussey”.
    …-
    “Goodall graces Herald with her message of hope
    Calgary Herald”
    “Jane Goodall says environment should trump economics CTV.ca”
    Hope* and Fear*:
    “Charles Lamb:
    “Hope* is charming, lively, blue-eyed wench, & I am always glad of her company, but could dispense with the visitor she brings with her, her younger sister, fear*, a white liver’d-lilly-cheeked, bashful palpitating, awkward hussey that hangs like a green girl at her sister’s apron strings & will go with her whithersoever she goes.”
    (Letters of Charles and Mary Anne Lamb)”

  35. ET: Your brilliance lit up this rainy morning in Vancouver. Thank YOU!
    Nick: Your comment about the first-rate examples of irrationality are spot on. Keeping that front of mind, let’s segue over to Juan Williams’ firing from NPR. Try to put yourself into the mind of a Leftist. At the moment when you first heard Williams, a man clearly on the Left side of the political spectrum, express his personal feelings about seeing people in Muslim garb at an airport, what would your reaction be?
    While I’m willing to concede that there might be some out there who are so deeply immersed in PC Kumbaya Group Think that they truly would be offended by his thoughts, this clearly can’t be the vast majority, even on the Left?! Surely most people would have had similar thoughts since 2001-09-11? Such thoughts might not be “right” and certainly aren’t fair to peaceful, law-abiding Muslims but haven’t we all had them?
    But I’ve seen very little defense of Williams by folks on the Left since this occurred. What sort of mental gymnastics is required to throw one of their own under the wheels of the airplane?!

  36. What sort of mental gymnastics is required to throw one of their own under the wheels of the airplane?!
    Probably the same sort of gymnastics akin to calling your dying Grandmother a racist.

  37. P.S. For those who didn’t get my metaphor, I thought the space underneath the proverbial bus was getting cramped so opted for an airplane instead.
    P.P.S. Come November 3rd the long knives are sure to come out amongst Leftards, figuring out who to blame for what may very well be the largest loss in American history. Since no Leftist EVER blames themselves for anything, instead they need to attack their fellow compatriots.

  38. Juxtapose:
    A column in today’s Star by Haroon Siddiqui, headlined “Ranting from the right deafens Canadians to success of pluralism”, begins:
    “Rob Ford thinks Toronto does not need any more immigrants, for now. Many right-wingers across Europe say the same. Some couch their call in the language of recessionary economics, as does he. Others express their xenophobia by attacking multiculturalism….”
    Toronto Sun:
    “(An Ekos) poll found (Rob) Ford’s support draws heavily from those born outside Canada. Around 39.6% of Ford supporters were born in Canada and 51.7% outside…”

  40. There is a poll at the G&M regarding Khadr being sent back to Canada to serve his sentence that needs your attention.

  41. On the radio, I just heard the fool who founded The Daily Kos repeatedly state that NPR is incredibly non-partisan.
    That’s like hearing an NDP’er drone on that CBC News is non-partisan.
    These folks have their heads so far up their ….

  42. Yet another savior of Gaia set himself up to make millions:
    Queen’s £38m a year offshore windfarm windfall – because she owns the seabed
    The Royal Family have secured a lucrative deal that will earn them tens of millions of pounds from the massive expansion of offshore windfarms…
    Prince Charles is a vociferous campaigner for renew­able energy sources such as these, but is opposed to turbines being erected on land – particularly near his own homes. He has described windfarms as a ‘horrendous blot on the landscape’ and has refused to have any built at his Highgrove home or on the Duchy of Cornwall estate.But he has expressed enthusiasm for siting them offshore.
    The Crown Estate said profits from windfarms in Britain’s territorial waters – which extend almost 14 miles from the coast – could rise to £100  million a year, giving the ­Royals £15 million. But industry experts said this was an under-­estimate and that the true figure was likely to be nearer £250 million by 2020, with £37.5 million for the Royals.

  44. More Gun Registry Murder/Crime.
    There oughta be a law.
    …-
    “Winnipeg under lockdown from ‘ninja’ shooter
    Montreal Gazette – Kevin Rollason, Gabrielle Giroday – ‎52 minutes ago‎
    A shooting victim is loaded into an ambulance at the scene of shooting in Winnipeg Saturday night. WINNIPEG – The streets of the Winnipeg’s north end are empty Sunday morning as police keep searching for a suspect in a deadly shooting spree Saturday …
    2 dead, 1 hurt in Winnipeg shooting spree Toronto Sun”
    (googlenews)

  46. Att: beaglelberia: How’s yer hope? Any change for a tenner?
    As LeninStalin said, lberia is my O’executioner.
    …-
    “60 Minutes Just Blew The Lid Off The Unemployment Situation in the USA
    Airing right now…said the real unemployment is at 17.5%…showing tons of people with masters, bachelors, phd’s, you name it…unemployed for 2 years…can’t even get jobs at Target.”
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2613754/posts
    Commenter said:
    “This is the most devastating expose I have ever seen on 60 Minutes with a Dem president in office a week before the election. Just wow.
    Something is changing here.”

  47. nv53, EBD, nutritional labelling.
    While I see EBD’s point I tend to side with nv53.
    EBD essentially argues that he’s OK if the regulation is “useful”. True, the initial intrusion may seem minor and reasonable, but it inevitably leads to government hubris — mission creep.
    As a long-suffering victim of government securities regulation, like nv53, I tend to dislike all government intrusions useful or not. Like nv53, I believe that if the consuner demand is there, the ultra-competitive environment (the less government intrusion the more competitive) will lead to the labelling. I would prefer to see consumer groups/associations communicate with companies about these issues and to keep the dead hand of government out of it.
    I’m probably overly doctrinaire on this, but I have a strong sense that 100% of government regulation generates NET disutilities.

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