FYI

Sorry for the recent silence. My beloved retriever--he turned nine the other week--is extremely ill, and likely won't make it (it's his heart). It was all very sudden. One minute he was his normal happy, hyper-energetic self; the next he was down on the floor and unable to move. I'm too upset right now to be coherent, so I hope you'll understand if I take a little break.

He's the best dog in the world, and we're all reeling over this dreadful and unexpected turn of events.

Bad Move

After an 18 month absence, Israel is set to rejoin what is laughingly known as the UN "Human Rights" Council. At the moment, such paragons of liberty as China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia are at the fore of the body, acting as official arbiters of "human rights" in this world. That fact alone tells you practically everything you need to know about this farcical body. Add to that its endemic Zionhass and Israel's move to rejoin the jackals makes no sense whatsoever.

Easily, Cunningly, Purposefully

How the Muslim Brotherhood Dupes the West

Just Desserts: Ontario Gov Target of "Human Rights" Complaint By a "Victim" Group; Cabinet Minister Says She's "Puzzled" By the Action

Sure, the government has no problem when some unsuspecting shlub gets dragged though the "human rights" process (where the process is the punishment, even if no monetary punishment is meted out at the end of it). But it doesn't much care for it when they're the target of a complaint:

TORONTO – Health Minister Deb Matthews is pouring cold water on a bid by Ontario midwives to double their salaries to almost $200,000 a year. 

The Association of Ontario Midwives has filed a human rights complaint over what it says is the government’s refusal to comply with pay equity for midwives.

It says midwives “suffer a gender penalty” because they are a female-dominated workforce. 

Matthews says the government wants more midwives so women have another option when giving birth, but she can’t understand why they’d ask to double their pay. 

The health minister says she is “puzzled by their approach.”...

"Puzzled," is she? That's a laugh and a half. Here in Ontario we encourage people to avail themselves of the "human rights" racket any time they feel they've been victimized.

Deb has visited the OHRC website, hasn't she? It's all spelled out very clearly there.

Obama's "Promises": Worse Than Worthless

I wouldn't believe a word he says:

One of the president’s chief promises is that Iran won’t get a nuclear weapon. That promise should be considered in light of the promises on healthcare.gov and on the Syrian red line.

Three strikes yer out? Sigh. If only that were true.

"What Is the One Novel That Could Change Canada?"

A question that's so ghastly, so goshdarned Canadian, that it could only have been posed by the dweeby Ceeb. (Socialist Saint Stephen Lewis shilling for one of Margaret Atwood's execrable, unreadable eye-glazers: how perfect!)

Update: According to Wikipedia,

The Year of the Flood details the events of Oryx and Crake from the perspective of the lower classes in the pleeblands, specifically the God's Gardeners. God's Gardeners are devoted to preserving all plant and animal life, and they predict a disaster (The Flood according to the Gardeners, known by the readers to be Crake's viral pandemic) will radically alter the Earth. 

The plot follows two characters, Toby and Ren, whose stories intertwine with each other and, at points, with major characters from Oryx and Crake. Much of the story is told through flashback with the two main characters separately surviving the apocalypse described in the previous novel, both reminiscing about their time in the God's Gardeners religious movements and the events that led to their current positions. 

Toby is a young woman who loses her family, blaming the corporations, and is forced to work in a low-quality burger joint. She soon encounters the unwelcome attention of the brutish manager of the chain who is depicted as grooming and assaulting women in his employ. Adam One, depicted as a self-proclaimed messiah but perceived by outsiders as a cult leader, saves Toby from the manager and takes her to the sanctuary of his rooftop garden. Toby becomes an influential member of the gardeners and encounters Ren, a child member of the gardeners. 

Ren eventually grows up to become a trapeze dancer in the sex club Scales and Tails, and happens to be locked in a bio-containment unit in the club when the pandemic occurs. Similarly, Toby is barricaded within a luxury spa where she has begun to work following the gardeners raid.

Thanks, but I think I'll wait for the movie--and then avoid it like the plague, too.

Update: Gotta love that Ceeb. Mere minutes after Anna Maria Tremonti has a friendly chat with the new Hamas spokeswoman in Gaza City, Jian Ghomeshi berates the Canadian government for failing to get in on the let's-placate Iran action go the diplomatic route with Iran.

Your tax dollars and mine in action, friends.

The O-Care Fallout for Canada (Hint: It Involves Justin Trudeau)

Sitting in my doctor's waiting room yesterday, I couldn't help but think: I like my doctor and, thankfully, I get to keep her. That's because I live in Canada, where the health care system is socialized but isn't, thank God, Obamafied.

Maclean's magazine's Colby Cosh has some thoughts on the subject:

The redistributive aspects of Obamacare were undersold, and possible pitfalls obviously not foreseen. The neoliberal Democrat Walter Russell Mead put it neatly the other day: “President Obama may be the Democrat who ends up convincing millions of American millennials that Ronald Reagan was right, and that the progressive administrative state is neither honest nor competent enough to solve the problems of the American people.” If that is the case, the effects cannot be confined to the U.S. 

Barack Obama is a charismatic president who lacked executive experience but was, partly for reasons related to his ancestry, an attractive blank slate onto which young voters could project their dreams. He compensated for his shortcomings in political dues-paying by building a team of high-profile brainiacs like Steven Chu, Peter Orszag, and Austan Goolsbee. Am I wrong to detect resemblances with the Liberals’ Justin Trudeau victory plan? If Obama goes down as a failure, someone who peddled Hope and got in over his head, will our millennials think twice about casting a feel-good vote for an unknown quantity who fast-forwarded past the usual leadership training?

Actually, I don't think our millennials will give the O-Care debacle a second thought. Not when they can get caught up in a swoony, woozy, hopeychangey election par-tay of their very own. For as I like to observe: leftists swoon in haste and repent, well, never.

O-Care Propaganda: Pick the Winner of the O-Care "Healthy Young Invincibles" Video Contest!

The adorable Kathleen "Dimples" Sibelius will give 30Gs to the winner, money that will no doubt come in handy when he or she (one of those in the "healthy young invincibles" demographic who is expected to shoulder the burden of shoring up the wretched scheme) experiences sticker shock upon signing up for O-Care. (The deductible is $6,000? WTF!)

Der Fuhrer Gets a Rude O-Care Awakening

Turns out he can't keep his doctor or health insurance plan either.

 

Too Weird for Words: Hassan Rouhani's Rip Off of Will.i.am's Obama Video

This one beats all: the pseudo-moderate Khomeinist who succeeded the not-at-all-moderate Ahmadinejad has a new video out. It's a direct steal of Will.i.am's video in which he put music to Barack Obama's drippy Yes We Can campaign stuff from back in those initial rapturous days of hypey hope 'n' change. Even more bizarre, Rouhani seems to be channeling John Lennon's "Imagine" and its swoony fluff about peace 'n' love 'n' hugs 'n' kisses. You can bet, though, that more than a few naïve infidels with fall for the touchy-feely stuff, especially because, cleverly, it omits anything about wiping the Joooos off the map or the imminent return of the Shia messiah, the long-occluded Mahdi.

Mark Steyn Pays Tribute to His Late Nemesis, Canada's Chief Censor/ "Human Rights" Commissar Jennifer Lynch

Steyn, a man who could certainly have borne her ill will even now, manifests a degree of graciousness that I never could, and that, under the circumstances, is very classy indeed:

As I say somewhere in After America, you don't need a president-for-life if you've got a bureaucracy-for-life. Jennifer Lynch, garlanded with every bauble the Canadian state could confer (the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal, etc), was the sort of person a government turns to fill all these posts. I'm sure she was decent and well-meaning and pleasant and likeable, but she put her fine qualities in the service of a squalid and corrupt regime whose practices could not survive the light Ezra and others shined on them.

The take-away from the above: she wasn't a bad person, but she did a great deal of bad in the name of doing good. 

Wherein I Try to Account for Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's Sudden International Fame (Apart From the Crack-Smoking and Bull-In-a-China-Shop Antics, I Mean)

I think there's a craving (dare one call it a hunger?) out there for a funny fat man. Shakespeare, after all, gave us Falstaff. In the early years of Hollywood, there was Fatty Arbuckle, who looked like an overgrown boy, an image that was held against him when he was tried and eventually acquitted of raping and killing a Hollywood wannabe-starlet. In the 1930s, there was Oliver Hardy who teamed with skinny foil Stan Laurel. And let's not forget stout Sydney Greenstreet of The Maltese Falcon and other memorable film turns (in most of which, admittedly, he was more menacing than he was funny; the same could be said of portly film director Alfred Hitchcock). More recently, we've had John Belushi, John Candy and Chris Farley. (Orson Welles, as he aged, became quite obese, but when he showed up to chew to fat--sorry--with, say, Johnny Carson, he was more of a raconteur than a comedian.) Also--hello, Santa!

In other words, there was opening for World's Funniest/Most Famous Fat Man, and Rob Ford stepped up to fill the role.


Rob Ford: a Falstaff for our time, no?

After Libs Win Two in a By-Election Justin Trudeau Drapes Himself in the Mantle of Late NDP Saint Jack Layton, Much to Tom Mulcair's Disgust/Dismay

Kid Trudeau is even being called--oy vey!--"Laytonesque." From the NDP's perspective, talk about adding insult to injury!

Theatre of the Absurd: Fantasy "Peace" Talks to Take Place Without the Participation of the Two Warring Factions

Neither the Damascus despot nor his "rebel" rivals will attend.

Interesting Theory

Was "Obama’s retreat from Syria...prompted, in part, by his desire to generate Iranian goodwill in the nuclear negotiations"? This guy speculates that it was.

Er, Do They Also Have to Take the Drums Out for a Walk?

"Aboriginal education" for non-Aboriginals is all the rage at the Toronto District School Board:

Queen Alexandra Celebrates “Aboriginal Education for All”  

Earlier this month, students from Queen Alexandra Middle School had the exciting opportunity to participate in a very special and unique “drum awakening”. This process began last spring when students, in collaboration with Arts for Children and Youth (AFCY), participated in workshops related to aboriginal culture and tradition. Students were able to participate in drumming lessons with visiting guest artists. As a culminating activity, students were able to make their own traditional Aboriginal hand drums.  

These drums had been curing at Queen Alexandra for 6 months, and finally, they were ready to be “awakened”. Our students watered the drums, "fed" the drums and heated them. The drums were finally ready to have their first sharing and on November 12th, the students performed on their drums for the first time.  

With the support of AFCY Toronto, all of the students at Queen Alexandra over the upcoming weeks, will have the opportunity to learn to play these aboriginal hand drums.

I'd love to see them take this drum awakening program to the TDSB mosqueteria Middle School, but, of course, the board wouldn't dream of doing such a thing because it would be perceived as trying to foist paganism on the mosqueteria kids.

You Better Watch Out/You Better Not Cry/You Better Not Pout I'm Telling You Why: Twelfth Imam Is Comin' to Town

By overlooking Shia eschatology, writes Robert Spencer, Obama has made end game intended to bring about the Mahdi's arrival far more likely:

The two powers that the Iranian mullahs have long designated as the “Great Satan” and the “Little Satan” – America and Israel – would be the only targets of an Iranian attempt to hasten the Twelfth Imam’s coming.

A nuclear strike from Tehran into Israel could kill, estimates say, upwards of twenty million people, completely destroying the Jewish State.

Barack Obama, by acceding to the Iranians’ nuclear ambitions, has given a tremendous impetus to these revenge fantasies, probably not realizing or caring that Iran’s mullahs take the prophesies of the Twelfth Imam very seriously indeed – seriously enough for them to bet the entire world upon them. Obama has just made the odds appear to them to be considerably more favorable than they were just a week ago.

Way to go, O!

The Guy Who Produced "Pretty Woman" and "Fight Club" and Late "Tootsie" Director Sydney Pollock Israeli Spies?

That's the scuttlebutt.

"If You Like Your Nukes, You Can Keep Your Nukes. Period"

Now, there's a promise you can count on.

It Sucks When You Have Such Great Intentions But "The People" Won't Bow To Your "Will"

Dictators have it so much better, don't they, Barry? Or, as Bertolt Brecht put it in another era:

Would it not be easier / In that case, for the government / To dissolve the people / And elect another?

Short Term Gain, Long Term Pain

America Traded Its Long-Term Future for 6 Months of Peace

Palestinians "Lonely" (What--Like the Maytag Repairman)? Ha!

How can they be "lonely" when they're the UN's pet/pet project? Kindly explain the sort of "loneliness" that prompts UN Zion-loathers to name an entire year after you and your never-ending "struggle":

Later today, [the Chair of the General Assembly’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, Abdou Salam] Diallo will introduce several draft resolutions related to the question of Palestine to the General Assembly, which will be asked to, among other things, declare 2014 as the “International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.”  

General Assembly President John Ashe welcomed the Committee’s initiative to have 2014 proclaimed as the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, and called for using it to redouble efforts to create the necessary environment for successful peace talks.  

“Ongoing peace negotiations must be given a chance for peace to take root and flourish, but peace cannot be meaningful and durable without taking fully into account the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, which are key to the solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East.” 

“I call on the Governments and people of both Israel and Palestine to avoid actions that would undermine the fragile hope created by this renewed round of negotiations, and to cease and desist from any actions that are in contravention to international law and would pose a major impediment to peace in the Middle East and, more importantly, render the two-State solution impossible,” said Mr. Ashe.  

Speaking on behalf of the UN agency responsible for assisting five million Palestinian refugees, Filippo Grandi said that solidarity – which transcends political and financial support – is crucial because it makes Palestinians feel that they are not alone. 

Mr. Grandi, the outgoing Commissioner General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said his organization is “sadly familiar” with this loneliness, given how closely it works with refugees whose plight has remained unresolved for over six decades...

Cry me a freaking river Jordan with that "loneliness" bollocks, UNRWA creep.

 

Toronto Taxpayers Forced to Eat Nearly $4 Million for Failed "Bixi" Bikes Scheme

Placing stands of pay-per-use bicycles in chilly, hilly, traffic-snarled Toronto? What could possibly go wrong?

Can the Example of ProMo's "Humility" Help Shape the U.S.-Iran Deal?

Absolutely. Because if there's one thing the Grandiose Ayatollah and his rotten, megalomaniacal crew are it's "humble" a la Mo.

"Israeli Doctors Helping Syrian Refugees May Pay Dividends In Future"

I wouldn't bank on it.

Unrequited Love: American Jews Adore Their Barry (Who Has No Love For the Jews' State) No Matter What

And now that "what" includes a Chamberlainesque deal with the Jews' fiercest, most dangerous enemy:

President Obama hasn’t made it easy on his Jewish supporters. Conservative critics—and if polls are right, the majority of Israelis—have always doubted his intentions toward the Jewish state and suspected him of either tilting toward the Palestinians or, as veteran diplomat Aaron David Miller memorably put it, someone who was “not in love with the idea of Israel.” But for the majority of American Jews who remain loyal Democrats and liberals, Obama was, at worst, a satisfactory ally of Israel, and, at best, the misunderstood victim of smears. At times, the president’s penchant for picking fights with the Netanyahu government over settlements, borders, and even a consensus Jewish issue like Jerusalem caused some liberal true believers like lawyer and author Alan Dershowitz to worry about his intentions. But even when the relationship between Washington and Jerusalem was at its worst during the past five years, the president’s supporters could point to the issue of paramount importance to Israel’s security and claim with some justification that he was as solid an ally as could be asked. 

That issue was, of course, the Iranian nuclear threat, and from the earliest days of his first presidential campaign, Obama had made it clear that he would never allow them to gain a nuclear weapon. Though he had also mentioned his desire for a rapprochement with Iran in that first campaign, the president’s rhetoric on Iran was consistent and strong. Critics could point to failed efforts at engagement, his slowness to back tough sanctions, and his reliance on a shaky diplomatic process as undermining that rhetoric. Yet administration backers like columnist Jeffrey Goldberg continued to make the case that on this point there could be no doubting the president’s resolve. 

But in the wake of this past weekend’s nuclear agreement with Iran and the evidence that the president has not only ignored Israel’s concerns about the deal (as well as those of Saudi Arabia) but appears to want a détente with Tehran that will upend America’s entire stance on the Middle East, it’s fair to say that the president has put his backers into a new and even more difficult test. Liberals may be lining up to take Obama and Secretary of State Kerry at their word that they have not given up their determination to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions and even accept the claim that the deal makes Israel safer. But given the administration’s acceptance of Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium and its apparent belief that it is unrealistic to think that Tehran can be forced to give up its nuclear program, belief in its bona fides on this issue can no longer be considered anything more than a leap of faith. At this point, American friends of Israel as well as those who understand the grave threat that Iran poses to U.S. interests and security need to face the fact that this president has abandoned them.

Why would they face that fact? That would entail admitting that they backed not only the wrong horse, but one unworthy of their devotion. Mark my words: it'll never happen.

Obama Condemns--Yes, CONDEMNS--Critics of the Iran Nuke Deal

Is that so, O? In that case, this one's 4 U.

What Do Hot Chicks in Miniskirts and Slutty Boots Have to Do With the Holocaust?

Tell me and we'll both know.

Canada's Former Ambassador to Iran Gives Us a Foretaste of What Things Will Be Like Once Future Former P.M. Justin Trudeau Is in Charge

We will go from being the last red line in the western world to being supine appeasers a la Obama.

Movie Quotes Everyone Has Been Getting Wrong

Iran's Contribution to the JFK Conspiracy Theories

Da Joooos killed Kennedy.

The Single Most Effective U.K.-Based Recruiter for Jihad

It's Up-and-At-'Em Anjem Choudary.

A Song That Describes Obama and Kerry Vis-a-Vis Israel and the Iran Nuke Deal

Too Much Info

Dr. Conrad Murray says, "I held Michael Jackson's penis every night."

Dershy On the Nuke Deal

The sage of Harvard weighs in hyperbolically but not necessarily inaccurately:

Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz said Sunday that the Obama administration was naive and had possibly made a "cataclysmic error of gigantic proportions" in its deal to ease sanctions on Iran in exchange for an opening up of the Islamic Republic's nuclear program.

"I think it could turn out to be a cataclysmic error of gigantic proportions," Dershowitz said of the deal, which he described as "naive."

"It could also turn out to be successful, to be the beginning of a negotiated resolution," Dershowitz told Newsmax on Sunday. "But I think the likelihood of it being the former is considerably greater."

So do I.

The West Gets Bested

Ayatollahs, 1; West....Damned

Canadian Government "Skeptical" Re Iran Nuke Deal, Will Maintain Sanctions

Unlike the rest of the West, the Harper government isn't overly impressed by the deal:

The Canadian government remains “deeply skeptical” of Iran in spite of the newly-brokered nuclear deal and will continue to implement tough economic sanctions on the country, says Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird. 

Under the new deal -- reached in Geneva during talks between Iran, the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia – the country will curb many of its nuclear activities for six months in exchange for relief from crippling economic sanctions. 

But Baird said the Canadian government has decided to take a wait-and-see approach-- and will evaluate the new deal based on its successful implementation. 

 “We will evaluate this deal not just on the merits of its words, but more importantly by its verifiable implementation and unfettered access of all Iranian nuclear facilities,” Baird said at a news conference Sunday. 

Until then, Canada will stick to economic sanctions, which “have brought the regime to present a more moderate front and open the door to negotiations,” Baird said. 

He added that Canada is skeptical of Iran’s “ability to honour its obligations.” 

“We think past actions best predict future actions and Iran has defied the United Nations Security Council, and has defied the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Baird said.  

“Simply put, Iran has not earned the right to have the benefit of the doubt.”

Simply put, Canada's government "gets" Iran better than Obama et al do.

Update: It takes but eight pithy words for Greg Gutfield to summarize the deal.

The Mullahs Crow: We're Bloody Well Right!

American claims to the contrary, Iran sees the nuke deal as affirmation that Iran has a right--that's right, a right!--to enrich uranium.

Let's give 'em an exhibit in Canada's mausoleum of "human rights"!

If you listen closely, you can hear the mullahs channeling Supertramp:

From the "I'd Rather Pass a Kidney Stone Than Read This Book" Department

"Svend Robinson: A Life in Politics."

Everything Old Is New Again

Yesterday: the world failed to lift a hand to save the Jews of Europe.

Today: the world fails to lift a hand to save the Jewish state.

La plus ca change, eh?

"Iran Deal Marks Vast U.S. Israel Gap on Existential Issues"

What an excellent way to put it. The most immediate existential issue: the chances of Israel continuing to exist in light of a soon-to-be nuclear Iran.

Boom Times Ahead for Iran--In More Ways Than One

With Iran's currency already on the upswing following the announcement of a deal with the usefully idiotic Western powers, the Grandiose Ayatollah and his mullah-bullyboys are more firmly in control than ever. Which means that their plans to get on with their nuclear agenda (dare we dub the ensuing nuke an "Obomba"?) under the noses of the gullible infidels easily taken in by the Khomeinists' taqiyyah can continue apace. (Do you honestly believe they would have signed on to this deal if they really had to put the kibosh on their nuclear dreams?)

The "Obomba" in the Khomeinists' livingroom?

Churchill's Words on the Occasion of Chamberlain's "Peace In Our Time" Deal Should Come Back to Haunt Us

It's deja vu all over again, with Iran in the guise of Germany:

I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat. ...

It is the most grievous consequence of what we have done and of what we have left undone in the last five years - five years of futile good intentions, five years of eager search for the line of least resistance, five years of uninterrupted retreat ... five years of neglect of our defences....

Our loyal, brave people...should know the truth. They should know that there has been gross neglect and deficiency in our defences; they should know that we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road; they should know that we have passed an awful milestone in our history ... and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies:

"Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting."

And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time...

"Moral health" and "martial vigour"? Under Obama?

'Tis to laugh!



Two slim, smiling, fast-talkin' dudes

The Iran Nuke Deal: Mad, Bad and Morally Indefensible

Sort of like O-Care, but without the flawed website and with plenty of plutonium. (The West's promise to the mullahs: If you like your nukes, you can keep your nukes. Period.)

Update: It's official! The world is now far more dangerous.

When Is Checkbook Journalism NOT Checkbook Journalism?

When the Toronto Star's "public editor," responding to charges that her paper's paying 5 Gs for a video showing Toronto Mayor Rob Ford going apeshite for some as yet inexplicable reason, says it isn't.

Hey, I believe her, don't you?

"Not since Rep. Nancy Pelosi told us we had to pass-the-bill-to-find-out-what’s-in-it have the news cameras captured such quivers of delight over things so huge and appalling..."

Claudia Rosett casts a baleful glance at those nuclear talks in Geneva.

Dog Days of O-Care

Mark Steyn, that cheekyboots, comments on a pooch named Baxter being offered an O-Care insurance policy:

This is an ingenious move on the Administration’s part. With only 26,794 human beings signed up for Obamacare, it should be easy to make the 7,000,000 enrollment target by enrolling 6,973,206 dogs. Of course, they’ll need to sign up enough young, fit, scampering pups to cover the costs of all the aged, lame, mangy old pooches with pre-existing conditions.

So true.

Hey, maybe first canines Bo and Sunny can be the O-Care poster dogs.


Sunny and Bo: my favorite Obamas--by far!

 

The Farce That Is UN "Climate Change" Negotiations

It is captured here:

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Avoiding a last-minute breakdown, annual United Nations climate talks limped forward Saturday with a modest set of decisions meant to pave the way for a new pact to fight global warming. 

More than 190 countries agreed in Warsaw to start preparing "contributions" for the new deal, which is supposed to be adopted in 2015. That term was adopted after China and India objected to the word "commitments" in a standoff with the U.S. and other developed countries. 

The fast-growing economies say they are still developing countries and shouldn't have to take on as strict commitments to cut carbon emissions as industrialized nations...

Wind Turbine Company Ordered to Pay $1 Million in Damages Because Its Machines Keep Liquefying Protected Bird Species

Another great reason to get rid of these blights on the landscape.

"Peace In Our Time" In Our Time

John Bolton says that Obama's "deal" will enable Iran to invade Poland, er, sorry, get a nuke or two for sure.

All the Presidential Conspiracies

Who killed JFK? Commentary's Jacob Cohen has a run down of all those who have been bruited to be behind the murder:

It was anti-Castro elements, furious at Kennedy for his betrayal during the Bay of Pigs invasion and his failure to dispatch Castro during the Bay of Pigs crisis. It was pro-Castro forces, furious at Kennedy’s attempts to assassinate Castro, also alerted by Kennedy’s sudden turn to a strongly anti-Communist position during the campaign, a turn that resulted in his contested victory over Nixon in the 1960 election. It was Nixon, angry about the outcome and also fearful that Kennedy was preparing to lead the United States out of Vietnam. Nixon’s connections with organized crime, derived from his involvement with illegal drug rings, also led him to think ill of the president, which naturally means to think of killing him. Suspiciously, Nixon was in Dallas the night before the assassination and departed just after or before the assassination, or perhaps he did not depart...

It was the Soviets,⁵ who, having programmed and trained Oswald to assassinate Kennedy, may have changed their minds and tried to deprogram him during his visit to Mexico City in early October 1963. It was the KKK, a former member of which foretold that Kennedy would be assassinated in Miami. It was, of course, organized crime, which hated Kennedy’s brother Bobby, their nemesis, and whose drug and gambling interests were being threatened by either Castro or Batista, and therefore by Kennedy, who swung all ways on these matters as well. Organized crime then ordered Ruby to kill Oswald, a kind of suicide bombing to which Ruby agreed because he favored a slow death in prison to the torture he would have received had he defied orders. It was the CIA, which actually had engineered previous assassinations, most notably of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. The Arbenz assassination set the stage for their unsuccessful Bay of Pigs invasion, which in turn prompted anti-Castro Cubans to hate Kennedy and, therefore, proves that the CIA was the cause of the Kennedy assassination. It was Lyndon B. Johnson, for obvious, Macbethean reasons, but also because he hated the Kennedys, who constantly humiliated him—and because he, too, opposed Kennedy’s intent to leave Vietnam. Did you know that Johnson’s long-time mistress claimed that Johnson whispered to her (at a party they attended in Dallas the night before the assassination), “After tomorrow, goddamn Kennedy will never embarrass me again”?... 

It was the Justice Department. It was the Watergate burglars and especially Howard Hunt (punished for his illicit knowledge by the assassination of his wife). It was the same people who organized at least three other assassination plots against Kennedy, each similar to the Dallas assassination, with a patsy who was an ex-Marine looking “remarkably” like Oswald and an attack plan replicating the events in Dealey Plaza. It was China. It was jealous husbands whose wives consorted with JFK. It was the Dallas police. It was Washington insiders like the legendary James Jesus Angleton (who knew all about Oswald well before the assassination), and Allen Dulles. It was the French drug mafia, which was allied to the South Vietnamese drug mafia. It was the Corsicans, those notorious assassins, one of whom, world renowned, was in Dallas on the day of the assassination and was never even detained and questioned! Have I mentioned the Military-Industrial Complex?... 

Oswald, though, did not do it, although he was involved and would need to be framed as the designated patsy. After all, there is “credible evidence” that Oswald worked for the KGB, but also Naval Intelligence and the CIA. He was, therefore, simultaneously, a single, double, and triple agent...

 It was da Joooos!

Dear Leamingtonians: When Premier Wynne Shows Up Today, Why Not Greet Her With a Barrage of Rotten Tomatoes?

After all, it's because of her and her predecessor's deranged "green" energy program that electricity costs in the province have spiraled, and the Heinz ketchup plant, the one that kept Leamington and surrounding tomato farms up and running lo these many decades, is no longer cost-effective, and is slated to close.

How are you going to assuage the townfolk, Kathleen? By telling them to transform the ketchup factory into a wind turbine plant?

Dallas Strives to Shed That "City of Right Wing Hate" Designation It Got Stuck With Post-JFK Killing

Some folks still can't come to terms with the reality that JFK's assassin was a man of the left, a Communist who loved Castro and Cuba:

Friday's 50th anniversary of assassination of President John F. Kennedy is an important moment for Dallas: The city wants to use the occasion to demonstrate how much it has changed.

In the 1960s — after the president's murder — Dallas became known around the world as "The City of Hate." And it was a hotbed of right-wing politics, a magnet for the extremes of the conservative movement at the time. 

If the world would like to see evidence that Dallas is no longer the City of Hate, it need not look further than the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. 

The orchestra is practicing for its four upcoming concerts celebrating the life — and mourning the death — of the 35th president of the United States. 

A Dutch conductor leads an orchestra of black, white, Hispanic and Asian musicians for whom the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination is not an occasion for regret and shame but a canvas upon which they will express their fondest hopes and deepest fears for the country and themselves. 

"You know, cities grow and cities change," says Dallas Symphony CEO Jonathan Martin. "One of the things that I hope that this week will show the world is that the Dallas of 2013 is not the Dallas of 1963."

This just in: the Dallas of 1963 did not murder JFK. Oswald did, and he wasn't even a Dallas native.

And, oh yeah, JFK's brother wasn't killed by a "climate of hate." He was done in by a Zion-loathing Palestinian.

Update: Daniel Pipes writes:

Kennedy’s assassination profoundly impaired American liberalism. James Piereson’s 2007 book “Camelot and the Cultural Revolution” established how liberals could not cope with the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald, a communist, murdered Kennedy to protect Fidel Castro’s control of Cuba. Kennedy died for his anti-communism; but this wildly contradicted the liberals’ narrative, so they denied this fact and insisted on presenting Kennedy as a victim of the radical Right, reading Oswald out of the picture.

As the Dallas symphony article shows, they're still inclined to do so even now.

Update: In Expunging Oswald, George F. Will writes that "there is a human instinct to reject the fact that large events can have small, squalid causes..."

Ah, Yes, the Old Silver Spoon in Your Knickers Trick

It's said to be a method some young British girls are using to foil their parents' attempt to marry them off at too young an age. (The spoon sets off alarms at airport security so the girls can't be shipped off to the old country where an eager fiancé is awaiting his child bride.)

JFK's Assassination Utterly Transformed America and the American Left—and Not In a Good Way

Bruce Bawer has a great essay about the profound changes wrought by the murder:

In the decades that followed, along with the horrors (from Vietnam to 9/11), there would be positive developments (above all, the defeat of Soviet Communism) and certainly better presidents than the internationally adored JFK. But scarcely anything – not even the very best things – would remain entirely untouched by such toxic, illiberal post-JFK phenomena as political correctness, multiculturalism, and the culture of victimhood. JFK himself, an essentially conservative politician who had been killed by a Communist, would likely have rejected these phenomena outright, but no matter: many of their adherents did their best to turn him into a symbol of them.

Bawer says that but for that fateful day 50 years ago, there would likely never have been a President Carter or a President Obama:

The thoroughly appalling Jimmy Carter, for example, would surely not have won in 1976 if his palpably bogus Everyman act hadn’t appealed to millions of media-age voters in the wake of the overblown debacle of Watergate. It was Carter’s fecklessness, and his evident (and dangerous) discomfort with the idea of America as the Fortress of Democracy, that made possible the 1980 Reagan victory, and it was Reagan’s revolution that saved America, and the free world, from the Carter retreat (and, moreover, helped bring about the Soviet collapse). 

After the Carter nightmare, more than thirty years had to go by before it was possible for a new generation of voters (for whom the Carter years were ancient history) to elect, and even re-elect, another man who was even less fond than Carter of his own country and who, in addition to making war on constitutional liberties and on the economic system that had made America rich, stood for an even more extensive, and more damaging, U.S. withdrawal from superpower responsibilities – all of which, barring the arrival on the scene of a new Reagan, may yet succeed in unraveling the American miracle.

A miracle that, what with the fallout from ObamaCare and the Senate opting for a "nuclear option" (not to mention a soon-to-be nuclear Iran), is unraveling at an alarming rate.

It Was Fifty Years Ago Today...

Rolling Stone magazine has compiled 16 songs that have something to do with JFK. This is one of them:

 

Update: It's shocking to consider that he was only 46 years old when he died—and would be, gulp, 96 were he alive today.

How...Orwellian

Totalitarian Dubai to host its inaugural George Orwell lecture.

Um, These Folks Know That Canadian Lefty/Liberals Aren't Exactly Israel's Best Friend, Don't They?

The Canadian fundraising arm of an Israeli hospital announces its latest batch of honorees:

The Meir Medical Center is the fourth-largest hospital in Israel, and from its location north of Tel Aviv, “it takes care of one million people in the region,” Fishbein said.  

There are many Arab villages and communities in the area it serves. It was that kind of inclusive and integrated medical facility that led one Canadian to donate more than $1 million to the hospital last year, said Arie Raif, vice-chair and CEO of the Canadian Friends of Meir Medical Center. 

Altogether, in the four years he’s headed the hospital’s local support group, Canadians have contributed more than $2.5 million to it. The bulk of the funds have gone to the children’s facility and the cardiology unit, where Canadian funds were used to acquire new equipment.  

One of Raif’s primary tasks is to raise Meir’s profile in Canada, particularly among younger people.  

The Canadian support group now has “a few thousand” supporters. The main event on the organization’s calendar is its annual gala in which the hospital’s Medal of Merit is awarded to worthy recipients.  

This year’s event will take place April 6 and will see the Medal of Merit awarded to Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, Dr. Allan Abramovitch, a urologist at Scarborough Hospital and Jacqueline Abramovitch, a community activist, as well as [JSpace aficionada] Karen Mock, a human rights activist, and David Mock, a professor and former dean of the faculty of dentistry at the University of Toronto...

I thought the award was supposed to go to worthy recipients.

Update: Justin Trudeau and the Federal Liberals are Preparing to Reduce Canada's Support for Israel

Update: This CJN article provides a window into Arie Raif's mindset and goes a long way to explaining this year's selection of honorees (h/t: LRC).

Rob Van Damme

Brandeis U Severs Ties With Palestinian Al Quds U

The AQ campus protest featuring Nazi salutes proved to be too much even for those Brandeis squishes who are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

"Subpar," "Bad Apples" and "Glitches"--Oh, My

VDH weighs in on O-Care bafflegab.

Thomas L. Friedman Disses Congress, Endorses Obama's Nuke Deal With Iran

Obama's (or is it Khamenei's?) useful idiot offers the sort of "wisdom" for which he's famous.

Full of Hot Air

Al "Jazeera" Gore hooks up with Premier Kathleen "Green" Wynne.

Zionhass as OISE

Eye on a Crazy Planet has all the kooky Marxist details.

Update: Last night at Beit Zatoun--kooky Marxist Zionhass with a zany Aboriginal twist.

The List of the Top 50 Muslims in the World

It's comprised largely of rogues, royals, Islamists and other Zion-loathers. categories that are by no means mutually exclusive. (Wanna bet that Hamas's Khaled Mashaal is miffed that he's numero 50 while Hezbo's Nasty Nasrallah is way above him at #27?)

It's a Wonderful Plan

Shockingly, the everything's-comin'-up-roses video posted below is still running on the White House website--as if everything were glitch-free. If I were an American who had recently had my health insurance canceled even though I liked my plan and wanted to keep it, I'd be tempted to hurl rotten eggs at my computer screen. I'm gobsmacked that the thing can remain up when so many of its promises have already been revealed to be little more than wishful thinking and pixie dust. (Did you know, for example, that every time someone successfully logs on to the O-Care website, an angel gets its wings?)

One thing I did learn that I hadn't heard anywhere else: did you know that if an insurance company has an overhead over 20% or more, it is obliged to send out compensatory cheques for the difference to those it's insuring? Which makes no sense whatsoever given that if these companies find they aren't making enough money, it says in the Affordable Care Act that the government must subsidize them.

The whole rickety apparatus is simply deranged.

Genuine Free Speech on Campus IS Possible

The University of Colorado shows how it's done:

The University of Colorado, which has a reputation for liberal politics, has banned discrimination based on political affiliation -- giving greater protection to students and faculty who speak their minds while on campus. 

The policy is believed to be a first for any public college or university, and could help protect campus conservatives who might fear retribution for expressing their views in the classroom, or in written assignments.  

While the measure was sponsored by two Republicans, the change was unanimously passed by the entire Board of Regents. 

Regent Sue Sharkey, who spent months working on the policy change, points out: "This just wasn't a Republican or conservative initiative. Rather, we as a board came together as Democrats and Republicans to be unified." 

Sharkey says it covers students and faculty, "to ensure... we were honoring their First Amendment rights and they could speak out on their political views and not feel they would be discriminated against based on that."...

Might this be a template for other universities?

Zionhass Metaphor Alert

Iran likens Israel to a rabid dog.

Obama Says the Difficulty of Launching O-Care Was "Underestimated"

Way to vastly understate it, Barry. BTW, your plausible deniability is undeniably implausible.

Much of the Late Jennifer Lynch's Work Was in Vain, Thankfully

The "human rights" commissar who once compared hate speech to microwaved popcorn ("For the first while on the Internet, there was this little pop, pop, pop. And now, the popcorn is in full popping formation. It’s just omnipresent, 24/7, popping up here, popping up there, and so it seems to make it difficult for measured voices to respond,” she told the National Post in 2009) didn't make much headway in her battle to retain draconian state censorship:

Much of her response to the scandal, including a 2009 report to Parliament that recommended scrapping the hate law’s penalty provisions, was in vain. The law, known as Section 13, was doomed to be repealed. Though it was technically saved as constitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada, the days of Ms. Lynch’s investigators inviting white supremacists to mediation with complainants are over. The legal test of whether a message is “likely to expose” a protected group to “hatred or contempt” is now all but defunct at the federal level.

Defunct: it has a lovely sound, don't you think?

Update: A writer who had the distinction of making it on to la Lynch's enemies list recounts his experience with her redaction action (via SteynOnline).

How Would Obama Have Handled the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Not well, as you can well imagine.

Update: He would have handled it about as well as he's handling the Iranian nuclear crisis.

Obama Doesn't Want to Call It ObamaCare Any More

Perfectly understandable, considering the cirucumstances.

Al Jazeera English Squanders Mega-Gazillions to Reach Puny Audience

Not exactly value for money. The only one laughing all the way to the bank is Al (Jazeera) Gore.

Stoopid Jews

I'd appreciate it if someone--anyone--could 'splain to me why a Jewish organization would give a "heal the world" award to an unelected Ontario premier who heads up what is arguably the most corrupt government in Canadian history as well as to an Aboriginal leader who's angling for a genocide designation for his people. Because I don't get it; no, not at all.


Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne demonstrates how she practices "tikkun olam"

Introducing the Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Homelessness and Life Transitions

Nice work if you can get it.

Barry's Phone Fumble

For a mere 3 bucks, you could have signed up yesterday for a mass phone call with Oscama. Fittingly, it went about as well as the O-Care rollout.

The Left's Midas Touch

That's meant ironically, of course, since everything they touch turns to crap.

It's the Rob Ford Crack Video!

Sounding Ominous

"Now is the most fateful time for Israel since the Yom Kippur War."

An Idea Whose Time Should Never Come

There's going to be a sequel to It's a Wonderful Life?!? Don't tell me, let me guess--George has gone into business with Mr. Potter, Mary is having hot flashes and Zuzu's on crack, right?

"What a Difference One Election (in Iran) Can Make"

Ceeb cluelessness encapsulated in one pithy sentence. (Ms. Ayed's piece goes to show how easy it is to bamboozle Western journalists. The only thing that's "changed" in Iran is the desire to have the onerous sanctions lifted--the reason for Rouhani's duplicitous charm offensive. That Ms. Ayad along with many others--excluding, of course, the French--have fallen for it says a lot more about them than it does about Iran.) Here's the truth.

RIP Jennifer Lynch, Head of Canada's Federal "Human Rights" Commisariat

One hesitates to speak ill of the just-deceased, but the woman was responsible for this freedom-killing bilge:

 I believe critics of human-rights commissions and tribunals are manipulating information and activities around rights cases and freedom of expression to further a new agenda. This agenda posits that rights commissions and tribunals, and the attendant vigilance over all the rights and freedoms Canadians now enjoy, no longer serve a useful purpose. In this way, the debate over freedom of expression has been used as a wedge to undermine and distort our human-rights system. 

Ironically, a debate about balancing rights has not itself been balanced. One can only surmise that if these critics succeed, thus would begin a broader assault on freedoms they would subordinate to absolute freedom of expression.

In fact, it's La Lynch and her ilk who would sacrifice free speech on the altar of "hurt feelings." I'm sorry she has passed, but I wish I could say the same of the tinpot bureaucracy of busybodies which she championed and over which she presided.

Palestinians Brazenly Use UNESCO to Delegitimize Israel

They're so proud of themselves that they brazenly broadcast their efforts here.

Galloping Sharia: Thomson Reuters Introduces the IFDI

It's the "first-ever barometer for the development of the Islamic Finance industry."

"Dangerously Cheesy"

You've been warned.

The Knights of the Order of the Kishka

A Jewish conspiracy to make you fat and clog your arteries?

The Epitome of Wretched Excess

How mega-wealthy Arab men are accessorising their supercars and powerboats with lions and cheetahs.

Potential Nuclear Annihilation Makes Strange Bedfellows

The French-Israeli-Saudi Front Against Iran?

You've Heard About Camelot But What About Obamelot?

Here's Mark Steyn on how, fifty years ago, a quick-thinking widow hitched a mediocre musical with a grandiose theme to her late husband's abbreviated presidency. And here's my revision of its titular song:

It's true! It's true!
He hasn't got a clue.
And now his minions don't know what to do.

A plan was crafted sev'ral years ago now.
Alas, it seems that is has been for naught.
ObamaCare's collapsing as we know now
In 'Bamelot.
An economic sector so unfettered,
So tantalizing its control was sought.
They thought that health insurance could be bettered
In 'Bamelot.

Obamelot! Obamelot!
It should have given people pause.
That Obamelot, Obamelot
Has passed some awful laws.

He promised if you liked stuff
You could keep it,
A line the trusting people eas'ly bought.
Don't let it be forgot
So weasels will get caught
And pay the price for hubris
As it's known in 'Bamelot!

 

Update: An Obamabot defends Obamelot (and Obama a lot).