The New Horror File

(Ripped from the headlines: Dec 8, 2009)

Woman 'sentenced to death for adultery'

"Nine men are awaiting trial in eastern Spain after allegedly sentencing a woman to death for adultery in an unofficial court held under Islamic sharia law."

More compassion from the religion of peace.


Climate conflict

"The EPA's endangerment ruling could allow the Obama administration to regulate emissions without approval from lawmakers in Congress and the Senate."

Didn't Americans fight a war to win the right to have their voices heard in government?


The Real Inconvenient Truth

"A planetary law, such as China's one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate currently, which is one million births every four days."

Why don't the nut-jobs that write these kinds of doomsday articles ever take into account the human propensity to solve problems, to innovate and to create new opportunities in response to reality? How many thousands of years have people been claiming that we are going to destroy the planet or be wiped out by our own excesses?

Hey Moon-Bat's listen closely Human beings are adaptable!!!

Meditarianism

When 50% of a province's resources are concentrated on running a single program then you no longer have a government run program, you have a program run government.

This is the situation Ontario finds itself in. According to the Frasier Institute next year the Ontario government will spend more than half its revenue on health care, the year after New Brunswick will follow suit, by 2034 four more provinces will follow suit...

With no alternative available to the citizens, the government is essentially nothing more than a support system for medical totalitarianism.

In Meditarian Canada, health care runs you!

The Charitable State.

Invariably when arguing for complete laissez-faire policies and the dismantling of the welfare state the question that the statist asks is...

"What are we to do with the people who can't fend for themselves as well as others and who need assistance in order to survive in society?"

The Objectivist response is that the individual can do whatever he wishes to do, but that he can not claim the right to force others. That he can not take his personal penchant for charity and with the loaded gun of government force others to be charitable.

There are two man-centric ideologies at work here, represented by the welfare state, and the charitable state.

The welfare state is ruled by conflicting premises.

On one hand is the claim that we men are caring creatures and that we are not "wired" or "evolved" in such a way to act as self-centered, egoists and individualists. The claim is that each and every one of us needs the community, the collective and as a result men overwhelmingly realize that the collective is greater than the sum of its parts. This reasoning is used to indicate that men should help one another, that we ought to be charitable, altruistic toward our fellow men.

The other (and contradictory) premise, which leads the welfare state to use its ill gotten force is that men are nasty, selfish, ignorant brutes who would never stop to help their fellow men and therefore must be forced to support all sorts of initiatives and progams to alleviate the suffering and hardship of those less fortunate.

Yes, the claim is that we are simultaneously "hard wired" to be altruistic and yet need to be forced to think of anyone but ourselves. This is a contradiction of epic proportions.

The Objectivist stance on the less fortunate is simple. Let each and every individual choose whether he is going to be charitable or not, depending on his preference and his ideals, his values and his own situation. There is no need to force charity.

Without government forcing the charitable to pay for every politician's pet project or well connected pressure group's personal agenda the amount of disposable income available for charity would be immense.

The benefits to the contributors would similarly be valuable to them. "Contribute to a home for the homeless? Sure! It might reduce crime, it would certainly make the city look better. Donate to the family down the street in their time of need, but of course..."

Funny isn't it that it is the selfish egoist's that are certain that individual, honest, uncoerced charity can function as required, and that the altruistic, collectivist humanists see the need to point a gun at your head and demand your money for their life.

Anti-contextual

"Every day... I can greedily, rightfully, seize every ticking moment, and never give one of them back."




"I don't live to live through anyone, ever."

On the surface these commercials are great. There is no equivocation, the sense of life is individualistic and unapologetic. They are classy and they appeal to the kind of strength of character that accepts such ideals... On the surface.

But context is important and in this case the context includes the fact that this company just received one of the most massive bailouts in history. That this is the second such bailout for this company in the last 30 years.

I don't think that these rather Objectivist appeals to individualism are an accident either. Atlas Shrugged is poised to have its best selling year to date, Tea Parties protesting the largest expansion of the welfare state in the US since the "New Deal" were held across the country.

The company is most definitely trying to appeal to that backlash, and it is just as fervently hoping that you and I and all the rest of the people out there don't notice their hypocrisy. They are counting on their audience being as anti-contextual as they are.

"Shhhhhhhhhhhh," they say... "forget the bailout... Forget the fact that your choices made us unable to survive on our own so we told the government to force you to support us. Forget that this already happened in 1979, forget that to us the ideas in these commercials are just a crass advertising ploy"... Yes, forget all that...

But then maybe that is the point, and part and parcel of their problem. As long as this company, and others like it remain anti-contextual themselves, as long as individualism, self reliance and rational self interest are only marketing gimmicks to them, then they are doomed to be moochers, looters, scavengers and thugs, taking the money they are not worthy of earning by force and denying us our freedom and choice through the barrel of a government gun.

Peace? Order?? Good Government!?!?

"In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit." Ayn Rand

This travesty stems directly from a pragmatic (and cowardly) approach to law enforcement.

The fact that a massive operation would have to be undertaken by police to secure the Brown's rights and that native bands across the country would respond with force and violence means that the Browns are left without any rights.

That is the compromise here, a festering standoff, masquerading as "peace" for the rights of an innocent family.

Disgusting.

Climate Panic

Hmmm...

Eh?

You can almost taste the panic, and it has nothing to do with Arctic Ice, Polar Bears, the eventual disappearance of the Maldives, the Amazonian rain forest, at risk species or environmental disaster.

Cap and Enslave

This is Liberals threatening to do what Liberals(socialists) do best...

Take your hard earned money and give it to people who haven't earned it. This plan makes a virtual slave of the Canadian economy and Canadian business. For the sake of what... Global warming, something that is either a natural cyclic occurrence or a big fat lie.

Cap and Trade = Wealth redistribution. The liberals want us to count on buying carbon credits from third world dictators and despots, so that we Canadians can continue to produce goods and services in order to live in the manner that we work for, which in turn makes this country the envy of every single one of those third world thugs. This is the actualization of the punishment of the good for being good. Our productivity is what is being paid for here, not global warming. AGW is a theory at best, and as pointed out elsewhere in this post it may in fact be a complete fabrication.

The fact that this plan to screw the Canadian economy (and Canadian business) comes out the same week as Climategate is astounding.

News today is that PM Harper will be going to Copenhagen for the climate summit. I hope he's there to deliver this...

Scandal, Evasion and Distraction: A Flow Chart of Modern Government.

What is it that leads governments to believe that they can hide, evade or deny their actions and the scandals they create?

Take this ridiculous example. Everyone, EVERYONE! knows there are people being tortured in Afghanistan, indeed it would be much more newsworthy to have a headline that read; "No Afghan Prisoners Have Been Tortured", and to have it be true.

The level of evasion necessary for the PMO and the government to claim that they "didn't know" is Herculean, but only slightly more so than that required by the opposition parties, the press' talking heads and us dumb voters to act surprised and outraged by it.

But this story is a mere blip on the radar. Much more important is the question why Governments think that they can hide things like this? What are they hoping to do? I believe there is a pattern here... scandal, evade, distract, (repeat if necessary).

Here's my theory...

All governments start off like the Hollywood starlet with the good girl image, and we voters are like smitten fans, happy (for the most part) with the choice we have made in the aftermath of an election.

But this electoral honeymoon is short lived. It doesn't take long before our sweetheart is rumored to be less than pure, and sure enough the sex tape emerges.

Our governments in scandal are just like that starlet. They divorce their actions from any possible repercussions. Then even when they are discovered on all fours taking it like a pro (metaphorically speaking) they deny even the possibility that they have done anything wrong.

We, voters (fans) are left either sputtering in disbelief, or cynically nodding our heads in disgust, but only for so long, only until the next political porn, a fiasco, another boondoggle, some scandal, heaven forbid there be a somethingorother-gate.

Then, not unlike the pathetic guy watching that starlet's home video, we are distracted by the next outrage, more outrageous than the last outrage.

So we go, from scandal to scandal, but rarely do we do anything other than bitch about it over coffee, because...

"did you hear...???"

Lies, Damn Lies and AGW

Ok, a show of hands...

Who's surprised?

The Bowing Chicken - a Parable

By Richard Gleaves

Once upon a time in a small white farm on the edge of the frontier, a chicken was voted leader of the barnyard. She was a particularly fine chicken: robust and cheerful, with smooth orange and white feathers. Her sharp little beak was particularly adept at pecking small seeds out of the dust, and she was well liked and admired by both the other chickens and her fellow animals.

The old dog that had previously been barnyard leader took her aside on her first day.

"Chicken," he said, "the most important job in this barnyard is to protect yer fellow animals from predators. The farmer built a nice fence around the property, but now 'n then some varmint'll get in and try to make off with one of the young 'uns. I figgered the best thing was to set a watch every night. The horse took the first shift, and the cows the second and..."

"Cluck cluck cluck!" said the chicken. "You're not the leader anymore, dog. Elections have consequences. I'll be making the decisions from now on. If varmints are attacking us, I'll know how to deal with them!"

"How, then?" asked the dog.

"Reason, of course! Just like when the pigs wanted to eat Horse's corn! I reasoned with them. And now everything is fine."

"It ain't the same! A fox ain't a pig. And a wolf ain't a horse. They don't live on a farm with reasons and rules. They're wild beasts!"

"Cluck cluck cluck" said the hen, "Go back to your doghouse and let someone smart run things!"

The dog wagged his head sorrowfully, his jowls flapping, and loped off to his little doghouse to chew an old bone.

The chicken skittered about the yard, giving orders. "Cluck cluck cluck!" she sang, "Everybody work! Make your eggs and cheese! So say I: the barnyard ruler. I do what I please!"

And the little farm obeyed.

The sun sank low on the frontier plains. The animals climbed under their straw and went to bed. The chicken flew to her roost at the tippest-top of the old white barn and tucked her head under her wing.

"Baa!" came a sudden bleat, just as the moon cleared the farmhouse roof. "Thief! Thief!"

"Cluck cluck cluck!" cried the chicken, and she flew down to the sheep corral. "Why are you bleating, you foolish sheep?"

"There! There! By the bushes! A baa-baa-burglar!!"

The chicken trundled over to the bushes and, in the moonlight, saw a raccoon attempting to climb back through the fence. His arms were full of cabbages and carrots, and he was having difficulty.

"Halt, thief!" she said "You will drop those things now!"

"Who says?" said the raccoon, his beady little eyes narrowing behind his mask.

"I, the ruler of the barnyard!". She tried to sound impressive.

"I don't wanna. I got twenty hungry babies in a log by the river. We got nothin'. Why should you guys get dese lettuces? We're starving. We need these carrots more den youse do! I'm taking dese carrots and dese lettuces."

The chicken cocked her head. "That sounds reasonable." She said. "Oh, noble raccoon. Let me apologize for the farmer's greed. We need to share with our fellows and redistribute the barnyard's bounty. My apologies for our selfishness". And then, with an impressive flourish of her wing, she bowed low before the raccoon.

Then she raised her head. The raccoon the carrots and the lettuce were gone.

"You shouldn't a' done that. Now the farmer will have to sell our eggs and milk."

The chicken turned to see the old dog frowning at her. He turned about and loped into the night.

The next day, the chicken strutted about the barnyard.

"Cluck, cluck cluck!" she sang. "Everybody work! Make your eggs and cheese! So say I: the barnyard ruler. I do what I please!"

And another day passed on the farm.

That night she was dreaming of sunflower seeds when "Neigh!" a deafening cry broke the night!

"Cluck cluck cluck!" She cried, and flew to the stable. "What has happened?" she asked the horse.

"A fox! A fox has been in the henhouse! And he's been drinking the milk!" the old nag whinnied.

She turned and saw a red-tailed fox scurrying through the window, his arms full of eggs.

"Halt, thief!" she cried "You will drop those babies now!"

"Who says?" said the fox, his tail curling into a question mark.

"I, the ruler of the barnyard!". She tried to sound dangerous. She puffed up the feathers on her chest.

"But I was ruler first!" said the fox, wiping a milk mustache from his upper lip. "This was once an open field where the foxes played in the grass. We were at one with nature. Until the evil farmer kicked us off our own lands! These eggs are reparations, until we are given the right of return!"

The chicken cocked her head. "That sounds reasonable." said the chicken. "Oh handsome fox, let me extend my apology for the suffering the evil farmer has inflicted upon you. Take our eggs and milk with my blessing!" She raised a wing and bowed low to the ground. When she raised her eyes, the Fox and the eggs were gone.

"Foolish chicken!"

She turned to see the old dog in the stable doorway.

"Now the farmer will have no lettuce, no carrots, no milk and no eggs. He will have to kill one of us and send us to market."

And the old dog loped away.

The next day was chaos on the farm. Raccoons came and went, taking everything they could. The foxes were nesting in the old hound's doghouse. Worst of all, two little piglets had been taken for slaughter.

The smell of blood hung thickly in the air. The chicken perched high on a fence post, and called an impromptu press conference.

"Cluck cluck cluck!" she sang. "Everything is bad! Work hard just the same! I inherited this mess. So the dog is to blame!"

The animals mobbed the old hound, picking him up and carrying him away.

"You're making a mistake!" He barked. "There's blood in the air! Something will smell it! Something bad will come tonight!"

The animals heaved and– with a yip!– they threw the dog over the fence. He was never to return.

And a crimson sunset descended on the tiny farm.

In her perch high above, the pompous little chicken tried to sleep. She thought about the warning of the old dog. Was she being foolish? Should she put a watch on the farm? Was there really a danger? She couldn't imagine how the world could be all that dangerous. She had lived all her life in a neat little barnyard. She'd been pampered and spoiled. She'd never faced hardship or battle. The dog and horse and the cow and the other strong animals were just dumb brutes. They chose force when reason was obviously the better alternative.

She wondered now, might the world be wild after all- somewhere beyond the furrowed fields and neat little hogpens- a wild, wild world?

She put her head under her wing and drifted to sleep.

Sometime after midnight, cries erupted all around the barnyard! Animals were bleating and running, scurrying and leaping! They honked and snorted and mooed!

"Wolves!" they cried! "Wolves!"

The little chicken didn't know what to do. She fluttered down, jumping from place to place, wings over her eyes. She caught a glimpse of grey fur, saw hulking forms pouncing on defenseless creatures. She saw a sheep stamping her hooves in terror as she was devoured.

The night was full of growls.

"Cluck cluck cluck!" she dithered. "Oh dear, oh dear!" she hid in an overturned barrel, peeking out through the slats. She trembled as a long grey snout appeared at the opening, and feral eyes glinted in the moonlight. She was about to be eaten!

Then she heard a moo from above and she saw a hoof flash out- knocking the wolf aside! Through slats in the barrel she saw cows and horses forming a defensive ring around the other animals. She heard the blast of the farmer's shotgun.

She heard the voice of the old dog!

"They're on the run! Everybody stick together. Watch the young 'uns! Those wolves can't get us now! No thanks to that stupid, stupid chicken!"

Her feathers on end, she scrambled out of the barrel and perched on top.

"This isn't MY fault!" She cried. "The dog has brought the wolves upon us! He is staging a coup!"

"A coop?" asked the dog.

"A coup! A rebellion. A mutiny! The dog is a radical extremist! This is a plot to take over our barnyard! You– You just don't like chickens!"

"This has nothin' to do with likin' chickens! This is yer fault! Don't you get it? You stupid piece of unplucked poultry! You can't negotiate with wild things!"

"You can so!" Said the chicken. "Watch!" and she fluttered over the fence and out of the barnyard.

As she landed on the other side, the chicken stopped and looked around. She'd never been off the farm before! The world outside was dark, gloomy. The moon shone down on tangled weeds and muddy ditches, on thorny brambles and gnarled branches that reached down as if to snatch her away. Yellow eyes peered from the dark.

"Cluck cluck cluck!" she murmured to herself. She didn't like the world one bit!

Then the Great Wolf appeared.

He padded from the shadows towards her, stopping a foot away. He was muscular, immense, grey, scarred and ragged. She could feel his hot breath.

The chicken cocked her head.

He looked reasonable.

"Oh, noble wolf!" she said, ignoring his rows of teeth. "I am here to apologize for offending you. Too long has the farm shut out your great people. Too long have we been selfish and stubborn– never seeing the wolf's side of things! Let us open a dialog in hopes of reaching a mutual agreement to mutual interest. All animals are brothers and it is my greatest wish that we live together in peace and friendship!"

And, with a flourish of her wing, she bowed low before the Great Wolf.

The last thing the chicken ever knew was the sensation of teeth on the back of her neck...

© Richard Gleaves 2009-11-17

Many thanks to Richard for allowing me repost this...

America Emasculated.

Can you pick out the simpering toady in these pictures...

Canada's transformation into a Republic

An American Republic at that.

Canada will probably become a Republic sometime in the mid century through a combination of demographic and economic forces.

Short version of the argument: while Canada erodes with a very sub replacement birthrate (aprox 1.4 children per couple), the United States is continuing to expand, with the population expected to be between 500 and 550 million. At the same time, Canada will be suffering acute labour shortages due to the demographic "bust" of the 2020's.

Large numbers of Americans can be expected to immigrate to Canada seeking the higher pay employers will be forced to offer to get workers, and they will also import their values. As they become more numerous and politically active, they will become the driving force behind many social and institutional changes in Canada.

Remember too that it is the "Red State" Americans who have large families, not "Blue State" Americans, and the generations leading up to 2040 will have seen Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid go bankrupt (along with many US municipalities and even some States like California, Michigan and New York). Come to think of it, most Canadians will be around to see American entitlement programs go bust (some estimates put the entitlement programs into net deficit as soon as 2016), so there will be at least two generations of Americans who will not be disposed towards unsustainable entitlements, and certainly will work hard to see these things do not happen in their new home.

Canadians will also have witnessed their own social programs like "Public Health Care", CPP and OAS go bust as well in the late 2020's as Boomers drawing on taxpayer funded benefits begin to outnumber and overwhelm the actual number of taxpayers. A large segment of Canadian voters will also have become adverse to socialist ideology, given they were put through severe hardship to pay for these Ponzi schemes, combined with a generation of young, politically active American immigrants with similar life experience should provide a large voter base to carry out political change.

This should be a topic that everyone should consider regardless of political orientation; how will you prepare yourself and your family and loved ones for the coming demographic changes, and what will you do to ensure the change is positive and peaceful for most Canadians?

Doomed to Repeat it...

*

"With interest rates at zero, monetary engines humming as never before, and a self-proclaimed Keynesian government, we are back again embracing the brave new era of government-sponsored prosperity and debt. And, more than ever, the system is piling uncertainties on top of uncertainties, turning an otherwise resilient economy into a brittle one."

Acting Surprised

Why is this a surprise?

We have built a system where we expect our politicians to hand out money for everything from road construction to health care, where the electorate's call to action sounds more like the old refrain "what have you done for me lately" and then suddenly when our politicians spend the money we give them to buy our votes like we asked them to during their campaigns we claim it is violating some sacred trust?

What hypocrites we are.

This problem is easily solved though, limit government to one task, the protection of inalienable rights; life, liberty and property.

Take away the power of politicians, the ability to engage in influence peddling, to stifle business and to legislate on a whim. Take away the power of the politician to declare illegality for anything other than the initiation of force or fraud and remove their ability to manipulate the market in any way shape of form.

But don't stop there, you can't stop there...

Educate the electorate to the point where it consistently and rightly realizes, that the power to tax is the power to enslave. So that they look to business to provide solutions not the tyrannical hand of government. Where they realize the truth in the old adage that to be free themselves they must allow others to be free, where the only thing rightly viewed as anyones else's business is the initiation of force or fraud upon another human being.

Until this happens, all of you out there bitching about some peoples ability to be more equal than others, the signatures on cheques, the crass politicization of economic panic, the buyouts and bailouts should just stop acting surprised, because the system is working exactly the way you designed it to work.

Resist...

Thanks to avgleandt

That's it.

I'm going to save the planet.

I'm going to train my dog to eat environmentalists...

They Have No Right(s)

It ought to be called "The Canadian Charter of Desires and Permissions" because Rights and Freedoms don't enter into the equation...

"The court acknowledges that the law violates the rights of parents and children. The court acknowledges that if the law is read as written any attempts to achieve the same result as the offending law will violate those same rights. The court says, we won’t read the law that way next time if you change the wording to something nicer. "

read the whole thing

No, Really? Seriously?!?

*

"She criticized the media's portrait of Mexico as nothing more than a society of illegal migration, drugs and violence, and she said her fellow citizens found it amazing that Mexican asylum seekers in Canada were claiming their government couldn't protect them from the drug wars and corrupt and abusive security forces."

I know that as a politician she is required to paint a somewhat skewed picture of her nation but seriously, Mexico is currently embroiled in an all out Drug war with more than 8,463 dead and counting. Hell, the war even has its own Wiki page.

*

"In five minutes, without shooting a bullet, a 20-man armed commando unit burst into a prison in the Mexican state of Zacatecas and freed 53 prisoners – all of them connected with the Gulf Cartel. The lightning speed of the operation and the crisp Federal Police uniforms worn by the gunmen was the work of the Zetas, the Gulf Cartel’s armed wing."

With all due respect to Senator Rosario Green Macias, her humiliation is a direct result of her own country's inability to stem both the flow of drugs and the flow of people away from the violence and the drugs.

Senator, don't look at Canada and claim that relations will get better with a new Prime Minister, look to Mexico and fix the problems there.

Watch This

There's a lot of noise about the PM not watching Canadian news...

Three points.
1. Do people honestly believe that anything that the PM needs to know isn't briefed to him by people a lot more in the know than the Canadian press?
2. Perhaps the Canadian media should be examining just how poorly they deliver their product when it's not even watched by the leader of the country.
3. With Canadian news as partisan as it is (on both sides) do you really blame the PM for wanting a somewhat removed perspective on it?

Right for all the Wrong reasons

Bob Hepburn is right for all the wrong reasons.

Everything "Lord" Moran said about Canadians seems to me to be pretty close to the mark. We tend to overly praise even just the competent members of our society, and should someone reach critical acclaim outside of Canada, well Lord Moran's quip about the Order of Canada is not far from the mark.

Similarly Mr Hepburn is not wrong in asserting that it is high time that Canada cut the umbilical and ended the sham of constitutional monarchy. The Queen and her representative, the Governor General are a waste of time and money. We do not need a royal marionette or even the puppeteer herself to give the actions of our government and its elected officials sanction.

What do you suppose would be the response by Canada and Canadians if the GG on the recommendation of the Queen, or the Queen herself decided to refuse to sign some piece of legislation into law?

If you guessed the end of the monarchy in Canada you would be right.

This begs the question that if the Queen/GG would never contemplate disallowing a Canadian law or a proclamation from Canada's parliament what use are they anyway?

Was Lord Moran being a pompous arrogant wind-bag when he wrote that letter all those years ago? Most likely, but Mr. Hepburn's pulverized feelings aside, the Stars writer hasn't done a very good job of proving the Brit wrong when his article stands on the premise of digging for hurt feelings from a 25 year old letter.